I guess I could have at least responded to say that, yes we did finish... In fact, we finished together.
I had a somewhat lackluster swim due to be in a lake with 2800+ other people. Not my idea of fun! But I survived the swim in 1:17:13, 24 seconds slower than my previous Ironman swim... Disappointing, but there were still two more events to go!
I hammered the first 2/3 of the bike (first 42 miles in 2 hours, 4 minutes!) before getting a cramp. I got off my bike to use a porta-pottie at one of the rest stops and my left quad cramped. So I took it easy after that, which combined with the headwinds, rain and chillier weather slowed me down a lot. My total bike time was 6:13:27, which was still 2 minutes, 23 seconds faster than at New Zealand!. Not bad, and I still had energy for the run this time around!
My total run time was 5:07:56, compared to 6:08:43 at New Zealand. Not bad! I was struggling mightily about 14 miles in when Joan caught me. She force-fed me a couple of GU's and I was good to go after that. She says that I dragged her to a PR once I revived myself. So we finished together in 12:51:51. I broke my old PR of 13:55:38, and she broke her old PR of 12:59:06 (both set at IMNZ in '09).
Good times!
Now I'm dreaming of doing Ultraman Canada in 2011! That's 10km of swimming, 260 miles cycling and 52.4 miles of running spread over three days!
