On the road to Ironman Augusta 70.3, I locked in several milestone races to ensure I’m fit for the job. The Hartwell (Georgia) Olympic triathlon was to test my OWS skills, and mission accomplished!

Where: Hartwell, GA

What: Olympic Distance Triathlon

Goal: Don’t drown and Die

Overall: Mission accomplished. Finished in 3:06:27 | Distances(ish): 1500 yard swim, 40K bike, 10K run

Before I dig into this particular race, it’s important to note that I both suck as swimming and still have a fear of drowning. Those two elements are towards the top of the list for why I threw myself into triathlons to begin with, which is why open water swimming is so important in my training. And now on with the show…

Last year I had planned to compete in the Hartwell Olympic distance race but ended up getting a pretty nasty case of strep throat. It knocked me out for nearly a month, and I was nowhere near ready for this kind of race. A month or so later I was set to do a different oly tri, but the swim was canceled. So this was officially going to be the first olympic distance race for me.

Needless to say, my OWS/swim anxiety was in rare form because this had a pretty long swim attached to it. Even two weeks ago at the local sprint, a race that I’ve done a handful of times, I still got anxiety. This meant crappy or no sleep the evening before, and this is even a race where you can basically stand a majority of it. This race? Zero opportunities to stand. You just go and go and go. But I wrapped it, the numbers look good, and I’m pretty happy with the results. So let’s start from the beginning.

Training-wise, I didn’t do anything specific for this race. I’ve been on this plan that is leading up to Augusta 70.3, and felt that it would be safe to slot this race in based on my current fitness. Swims range from 1500 – 3000 yards, which consist of a weekly OWS, speed runs, and a lot of intervals. Biking has been intervals and distance building, and running I’m actually decreasing massively as I’m coming off of London training.

Pre-race day: Well, that was a mess. I got stuck in traffic, so I was aiming for 10 minutes past packet pickup the evening before the race, which means I was going to go in pretty blind on the swim and prep. When I got there, they were super nice and were going to help me out, but my dumbass managed to forget to register or finish registering, not sure which. Instead, I went back out to my car and registered immediately, after running into a bump with my USA Triathlon membership (they had to merge two accounts).

Because I was still going in blind and there wasn’t a map for the swim source, I took a quick trip over to the start area to at least get a look at what I was getting myself into and see how the water was. All I saw was a big ole lake and my anxiety soared. Big oops. Because I don’t typically sleep much, I try to distract myself and reduce anything that may make that worse. Did some reading, and somehow managed to get some decent rest.

Race day: Got up around 5 am, got checked in and setup, and had around 40 minutes to get my head straight. That… did not happen. After seeing where the buoys were, I freaked out a bit, only to find out that I was not even looking at the right set. My buoys were even further out. It stretched far into the water, hit a right turn towards a small island, and hit another right turn towards the exit. To combat some of the swim anxiety I jumped in the water, got a few stokes in, and acclimated to the water. Beyond that, the rest was just waiting.

Swim: They kicked us off, and as per usual, I waited until most people cleared the launch point so I didn’t get yanked down. I met up with my fellow slow swimmers, and promptly was run over, hit in the head, and my leg pulled. All typical, and I was able to recover pretty well. About 200 yards in though, my brain kicked in and my heart rate was way too high. I wasn’t able to get in an ideal stroke pace or breathing pattern, so I floundered a bit. Flipped on my back, reset myself, flipped back over and was on my way.

I was doing a pretty solid job of sighting and didn’t need to pause, right up until the first turn buoy. Then I crossed paths with some guy trying to draft after my slow ass, but he kept smacking my feet. After him, there was the crazy guy breast stroking the entire thing, so I drifted further out as I kept fearing for getting kicked in the gut or worse. Apparently, this is where I royally messed up, because my swim went from 1500 yards to 1900. Either they misplaced the markers or I went out too far, honestly not sure which. My Garmin tracker seems to have me going straight (which is pretty odd for me), so maybe a mix.

Towards the 1000 yard mark I had to pause a few times and tread water to get my bearings straight due to sun hitting me in the face, but once I had my sighting set for the exit it was clear sailing. Around 90% of that swim felt great, which is a huge confidence builder for Augusta. I got out of the water feeling solid, did a two-minute-ish transition, and kicked off the 40K bike. You can see the swim course info here on Strava.

