Checked in on Thursday for the Saturday race and received a nice surprise when we got to our hotel room (Embassy Suites). Turns out we got probably the best room in the whole hotel. Out of around 200 rooms only eight have balconies. We ended up on the top (9th) floor with a corner balcony. What an amazing view!

This race is always questionable if it will be wetsuit legal or not. Fortunately this year it was with a race day water temp of 75 degrees. Right before entering the water The Voice of Ironman, Mr. Mike Reilly, gave me a fist bump which was a pretty cool way to start the race. The swim course itself is a bit unusual with out and back segments in the main lake of just under a mile each, then finishes in the Canal for the last half-mile. The Canal is interesting as it's a narrow strip of water with spectators lining both sides cheering you on. (This photo is The Canal the day before the race, nice and peaceful looking). Overall my swim went well. I did catch a heel right in the goggles but fortunately no damage done. I heard from another competitor that he also got a heel in his goggles and had to do the entire bike and run with one eye before being taken to the ER after the finish line for a corneal abrasion. Stories always circulate about the questionable water quality in this swim, which I experienced first hand (more about that later in my report). One nice thing after the swim was the post-Covid reinstatement of wetsuit strippers. I was hoping for a swim time somewhere in the 1:20s, so I was fine with my time of 1:28. 

For this race nothing was allowed in Transition other than your bike. So after the swim you grab your bike gear bag, head to the changing tent and stuff all your swim gear into the bag, then head out to your bike. The first 20 miles of the bike is a nice warm up through city streets before reaching the meat of the course – 84 brutal miles on the Hardy Toll Road. This portion of the race consists of two full south and north loops with each segment being 21 miles. The entire course is relatively flat, but being on the toll road there is no protection from the wind, and boy was it ever windy! The wind here typically comes from the Gulf, so it's a south wind and it was blowing 20-30 mph the entire day. It made for a crazy tough ride. Going southbound, directly into the teeth of the wind, I only averaged about 13 mph. While northbound I was averaging about 23 mph. Definitely took its toll and wiped the legs out for the marathon afterwards. After the race all people could talk about was the wind during the bike. During the awards banquet the next morning the overall female winner, Jocelyn McCauley (from College Station TX), said this was the 7^th time she's done this race and this was by far the worst wind she had ever experienced on it. I was shooting for a six hour bike leg, but considering the wind and the toll it took on everybody I was happy with my 6:39 split. I don't feel I pushed too hard on the bike and was ready for the run. 

As soon as we reached T2 a volunteer took my bike to re-rack it. I grabbed my run gear bag, stuffed my bike gear into it and headed out for the marathon. The first couple of miles started great, just under 9:00 per mile pace and within my target HR. I definitely felt good and was thinking that I had a chance at a top 5 podium finish. Then a few miles later I started to develop some GI issues and was searching for the nearest porta-potty. Back to the run, but not for long. Started feeling lightheaded for the rest of the race and visited the porta-potty at least 2 or 3 more times (I lost count). Even though by this time all hope of a podium had long disappeared, the thoughts now were to just finish the race, which I had plenty of time to do. The weird thing was that I've done lots of races, but never had this type of GI or lightheaded issues before. Not sure why now. The run course consisted of three laps of about 8.5 miles each. By the time I was on my last lap it was a combination of slow jog and walking (four of my miles splits ended up being over 20 minutes). At least I knew I would finish under the IM 17 hour limit. I talked to several people that still had more than a full lap and they were just trying to meet the various check point times. The race ended up with a 17% DNF rate, mostly because of the wind.