I’ve been having a lot of fun racing halfs this year. I’ve seen a HUGE improvement in my times after a few years of minimal gains. I’ve got to thank Eric Bean for the guidance this year.

I was registered to race IM Lake Placid last weekend, but decided to forgo a mid season Ironman to focus all my energy on Kona (I got a slot in Arizona in the fall). Instead, I decided a little back to back half ironman experiment would be “fun” to do. It started off with a “Holy Crap! Where did that come from!” 4:03 at Racine, and my hope was to match or better that time at Chisago one week later.

Between barely missing a bloody impact with a deer, and some sketchy directions from the British lady inside our GPS (it must have been set to “I want to buy crack at the projects” mode), Jackie and I showed up with minimal time to spare. Swim warm up involved putting on the wetsuit as I ran down to the start.

I went out hard and blew up hard on the swim. I gave it my all to tack onto the lead pack, but once I realized that wasn’t going to happen, I slowed (blew) up and let Jackie pass, and drop, me. I got into a groove on the way back, exiting in 26 min and change.

Onto the bike, I rode pretty conservatively. My legs felt good, but I knew after last weeks race that my run was going to be hit or miss, so I was going to do everything I could to save some juice for the last leg. I exited the bike in 2:13.

Mile 1 of the run, my goals changed to just break 4:10. At Racine I ran the whole run at ~160 bpm. First mile at Chisago was up near 190 bpm. With my HR through the roof, I was in damage control mode for most of the run. My legs lacked any snap, and felt like lead, or maybe Jello, or maybe Jello with chunks of lead inside, I am not sure.

I still managed to finish in 4:08, good enough for tenth place against some stiff competition. A bit of a bittersweet result, but I can’t complain. It was great to see Tim Hola out there racing as well.

Now its back to training mode. Pigman half in 2 weeks, then its full speed ahead to Kona.

Thanks for reading
Mike.