Showdown at Sundown Half Ironman

I just returned from Las Vegas where I participated in the Showdown at Sundown Half Ironman along with my friends Stan Hansen, Rich Goode and Greg Hoole. We were joined by Matt Perkins and stayed at Rich Cornia's home in Summerlin for a fun Boys' weekend. The weather was actually unseasonably cool and windy, not ideal for a triathlon. In fact, the race organizers actually ended up canceling the swim portion due to water temperatures (52 degrees at Lake Mead) and high winds (20 - 25 mph). A group of us (~15) decided to swim anyway prior to the Bike/Run. I opted to swim along the coastline in case I got into any trouble. Not only was the water freezing, but the white caps made it difficult to breath. I think the race organizers made a good decision to cancel as there certainly would have been swimmers in trouble. I ended up swimming for just under 40 minutes. We then had a longer than usual T1 (apx. 15 minutes) before the start of the race. For official race time tracking, I used a swim time of 44:24 and a T1 of 6:36, which is consistent with last year's Pumpkinman race which was held at the same location. I actually added in 1 additional minute to my time. The bike portion of the race was a bear. Again, same difficult course as Pumpkinman, but with significant winds. I did okay for the first 30 miles or so, but then fell apart. My time was slightly better than Pumpkinman (3:59 vs. 4:06), but not much. And I was completely spent by the time I got to the run. The run course was different and better than Pumpkinman; although, slightly more difficult as the first two miles were down hill meaning the last two we all uphill (out and back course). At mile 5, mile quads began to seize up. I took some salt tabs and walked a bit and they eventually did okay. In the end, I finished the run in 2:03:44, which is 30 seconds slower than my run at Pumpkinman. Overall, my official time was 6:03:12; however, if you add in the swim/T1, my time was 6:54:12 making this my fastest (although still very slow) Half Ironman. I felt very sick post-race, even throwing up several times. I need to figure out the nutrition side of things better, particularly as I head into the Full Ironman down in Houston. The temperatures/humidity are going to be a challenge. Nevertheless, I'm glad I was able to participate in this race as a good tune-up and gauge for where I'm at in my training. I think we all agreed that we are done with these shoe-string Triathlon operations and will opt to pay more and go with an Ironman sponsored race in the future. The support is better, the experience is better. In Showdown at Sundown, they only had one water exchange (mile 25). Their t-shirts are terrible, never to be worn. And they gave out a beer glass as a momento instead of a medal. So as a race, I give it a major thumbs down, but as a training day, I was happy to have done it. Now onto IM Texas - 8 weeks and counting!