Jerz goes to Ohio

Sunday is the Rev3 full ironman race I signed up for last minute. It's in Sandusky, Ohio which I'm figuring is an 8 hour drive. I'm either going to leave tonight at 1am and drive 4 hours, sleep 4 hours, drive 4 hours. Or, wake up at 5am and just drive 8 hours straight through. I'll see how tired I feel later tonight. I want to get there by 1pm so I can do my race packet pickup and bike check-in by the 4pm deadline, leaving myself a couple hours padding just in case. Maybe I'll download an audio book for the ride, learn something new along the ride. I'm packing all my meals with me (salads, fruit, etc) because it is stressful finding food I can eat in a strange town.

Believe it or not I have a race plan for Sunday. The forecast keeps bouncing between t-storms and showers to partly sunny. In any case it should only be low to mid 70'sF which is perfect. KK told me it can get really windy along Lake Erie so that'll be the enemy on Sunday, as the course if very flat from what I can gather. I prefer hills over wind, hills have a start and and end, headwinds last foooorever. But, whatever.

Swim: I'll be in a wetsuit which will help my form so I hope to knock a few minutes off my IMLOU swim time. The swim is 1.2 mile swim, short beach jog, then another 1.2 mile swim. It's a mass start so I should have company the whole swim. I have no idea what to expect in terms of current, waves, etc but...let's shoot for a 1:20 swim time.

Bike: The bike course sounds like it favors me, no real hills, pretty flat. The only factor should be a headwind on the returning section of the course. If the wind isn't too bad I have hopes for a good bike time, on par with the 6:15 I laid down at IMLOU. If the wind is horrendous than all bets are off, it'll be what it'll be. I won't have heat to deal with so let's try to best my IMLOU time by 5 minutes and pull down a 6:10 bike leg.

Run: Again, this run is supposed to be dead flat so...should not be too bad. Then again, doing another ironman 2 weeks after completing one that I barely trained for could be a changing factor in that equation. I went 5:33 in IMLOU and that was in crazy hot conditions. I fought back strong on my 2nd lap there and I'll hope for a repeat effort at Rev3. I think it would be cool to go sub 13 hours. I don't know who long transitions are but I'll figure 15 minutes all-in to estimate them. If I hit my times above I'll be sitting at 7 hrs 45 minutes which leaves me 5:14 to complete the marathon. I need to shave 19 minutes off my IMLOU time, which I'm hoping will come simply from not having to deal with oppressive heat.

So there... 1:20 swim + 7:30 T1 + 6:10 bike + 7:30 T2 + 5:14 run = 12:59 FINISH!

No matter what, I'm super stoked to go racing again. I'm having a blast out there and trying pull these finish times out of my...hat....makes it even more fun. I want to hurt myself on this one, I want to be in pain the next day from my effort. So believe me when I say, I will leave everything I have out on that course this Sunday. JoJo will rock the Rev! OUT!