The last pre-IM race is officially completed, so now 7 weeks is all that’s left. It’s a little overwhelming to think about, but luckily I’m too busy to spend much time looking ahead. This past Saturday, I completed the ½ IM at the Muncie Endurathon, so now comes the race report…
The Muncie Endurathon is a long running independent half-iron distance race in the Midwest. This year was its 31st running. As you would expect from a race ongoing for this long, it is run very professionally and had many of the offerings of the 70.3 series races without the crowds and additional costs. Additionally, there was a sprint tri, multiple distance duathlons, and an aqua-bike offering. The city of Muncie doesn’t have a great deal to offer for tourists, but the area near the course, which is SE of town at the Prairie Creek Reservoir, is a pretty nice farm and boating area. Overall, the event is worth doing if you live in the area and are looking for this particular distance…or if you want a bike course split to brag about for the rest of your life, but more on that later.
Race Morning
It seems like most of the chain hotels in Muncie are in the NW corner of the city, likely due to that being near Ball State University and the university being a major part of the city as a whole. However, that made for a longer drive to the reservoir (~30 minutes) and thus an early wake-up. We were not alone on this trip, though since it looked like most of the out of town athletes stayed in the same area. Now, normally triathlons lead to waking up and leaving before breakfasts fire up at the chain hotels, however I have to give credit to the Hampton Inn in Muncie, for not only having coffee and fruit out by 5am, but also having breakfast grab bags that you could snag on your way out the door. They included an apple, special k bar, and muffin. The extra effort to accommodate the race participants was appreciated.
Pre-race
Talking pre-race strategy with Dad
Arrived at the site and had to park about a quarter mile down the road due to the main lot (open field) being full. No big deal though, as I just threw everything on my back and biked to transition. Got everything setup in my designated spot and hung out with the family a bit before heading down to check out the water. I wanted to see if the Tegaderm on my healing road rash would keep the water out…it worked like a charm. Afterwards, I downed my gel, drank the last of my pre-race water and got into the mass of other green-capped starters in my wave to await the swim.
1.2 mile swim (or so they claim)
Being a weaker swimmer, I always tend to think the course looks long when staring out at the buoys. For this race, my dad and I were both discussion how far away the turn buoys looked from the moment we arrived. Turns out, this time we were right. The swim was a single loop triangular course with only 2 turns. The water wasn’t too choppy and with long stretches of straight before the turns there really was no congestion on the course. I felt like I got into my rhythm earlier than ever while swimming and cruised along pretty smoothly. However, I felt like I had been swimming a long time…and I had. I wouldn’t know my time until the end of the day, but the swim took me 7-10 minutes longer than my previous swims of this distance. I don’t know how long the course was, but evidenced by the fact that only 3 swimmers (of 650+) broke 30minutes, I can say for sure it was long. It hurts the overall goal time, but I felt better knowing that I didn’t just lose a bunch of speed in the last 2 weeks. Either way, eventually I found my way back to shore by sighting off the giant flailing-arm tube creature (that you see at car lots) and headed to T1.
Time: 43:18 (228/663 overall)
56 Mile Bike
The entire bike course here is on totally closed roads, the course starts going around the south of the reservoir, then picks up the Cardinal Greenway (a rail trail) for about 7 miles heading north, u-turns onto a state hwy and is essentially a long out and back on the closed highways until the very end when you return around the north of the reservoir. It is pancake flat with minimal turns and super smooth roads. Add to that the fact there was basically no wind Saturday, and the bike course becomes a speedway. I felt strong from the get-go and paced off another athlete (outside the draft zone) as we navigated the narrow rail trail. Once we got on the highway, I settled in to what felt like a good pace, but holding back a bit. I cruised the first hour and a half or so and was well ahead of my goal pace. I really focused on taking nutrition at regular intervals to practice for the IM. In the times when I wasn’t thinking too much, I caught myself singing “A Whole New World”. You know, from Aladdin…I have no idea how that came into my head. I was still felling strong at mile 30, so decided to push the pace until mile 50 before shutting it down to prepare for the run. The course ended up being a little over a mile short, so my already surprisingly fast bike split looks even faster, but I won’t complain.
Time: 2:23:02 (23.5mph avg, 23.0 according to Garmin, 43/663 overall)—lots of fast bike splits out there
Returning from the bike
13.1 Mile Run
For Christmas this past year, I got a Garmin 305. The biggest reason I wanted one was to help me with pacing, particularly on the run since I tend to leave T2 faster than I should, which comes back to bite me in longer events. However, I haven’t adjusted the data fields for multisport mode, so I wasn’t getting real time pace data. So, of course, I took it out too fast. In my head, I kept repeating to myself to be humble and thought I was. It wasn’t until mile 7 when I looked at my watch, and by that point it was too late to make a big difference… Before going further with my run, though I’ll describe the course a little. After the bike, I assumed there were no real hills in the area of the course. While there weren’t big hills, the roads surrounding the reservoir (where the run course was) were constantly rolling one way or the other. Along with that, the midday sun provided very little shade, so the course was hot as well. Thankfully there were aid stations every mile where I was able to squeeze ice cold rags out over my head and drink plenty of water. Now back to the last 6 miles, I tried to pull back on the pace, but walking was already on my mind. I held on until mile 9 before adding in some walking, but once I started, I decided to add a lot of short walking breaks in the rest of the way. The finish line was just past the top of the largest hill on the run course, and I walked part of it too even though I was less than a .1 miles from the finish. At the end, my run pace was still close to my goal since I had gone out so fast, but I need to pace better if I’m going to do the IM run in a time I can be satisfied with.
Home stretch of the run, I can’t tell which if I looked worse than I felt at that point or not
Time: 1:36:28 (7:22/mile pace, 27/663 OA)
Final time (w/ transitions): 4:47:04 (37th OA, 4/29 in 25-29 AG)
I got a new PR by a minute, the goal was to break 4:40, but the swim killed that. My bike + run time was on pace, so with that I’m pretty pleased. After the race, I still feel like I’m on pace to meet my IM goals, provided my next 4 weeks of heavy training go well. I guess we’ll see…
