As per usual on race day, I woke up about once an hour and checked the clock. I guess I probably slept in these in between times but it didn’t feel like it. Finally it was almost time to get up, so I got up and got started getting ready.

Soon after, our wakeup call rang and Julie got up. I was already in my racing onesie (aka triathlon skinsuit) and pretty much ready to go. As i said, I had forgotten my cycling bibs and I was concerned about the state of my ass when I got off the bike, so I was wearing some Underarmor compression pants under my onesie.

This also allowed me to strip off my skinsuit after the bike and put on a shirt and some shorts in T2 without being bare-assed naked, thus crossing the finish line looking somewhat like a runner as opposed to a multicolored sausage. Race officials frown on bare nakedness in transition, but you can believe that male and female triathletes would happily strip nude in front of God and everyone if they thought it made their T-times faster.

That’s why it’s outlawed.

Here’s Julie, founding and highly dedicated member of Team Hodgson and myself in my racing onesie on race morning. Julie came with me to my Olympic distance race last September and cheered me on and helped drive. She has no reason whatsoever to do this other than to be supportive and a good friend. She gets up at the buttcrack of dawn, rides a million miles in the car even when I’m farting my ass off from drinking milk, and was the only person to meet me at the finish of my marathon in addition to being at two places on the course.

Which was fortunate, because although it was awesome to have a lot of friends see me on the marathon course, finishing and then sitting on a park bench by myself sucked. Even the girl I was seeing at the time was on the course but didn’t come to the end. I was thinking I was gonna have to hobble to a Marta train by myself, but Julie walked up and kept me company. Thanks, Julie.

We got in the car at the hotel, drove onto the Disney premises, and filed onto a bus. In line for the bus, Julie made someone take a photo of us with my camera, as you can see here. I stuck my finger in her ear.

My bike was already in transition so all I had was my transition area bag with all my gear in it. The other athletes smiled and joked with one another. I needed to borrow a bike pump before the swim start just to make sure my tires were ready to go, but other than that we had over an hour to kill before go time.

The race started at 6:20, but my swim wave didn’t start until 7:09. I set up my transition, borrowed a pump, pumped my tires up, and then we walked down to watch the start.

After a while, it was time for me to start. I saw another guy in the same racing onesie I had on and I said “Lookin’ sharp, buddy” to him. I scooped some bay water onto my head and put my swim cap on over my wet hair. I don’t like putting the swim cap on over dry hair because when I take it off it pulls hair out.

I walked over the timing mat and through the big inflatable IRONMAN archway to the start, following the rest of my start wave and being led by a girl with a piece of posterboard with our wave number on it like a ring girl at a boxing match. We all spread out on the beach and got ready to start.

“This is the men’s thirty five to thirty nine wave, folks.. some of these guys will finish around the five hour mark!” the announcer was saying over the loudspeaker. Not this guy, I thought.

Somehow the crowd on the beach kinda filled in behind me and I was in the middle of the line of people. I didn’t really want to have to fight anyone in the water, but I wasn’t gonna back up, so I just let it lie.

The announcement came for ten seconds to start. I got my watch ready with my finger on the button. They blew the horn. We were off.

I started my watch and pranced into the water with high knees like everyone else. Soon we were far enough in to swim and I began pulling through the water.

It’s hard to see what’s going on in the water, but at what I thought might be the halfway point I had 17 minutes on my watch. I probably was a little shy of the halfway point, however, as I got out of the water at 43 minutes it turned out.

I ran to transition, and the Soul Coughing song Super Bon Bon as remixed by the Propellerheads was on the stereo. It’s a favorite song of mine and pretty obscure. Weird.

The transition area was black sand with grass and the occasional live oak around. The black sand coated everything, especially my feet. I just decided not to worry about it and put on my socks right over my dirty feet. I strapped my helmet on, put on my gloves and stuffed a few powerbars in my onesie pocket. I unracked my bike, and jogged toward the bike out.