Bike: I went in with the expectation of a pretty flat course. Or, at least that’s what whoever manages the event on Facebook told me. According to my Garmin, there was about 750ish feet of climb, which if I’m not mistaken, is not flat at all. Essentially it was mostly rolling hills, which wasn’t terrible due to all the interval training, but there was one big ole fuck you hill to get over.

I had a strong start on the bike, but with all the hills and having little training with them, I held myself back as to not burn out, which turned out to be the right call as I fried on the run. Within the first 10 miles, I was passing a lot of guys, which isn’t surprising as I’m one of the slowest swimmers. The road was pretty rough, but mostly free of gravel or the other mess you find around Charleston. Around the halfway point I had a rat run across my path, which I’m calling for good luck, but otherwise, most of the cycling portion was uneventful beyond the sweeping hills and farms. Played bunny hop with some guy around the last seven or so miles, and eventually just kicked myself to get through the last leg and passed him up. Strava data from the ride here.

Run: This was a simple two loop out and back across the Hartwell Dam. The view was pretty awesome, but there was close to zero overhead overage. Even with a hat and my Epix tri suit on (covers shoulders), I was absolutely toasted. The sun was reflecting off of the water, it was slightly elevated so you didn’t get a breeze, and I just couldn’t get my pace right. Around mile four there was a kid at an aid station with ice, so in my desperate state, I just told him to chuck a bunch in my tri suit. I zipped it up, and it was immediately filled with regret. TMI, sorry, but it just bottles up right at the private parts and makes you want to hit the porta-john. At least this distracted me for a bit, but into the last mile, I was feeling rough and walked for a second. Can’t recall the last time I did this in a race, so it was pretty disappointing, but I powered through and had a pretty crappy pace of around 9 minutes. Strava data from the run here.

Post-race: They threw me a medal, an iced towel, and some water. After breathing for a few, I stretched out, packed out, and rolled out. Apparently, where my Airbnb was, there was a festival that shut down the road, so that was a fun adventure of trying to find parking nearby + walking through a small town’s village while wearing a tri suit and being a hot mess. I accidentally parked at their prison, so that was a fun one to realize as I was getting back to the car. About 24 hours later I am feeling pretty solid, will do an easy hour on the bike, and go back to training as usual. I’d say overall I was pretty happy with how I did at Hartwell, and am feeling like I’m getting closer to being ready for the first half Ironman.

If you are looking for a solid olympic tri in the Georgia/South Carolina area (they have a sprint distance too) with pretty clean water and rolling hills, I can definitely recommend taking on the Hartwell.

Back in early 2018 when I finished the Charleston Marathon I was fully under the impression that it would be a one and done thing. From there, I’d skip over to triathlons since they are less terrible on the body up until a certain point. Then I got into Chicago 2018 through their lottery, and as I was wrapping up my trip, I learned that I managed to get into the London Marathon too. For a race that takes some people six or more years to get into, I was incredibly fortunate to skip ahead of the line, and it was similar for Chicago, which to me is a sign that the world wants me to continue to torture myself. So here we are, two days after the London Marathon, my legs are still stiff, my energy coming back, and already looking to plan my next goal.

The first marathon I was happy with the 4:15-ish finish. I was going in blind and just wanted to survive. For Chicago, I wanted to best that, but wasn’t sure how I’d fare because I kept having a few hiccups in my training aka Charleston is fucking hot (100+ and humidity) so I could not train effectively. Ultimately I had a sloppy start, stopped a few times, couldn’t take my hydration pack, and was just not prepared for it or the massive amounts of people. It was still a great race, and I’m glad I was able to finish in general. No PR, but it was good training for the insanity of the London Marathon, which I will get to shortly.

The goal for the London Marathon was to fall under four hours. That’s it. Anything more than a second count, and apparently that’s what my legs afforded me. I finished in 3:59:50. Mission accomplished by 10 seconds. This means the new goal is significantly worse for me, which sits at 3:45. Anything in between will be great, and I am fortunate to be part of the Rock N’ Roll Marathon Rock n’ Squad, so I have additional marathons to add in this year + the Augusta Ironman 70.3. I still have to calculate the training to see if I can push to those speeds and not neglect my first half Ironman, which I still think the swim may kill me.

