Pocono Mountains Half Ironman Race Report - My Almost first 70.3 Race

The morning of race day

This race report is for my almost first half-Ironman race. Since I completed Ironman Louisville, I’ve been looking for one more race to finish out my inaugural season of triathlons. Originally, that final race was going to be the Nation’s Triathlon which was held locally on 9/11. Not only would it be my last race of the season, I could redeem myself for my performance in the similarly designed DC Triathlon in June.  (I decided to try out running with no socks during that race. I am not sure if my feet have forgiven me yet.) Thanks to the monsoon season of rain we have been experiencing on the East Coast this fall, the swim portion of Nation’s was canceled.  Although I had a good race overall, it didn’t seem like an appropriate way to end the season. So I decided to do the half Ironman in the Pocono Mountains (1.5 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run).  As my first half Ironman, I thought it would be a good note to end the season. Mother Nature is laughing at me.

For those of you unfamiliar with the area, the Poconos are basically a resort area on the PA, NJ, NY border and surrounding the Delaware Gap National Park.  My wife and I spent New Year’s skiing there, so we were familiar with the geography.  Did I mention this was the inaugural race for this area? 

After signing up for the race, I tried to book a room at the Fernwood Resort, the official race headquarters and the hotel we used in January.  After hearing the “No Vacancy” news from this hotel and every other hotel in the area I decided I had two choices, book a hotel almost 30 miles away from the race or stay at the nearby Pocono Palace, an all-inclusive resort for honeymooners.  Not wanting to get up at 4 a.m., we opted for the Palace, although I was disappointed we didn’t get a heart-shaped bed.

With final race of the season chosen and housing arrangements made, I just needed to train and wait for race day to arrive. Fast forward to the week of the race. The extended forecast predicted no rain and low temperatures (low 42 to high 52).  This was quite the change since all my triathlons have been in the spring and summer months, and I had trained primarily for hot weather races. My first concern was that I was going to freeze my butt off getting out of the water. Yes, wetsuits would be allowed for the swim (thank god), but I was still going to be freezing once I got out of the river. Of course, none of this really mattered because the weather in the area continued to deteriorate as the week progressed. Heavy rains fell most of the week, and now it looked like it would rain all weekend as well. By Friday, the swim was canceled, and my plan to end the season with a full triathlon was nixed.  Though not a huge fan of swimming, I was pretty disappointed. I had been working on my swim technique quite a bit since Louisville and was really looking forward to see how much progress I had made.

While I no longer had to be concerned with freezing once I got out of the water, it was looking more and more like I would be racing in the pouring cold rain.  The day before the race, we woke up at 5 a.m. to drive the four hours to the Poconos.  we checked in, grabbed my race packet, and joined the pre-race briefing to hear about the revised time-trial bike start and several warnings to avoid the walnuts on the course.  (No joke, walnuts.)

Originally, shuttles from the Fernwood would take athletes to the river several miles away.  T1 was a short distance from Swim Out then off to the bike course which ended at a separate T2 at the local high school.  Run an out-and-back for a finish through downtown and into the area Oktoberfest.  With the swim canceled, things changed a bit.    Instead of dropping our bike gear at T1, we brought the gear with us in the morning.  With the swim, we would have started in waves based on our age with each wave jumping in the water at a designated time. Now we would start on the bike using a time-trial fashion. The bikes were racked by bib number with athletes released in numeric order.  The lower your number, the less time you spent waiting in transition.  My number was 1976 of 2000.  A long, tedious wait followed by lots of time spent passing.

After the coordinators finished with the course changes, it was time for the head race official.  Now I’ve heard the Ironman rules before and if you read my Ironman Louisville race report, you know these rules don’t seem to be strictly enforced for general age groupers. This particular official seemed proud of the number of penalty flags issued by her team.  She predicted the penalty tents would be incredibly full - and even talked about stopping to pick up your dropped water bottles to avoid disqualification for unsportsmanlike conduct.  My first thought was, “Are you kidding me?”  One of the things I knew based on my experience from the bike start on the Nation’s Tri is that everyone piles into tiny lanes at the same time because there is no swim portion to thin out the crowds.  Preventing drafting and blocking in a race like this is almost impossible. Maybe the official was trying to scare us to cut down on rules violations they had no way to enforce.  (Turns out I was right, plenty of people drafted with nary an official in sight.) 

The rain was still holding off so after we racked my bike at T1, we headed out to drive the course on our way to T2 to drop my run gear bag.  It was quickly apparent the 56-mile course was going to be very challenging.  I originally hoped to finish the bike leg in 3 hours but revised that estimate to 3 1/2 to 4 hours depending on the weather.  The course was hill after hill with at least three OMG hills. Many of the downhill portions ended with fairly sharp turns causing you to have to slow down and lose any real momentum. Add to that wet roads with wet leaves and huge nuts that kept falling from the trees. My concern in Louisville was getting out of the water; for this race I was quickly becoming concerned with coming out of the bike course alive, especially if it was going to be pouring down rain. The run course had its share of hills as well but nothing I wasn’t used to.

