Gulfman 2005, A Chronicle
by: Trevor Casper

“Getcha some, brah.”  So said my very talkative running partner to the occasional speedster that blew by us in the early miles of the half-marathon portion of the inaugural, Gulfman Half Ironman race in Galveston , Texas .  “JB”, the talkative one, and I (silent type, somewhat strong), had ridden a fair portion of the bike course in pretty close proximity (legal proximity) where he had introduced himself, told me this was his first long-course triathlon (me too), that it was his 30^th birthday, that he had a wife and a little girl, and that his endurance racing background was in the adventure racing/mountain bike realm.  JB had a substantial cheering section which regularly leap-frogged us in a pick-up truck and engaged in such antics as singing Happy Birthday, screaming like frat boys at a wet t-shirt contest, and running alongside the road wearing nothing but a thong.  The last would have been great had it been the pretty young woman in the pick-up truck, but it was not.

“Someone you know?” I asked.

“My best friend,” he replied.

A dude in a thong—great.

Feeling fairly strong, I dropped JB for the last five miles of the bike course, but thanks to a very sloshy stomach and some conservative energy management, we were back together again early in the run.  JB was friendly and funny, but with my stomach feeling the way it was I kind of wanted to focus silently on the road ahead.  Mercifully, he asked me how I was feeling.  “My stomach’s a little sloshy,” I said.  He nodded.

“Alright brah.  I’m going to pick it up a little.”

“Cool,” I said.  “Getcha some.”

And JB left me to run in silence, and focus.

Without going too deep into how I arrived at that particular spot in time and space, let me say that when I first heard of the Gulfman Half Ironman it sounded like the perfect long course race for me, a first-timer at that distance.  Early in the season, so fairly cool (good for me, a fellow who’s seen the lake ice in front of his house break up in late May), flat, and did I mention cool?  The thought of a half ironman race in the deep south in the summer does not appeal to me.  So I registered, and by race weekend I had the better part of four months of mainly aerobic work under my belt.  I trained an average of seven hours a week during that time—not all that much I know, but it’s what I can fit in between work and family and everything else.

On Saturday evening, after the buffet dinner put on by Moody Gardens , the host hotel/resort, I shivered as I walked back through the gardens to our room.  “I wanted it to be cool,” I told my wife, “but not quite this cool.”  The breeze was still stiff out of the west, and it raised goosebumps on my arms.

Race morning, after a fitful sleep punctuated by a dream in which I slept in and missed the start of the race, I woke up at 3 a.m. for a breakfast of Ensure, bagel with peanut butter, and a banana (stole the menu from Gordo Byrn’s website).  Then I went back to bed until five.  At five I had a cup of coffee and then telephoned the other Lafayette boys down the hall (Charles, Jody, Robert, Dodd).  Jody helped me inflate my tires and I was off to the transition area.

Though the administrative aspects of this race were not well managed, I took care of the essentials (body-marking, timing chip, bike racked, numerous bathroom breaks) pretty quickly and without frustration.  With about fifteen minutes to spare, I donned my wetsuit and headed for the water.  The last thing the race director told us before the start was that the water temperature was 64 degrees.

Ladies and gentlemen, 64 degree water, even with a wetsuit on, is cold.  For my first few warm-up strokes the water was that shocking, suck in your breath kind of cold.  After my warm-up I noticed one fellow in our wave who wasn’t wearing a wetsuit at all—crazy, I thought.  They counted us down, and we were off.

I positioned myself right in the middle of the pack, which is about where I expected to finish, and found the first two hundred meters only semi-combative.  A little pushing and swatting and looking for space, and then head down trying to stay with the feet in front of me.  The water was good for several feet of visibility which made it easy to stay on someone’s hip for a draft.  I like that position better than tucked in behind someone’s feet because you get to look through clean, mainly undisturbed water.  I tried to use good technique, relax, and pull reasonably strong.  I tended to have a bit of leftward drift in my course management which soon had me left of the main body of swimmers, but I sighted enough to keep fairly straight and hooked back up with the group at the first bouy.  Then my legs started cramping.

I don’t know why I started to cramp in my calves and hamstrings, as this has never happened to me before while swimming.  Maybe it was the cold water and the tension associated with trying the new, longer distance.  In any case, once they started, they never went away.  I was able to swim through most of them without losing form or effort, but they were an annoyance.  A couple of times I tried to stretch my right calf by pulling my toes toward my shin, but I knew that was compromising my position in the water, so mostly I just ignored it.

The whole swim didn’t feel too much longer than the CajunMan swim, and when I stood up to walk/run out of the water my watch read about 34’ 45”, which was right where I hoped to be.  Good, I thought.  One leg down.

In the transition area my legs started cramping again.  Hard, full leg cramps that made it almost impossible to get my wetsuit off.  Every time I’d flex a leg to grab the wetsuit, I cramped, and I’d have to stop and wait for my legs to relax.  Finally, after much cursing and grimacing, I tossed the wetsuit on the bike rack, donned bike shoes and helmet, and headed out.

