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Barb's Race: It was hot. I finished. The end.

There's my extremely abbreviated race report for Barb's Race, the half-ironman I raced yesterday. Also: it was hard. Really hard. I suppose I could add a few more details.

This race is a low-key, all-female version of the Vineman Half, a hugely popular and competitive Hawaii Ironman qualifier which took place two weeks ago. Barb's Race takes place the same day as the Vineman full-iron-distance triathlon. There are also Aquabike swim-run races for both half and full distances (I did the full last year). Barb herself is a longtime race volunteer and two-time cancer survivor. The race web site says, "If Barb can beat cancer, then what’s the big deal about finishing a half-Ironman?!" Indeed.

Up until 20 minutes before my start I debated whether to wear my wetsuit or not. The water in the Russian River felt like a warm bath when I dipped my toes in. But everyone else was wearing their wetsuits, and I didn't really want to find out exactly how much time I'd lose without it. So I wore it. And it turned out OK. I didn't overheat.

In fact, I had a fantastic swim. My fastest half-ironman swim before this was 39 minutes, and I was hoping for 36-38. By my watch (the results aren't up yet) it was under 35 minutes. Of course that always makes me wonder if the course was short, but I swam through a LOT of the yellow swim caps of the wave that started 5 minutes before mine. I even caught a few of the full ironman swimmers who had started almost an hour and a half ahead of me. And when I got to my bike rack, only one woman there had beaten me out of the water. She was 64, wore Team USA gear, and had her stuff spread out on an Ironman Hawaii towel. She left just as I got to my bike and I didn't see her again until much later.

I headed out onto the bike feeling pretty stoked about my swim. The bike course is a gorgeous tour of Sonoma's vineyards, mostly rolling with a couple of climbs that are not too long but challenging nonetheless. The day was perfectly cool when I started but began to heat up near the end of my ride. As I inched my way up the final climb, sweat dripping off my chin, I started to feel the heat and the discomfort in my stomach.

I finished the ride, by my watch, in 3:16, having predicted (and hoped for) a 3:15 ride -- just over 17mph. In T2 I took the time to change my socks and lube my toes, knowing that I have another half in five weeks and that I didn't want mega-blisters to keep me from running for a week. Incidentally, by this point -- around noon -- the asphalt in the transition area was so hot that my stick of Body Glide, normally the consistency of chapstick, had melted into runny goo and my gel packets were baked-potato hot.

I grabbed my hat, hit the steaming-hot pavement, and immediately clutched at the stitch in my side. I'm afraid the liquids I had consumed in the last hour of the bike were still sitting in my bloated stomach, which was causing a painful stitch with every stride. I tried every trick I knew to get rid of it, but the only way to make the pain subside was to suck in my stomach really hard. That's hard to maintain for two-plus hours while running. So the discomfort was on and off for the whole run.

That run was hard. I never doubted that I would finish, but I wondered how long I could keep running. My legs were really fatigued; I probably biked harder than I should have to hit my goal time. My stomach was unhappy. And it was HOT, in the high 80s to low 90s, with most of the run course unshaded.

Just today I watched the 2006 Hawaii Ironman coverage (which was a cry-fest for various reasons, but I digress). The eventual 2nd-place woman Desiree Ficker says in some interview footage that sometimes you wish the run course were just one long aid station handing you cold drinks and ice. Sonoma County isn't nearly the blast furnace that is Kona, but I understood exactly what she meant. I just could not get enough cold water or ice. The aid stations were spraying athletes with hoses, and while I'd normally turn down a spray to avoid blisters, yesterday I dumped water all over myself at every chance. I was really glad to have put all that Body Glide on my feet. I was dripping wet for the entire run.

I never thought that run would end. We ran one 8-mile out-and-back and one 4-mile out-and-back. The first lap included some brutal hills which were completely exposed to the blistering sun. Have I mentioned that I just don't do well in heat? I don't have much opportunity to train for it, seeing as how July in San Francisco is generally foggy and cold and damp.

As I finished my first lap and headed out for the second, a volunteer handed me a wristband to wear as a lap counter. As I headed out I passed a handful of friends who cheered madly. My friend Barb (no relation to the race -- hee hee), who had done a smoking-fast bike ride as part of a relay, snapped photos and I tried to smile. I pointed to my stomach and gave a thumbs-down, to which she said, "You're tough! You can do this!" That carried me for several minutes, until I realized that most of the women coming toward me didn't have the lap-counter wristbands yet. That meant that I was ahead of most of them! Maybe I wasn't melting down after all.

That run course just got hotter and hotter and I had to fight ever harder to keep from walking. The route was scenic, but adding to the heat was the variety of barnyard odors as we passed by a goat farm, a horse farm, and acres of vineyards. Ugh.

Once I got to the last aid station for the fourth and final time, I nearly cried with relief. Less than a mile to the finish! I thanked the volunteers again and again, told them they were angels, and admitted I was not sorry I wouldn't be seeing them again.

I passed a lot of women in the last mile. Does having so much energy at the end mean I ran the first 12 miles too slowly? Eh. Who knows. The last woman I passed, just before turning into the driveway that led to the finishing chute, was my 64-year-old rackmate. I was pretty surprised to see her; I had assumed she beat me by a long shot. She's twice my age and she hauled ass. I knew her age from her calf, but I would have guessed she was 10 years younger.

I heard people shouting my name as I sprinted for the line. I could see the seconds ticking over and for some reason I wanted to finish in 6:15, not 6:16. Why 6:15? Because that was the guesstimate I had made in the car on the way up to the race on Friday. It wasn't a goal so much as a vague prediction. According to the clock, I finished in 6:15:59 or so (give or take a second), although like I said I haven't seen the official results yet.

My best-case-scenario run time was 2:00-2:05; my goal was 2:10, which would be 10-minute miles. My final run time was 2:16ish, and I should be fine with that, considering the heat and my stomach issues. I am a wee bit disappointed, although I shouldn't be. If I had finished in 6:15 total and had a slower swim but a faster run, I might be happier about it. It's weird, I know. This is my second-best-ever half-ironman time! Out of six races at this distance! On a tough course! Take it, woman! Sheesh.

Barb herself placed my medal around my neck at the finish. That's her smiling face on the medal above. (I didn't take any actual photos at the race -- the logistics were not conducive to me taking a camera along -- so you get a photo of the back of the medal.) I don't remember much of what happened immediately after I finished, because I wandered around in a bit of a daze, suppressing the urge to puke. I was so happy to be done.

We hung out for a while after the race, putting off our return to the cold and foggy city. I got a chance to talk to my friend Tracy, who kicked butt in her first half. And then at the awards my friend Leishia graciously accepted her bottle of La Crema chardonnay for her dominating first-place finish in the Full Aquabike. (Sorry you didn't get the Pinot Noir, Leishia. We can go back to the winery when you get back from IM Canada. Without our bikes.)

And then we got cleaned up and headed back home and the temperature dropped about 40 degrees as we approached the Golden Gate Bridge and its accompanying blanket of fog.

I'll post the official results when they go up.

August 5, 2007 11:48 PM