Post-race

A lot has happened since the race last Saturday. I wish I had been able to sit down and write about some of it before now. At this point, some of it has escaped forever! I will probably have to re-learn some of the lessons that I took away from the race because I didn't take the time to note all of them. You can see the race results here. (2006 results are the default; enter "Sampson" into the "search for" box in step 2; click on "All" in step 3 to see all data fields; scroll down and click on "Get List" and you'll have it! Or you can select "All Finishers" in step 2; sort the list by by finish place and see me in the context of my finish - I was 315th overall.) I thought the race went very well for me and that I paced myself so much better that at my last half-iron distance race, where I hammered the bike leg and ended up with massive leg cramps all throughout the run. Not the case this time! I ran clean through the whole run after pacing myself well on the bike. And the swim - easiest 1.2 miles I have ever swam! I purposely tried to stay aerobic and even "drafted" (it's legal to draft in the water and on the run, just not on the bike!) of other swimmers to save energy for a good bit of the course! The water was the clearest bit of ocean I have ever swam in! Crystal clear all the way to the bottom, which at some points was 60+ ft (they told us at the pre-race meeting how deep some of it was; I don't have a "metric eyeball" or anything like that!). At the post-race awards ceremony, one of the top pros who finished the race, Australia's Michellie Jones (the overall female winner), mentioned that this race covered the toughest part of the bike course for the Kona Ironman World Championship race, and I believe her! It was a heck of a climb into a stiff, stiff headwind to get to the turnaround point. And boy did it get hot out on the lava fields and Queen K Highway as the day wore on! I can just imagine what it is like to cover double the distance for each leg on essentially the same course! The race was well-supported, well run, and if I'm lucky I'll be able to do this one again next year (actually, if things go as I hope they might, I might be running an Ironman race next year instead of this one, but if I can't do that, then I'd like to do this one again).

I just finished posting a bunch of new pictures of John's first month to Yahoo Photos. You can see them here. The little guy is growing right along, up to 10 lbs and 23 inches as of Monday!

I have been resting completely since the race - no exercise at all. That ends tomorrow when I take the Marine Corps physical fitness test for the second time this year. This time it's not for score, though - thank goodness! Next week I will start training again in earnest, preparing for a July 23 ~Olympic distance race. Beyond that, I will start getting ready for the Honolulu Marathon in December. I think that I am going to try and get some of the Marines in my platoon to run it with me. They think that running 26.2 miles is an insurmountable task, and I will show them that is not, especially if you prepare yourself the right way over enough time!