HITS Full Distance Triathlon
Grand Junction, CO
Saturday, May 16th 2015
I signed up for this race after getting a promotional email
from HITS offering entry into the Full (Iron) distance Triathlon for only $200
if I signed up within two days of receiving the email. This was a full year before the date of the
race, so even though I wasn’t looking for an Ironman distance Triathlon to do
in Colorado any time soon, I figured that far out I would be able to make it
work with my calendar and I decided to take advantage of the incredibly low
price for a 140.6-mile race.
I arrived at the race
site the day before the race. The
weather was pretty bad at this point. It
was windy, rainy, dark and cloudy. With
less than a day until the race started, it was pretty obvious to everyone
checking in that we were going to be dealing with less than ideal weather for
the race – and possibly even downright terrible conditions if things didn’t
change dramatically very soon.
When race day came, it was still pretty crummy weather – as was
expected based on the previous day’s forecasts.
Nevertheless, the race still started on time and went off without a
hitch. Mark Wilson (the Race Director
and an all around awesome guy that you would happily follow into the gates of
hell in battle even after just meeting him for the first time) called everyone
into a huddle on the beach at the lake with just a few minutes to go until the
race started. He gave us a few
last-minute heads ups about some places on the bike course to watch out for
gravel and things like that. He also
said that anyone who wanted to participate in a group prayer could all stick
around for a moment longer and huddle around him. Most people proceeded to get into the water
and prepare themselves for the race, but I stuck around for the prayer with
about 15 or so other racers. I thought
this was a nice, sincere touch by Mark.
Mark offered a genuine and humble prayer and then we all got ready to
start swimming.
Because the weather was so yucky heading into the race day,
Mark told us that they repositioned the buoys over the night and now anyone
doing the Full Distance would need to do 4 laps instead of 2. The purpose of this adjustment was to keep
everyone closer to the shore just in case (with the bad weather and all). I hadn’t ever had to do 4 laps in any race of
any distance before, but it didn’t really end up making a noticeable difference
for me one way or the other.
Something that had never happened before though occurred as
I was leaving the water and entering into the first transition zone. I would learn later that the cause was the
cold air temperature (not the actual temperature of the water in the lake), but
as I was trying to take off my wetsuit and get into my bike gear, I entered
into an uncontrollable shaky quivering state of hypothermia. I was shivering so violently that it took me
5 minutes per foot just to get my socks on.
My entire body was shaking so badly that I doubted for the first time in
any race I’ve ever done whether or not I should or even could continue. Two other people coming out of the water at
the same time as me also were hit with hypothermia. One was a man and the other was a woman. The woman had to be taken away on a
stretcher. She kept saying, “I can’t
breathe.” One of the HITS employees said
that they deal with hypothermia all the time but he had never seen someone
unable to breathe because of it before.
Any hopes for a PR were completely shattered after the 40
minutes I spent in T1. Even now, I can’t
explain what I was doing for 40 minutes in T1, but the times don’t lie, and
that is how long it took me to dry off and change. I was not prepared to be this cold starting
out the bike portion of the race. I wore
all the clothes that I had access to, which consisted of the sweats and long
sleeve tee I was wearing in the morning when I travelled to the race site. I was being pretty obviously weighed down by
all the baggy, saggy clothing I was wearing as I started biking but I had to
warm up some how. I spent the first hour
on the bike shivering and quivering and only made it about 10 or 11 miles. I knew that I would not finish the race if I
had already wasted nearly an hour in T1 and my average bike pace continued to
be barely in the double-digits for 112 miles.
As I mentioned before, I had never found myself in this position in a
Triathlon before. Obviously my chances
of setting any records were over with, at this point all I cared about was
finishing the race. I’ve never had a DNF
(did not finish), and I did not want my first one to be in an Ironman I
travelled to another state for. I was
determined to, if nothing else, at least finish the race I had started.
At some point before I was halfway done with the 112-mile
bike course, I realized that I was finally totally warmed up and wanted to
start shedding layers. I took off my
gloves and beanie that I was wearing under my helmet and stuffed them in the
chest area of my Trisuit. Shortly after
this, I hiked up the legs of my sweatpants and pulled up the sleeves of my
shirts and jacket. I was officially
totally warm again and I could finally stop worrying about the hypothermia and
I could start focusing on the race. When
I finished the first of the two 56-mile laps, I ditched my gloves, beanie, two
tee shirts, and a jacket in the transition area. It felt great to finally be on my bike
without all that extra clothing slowing me down. It felt like I had been dragging an anchor
for the first 56 miles of cycling with all those extra layers.
The bike course was pretty bland, truth be told. It was basically desert and some mountains off
in the distance. There weren’t any trees
or shade so it was also pretty windy.
This happens to be what I get to trudge through on a daily basis where I
live in Idaho so it didn’t faze me too much.
Furthermore, the wind never crossed the threshold of miserableness where
you start hating everything about your life and never want to ride a bike
again. Additionally, the course had
enough changes of direction so that you never had to bike directly into the
wind for too long at a time. It was nice
to get a tailwind every time there was a turnaround after having to face the
wind head-on. I think this evened the
scorecard with the wind as much as is possible – you never gain as much with a
tailwind as you lose against the headwind – but all things considered it wasn’t
bad at all. I managed to finish the
112-miles with an average pace of 16.3 mph, or less than 7 hours total on the
bike. As I was nearing the end of the
bike course, I did some quick math and knew I was back on track to at least
finish the race well before the 17 hour time limit. This was a huge load off my shoulders, never
having been in a position before where I was unsure if I would even be an
official ‘finisher’ or not. This is when
I started to have fun and enjoy myself.
