Success at the Big Kahuna – Santa Cruz, CA – Half Ironman
On Sept. 7, 2008, I finished my first Half Ironman. I did it in Santa Cruz at the Big Kahuna. My time wasn’t very good. But, my goal was to simply finish. Here’s a video that a made of the event. Sandy, my wife, took all of the clips.
I had performed the full distance (1.2 miles swim, 56 miles bike, 13.1 miles run) a month before the event to prove to myself I could do it. I later found out that there were strict time limits on each part of the event. For example, if a participant didn’t leave the transaction area for the run by 1pm, they were disqualified. The elite athletes left at 7am. My age group left last at 7:40am. This didn’t seem fair that the oldest participants would have the least amount of time.
I was really nervous before the race started. After all, I had only swam in the ocean on a handful of occasions. Most of my swimming practice was performed in the swimming pool at my local gym. I found out later that swimming in the ocean was totally different. I swam at Corona Del Mar on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday the week before the event to get as much time in the ocean as possible. Here are my stats. Not very impressive. But, I did complete the race.
Clock Time 7:26:21
Chip Time 7:26:21
Overall Place 794 / 853
Gender Place 551 / 574
Division Place 61 / 65
Swim 1 2M Rank 835
Swim 1 2M Time 53:43
Swim 1 2M Pace 44:46/M
T1 Time 13:16
Bike 56M Rank 732
Bike 56M Time 3:26:42
Bike 56M Pace 16.3MPH
T2 Time 10:12
Run 13 1M Rank 766
Run 13 1M Time 2:42:25
Run 13 1M Pace 12:24/M
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