Firmman 1/2 iron aqua bike

Today  I did the Firmman 1/2 iron aqua bike. This consisted of 1.2 mile ocean swim and a 56.1 mile bike.   Although I ran 7 miles yesterday (5k race between the two mile warm up and cool down, I thought “you aren’t doing the run, so you should be able to push yourself today and get a great bike split”.  This was not to be….

I guess last week finally caught up with me.  Not to mention, I really don’t sleep well in hotels, so I didn’t sleep so great last night.  But, enough with the excuses.  All in all I guess I did OK and should be happy that I can now bike 56miles after such a week and still be able to walk around and do chores when I got home.

The ocean swim was really funny.  The waves were huge going out and it was low tide, so you practically walked, stumbled, fell face first into the water whenever a wave came all the way out to the first buoy!  Then, apparently the current was with us, because even though Krista and I both swam way out to China across to the far buoy, I finished the swim in 35min.    The best news is that I wasn’t tired at all and felt I COULD have done it again if I HAD to (like I will on Nov 1st).

The bike felt really hard.  Maybe it was mentally hard because I thought the course would be flatter than it was.  The middle section of the course was lots of hills.  The beginning and end were pretty much flat on the highway.  I averaged 18.2, so I guess it was OK, but it didn’t feel great.  I really wanted to push it and feel like I gave it my all.  This was weird, my heart rate was only around 130, but I felt like it was really hard. This must have been my legs telling me that they were tired from the run the day before.  Not a fun feeling!  I kept saying to myself “thank goodness I don’t have to run when I finish biking”.

The day was actually a beautiful day, except the start which was about 48 degrees.  My hands were absolutely numb on the bike and I couldn’t shift in the middle section.  I forgot my gloves and opted not to put on a shirt (not one of my stellar decisions   But, Krista did it too and she should be very proud.  It was her longest swim and bike and she did FANTASTICALLY!!!

Thanks Krista for going with me!

Here is a pic of Krista and I- you can kind of see the magnitude of the waves