This is a really long race report, but even if you don't read it, you should definitely consider doing this one.  It was voted the 2nd best Iron distance triathlon in the U.S., and 5th in the world.  After doing the half, I see why.

Registration starts Dec 1, and the race will be Oct 29, 2011 (a little earlier, so hopefully the water will be  a bit warmer).

Along Wrightsville Beach the Atlantic ocean flows inland from a place called Masonboro Inlet and forms a channel where the direction of the current depends on whether the tide is high or low.  The Beach to Battleship Iron and Half Iron distance triathlon starts the race in this channel, and last year the timing of the tide was ideal for a super fast swim for the half iron distance triathletes.  This feature alone made the triathlon attractive to me because I struggle greatly with swimming.

I remember my first open water triathlon swim less than two years ago.  I remember being so nervous that I stood in waist deep water after a practice swim and dry heaved.  In my second open water triathlon, I had an even tougher time and had to hang on to the kayak for a couple of minutes, about halfway through the swim, then continued.  I completed both of these triathlons, but the swims were only 400 yards. 

In June of this year, I had another triathlon with a 0.6 mile open water swim, and I wore a wetsuit.  This was sort of a test case and if I felt ok during the swim, I was going to sign up for the Half Ironman. 

To keep this from being too long for anyone to read, let’s just fast forward to the Half Ironman.

We arrived in Wilmington, picked up our packets, and immediately went nervously down to the beach to check out the swim course.  When I got in the water (without a wetsuit), two things were very clear – 1. 64 deg F water feels extremely cold to me, and 2. The Atlantic Ocean is salty

The day before the race, we got our wetsuits on and tried to swim a little bit in the channel, where I discovered something else – cold water makes my head hurt – and neoprene swim caps help prevent that…so we went back to the expo and I found the last large BlueSeventy neoprene swim cap.

Fast forward again to race morning.

After setting up transition, we jogged the 1.5 miles or so to the swim start.  We got into our wetsuits and watched as the full participants started swimming by.  The air temp was high 40s or low 50s, and the water was 64.  This took a toll on some of the swimmers, and as we nervously watched, a guy had to be pulled out of the water due to cramps, or hypothermia.

The whole scene was a bit surreal.  After some anxious waiting and small talk, we stood there in wetsuits, neoprene caps, and goggles, hands over our hearts as the national anthem was played.  Then after the announcements, I heard what sounded like a slow, steady heartbeat through my heavily insulated neoprene swim cap.  As I lifted the side of the cap, I realized the sound was Eminem blasting over the speakers and as I listened, I forgot some of my fear and began to get caught up into the moment – a mix of excitement, nervousness, and subdued fear – only minutes until my time to enter the water.

This was to be my girlfriend’s first Half Ironman as well, but her arrival at the decision was much more spontaneous than mine.  She just “up and decided” to do it, in spite of the fact that she is one of the few people in the world who is a worse swimmer than I am (only because she never swims).  And as nervous as I was, she was more nervous.  It was to the point that I thought she may decide not to do it, and I wasn’t sure whether to encourage her or to insist that she drop out.  It’s pretty tough to encourage someone not to be afraid of something that you yourself are afraid of.  What a perfect scenario – the almost totally freaked out trying to comfort the totally freaked out.  I did the best I could do, and told her if she didn’t feel like she could do it, to not do it.

The clock was ticking, so I kissed her for good luck, and told her I was going to the water.  The wet sand felt really cold on my feet, and there were lots of shells, so I stepped lightly to keep from getting cut (that would suck).  As I was getting in the water, the announcer said, “If you are wearing a neon green cap you need to be in the water NOW!”.  So I started going under water for a few seconds at a time to get my face and head at least to the point that I didn’t have the dreaded gasp reflex during the swim.