Finally after checking out the courses and dropping all our stuff, we headed to dinner at a local Italian restaurant (have to stock up on those carbs) then hit the local grocery store to stock up on some last minute race day snacks. After a relaxing stint in the room’s hot tub it was time for bed. Unlike Louisville where I got next to no sleep, I was going to get plenty of rest for this one. During the night, the rains returned so hard I actually woke up from the rain hitting the roof of the hotel. By 5 a.m., the rain thankfully had stopped.

Dressing in layers for a cold race day start

After I packed everything I needed for the race in a bag, my wife drove me over to Fernwood to catch a shuttle (school bus) to the T1 area. Spectators weren’t allowed down at the T1 spot, so my wife just dropped me off and headed back to our hotel to get a couple more hours of sleep. I had a long wait ahead of me. I sat in the Fernwood lobby for about 40 minutes waiting for the last shuttle to arrive around 6:30. It took about 15 minutes to get down to the T1 area where I proceeded to my bike rack. After removing the covers I had put on the handle bars and seat to keep it dry from the night rain, I dried the rest of my bike, checked the tires for air, and made sure everything was in good working order. Now all I had to do was wait. I made sure to dress in layers for this race as I knew the day was going to start off very cold and possibly even wet, but as the day went on and things warmed up I likely was going to want to easily remove the warmer garments. This would be my first Tri in the cold so I was treading some new ground with how I should dress. I packed everything from your basic tri kit to long leggings and a long-sleeved shirt. I opted to wear basic tri shorts and a sleeveless tri top with arm warmers and a windstopper short-sleeved cycle jersey. On top of that, I put on running pants and a water-proof bike jacket. Oh, and I had a skull cap on to keep my ears warm under my bike helmet.

The race was supposed to start at 7 a.m. but was delayed to 7:15ish. Either way, I knew I wouldn’t be crossing the starting line till at least 8:30 a.m.. Fortunately, the rain held off for the entire race and I did not have to sit there in the rain.  It was quite chilly. After the National Anthem was sung and we heard a mile had to be taken off the course due to overnight flooding, the pros got started from first rows. Of course, being all the way in the back I really couldn’t see much. Deciding I wouldn’t be starting off in the rain, I decided to leave the rain jacket and just wear the tri shorts and top with the cycle jersey over top and the arm warmers to keep my arms warm. This was definitely the right call. After patiently waiting and pacing and watching, it was finally time for my row to head to the start line. The time was like 8:33 a.m., so I had estimated my start time fairly accurately. I ran to the bike mounting area over the time mat, hopped on my bike and was off.

The course starts with in a parking lot type area leading to a left turn to a quick up and back. Unlike with Louisville where my primary goal was to simply finish, I wanted to push myself hard with this race so that’s what I did. Right off the bat, I pushed hard. I had a bit of a pain in my lower back which I had actually been dealing with all week. This made it more difficult to get in the aero-position, but truthfully this wasn’t really much of an aero-postion type of race. At first the cold caused my heart rate to speed up faster than what I am used to, so I did end up pulling it back a notch for a short bit but as I got going I quickly warmed up and my heart rate returned to normal. After completing the first up and back, I knew the first set of big hills would soon be upon me. As I approached the first OMG hill (within the first 5 miles of the course), already I was seeing other riders who had stopped to either rest or walk their bike up the hill. I had seen people walk in the run portion of a triathlon but this was the first time I had seen people walk their bike in a race. There was one lady off to the side resting against a guardrail who looked as if she was on the verge of a heart attack. I heard another rider who must have thought the same thing ask her if she was alright as we went by and she said yes, she just needed to catch her breath. Knowing this hill was only the beginning, I thought if people were already struggling they might as well hang it up now.

As the race went along I continued to push my self hard. There was always a steady stream of people in front of me since I basically started at the back of the pack and had to make my way to the front, so getting complacent was never much of an issue. Almost from the beginning, I played tag with another racer in front of me as we took turns passing each other.  This went on until almost the very end of the race. We even joked with each other about it as we kept passing one another. He was faster than me on the straight-aways but I was always able to overtake him on the hills. I think the last OMG hill towards the end must have slowed him down enough though, because I didn’t see him after that.

At one point in the course, I had two riders wipe out right by me. One guy decided he was going to try and pass in a pack of riders, and I guess he ended up pushing another rider over to the right where he hit one of those plastic orange cones used to divide the lanes. When he hit, he wiped out causing the guy behind him to also crash. Both riders ended up with only some scratches and bruises.