The beginning of the bike course was twisty and tight so speed was low. There were a lot of 90 degree turns. Finally we got out on some open roads and I got down into my aero bars and cranked ahead.

The bike elevation was flat as a pancake. It had something like 500 feet of climbing over 56 miles, which around Atlanta is unheard of. My team training ride on Thursdays is around 2000 feet of climbing for more like 35 miles. So I knew I would be able to lay down in the bars and spin it out without having to work too hard.

That’s exactly what I did. I immediately began passing people on very expensive bikes with deep dish carbon wheelsets. I was riding an aluminum Specialized Allez with entry level non-aero wheels. I looked down at my shadow and noticed that I appeared to be undulating. I’m not sure if it was a trick of the light or some sort of race day hallucination, but I know it wasn’t flattering.

Just then the finest female ass I have ever seen passed me on the left. In the sun her pants were see through. Good lord. I was looking directly at her naked ass and she was riding about a mile an hour faster than I was.

Well, I mean. You know. Call me a chauvinist or a pervert or whatever, but I put the hammer down. I know a sign when I see one even though I don’t believe in them.

I ended up leapfrogging with that ass for the entire bike leg. Any time I would sit up to drink water or eat a powerbar, she would pass me. If she took a break and slowed down, I would pass her.

We came to a few little rises along the way and the pack would bunch up as the other riders climbed up the hills. I cranked past people in groups of ten to twenty. They didn’t seem to be able to climb even these tiny little hills at all for some reason. I guess most of them as Floridians haven’t ever ridden up any hills.

Also the bike leg was littered with trash. Goo packets, gel flasks, seat bags, and even a Garmin forerunner 305 someone had dropped and not gone back for. Weird.

I kept thinking I had put Miss Fine Ass to bed for good, so I would sit up and take a drink and there she’d be passing me on the left. Well damnit.

By the end of the bike I was pretty tired and I decided to lay off a bit just to let my legs rest some before the run. A guy cycled up on my left and said “If I never see another rolling hill it’ll be too soon!”.

“Shit man, this is flat!” I said, and he laughed like I was kidding.

Miss Fine Ass rolled ahead and I let her go, coasting into transition and jogging to my spot. I figured I had seen the last of her, but when I got into transition, there she was, the next bike rack over.

“Hey that was a good ride,” I said “I was leapfrogging you the whole way!”

“Heeeeh” she said, clearly not interested in my multicolored sausage transition flirting. It was the sound a person would make if they wanted to be directly in between a dispassionate sigh and a single halfhearted laugh. Open your mouth and make a slightly laugh-ish noise and you’ll have it.

Oh well, it wasn’t meant to be, I guess.

I stripped off my onesie, treating everyone assembled to an unobstructed view of my hairy nipples and very un-triathlete gut, pulled on my shorts and running shirt and headed out on the run.

The run was also flat as a pancake, but there was no shelter from the hellish sun. I decided to relax and take it easy. Even though I wanted to try to finish in 6 hours, I didn’t want to kill myself. So I just walked a lot and let the miles come to me.

One part of the run pictured above was an arrow-straight section of grassy pathway with no sun cover whatsoever. You could see that you were going to be in the beating sun for the next mile or so with no breaks. As one fellow racer said to me, “They should call that first lap ‘The Demoralizer’”.

As I was walking along a guy patted me on the shoulder in a fatherly way and said “You’re doing very well.”

I said “Thanks, buddy! You too!”

He didn’t seem to be congratulating or encouraging everyone, just me. So I guess I looked like I needed the help. Hey, I appreciate it, but it makes me think I don’t look like someone who would be doing Half Ironman distance races.

I guess he hadn’t heard that I had just completed a 20mph bike leg following a girl’s naked ass.

On my first lap through the finish area, there were people cheering and shouting and clanging cowbells and waving banners. On the second lap through, the crowd had diminished a great deal as people finished ahead of me. On the third lap through, everyone was looking at their watches and complaining that the cowbells were hurting their fingers.