Finish details

Place (Gender) 10824
Place (Category) 5106
Place (Overall) 14773
Finish Time 03:59:50
Splits

Split Time Of Day Time Diff min/km km/h Place
5K 11:04:53 00:27:29 27:29 05:30 10.92 –
10K 11:32:24 00:55:00 27:32 05:31 10.90 –
15K 12:00:07 01:22:43 27:44 05:33 10.82 –
20K 12:27:57 01:50:33 27:50 05:34 10.78 –
Half 12:34:09 01:56:45 06:12 05:40 10.62 –
25K 12:56:15 02:18:51 22:06 05:40 10.60 –
30K 13:25:11 02:47:47 28:57 05:48 10.37 –
35K 13:54:57 03:17:33 29:46 05:58 10.08 –
40K 14:24:11 03:46:46 29:14 05:51 10.26 –
Finish 14:37:14 03:59:50 13:04 05:57 10.09 10824
My plan was to stick to a 9:00 minute pace, or even better, find the 4 hour pacer and trail him. I got grouped with the 4:15s, so I had to push harder at the beginning to find the 4 hour pacers, but mostly could not battle through the crowds to stick with him (there were two, the one I knew that would take me to finish was up a ways more). Welp, the pace was a flub. At mile two both of my shoe laces managed to become undone, even though they were double tied. This messed me up a bit, so I pushed a bit too hard to catch up to my spot.

For the first nine or so miles I was going 20-30 seconds too fast per mile. That’s not terrible over a couple of miles, but I was definitely trucking too hard for almost half of the initial race. I finally evened out until mile 16, where I got caught up in some mobs of people and slowed down. At mile 19, I hit more mobs of people and my calves were starting to burn. This was around the point where I was trying to decide if I should stop to use a porta lou or just hope for the best. I said fuck it, pushed on, and my pace took a toll. It wasn’t until mile 24 that I saw my pace was off for the last three, so I push hard back down to 9 minutes miles.

My legs were burning, but not yet stiffened up, my hip injury magically vanished, but my energy felt great. Unfortunately, the small rolling hills kicked my ass and it all built up. It was around mile 23 or 24 when I saw a man on the ground having compressions done to him, there was a wall of medical people shielding him from being trampled, and everything around started to become a bit chaotic. I felt dehydrated, was getting a bit lightheaded, and honestly was just desperately trying to find a song that was loud and hard enough to let me ignore the mental pushback I was getting. Two more fucking miles. No walking, no slowing down, you can rest at the damn finish line. I just kept repeating it, and then I saw Buckingham Palace appear in the distance… 800 meters left, 400 meters left, holy shit my calves were burning.

At this point, my body just took over and was full on automated. It carried me across the finish line, and when I tried to stop, it felt like every leg muscle was tightening up. I hobbled through a narrow bit of fences, they put the finisher medal around me, I hobbled over to have a photo taken, and then everything was a bit of a blur. All I remember was looking down at the Garmin and seeing a time of 3:59:59. I started laughing uncontrollably and people were staring at me like a madman. I DMed Grace to check my official time, assuming I may have just missed my goal by a few seconds, but this time I came in as expected. I say this because during the Chicago Marathon I relied heavily on an app on my Garmin that was designed to help me keep pace, but I hit a tunnel, twice, early on, and it fucked everythinggggg up. I thought I was coming in at a solid pace but was 10 minutes off.

Anyway, I escaped the masses around Buckingham Palace’s mall and made my way over to Duck and Waffle where Grace was waiting. Food was had, I died a bit inside, and then we hit the London Eye, Shard, London Tower Bridge, and even got fish and chips + a pint in a tiny pub under it. Yesterday my legs were beyond pissed, but we still got in some more touristy stuff with about 13 miles of walking, so you know, that’s great for the healing process.

The People, Holy Shit the People

There were more than 42,400 people that finished this year’s London Marathon. That is pure insanity to be running along. That’s very similar to the Chicago Marathon, but there were many more charity runners who kept to the sides, or even the Charleston bridge run, which can be torture if placed in the wrong group.

http://www.runpix3.com/arace11/60/fo.php?id=61497&ce=&dt=42&hm=lon19&ev=lon19

You can see at the above where I finished compared to the massive army of people. As a mid-pack runner, I guess my ranking was a bit better than expected, but really none of those numbers matter much as I’m only competing against my set finish times, paces, and not injuring myself.

