Dang Ferg, I SERIOUSLY respect anyone that competes for 6 straight hours. My goodness that is awesome.
Ryan: I tend to agree with you ----- for one reason. I got into this to compete......and not "participate". In what else can a 45yr old man "compete"? I respect the heck outta Ferg's accomplishment. He did great. I just wanna know if he'll try to compete in the next one......or....if he'll use the next dist (full IM) as a way to track his "progress". Like I said - no wrong answer. I'm gonna do the 1/2 mary and I may never do another one. I know for a fact, I won't be "competing". And, that sucks. No way I can prepare enough to do so. What I can do is...compete in my age group in tris, though. I think I finished 8th (age group) in each of my 1st two. I wanna do better than that, before I go longer. Hell, I'm having fun doing the sprints.
Hey Ferg..... Just curious. Honestly, what was your longest run, leading up to the HIM...and list the frequency. I'm just curious. I think you did awesome on that leg. I'm MOST impressed with that! Thanks.
Thanks everyone! Several questions to answer: michaelp: Having never attempted anything like this before I really wasn't sure what I should do regarding my diet leading up. So I actually decided to continue doing everything that I had been all along. The only difference was that I planned for the race with much more gels then I have ever carried before. I packed my tri suit with 8 gels and I had another 6 layed out in my transition area so I could grab one or two each time I came into change. And I knew that they were providing gels at the aid stations along the course so I made sure that I slowed down enough at those stations to take on enough nutrition. Looking back at it now I don't know that I would do anything different. It worked out well and I don't think that changing up my diet would actually help. GMMAT: I absolutly plan to do more triathlons. The plan for right now is to compete in 2-3 half ironman events next year along with a few sprint/olympic races as well as training events. And then planning on competing in a full 140.6 event the year after. As for competing vs: participating I am at an age and ability level that I can honestly say I will never be competitive. My weight and fitness doesn't even put me close to being competitive in my age group. I do these races for myself and the times that I look to beat are those of my own. I am always looking to improve on previous times and that is what really drives me to keep on improving! So far this season I have been able to improve in every event I have participated in. I have run several 5k's and managed to get my time down from 28:28 to my current best of 24:42. I will participate in several more of those just to continue to rate my improvement. I know a huge part of my success has been my weightloss. Almost everyone at the G2G comment on how noticable it was. I have gone from 232 in September to my current weight of 176 with over 45 of that coming off just since March 1st. As I continue to drop weight I can only expect my times in both running and triathlon events to continue to drop and as that happens I know that half ironman events will continue to get easier!
GMMAT: Without a doubt running is my worst discipline in triathons. Most of my running is shorter distance. I usually run 4 times a week with 2 of those runs being 5 miles and the other runs being 7-9 miles depending on the weather and time of day as I usually can't get in runs till after work. The 13.1 was a real challenge for me because I have never completed that distance before. The longest I ever did at one time was only 10 miles. In deciding to participate in Steelhead I looked at the overal cutoff time and my ability to finish before that time. I knew that I would be fine on the swim and bike and figured with the worst case senerio I would have atleast 4 hours to complete the 13.1 and I figured if needed I could walk that entire distance in that time. As it turns out I did walk alot of it but I was able to manage swithing between running and walking every mile or so. Looking back at it now I also think that I would have slowed up my bike in the last 6 miles to start to rest/recover in preperation for the upcoming run. I think that would have really helped and made the run much more comfortable. For some reason my feet went numb on the bike around mile 40 and it wasn't till mile 5 of the run before feeling came back to them. I am extremely happy with my swim and bike times and will most certainly be looking to improve my running time considerably and it will be nice to be able to just put in a respectable run that would put me in the 5 hour range!
Good stuff, Jim. I wanna go <25min. on a 5K!....lol And, most "runners" would LOL at that! I've never run one, though (except for the run leg of my 2 sprints). I've got 10yrs on ya. The thing that gets ME (running) is the wear and tear on my legs. Aerobically, I'm OK. My legs ache a few hours every week. Like I said, earlier....if you walked a large portion of that run, you killed the rest of it. Simple math. I don't think I can compete "overall", either. I'm too old! I can't swim! I DO think I can get better at the sprint dist. enough to compete w/in my AG, though. My body is NOT built for distance (6'1"/190#). I'm currently trying to negotiate with my endurance side. But, it's not looking good.:p Once this half mary is complete, I'm gonna finally learn to swim....lol. Again, man.....you did great.
