Hot Fog

Yep, you read it right. Who knew that there was such a thing? Being from the west coast, I had never experienced this weird phenomena. I need Bill Frye the Science guy to explain it to me. Here's wikipedia on fog. It happened on Saturday morning. I knew it was going to be hot from the forecast so the plan was to wake up at 6am and ride at 7am skipping swimming. I could be back from my scheduled 6 hour ride by 1pm before it really got hot.

I woke up at six and turned on the computer to see how hot it was already. It was 75 and then I noticed the humidity read 98%. Hmm..that's strange and I looked outside. FOG! Crap...visibility was horrible so I was hoping it would go away soon. Finally around 8am it had cleared enough to be somewhat safe on the bike. Probably quarter mile visibility. I jammed out of the house and proceeded to start my death ride.

The new P2C only has 1 water bottle cage. I have a rear hydration cage system but I lost a key part in the packing of the bike from the Florida 70.3. So on the bike I have the front aerobars bottle and the lone cage. I packed two water bottles in my jersey. I was going to test some nutrition for the ride. I mixed a 3x concentration of infinit or 900 calories worth, the front aero bottle had another 300 calories of infinit and the rest was water.

My plan was to attack all the hills and just cruise the flats with some tempo sessions during the last 3 hours. By the time I got to my scheduled turn around point and free cold water stop, I had rode 57 miles 3.5 hours and it was frickin hot. I thought to myself this is how you toughen up for any hot weather you get at the Ironman.

The entered my rides last hour and I immediately started worrying. I mean I didn't swim 2.4 miles before this ride and I was planning to go pass out on my couch after the ride not run a god awful full blown 26.2 miles. Oh no, this is not good. What had I signed myself up for?!?! The final ride statistics were 111 miles in 5:50 which is about 19.2 average speed. I felt totally wiped out. Calling NASports....I think I need a refund. I stumbled incoherently into my condo and looked at the Weatherbug temperature. It read 95 degrees with 48% humidity for a heat index of 100.

So I woke up late Sunday, 7am because the current day plan was swim for an hour, bike for 4 hours and then run for an hour. I'd be done around 2pm just like yesterday. It wasn't foggy woohoo but it was 75 and humid right out of the gate. The good thing about the day was there was a breeze so it felt cooler.

I packed up the Escape to drive over to the pool and then park for the ride/run portion. It's hard to run off the bike from my house because there's easily 15 minutes of dodging speed bumps, crappy roads and traffic lights at the end of the ride. So my legs really spin out easy and I'm pretty refreshed plus if I want to go over an hour on the run I have to deal with more traffic lights and the worst part of the run is there's no water. There's a park that has most of its roads closed to traffic on the weekends here. It also has bathrooms and water fountains.

I was clicking off a nice swim pace until the end and then it was a struggle. I swam 3300 yards and hopped out the pool. I got onto my bike with a different nutrition strategy. I just feel the Infinit isn't working as well as my old standby Cytomax so I decided to go gels and cytomax for the 4 hour nice and flat mellow ride.

The ride started and I immediately got passed by a girl. She was moving at a good clip. I figured I might as well follow and get the legs moving. She turned at the top of this little climb so I continued on my way. I decided to explore a slightly different route and was hoping I'd be able to find free water around the 2 hour point. I was only 45 minutes in when I stopped at a water fountain. I had already consumed 2 bottles. Uh-oh...this is going to be a tough day.

The new route was quite smooth and nice. The legs started to feel good and I was going at a relaxed pace. The day definitely felt cooler due to the slight breeze. As I approached the car, I was quite relaxed and felt I was going to have a good run. This notion came crashing down like the hopes of my Dodgers actually having a chance with Joe Torre at the helm this year with the first 10 steps of my run.

Oh crap, my body feels like total hell. Instead of running the first mile of my hour run, this feels like I've already run 18 miles during a marathon. It was just all out tiredness. My legs didn't hurt but I really felt dead all over. Wow, this is how the marathon is going to feel out of the gate. I'm not even going to get that first 10 miles where you feel invincible during the marathon. I just kept trudging along feeling like my new goal for the marathon portion of the Ironman is 4 hours.

I made a bathroom stop and about suffocated from the intense humidity and heat. I slugged forward trying to stay with it although I just wanted to quit. I kept thinking about all the Ironman finishers each year and just wondering if they suffer like this through the whole marathon. What an amazing feat. I shuffled along and got to my first water fountain. I downed a gel and drank as much as I could while splashing some on my head. I made my turn around point right at the 30 minute mark and proceeded back.

The gel with caffeine perked me up and I felt a little better. I decided to try to go with it and if I totally blew up and walked so be it. I decided to make another water stop and eat my 2nd gel about 15 minutes later for that final push to the car.

I got to the car with a total of 61 minutes and thought I was going to die. How am I supposed to run at least 2 something more hours...maybe I'm not going to be an Ironman. Overall, I figured my pace was probably 8 something miles and it just felt tough. Man I'm stupid if I think I have a chance of making a 3:15 marathon.

I stopped at a 7-Eleven on the way home for a slushie..er slurpie. It was so hot all the flavors were just pushing out syrup except pomegranate margarita. Oh well, it was cold and had sugar so I started downing as I finished my drive home.

My bad foot was hurting, my quads were sore and I have a new blood blister under a totally different toenail. Joy! I was so wiped out that I wasn't hungry at all. It took everything just to eat one plate of food. Before I crashed into bed, I measured my distance for the run portion and logged my bike stats as well. For the bike, I rode 77.7 miles in 4 hours for an average of just over 19mph. Not bad considering it felt pretty easy but there wasn't much climbing at all. I did the whole Runner's World gmap for the run and it was an 8.6 out and back which put my pace at 7:09. WTF!! I was and still am in shock. It felt so slow and hard. I'm totally confused.

2 months 15 days...