Because this is the largest intentional race, the whole slow on the right, fast on the left thing didn’t really happen. I’m used to a minefield of walkers, but because there were more than 40,000 people running, all at various different paces, running through relatively narrow streets, it was mostly chaos. At around mile 5 I was able to get to one of the four-hour pacers, but he was basically strong arm pushing people out of his way. His group was already pretty large, so it was difficult to get in his wake without hitting the mob. For the most part, people were nice, but I had a French man start squirting his water all over people, and as I started to squeeze past him, he shoved me forward and turned me into a battering ram. Nobody fell over, but plenty got jammed out of the way. All I could hear was his swearing and some very angry people at him before I pushed on. Otherwise, there were the typical issues of a race. People slow down or stop near aid stations, so you stick to the middle. But in this, they used water bottles, so getting pelted with those are a bit tiring after a while and they are way easier to trip on.

As far as support goes, for any kind of big pothole, bump, or hump, they had a race marshal preventing us from making a fool of ourselves. I’ve seen plenty of smaller races filled with people toppling over due to road conditions, so they got this one right. London has now been the second of the majors for me, and I think I’ll wait a while before trying to do any of the other large ones. I feel that my time would have been 5-10 minutes better if there had not been such an insane amount of people to dip and weave through. There was honestly just so much stop, slow, and go motion that it messed with my pace like crazy and was not great on the muscles.

The Course

Near everything about the course was beautiful. This being our first time to the UK, and only having spent the day prior sort of poking around London proper, was basically the best way to get in all the sights. For me, any non-local race is an excuse to see new cities and it’s not in a format that most people can or will enjoy. Because of the marathon we were able to run Tower Bridge, down through Buckingham Palace, and many areas that cars just don’t like pedestrians being. This was also the first point-to-point race I’ve done, so it really does pack in a greater variety of views to take in.

Fortunately, the weather sat between 50-55 degrees, and it only sprinkled on us a few times, otherwise the sun would probably hit hard between the late start time and minimal overhead coverage from open roads and shorter buildings. The race is also said to be flat. Having now lived in Charleston for several years, where things are in actuality very, very flat, the rolling hills around London took their toll on my calves. I should have done just a bit more hill work because that is what hit me the hardest this round. They honestly had minimal inclines, but they stretched good ways and rolled through quite often.

The Support

Every long distance race I do is different on support, but this one was pretty good overall. London has a knack of being more eco-friendly, so they primarily used re-usable plastic bottles, which was a million times better than cups. I’m not sure how much better these are for the environment, but drinking out of a bottle is super easy vs waterboarding yourself with a cup. I only grabbed two of these, but there were aid stations maybe ever three miles or so. They also had these odd seaweed packaged things towards the end, but if I had stopped to try them I wouldn’t have hit my goal. They looked a bit odd though.

Besides water they had some sort of sports drink, but it was incredibly sweet so I avoided it. There was also an energy gel, but I will always stick with the magical Gu, and then there were energy jelly beans. The beans were terrible because they became a brick when trying to eat them. I will say that the crowd basically had endless amounts of odd candies on display for runners, but that seemed too iffy for me. I did grab a few random oranges though.

For the most part the race support was pretty low frills and provided a bit more than the basics, but nothing crazy. Rock n Roll races are still the king of race-day and pre-race support, so I’ve been a bit spoiled by them. The water bottles were super helpful though. But most of all, the crowd…

Even in Chicago, where you had people cheering on practically the entire time, it did not even remotely come close to this. People were cheering, yelling, and seemed truly involved. I had more high fives during this race than any other, and when shit starts to get really rough, that help push me through. I think besides taking in the sights this was my favorite part.

TL;DR – Hit all of my goals, way too many people (expected), it was a beautiful course filled with amazing architecture, if I deviated in any way I would have missed my finish time goal.

New goals: Continue to PR, but shoot for 3:45 finish time. Shoot for 1:40 finish time on 13.1. Unfortunately, we are approaching the season where Charleston heats up like crazy, which means any races the rest of the year likely won’t afford me this goal. I’ll chip away at it, but expect to find an early January (CHS full) or February race (New Orleans) to lock these in.