During another leg of the race, a car ended up driving onto the bike course causing us to stop for a second. They weren't race officials, just someone who somehow ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. The rider next to me wasn’t happy she had to slow down for this, but I just blew it off and started pushing hard once again.

For nutrition up to this point I had my usual bottle of Gatorade and water on my bike. I had eaten a banana and a box of Frosted Flakes cereal right before the race start and overall was feeling pretty good. I had a Gu pack on the bike and a Kit Kat bar in my cycle jersey. As I was approaching the last 15 miles of the bike course I was contemplating whether to stick with just the liquids or have either the Gu or Kit Kat. Before I could decide though, I came upon the biggest of the OMG hills. This thing was a monster. I don’t know the exact elevation of it but it was steep and it was long. The front tire of my bike actually came up off the ground a bit as I was pedaling. This one had quite a few people walking it, but I wasn’t going to be one of those people. Kicking it into the lowest gear on the bike which I seldom use, I made my way up that monster.

After that I had no choice, I was beginning to feel it and needed an extra boost. I knew the Gu was probably the better choice but I really don’t like those things, so I decided to eat just a small portion of the Kit Kat. I didn’t want a repeat of Louisville and have bad cramps on the run portion of the race. It seemed to work as I was feeling better and no cramps, though probably the Gu would have been better overall.

As I approached the end of the bike portion, my butt was sore and my back was still bothering me a bit but overall my legs felt good. I rolled into the dismount area looking to see if my wife was there. She wasn’t, turns out she had gotten stuck in traffic trying to make her way to the T2 area. As I mentioned before, this was the first year for this race and I think it’s safe to say the coordinators have quite a few bugs to work out for next year especially when it comes to coordinating the traffic and spectators.


My final bike time was 2:55:12. In T2, I racked my bike which to my surprise caused the entire rack to begin tipping over. I managed to catch it before that happened and saw one of the legs on the rack had come loose and so after playing with it for a few minutes I got it to stay up. This wasn’t a good start to my T2 time. After that, I realized I had forgotten to untie the laces on my running shoes (yes I have laces on my shoes). Of course this was after I had already taken one of my bike shoes off so I had to hop on one leg trying to untie the shoe cause I didn’t want to put my socked foot down on the wet ground. Finally after 6 minutes I was out of T2 and on my way to do the run.

Crossing the finish line

The run portion begins out the back of a high school. You actually run part way around the school’s track then out the parking lot onto a main road through the town. The course is basically a long up and back, where we ran out to about the 7-mile mark then turned around and came back. Things start out flat but I had to take on a number of hills before all was said and done, no OMG hills thankfully though. As I began running I thankfully had no stomach cramps. The pain in my lower back was there but nothing I couldn’t deal with. My legs overall felt pretty strong which was surprising after coming off that bike course. Still I wasn’t getting my pace up as quickly as I wanted to. I was running about a 9-minute pace the first half of the race as opposed to the 6-7 minute I would have liked to have seen. I attribute this partly to a very tough bike course, but also to the fact that I had gotten a little lazy in my training and had not done very many brick sessions (this is when you ride your bike and then do a run right after) since Louisville. By the second half of the race I had gotten my pace up in the 7-minute range. The weather was perfect for running and by this point I had shed my cycle jersey, arm warmers and skull cap. I grabbed water at several of the aid stations to make sure I stay hydrated and at one point contemplated stoping to pee, but decided I could hold it till the end of the race. There were a number of people opting to walk the race and on more than one occasion, I would hear people who were walking in pairs talking about how they were unhappy the swim portion had gotten canceled. I couldn’t help but think to myself, “If you can’t complete the race without walking with no swim, how can you really be upset there wasn’t one?”

As we got to the 12-mile marker one runner started saying how we were almost to the finish line, and another one said he wished it was the 13-mile marker. I yelled out it’s just around the corner when a spectator on the sidewalk jokingly yelled out, “I hear runners talking, they must not be pushing themselves very much.” I couldn’t help but laugh.

As I rounded the final turn, the finish line was in sight. There were several runners in front of me so I decided to kick it in high gear to pass as many of them as I could before crossing the line. The crowd was cheering and the adrenaline was pumping. Running down the chute of this race was nothing like the excitement of Ironman Louisville, but it was still a great feeling nonetheless. I crossed the line with a final run time of 1:52:31.

This race wasn’t a perfect race in large part due to the weather and in some part due to the its youth as a race. Despite that, it was a very challenging race even without the swim, and I was happy to finish my first Tri season with it. If I do a race in October next year though, I hope it’s in Kona :)

The finisher medal

Results:
Division M35-39 Place: 75/193
Overall Male Place: 301/907
Bike Time: 2:55:12
T2 Time: 6:03
Run Time: 1:52:31
Overall Time: 4:53:46