HITS Full Distance Triathlon

HITS Full Distance Triathlon

Grand Junction, CO

Saturday, May 16^th 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 26^th 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 2^nd 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 (2^nd 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"

Advantages of Running with a Heart Rate Monitor

I have continued to focus heavily on running the past few months.  I have reached several personal milestones, including having run 55 miles in one week (I did this last week).  I had previously run 50 miles in a week one time, a few weeks ago, but before that I don’t think I had ever even run 40 miles in a single week before. 

What I am most pleased about this milestone though is that I did it without injuring myself or even feeling like I needed to take any time off to recover.  After each long run I perform, I feel basically good to go the next day, which is very much in contrast to how my body used to react to my long runs or when I tried to run a large amount of miles in a single week.  I owe this to the fact that I have started to run using a heart rate monitor and each time I go running I have a specific purpose in terms of what type of workout I am trying to achieve. 

I have finally taken the time to read up on how to take running to a little bit more of a technical and sophisticated level.  I hate to say it, but for the past few years all of my Triathlon training has been all about just going out and running/biking x amount of miles.  A lot of the time and energy I’ve spent in the past years could have been utilized much more wisely if I were paying attention to how hard my body was working and by using something like a heart rate monitor. 

Now that I use a HRM, for the majority of my workouts I am not trying to run hard or fast, and I can make sure I am not exerting too much effort or wearing myself out too much by keeping an eye on what my heart rate is.  It is really such a simple tool but enhances training so much and will let me take my running to a new level.  Of course there are workouts where I purposely train really hard or do a certain amount of miles at my desired marathon pace as well.  All these different types of workouts – with the ‘easy’ runs where I keep my heart rate low – combine to make a weekly routine, reaching a number of miles I don’t think I could have ever done before.  What’s got me the most excited is that by running my ‘long runs’ at an ‘easy’ pace, I am fortifying my cardiovascular system and as time goes on my ‘easy’ pace will gradually become faster and faster all on its own as my cardiovascular system improves and gets stronger.  The goal is that eventually you’ll be able to run very far and very long – say, a marathon – at an ‘easy’ pace that is actually much faster than previous races, but that your body has acclimatized to and is now your new normal easy pace.    

Becoming a 'Licensed' History Teacher

A couple weeks ago I officially received my teaching certification in World and U.S. History.  I have actually been teaching these classes for a year and a half already but it was sort of on an interim license.  I held a teaching endorsement in a related field so the Idaho State Department of Education didn’t make me go back to school and take any additional classes or anything like that, I basically just needed to pass the World and U.S. History Praxis exam and get observed teaching a few times.  I studied really hard for quite a long time, basically studying the history of the world and the entire history of the U.S. to be prepared for this exam.  The test was no joke, I had to really think hard about the questions and rely on what I knew about certain civilizations to help me shed light on other topics I didn’t know the answer to in order to make sure I got a good score.  Luckily, my hard work paid off and I not only passed the exam last year, but am now – finally! – an officially certified History teacher.   

Christmas 2014

We had a great Christmas this year. I was really excited for it the whole month long. We got our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving and decorated it with Grammie and Grandpa. Mason was so excited. He got out his tool box and used his tools to "help" Grandpa screw the bottom of the Christmas tree into the stand. When he was decorating the tree he wanted to hang all the ornaments in the same spot. Sometimes he hung ornaments on other ornaments. It was very cute. Mason learned the songs Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas this year and often sang them at the top of his lungs when he was going to sleep. We wrapped all of our Christmas books,  got more from the library to wrap, and I bought a few new ones, and then we put them all under the tree. Each morning Mason opened and we read one of the Christmas books. He really liked it. We also had a countdown calendar where we added a cotton ball to Santa's beard each morning to countdown to Christmas. We also taught Mason about the Nativity story and he loved to watch it on the tv, act it out with flannel figures, read about it, etc. He knows Christmas is about "when Baby Jesus was born" and he gets really excited about it. Christmas has been extra fun this year because Mason is old enough to really understand and be excited. It brings back that childhood excitement.