The announcer told us to get ready, and I swam to where I thought would be the left rear of the pack.  I treaded water for a few seconds, looked around, and realized I was almost exactly front and center.  Just then the announcer said, “30 seconds”, and I told the guy behind me to get in front of me if he was a fast swimmer because I am slow.  He said he wasn’t fast… so for my first wave start, of my first half ironman, I picked the worst possible place to be.  Surprisingly, I didn’t panic.  I just decided to start at my own pace and if I was swam over so be it.  When the horn sounded and we started, I got bumped and kicked a little bit, but it really wasn’t bad.  Everyone spread out pretty quickly and the 1.2 mile journey began. 

10 minutes into the swim I felt the burn of the wetsuit on my neck, as if it wouldn’t be a long swim anyway.  Still my focus was to keep it steady, and stay calm.  About 15 minutes into the swim, the muscles in my shoulders started to burn.  I was a long ways away from the end of the swim, so I tried to focus on long, easy strokes, and slowed down.  I looked across the channel and remembered being surprised at how far from shore I was, and then I didn’t see any boats anywhere near me.  As I looked forward, I swallowed some water with my nose and felt the initial stage of panic.  “Ok Tony, just take a good turn to the side with each stroke, breathe, easy strokes, breathe, just like in the lake, just like training…”, “You’re ok.  You can do this.” then calmness returned.

Several times in the water I thought about Deanna, wondering how she was doing, worried that if I had a tough time, hers must be tougher.  But there was nothing I could do. 

After about 20 or 25 minutes, amazingly, I caught up with a group of about 8 blue caps.  The blue caps started 5 minutes before my wave started.  “Yeah!! I’m doing better than I thought!”

So I just kept doing what I was doing.  And kept swimming, and swimming, and swimming…and swimming.  I would intermittently be near one or two swimmers, then in a crowd, then completely by myself.  I think after catching the blue caps, I was completely by myself for a while, blazing my own path regardless of the intended swim course.  (This is probably why my Garmin showed that I swam 1.37 miles instead of 1.2.)    But then suddenly, I guess when I got back on the path toward the swim exit, a bunch of pink caps caught me.  They all had made up 10 minutes on me.  I have no illusions of being a fast swimmer, but seeing the pink caps pass me was a pretty big downer, especially since I kept looking ahead at what seemed like miles more of the swim course I still had to cover.

One thing I didn’t think about or expect was how after only 15 minutes, the taste of saltwater was awful…and after 30, it was all I could do to keep from gagging and throwing up.  I really felt like throwing up in the water would make it tough to stick with my plan of staying calm and relaxed.   Fortunately I didn’t get sick.

After what seemed like a really long time (because it actually WAS a really long time), I saw the marina, and the ladders to the swim exit.  At this point I had the feeling that you get when you work up a sweat in really cold weather, then start to cool down and get chilled.  I was SOOO ready to get out of the water.

I got to the ladder, and pulled myself up.  I hit “lap” on my watch – 48 minutes. WHATTT???!!!  I swam that fast in the lake with NO current.  This was suppose to be with the current!  I was in denial for a while, but continued on to the bike.  I found out later that my watch, unfortunately, was correct. 

Swim time – 48:15 for 68^th of 80 in my AG. 

T1 is about 300 yards from the swim exit, and I had decided to keep my wetsuit on for the run to T1, so I almost had to fight the eager wetsuit strippers.

My hands weren’t very useful that soon out of the water, so everything seemed in slow motion…maybe because it WAS in slow motion. 

T1  - 8:34

I felt pretty good on the bike except that my neck was really stiff and it hurt to hold the aero position.  I’m not sure why because all of my rides are at least 90% on the aerobars.   The first 30+ miles were straight into a headwind, or a crosswind.  I was hoping to average 20 mph, but at mile 25, my time was 82 minutes, 7 minutes behind.  I was pretty discouraged still thinking about my swim, and now it looked like my bike wasn’t going to make up for it at all.  Finally I decided to just ride, do the best I could, and enjoy it.  I passed a lot of people, and had a few people pass me.  For about the last 15 miles we had a pretty good tailwind, but even so, the last 6 miles seemed to take forever.  I rolled into T2 with a bike split of 2:43:20, 13^th of 80 in my AG.  I was happily surprised that I had made up quite a bit of time after mile 25.

