The 3's have the day..

My weekend of 3's concerning my High Cliff Half Ironman on Sunday.. Okay I must say, some of it is my fault for not reserving a hotel in the middle of Wisconsin..

I left Saturday morning on my 3 hour drive to a town close to the race site..

My first 3 hours...

Then looked for a hotel.. Everywhere I went, all booked up for the night..This is not looking good..

2nd 3,

Then it took a me another 3 hours in 3 (okay 4) major towns to find a hotel room at 1:00am in the morning. Zigzaging the state to find a place to sleep for me and my bike..Wholly crap everything was so booked up because of some Nascar race, I just took the 1st room I could get that was not in some corn field somewhere, and oh yeah I paid a premium for it.

Then the final #3, yeah,

3 hours of sleep for the Half IM race..Waking up to a pleasant rain trickling against my hotel window. Went outside to get going and yes it was raining...Enough to cancel a race type of rain..

So I loaded up my bike in the rain and headed for the race, hoping that the clouds would part on the way so I could actually race this morning...

Ahhh, luckily they did, the rain disappeared 1 hour before the race, "YES" the race was on...

The theme for the race was to stay focused and use it as a IM training race, work on my nutrition, mental game, and just try to relax out here and suck up my competitive pride while I take it easy because of my hernia..

The mantra for the day, Ironman pace, Ironman pace, drink every 15 minutes and eat every hour on the bike.. Above all relax on the 1.2 mile swim..

Okay, descent swim for me, even got a little cocky and tried to find 1 or 2 people to draft on the swim.. But everybody kept swimming away.. :( Okay 44:52 on the swim, I actually peeled my wetsuit off in the water, so I think my swim time was around 42+.. My goal was just to swim under 45 minutes and stay relaxed and conserve some energy..

T1 and then off to the bike route.. I'll say it was kind of cruel having a hill right after T1,

A slow 17.7 mph avg on the bike..Which was okay for me..I didn't push hard on the ride and actually just tried to enjoy the ride and was glad I was just out there racing.. My Hernia still reminding me that it's there, especially staying in the aero position for 90% of the race..

Then came the 13.1 trail run..Another hill after T2.. The route actually reminded of a place I usually train at.. Muddy, rolling terrain, but at least it was not lined with Horse carp like my usual running spot. Okay my run was 2:12:17. Totally suck ass concerning what I usually pace at, but just ran it like a LSD run, checking heart rate and trying to stay under zone 2.

Total Half IM time was suck ass (6:13:35) , but with no taper and treating it as a "C" race, okay "B" race, I really didn't care about the final clock time, it was just a challenge to get to the starting line that day and my hernia for the most part stayed in check...

I'm sooo grateful about that..

Because each training day completed gets me one step closer to starting IM Wisconsin..