Kristin and Brandt and Linda and Dennis came here for Christmas, which has made it so much fun! On Christmas Eve we made gingerbread to make a gingerbread house and also made 2 gingerbread cookies - one for Mason and one for Santa (at Mason's request). Mason decorated the 2 cookies all by himself. He decided to unwrap a bunch of hershey's kisses and literally cover the cookies with those. Then he dumped a couple inches of red sprinkles on one of the cookies. It was very cute. He also left carrots out for the reindeer. There was candy sitting on the table to decorate our gingerbread house and Mason grabbed 2 chocolate coins and 2 peppermints, put them in stacks, and said one stack was for the reindeer and one stack was for Santa. He did that all on his own. It was very cute.  Our gingerbread house turned out great this year. The frosting was perfect and actually got hard enough this year to really stick things together and the gingerbread house stood up perfectly. We also decorated sugar cones to look like Christmas trees and added those to our gingerbread yard. It was a lot of fun. We also decided to act out the Nativity for Christmas Eve this year. When my mom told Mason that we were going to act out the Nativity story he got so excited and said he needed to get all the stuffed animals out of his room for the manger. He got every single one and put them in a pile with lots of warm blankets. We used a stuffed dog wrapped in a blanket to be baby Jesus - with no little girls in the family yet we don't have any dolls. Mason loved the baby Jesus and kept wanting to sit by it. He didn't want to leave. Brandt dressed up as a shepherd and Mason was a shepherd with him for a minute, but like I said, he just wanted to sit by the baby Jesus so he stayed in the manager with Jesus, and mommy and daddy (Mary and Joseph). I guess he is a great example for us all - staying close to Christ should be what we all want to do always, above everything else. Grandma Buckner was an angle and Grammie and Kristin were wisemen. Grandpa Dennis recorded it and Grandpa Buckner missed it because he was at work. :(. It was very quick and simple, but fun, especially for Mason. He wanted to sleep with baby Jesus that night and has wanted to sleep with, sit with, and play with baby Jesus almost every day since then. Another family Christmas Eve tradition we have is that we all get new pajamas for Christmas with my parents. Mason loved this because he loves opening presents. He opened his pajamas and was so excited that he insisted on helping everyone else open theirs too. So cute! To top off our Christmas Eve it started snowing right before Mason went to bed. We were so excited that we were going to have a White Christmas! After Mason went to bed we played Catch Phrase for a while and then Kristin, Brandt, and my parents went home around 9:30.  It kept snowing and the wind really picked up. It was getting pretty crazy outside. Around 10:00 the power went out. Luckily we had a candle already lit to make the house smell good and we had a few flashlights.

Around 10:15 my mom called and said the power was out at Wal-Mart and my Dad needed us to go to the store and help cover all the meat with cardboard so it wouldn't go bad. Kristin and Brandt picked Chad and I up and we met my parents there. Unfortunately, all of the cardboard was in the bailer which was locked shut (which is never supposed to happen) so we didn't have anything to cover the meat. After a little while of trying to figure things out I suggested we get all of the ice out of the ice boxes at the front of the store so we used shopping carts and emptied those and covered as much meat and cold food as we could. More of my dad's management came quickly after and they found a little bit of cardboard and some plastic to help cover stuff up. We helped until around midnight when we had used up all the ice and there wasn't much more to do. My dad stayed until around 1:30 when the power came back on (it only came back on at Wal-Mart, not at our houses). Then they removed all the ice and stuff and he came home. Unfortunately an hour later the power went out at Wal-Mart again and Kristin, Brandt, and my parents had to go back and redo everything. The power did come back on for good until after 6 a.m. That is when they got home. So no one, especially them, got much sleep on Christmas Eve. This was the one night a year that the Wal-Mart stores close, the one night my dad didn't have to worry about what was going on there, and then he had to go in anyway. Bummer! It was kind of cool being in Wal-Mart after hours though.

Mason woke up around 7:15 a.m. Christmas morning. The original plan was just for my parents and Brandt and Kristin to come over when he woke up, but since they didn't get home until after 6, we decided to open presents at 9:30 a.m. It was a little hard for Mason to wait because he was so excited to open all the presents, but he did a good job. We let him open his stocking and he was really excited about that. We also showed him that Santa and the reindeer had eaten all the things he left for them and that was exciting too. We also watched Mater's Tall Tales in our bed with him for a while and then let him open one present. He picked the present that happened to be the remote control car from Grammie and Grandpa. That was good because then he got to spend time playing with that while waiting for everyone to get here. He was really patient!  Mason loved opening presents. He loved everything he received and had so much fun opening them. He did a little happy scream after opening almost everything and wanted to play with what he got right away and take it out of the box. He also really enjoyed passing out presents to everyone else and helping them open them. Grammie gave him a few wooden cars/trains for his wooden train track, all individually wrapped, and he got so excited about each one. After he opened it he ran and put it in his room with his other train stuff. He was also really excited about his new box of wooden train track, the hungry hippos game, the excavator (he immediately asked for some dirt to dig in), the garbage truck, and remote control helicopter. We all had a really good Christmas and got some great stuff. My mom gave us kids 72-hr kits and LED lanterns. It was funny to get these after losing power on Christmas Eve - just goes to show we really do need this stuff and never know what might happen.  The best part about Christmas was just having so much of our family here to spend time with.