When I hit Seawall Boulevard and turned southwest the conditions for racing were about as perfect as they can be.  It was cool, about sixty degrees, winds were calm, and the road was smooth and wide.  The sun rising behind me cast a golden light.  I felt relaxed, my cramps were gone, and I glanced down to check my heart rate.  WHAT???  161!!!  That’s not right, I thought.  Must be residue from my wrestling match with my wetsuit.  I told myself to be patient and pay attention to how I felt (which was good).  I was pretty sure it would come down.  A couple of minutes later, without any change in effort, it was 150, then 145, then 137.

My goal on the bike was to keep my heart rate around 140.  Managing my effort like that I thought I could finish the bike course in 2:45 or a little better.  Glancing down at the gears I was turning and noting my cadence, I felt like my early pace was plenty fast enough to meet that goal.  I was steadily reeling in most of the riders I could see in front of me, and there weren’t too many catching me from behind.  Then I passed a group of about three riders who were bunched pretty tight, and they stayed with me.  What followed for the next ten or so miles was an incessant and frustrating game of leapfrog.  One or two of them would pass me, pull in front, and slow down.  I was then faced with the decision of riding too close, dropping back, which usually meant dropping my effort down too much, or passing again.  I didn’t want to hammer, and really drop them, because I was trying to manage my output, but finally, with about five miles left to the turn-around and the wind now blowing in our faces, I got fed up and decided to end the game.  I pushed pretty hard into the wind until the turn-around, and never had the bunching problem again.

For nutrition and hydration on the bike I had two bottles of Carbo-Pro mixed with half Gatorade/half water, and water in my aero bottle, which I kept filled with pick-ups from the aid stations.  I stayed on a pretty steady schedule of two or three sips of the Carbo-Pro mix and two or three sips of water every fifteen minutes.  Doing this, I finished most of the Carbo-Pro by the end of the bike leg, and went through about two and a half aero bottles of water.  This may have been a bit much.

My lower back was a little tight and uncomfortable for much of the second half of the bike.  This is something I have to fix.  It’s hard to stay focused and fast and aero when you’re uncomfortable.

The last few miles of the bike leg were fun—cruising down the populated portion of Seawall Boulevard with a good tailwind and people cheering, and then negotiating the narrow, cone-marked lanes to the transition.  At the dismount line the crowd was a bit of a blur, but I heard Irene (my wife) asking me if I was okay.  “Yeah,” I said, and trotted into the transition tent.  On the way out of the tent—no cramps that time, thankfully—I stopped at the porta-potty.  I was definitely well hydrated.

Too well, I soon found out.  My nutrition plan included shooting a gel at the beginning of the run, and that, combined with the water I drank to chase it, and all the stuff already in my stomach, had me sloshing and burping like a volcano for the first few miles of the run.  This was the “Getcha some, brah,” portion of the run, and the part where I felt like I might not make my time goal (to be revealed later).  Also, at about four miles out, I drank some blue Gatorade, which is obviously the drink of the devil.  Additional burping and sloshing ensued.  Jody, and then Charles ran by me on their way back in, and we nodded to acknowledge each other.  They looked good.

My stomach did not feel right until the turn around, which was stocked with ice-cold, lemon-lime Gatorade.  It tasted great, and I was pleased to see that I’d gotten to the turn in about 57 minutes.  Not as slow as I’d thought, and I knew I could go back in faster than I’d come out.  I settled in with a tall fellow who talked about as much as I did, which is to say not much.  All through the second half of the run I felt good enough to pick it up, to go faster.  “But no,” I told myself, “wait.”  I’d been keeping my heart rate right around 150, and I wasn’t quite ready to abandon that strategy.

With about two miles to go, tall guy and I walked through an aid station and drank a bit of water.  As we tossed our cups in the grass beside the road I said, “let’s finish this bitch,” and he said, “okay.”  With one mile to go we came upon another aid station, and tall guy stopped again.  I ran on—at that point I knew I’d conserved enough.  I picked it up, started to really run—I could hear the people cheering as runners made their way down the boulevard in front of the Moody Gardens hotel.  A few more turns and I was on the boulevard, and then I could see the finish line.  As I passed the spectators on the sidewalk, an older fellow with a dog said, “just nine more blocks.”

“Nine blocks?  How?”  The finish was right there.  But the cones sent me off on a side road.  What cruelty, I thought.  A detour with the finish line in sight.  Back on the boulevard, no more tricks, I spotted Irene and my mom, and the crowd was cheering, and then came the mat.  As I crossed the line I remembered to clench my fist like I used to when I scored a goal playing soccer.  Last mile; somewhere around 6:45.  Total time; five hours, twenty-one minutes, and a few seconds.  Average heart rate over the whole race; 145.

Going into this race, I thought I could comfortably finish in five and a half hours.  Comfortable is not the best way to describe how I felt out there.  It was more like moderately  uncomfortable.  I know that in the future, if I want to go faster, I’m going to have to get stronger,  and I’m going to have to suffer more and eat and drink a little less.  That said, I was not so focused on myself and my time that I was unaware of the fact that it was a beautiful, near perfect day for a race, and that I have been blessed with the good health and supportive family that are pre-requisites for any half-day spent swimming, biking, and running.  Thanks are also due to all the Lafayette triathletes for their friendship, help, and encouragement.  Getcha some.