Ironman Mark

That was hard.  I did it in 1:31:52, so 90 seconds slower than two years ago.  To be honest, I was disappointed but I did my best.  How could I improve:

- Don’t leave my running shoes at work

- Use my HR monitor to keep the hills under control

- Practice more

This is what I wrote in my training log:

The weather was overcast, bit of a S wind, probably about 10 degrees.  In other words, pretty near perfect.
The start was delayed by 10 mins and it did get a bit cold on the start line, even with a bin bag on.
I’d set my GPS to do it in 1:30 and so all I had to do was stay with the real man with the flag and I could double check the runner on my gps.    What could go wrong?
Within 20m of the start I had gone ahead of the pace maker.  I probably scooted through some gaps so I carried on.  Then I looked at my gps and I was already 20m behind.  I’d better just carry on at the pace that I thought was right.  So, I did.  Scooting through the gaps, wondering why some people had started so close to the front when they were going less than half of everyone else’s speed.
At about a mile I was 50m behind the gps with no sign of the pacemaker so I carried on, trying to get a little quicker to catch up those 50m (dividing it by 4, about 12s). Then the pacemaker came screaming past me.  I tried to stay with him but he went way quicker than me.  I knew he was trying to make up time so I decided not to stay with him, especially as we were going up hill.
After 3 miles I stayed 10m or so behind him and his merry band of followers.  At the first aid station at about 4 miles in I was just behind him and then fell back a little to around 10m or so again.  By this stage I was ahead of the GPS and this lead grew to around 160m (40s) by the 10k mark (but I have no idea how accurate the gps is).
I thought the pacer was going quick so I looked at my watch at the 10k and it said 41:45.  Some times I maths goes wrong on the fly but I thought that’s 45s quicker than I wanted to be.  I decided that I didn’t mind a bit bigger gap in front and he seemed to slow down a little up the hill between mile 7 and 8.  I got to 10m of him and then at the top of the hill my legs began to start to fail me.
I was 130m ahead of my gps but then it got lower and lower.  Almost exactly at the mile 10 marker, I was down to 2m ahead. Between mile 8 and 10 people started going steadily past me.  I was slowing big time.  I don’t think it was my heart/breathing causing me to slow but my legs (surprise!)  Looking at my pace between 70 mins and 85 mins, it had fallen to 4:35 per km compared with the 4:13 I was aiming for.
There was a bit just before mile 10 that I decided to try to stay with a someone who had just overtaken me and so I increased my pace and it felt ok.  At that stage, I was back to (slowly) overtaking people but after a few minutes I seemed to have eased off because people were overtaking me again.
About 1km from the end, you go up a uphill bit to get you towards the stadium, I decided to push from there and stayed with a woman who had just overtaken me.  But after a short bit, I felt a stitch and just could not push.  My HR dipped in the last two minutes which is the wrong way around!
Not sure of my actual finish time yet, I think it is just over 1:32 but I didn’t press the right button on my watch.
Nutrition wise, I was probably a little dehydrated this morning.  I had a mouth full of water (about 7 miles in) and a mouthful of sports drink (about 5 miles in) and a gel at about mile 9.  So, I don’t think the stitch thing is to do with eating.  I didn’t sleep well (Sparkie barked to go out at 2:50am and it took an hour to get to sleep).
I left my red shoes in the office so wore the blue inov8′s.  These were probably a bit loose at the front of my foot as I can feel the start of blisters on the outside of the front left of my left foot.
Average HR=166bpm, max=175bpm (actual max is probably higher than that but just couldn’t push at the end because of the stitch).