The rest of Christmas vacation has been a lot of fun too. Friday night Chad and I went with Brandt and Kristin to the mall and then to Comedy Sportz in Boise. It was fun to spend time with them. Saturday, Chad and I, Dennis, my parents, and Kristin and Brandt all went to the temple. Linda and Mason met us afterward for dinner at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants. It was a lot of fun. It snowed again Saturday night, so on Sunday we built a snowman in the backyard and Kristin taught us how to make snow ice cream with snow and sweetened condensed milk. It was pretty good! There was still snow on Monday so we took Mason sledding at the park. He loved it! He would jump up and say, "Let's do it again" after going down each time. He even walked/ran up the hill by himself for quite a while and one time carried the sled up by himself for a while. We all had a lot of fun.

Getting Back Into Running -- Finally!

Last summer, while training for the CDA Ironman, I got completely and utterly burnt out of all endurance workouts.  I basically had no more desire to run, bike, or swim.  I wish I knew how or why this happened, because I would have tried to prevent it.  I managed to get through the summer and compete in and complete my fifth ironman (with my slowest time yet for an Ultra distance Tri), but from the day I finished that race I was done training and working out and wanted nothing to do with it.  This had never happened to me in the 4-5 years since I started getting into Triathlon and endurance sports.

I can't say for sure why this happened, but thankfully after about four months off from all training the desire to start getting back into shape gradually returned.  I have been running a lot the last three months and I have even incorporated using a heart rate monitor into my training regiment,  which is providing a level of technicality and sophistication I've never had before.  Now that I've gotten accustomed to knowing my heart rate at all times while running, I don't think I could ever go back to training without it.  It is a great tool to have the ability to find out exactly how hard your body is working to be able to know if I am pushing myself too hard or if I am just feeling tired or something else; either way, it is a great training tool knowing what my heart rate is.  More on this later, perhaps.  

This last week I reached a new personal milestone: I ran 50 miles in one week.  This is a new record for me and I am hoping to maintain this kind of mileage until I am ready to start biking again.  My running mileage would have to go down with an increase in biking, but until that moment comes (so far it has been too cold for me to get motivated enough to ride my bike) I am loving pushing myself and trying to become as good of a runner as I can be.  Furthermore, I have done a 15-mile run every Saturday for the last couple months. It has been a great measuring stick for analysis and comparison to perform this same run in length on a consistent basis and be able to compare how I feel each Saturday on my long run and take note of the things that seem to be helping me improve and what isn't helpful.

My goals right now are first off to make sure I am in overall good enough shape to complete the HITS Full Distance (140.6) Triathlon in April in California that I signed up for a very long time ago because the entry was extremely cheap at the time.  Next, I am hoping to set a new PR in a marathon sometime in the upcoming months or over the summer. Finally, I also want to complete an ultra marathon sometime over the summer or in the fall.  When I think about the prospect of signing up for and setting my sights on running either a 50 km or 50 mile ultra marathon I start to feel the motivation and determination stirring around inside of me that come from setting your mind to a true challenge (like the way I felt while training for my first Half Ironman and then first full Ironman and first marathon, etc.).

I still have a lot of time to train for and -- hopefully -- accomplish these goals.  This is the direction I am going in right now though.

It's Another Boy!

We are so excited! We will be having another boy March 25th! I think Mason is excited too. I was pretty sick the first 19 weeks of pregnancy, but thank goodness am feeling better now!

Ironman 70.3 and 140.6

This summer Chad competed in the Boise 70.3 Ironman and the Coeur 'd Alene Full Ironman. His parents were able to come to both races, and my parents came to the 70.3, which was awesome. Chad did really well in both and we had a lot of fun. Mason loved ringing bells and yelling to cheer daddy on. Now Mason likes to run back and forth in the house and have us shake Maracas to cheer him on just like daddy. Chad made a documentary about training for his Coeur 'd Alene Ironman so we don't have many pics from that race, but tons of video. 

Mason - future Ironman? He's already running fast and loves to swim!

All of these pictures are from the Boise 70.3

Waiting for daddy to come around the corner on his bike so we can cheer him on

Chad and the Vidmars who also competed

Dinner at Texas Roadhouse after the race - our favorite!