I finished and sat down on a picnic table and drank water. Julie found me after a few minutes, and I collected my finishers hat, tee shirt (not a tech shirt) and finisher’s medal and we left.

All in all it was a great race. I finished in 6 hours and 30 minutes. I could have pushed it and finished under six hours, but I decided to just chill and finish easy. I felt a lot less tired than I did after my marathon, that’s for sure.

I’m looking forward to my full ironman race in August now. I want to get it overwith. I know what I need to concentrate on this summer, though… running in the heat.

Hopefully no girls with ridiculously fine asses will be there so I can do the bike leg at a more relaxed pace.

Well I finished my Half Ironman race in Orlando, FL last weekend. It was pretty cool. It made me want to race a lot more, though.

My friend Julie and I left Atlanta Saturday morning, May 16th 2009 at around 7AM. We needed to be in Orlando to check my bike in and pick up my race packet by six PM or something like that, and it was around an eight hour trip, so we had time but didn’t need to dawdle.

The trip was fairly uneventful, save for some truly terrible eggs at the Valdosta GA Cracker Barrel. They were so bad that I actually sent them back to the kitchen as though I were dining on a white table cloth at Le Barrele Crackeur in Nice. I polished my monocle.

The second set that came out were every bit as bad as the first. I felt as though I were witnessing the very crumbling of western civilization, so I just commented to the waitress that I thought the chickens must have been in a bad mood that day and left the eggs alone. Au revoir, les oeufs.

Eventually we arrived at Disney some hours later. We parked in one of the huge lots and wandered over to a bus that people were loading bikes on. A disney employee informed us that the bus could only handle four bikes, and the line was six or seven people deep, so I just had Julie get on the bus and I rode my bike to transition. It was a ride of about a mile. Another racer who turned out to be from Mexico rode over with me. I told him I was glad to have him at the race.

Here you can see us riding to transition. That’s me with the love handles showing. If you wish to have a lie-down after becoming highly sexually aroused at the unobstructed view of my love handles, you may do so now. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Note that Julie took that photo from a moving bus, so the blurriness couldn’t really be helped. Also said love handles may have caused her some instability (or nausea).

I checked in, a process which was smooth and well-rehearsed. Everyone working the event was professional and sure of what they were supposed to be doing. They checked my ID, my USAT license, and then I signed waivers and forms telling them whom to contact in case I should explode or be devoured by an alligator.

I went through all the machinations, basically just killing time until I got my hands on my goody bag. At $225 for the entry fee, I figured it would have some pretty awesome stuff in it. I couldn’t wait. Finally it was time.

I approached the goody bag table and said “I’m ready for some goodies!” to the girl there. What would be inside? A tech shirt? Some socks? Surely at least a few packets of goo or some electrolyte tablets. I’ve gotten all those things in goody bags for races whose entry fees were a third of this one.

She said “Don’t hold your breath,” and handed it over. It had a lot of advertisements in it, as per usual, and a poster. Well, these are lean economic times, after all. I guess I could cut a hole in the poster and wear it like a poncho, but as I type this it’s just chillin’ here in my room, still rolled up. Oh well. I figured I was there to race, not collect gear, so I went on through the race shop that was the second half of check in.

I had forgotten my cycling bibs back in Atlanta that I had intended to put on for the bike leg, and I was somewhat concerned about riding 56 miles in the thin chamois provided in my tri skinsuit, so I was perhaps in the market for some bibs to race in. After looking at a set in the shop priced at $225, I decided that my ass would just have to deal. I wasn’t going to go for the race branded tritop and shorts. I prefer bibs to shorts.

I might grab a kit at my full race in August, and I only need one Ironman branded kit, I figure. Plus bibs are superior to shorts in every respect.

I put my sticker on my bike to denote my racing number, and checked it into transition, and we went back to the car and left.

We checked into the hotel, then ate a big dinner at Carabbas and settled down to try to sleep.

I can never sleep properly before a race.