Fortunately I did not spend another 45 minutes in T2 like I
did T1. I felt good and was completely
back to normal at this point – other than being about two hours behind schedule. At least I was having fun though and knew I
would be crossing the finishing line today.
My parents said I looked a lot better than I did the first time I was in
the transition zone. I felt so relieved
to not be under the weight of physical impairment and mental uncertainty as I
headed out to start the 26.2-mile run.
The run course was pretty bland, just like the bike
course. The run course took you through some
local farming neighborhoods, at which point I really started to feel like I was
at home in Idaho. I was feeling so
positive though after finishing the bike portion on a positive note that I ran
the first 10 miles of the marathon quite comfortably. It was at this time though that I had to make
an emergency stop at portapotty that could not have been placed at a better
position for me to avoid a truly terrible mishap on this Triathlon. After exiting the portapotty feeling much
lighter, the reality set in in my legs about how many miles they had already
carried me that day. I decided to start
alternating between walking and running to hopefully preserve my knees and my
legs and still get a few miles of running out of them before the ‘walking only’
mode set in. This strategy of starting
to alternate between running and walking before I absolutely had to seems to
have worked out well. I managed to run
about 16 miles of the marathon and walk the other 10 or so miles at a good
brisk pace of 13 minutes per mile. My
walking pace was so brisk that the pace per mile barely even changed when I
alternated to ‘running’ again for a mile or so. I got to see my family several times on the run. They were able to drive through the run course so they came to say hi a few times and Michelle walked with me for a couple of miles.
I had another first in this Triathlon in addition to the
hypothermia: I got lost on the run course.
About the time I made my final turnaround on the marathon course, the
sun went down for good and it went from dark to pitch black really fast. I found myself with about 5 miles to go
without any lights, on a run course that provided absolutely no lighting
whatsoever. When a car was coming in one
direction or another I would press a button on my GPS watch so the driver would
be able to see at least something and know someone was there. Most run courses are on some combination of
bicycle lanes and sidewalks so this issue of darkness hadn’t ever happened to
me before. Lesson learned – I will not
ever forget to grab lights if I might still be on the course when it gets
dark.
As I am guessing usually happens whenever anyone gets lost
doing anything, I don’t know exactly where I missed a turn to get back to the
final stretch of the race course and get to the finish line. I was trying to rely on my GPS watch to trace
back the path I had run to get to the finish area because I could no longer see
a darn thing in terms of street names, signs, numbers, roads, etc. I think I made a turn at a point where there
was a bike course marker, mistaking it for a running course direction
marker. And to make matters worse, right
after my GPS watch chimed in that I had run my 26th mile of the
marathon, the battery died, along with my ability to try and simply backtrack
and trace the line I had already run in order to figure out where I was
supposed to be. Don’t get the wrong
idea, I wasn’t in the wrong county or something all of a sudden, I could still
see and hear the lake I had been swimming in earlier that day, I just didn’t
know which streets to take to get back the right way. I kept going in what I knew was the right
general direction, and to my surprise, I somehow ended up at the finish line –
except coming from the opposite side of where I was supposed to be. I told one of the HITS employees I made a
wrong turn somewhere and had walked through a campground instead of entering
the state park on the road I was supposed to be on and I had somehow just come
upon the finish line from the wrong side of the park. To my relief, nobody was worried about me
having deviated off course or something like that. After all, I had obviously only added
distance to the run course instead of shortening it. The HITS employee just took me to a place on
the proper course and said run down there as far as you feel like, then turn
around and come cross the finish line. I
managed to find the finish line this time, having once again found a way to add
time to my race total, but at this moment I could not have cared less. As I was running toward the finish line I could hear Mason calling, "Daddy, daddy!" in a very sincere voice. He was waiting for me at the finish line and he helped the volunteer put the medal around my neck. He was pretty proud! My parents, Andrew, Michelle, and Ethan were also there to congratulate me. I was so happy to be done and that I finished
the course when earlier in the day I had serious doubts about whether or not I
would make it in time (which is saying a lot, 17 hours is a pretty generous
amount of time if your only goal is to finish the race…well at least if you’ve
already done five of these already).
Being a comparatively small race in terms of number of
people competing in the Full distance, I somehow came out of the race finishing
in 2nd place in my age division with a time of 15 hours and 22
minutes. A couple guys from my age
division were in the overall top 3 male finishers so that helped me to come
away with the second place spot in my grouping.
It is always fun to get to take home some extra ‘hardware’ in addition
to the finisher’s medal by placing in the top three in your age division.
Overall, I rate this race a success. Even though I got hypothermia after the swim,
spent 45 minutes in T1, got lost on the run course and forged my own trail to
the finish line, I had a ton of fun. Add
to this that Mark Wilson is such a great race director and all around nice guy
that you really feel and know that the HITS staff cares about you as a
Triathlete and member of their family and community. I cannot say the same about other bigger
organizations that I’ve raced with. Of
course if this had been a bigger race the course would have probably been
impossible to get lost on because there would have been so many racers and
spectators lining the way back. Having
said that, I still wouldn’t trade in the experience I had with this race for
any other.
Pros/Highlights of the race:
1. Affordable race entry cost – you could do three and half
of these for the cost of one WTC Ironman
2. Excellent accessibility for friends and family (no traffic,
masses of spectators, etc.)
3. Mark Wilson – This guy makes you feel like a million
bucks take the time to talk to every single participant in the race.
4. Friendly and sympathetic staff (really cool and nice when
I was taking forever in T1 and got lost during the run)
5. Much improved finisher’s medal compared to three years
ago
6. I got an award to show off (2nd in my division
of male 31-35)
 |
| "Daddy! Daddy!" Mason was very excited to see me finish and Michelle said he was getting pretty anxious. He kept asking where Daddy was and if he was going to come through the "tunnel" |
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