I was not going to bore you all with another report as I’ve seen so many great ones already.  A club and IM veteran told me that as a newbie and a rookie, it’s mandatory, so here goes.
 
The entire weekend seems like a blur to me now.  The first couple of days, not much went right.  There were no catastrophes, but lots of little hiccups, including a dead car battery in the parking garage and other little bad signs.  I finally got to feeling some nerves on Saturday, but mostly nervous excitement to get this thing going.  When the box for my special needs bag was missing, I thought, the bad luck was going to just keep going on and on, but it abated…….
 
The Swim:
 
God I hate the swim.  It should not be this way as I have body fat aplenty and a good wetsuit so I can just float forever, but man I hate it.  I put myself right where Carla told me to, between the ramp and the buoy, about 3 rows back.  When I heard people talking about their expected pace, I got a bit nervous, but I was not leaving.  When people asked me my pace, well, let’s just say I pretended I could not hear them, and in one case, I outright just lied.  Right before the start, Mike Reilly said, “Make a perfect day for yourself”.  That turned out to be really critical to me in the swim.  I put on my pretend protective cocoon that I mentally wear when I swim, and I was ready…or so I thought.  Gun went off, the beating began.  As I lurched forward, I got kicked in a very sensitive area, let’s just say about the mid point on my body.  20 or 30 strokes later, heel to the chin, followed quickly by someone yanking my cap and pulling it just about off, knocking my goggles askew.  Made it to the first corner, swimming at an angle in to the buoy, where I was promptly greeted by a huge crowd and mauled again.  Someone grabbed at my right leg, and in trying to shake them off, I got a wicked hamstring cramp.  I tried to move forward and it just got worse.  I was livid and could not believe it.  I was really fearing my day would end right there.  I wondered why nobody could see that I had my cocoon on?  I thought about those words though, “Make a perfect day for yourself” and decided non of these SOB’s would ruin my day.  Put the cocoon back on, and began swimming the rest of the swim without kicking.  The remainder of the swim was somewhat akin to a prison gang r@pe (so I hear), but I survived just doing pull, and actually got out of the water at exactly my low end target of 1:20.  Not fast, but a best for me.
 
The Bike:
 
I was so happy to be on that bike and still alive you could not imagine.  It was really euphoric.  I was singing to myself and yelping out loud.  I got more than a couple odd looks in the beginning, but they just didn’t understand that I was “making a perfect day”, and I had come to realize that I was in control, nobody else.  I set my alarm for hydration and gels, and then started my plan.  Just ride along for 40 miles.  I did just that.  Nothing hard, have fun, don’t cook the bike.  I saw lots of MSM friends along the way on the bike and spent a few minutes with a couple.  I caught up with Dave V. for a while and drafted, I mean, rode with him, for a good bit.  It was nice to have some conversation.  I met a few other nice folks along the way.  Other than nearly wiping out when a guy lost his chain and cut across three lanes of traffic, it was relatively peaceful.  I was just trying to focus on consistency, and just saw my detailed splits last night and realized that my average speed varied less than .3 mph across the entire ride.  I finished at 6:09 with a stop at my special needs bag for some lube and a refill of my Cytomax.  Never can have enough lube!
 
The Run:
 
Off the bike I felt pretty good.  I was really happy to get off the bike.  It’s been 7 years since I’ve run a marathon, but I figured worst case I just had to keep moving, and I knew I was ok out to about 15, so I figured life would go on, I was going to finish pretty much no matter what.  My hydration and nutrition put me in a good place, and I had gone 25 minutes slower on the bike than all my training rides, so I didn’t figure I screwed that up.  I’d been really studying the Endurance Nation guys program and was fixated on the fact that the real race begins at mile 18, the race against yourself.  My Garmin wasn’t working right and I had so much condensation on my Timex that I was basically flying blind.  Because it was warm I just tried to go slow.  I was feeling pretty good through the first half.  Mile 14-18 sucked worse than I could imagine, but I figured that was ok because I was not at 18 yet.  All through 17 I kept asking myself if I had the ability to do the “Dance of the 11 minute superhero” as the EN guys called it.  I had a lot of doubt.  At 18, the EN guys were there in their pink speedos and nothing else.  After I puked in my mouth a little bit seeing that, it was time to see what I had.  I put it in gear, slowly through 18, then by 19 I recalled my mantra from an old saying I shared with a partner when I was the PO-lice.  It’s blasphemous, but essentially it’s about detest of cowardice.  Several people heard me tell it to myself and found it rather amusing, particularly one of the cops who bust out laughing and said, “right on brother”.  I kept running for all but the aid stations that last 8 miles.  I was not fast, but I averaged 11:22, and 10:58 for the last 7 of it.  I was counting the people I passed along the way as instructed and lost track around 400.  Once I figured out that I just needed to know what time of day it was to figure out if I’d meet my goal, I realized I was going to hit my sub 13 hour target for sure.  I was starting to feel emotions well up inside of me as I hit State St.  When I realized that was making me unable to breathe, I got myself back together and ran.  I had picked up a little buddy along the way, and as we rounded the capital, I asked him if he had a lot left, he said yes, so I sent him down the chute for his moment in the sun ahead of me and backed off a bit.  As I got closer to the finish, before you go through the first big white thing, I heard Mike Reilly say, “Here comes a big fella finishing in under 13 hours.”  I took that as a compliment as I had realized from the gift shop that there were not a whole bunch of racers looking for 2XL shirts.  I saw my wife and my mom, and could not believe that one of my relatives in her 70’s was there to see me finish, she’d been there to see the start.  All of them hustled around all day just to watch me, it was overwhelming to feel their support.  I finished at 12:48:03, 12 minutes under goal.  I was happy.
 
In closing, I would like to thank all of the great people who helped me from MSM.  There are so many people that gave me little pieces of information and guidance it’s incredible.  I learned that over and above the fitness and training, there are so many little decisions along the way that you make that can make or ruin your day.  Without the guidance, I’d likely have made several wrong choices.  Fortunately I didn’t.  And for those of you I saw along the race, thank you so much.  Not having the MSM kit to wear I was harder to spot, but many of you still saw me and shouted out, and I needed it every single time.  This club is so full of great ambassadors to the sport it amazes me.  You all helped me transform from a 5k/couch potato to an Ironman in about 8 months.
 
Now it’s my turn to give back to my wife and support her as she does this next year.  I’ll likely be volunteering and looking forward to 2012, new goals, new respect for the event. 
 
Mark W. Porter