T2 is a different location from T1, and while it’s good that they take your bike for you, it’s bad that you don’t know exactly where to go for your running stuff!  I ran down two rows before I finally found my bag.

T2 – 4:29

I had done several race pace bricks and my run had felt strong in training, so I hoped it was there for me on race day.  I felt like I started out easy, but my first mile split was 8:19.  “SLOW DOWN!” I kept telling myself.  My half marathon PR (without the swim and bike) is about an 8:00 pace, and my plan was to take the first 3 miles easy, then go a little harder the next 7, then either hold pace, or speed up for the last 3.1.  I was thinking 8:40 – 8:45 for the first 3.

Mile split 2 – 8:16!  What?! I thought I slowed down!  Ok, for real – slow down…just run easy, even if you run a 9 minute mile it’s ok.  Mile 3 – 8:09!!!

The run was an out and back which went through the historic district and past hotels and restaurants, then through a park.  It’s amazing how many people lined the streets to watch, and the really cool thing about it was, although I didn’t know ANY of these people, they saw my name on my race bib and I got a lot of “Way to run, Tony!”, “Good job, Tony!” and it seemed like all of the volunteers went out of their way to make sure all the athletes had a good race.  By mile 4, I had finally slowed down to a reasonable pace, mile 4 – 8:25.  I felt really strong on the run, and it was a great feeling not to be exhausted immediately after getting off the bike.

At about mile 6, I took another gel, and soon I was at the turnaround.  The miles clicked off, and I had one mile that was an 8:50 or so, but I think I must have stopped at two water stops in the same mile. 

Between mile 9 and 10, I saw my girlfriend for the first time since the swim start.  I was so relieved to see that she had made it, and since running is her strong point, she was through the tough part for her, so she was nothing but smiles!

About mile 10, instead of taking my 3^rd gel, I drank a cup of flat coke because that sounded more like something my stomach could handle.  It must have worked okay because although the last 3 miles were tough, I managed to hold a pretty good pace.  At about mile 11, I saw “42” on the calf of a guy ahead of me.  That’s my age group, so I caught him, and passed him, trying to get away from him quickly to make him think I was running that pace for the rest of the race.  I was happy that he didn’t challenge me.

I went over the last bridge, took a left turn toward Battleship park, and just ahead I saw mile marker 13 – almost home!  I was in that near the finish, exhausted delirium, and although I saw marker 13, I also saw a turnaround (for those running the full) and was so afraid I had to turn around, then come back to get the 0.1.  Fortunately I didn’t, and a volunteer told me to go straight, then take the left turn to the finish.

When I turned left and saw the finish line, I can’t describe the feeling I had.  I know a lot of people do this, and to some it’s not a big deal, but to me, finishing this race was an incredible feeling, even more so than my first marathon.  Maybe it’s because not long ago, I really felt like this was something outside of my reach, something I’d never be able to do because of the swim.  I got my medal, and as I walked over to sit in the grass listening to the band playing, I was unexpectedly overwhelmed with emotion.  I just finished a half ironman.

My run time was 1:52:20 for 5^th of 80 in my AG, and my total time was 5:36:56 for 20^th of 80 in my AG.  

I got up and stumbled to the “warming tent” where I was treated like a king, and as I sat there wrapped in a mylar blanket, sipping chicken broth, a goal that I’ve been afraid to say out loud became realistic to me – I want to do another Half Ironman, but my big goal now is to finish an Ironman, a full 140.6.

Nice report Tony, congrats on a great race. Can't imagine swimming that far in salt water, I wanted to puke after a sprint tri in the ocean due to the salt water. Congrats again.