Ironman Maryland (well, kinda)
What an interesting day! Actually, the whole trip was interesting! Alia and I drove up to Maryland to begin the adventure. We took the route that goes over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge which was pretty cool. It actually goes under water in two places for the barges to pass over. We stopped a night in Ocean City before getting to our final destination of Cambridge. Ocean City was kinda a dirty place but we didn't have a ton of time to explore. Almost the whole time we were in Maryland leading up to the race it was windy and rainy. This made attempting to do any workouts challenging since we didn't know the area very well. We spend most of our time indoors working and hanging out.
This was the first Ironman event I have gone to that I felt was poorly organized. No one knew what was going on and it was just poorly run. I know a lot of this may have been due to the weather, but I have been at races where the course had to change and it was still managed well. There also wasn't the normal excitement you get from an Ironman event. Finding a place to stay was also a challenge. We ended up staying in a small town about 35 minutes away named Federalsburg. I definitely would not go back to this race (and this has nothing to do with the cancelled swim or shortened bike).
Race morning, everyone was wondering if we were going to swim or not and we already knew the bike had been shortened to 100 miles. They kept postponing the swim start, then at one point cancelled it. We did a time trial start by race number and I was a low number so I got on the bike pretty quick. The race ended up being really nice. We had a little rain on the bike and some flooding on the run, but it just made it a little more exciting. The run was 2.5 loops and there were two section where we had to run through shin deep water for about 75 yards. It definitely made the shoes heavy, but once all the water squished out, it wasn't too bad.
With my lack of training leading up to the race I didn't really have any huge goals other than to go out and have fun (as much fun as you can have while racing) and I think I accomplished this. I did suffer at times, but just went out and tried to keep a steady pace. I finished 10th in my division and 58th overall. Not good results, but I'm happy to not have another Ironman on my schedule for the time being. Now I can focus on surfing over the winter and get back to short races and Xterra next year.
This was the first Ironman event I have gone to that I felt was poorly organized. No one knew what was going on and it was just poorly run. I know a lot of this may have been due to the weather, but I have been at races where the course had to change and it was still managed well. There also wasn't the normal excitement you get from an Ironman event. Finding a place to stay was also a challenge. We ended up staying in a small town about 35 minutes away named Federalsburg. I definitely would not go back to this race (and this has nothing to do with the cancelled swim or shortened bike).
Race morning, everyone was wondering if we were going to swim or not and we already knew the bike had been shortened to 100 miles. They kept postponing the swim start, then at one point cancelled it. We did a time trial start by race number and I was a low number so I got on the bike pretty quick. The race ended up being really nice. We had a little rain on the bike and some flooding on the run, but it just made it a little more exciting. The run was 2.5 loops and there were two section where we had to run through shin deep water for about 75 yards. It definitely made the shoes heavy, but once all the water squished out, it wasn't too bad.
With my lack of training leading up to the race I didn't really have any huge goals other than to go out and have fun (as much fun as you can have while racing) and I think I accomplished this. I did suffer at times, but just went out and tried to keep a steady pace. I finished 10th in my division and 58th overall. Not good results, but I'm happy to not have another Ironman on my schedule for the time being. Now I can focus on surfing over the winter and get back to short races and Xterra next year.
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