I headed down to Titusville, Florida this weekend for the inaugural Rocketman Half-Ironman Triathlon, which boasts one of the most unique race courses in the triathlon calendar. The week leading up to the race had been constant rain storms and wind across most of Florida, so I had been watching the weather reports fairly actively throughout the days before it. Fortunately, the rains stopped as I was driving down on Saturday to go to packet pick-up and bike check-in. It was beautiful for the rest of the day, and race day was planned as partly cloudy with a wind of 5-8 mph out of the west. That’s not really the way it happened, but I’ll get to that.
I had signed up for this race because a couple of friends were planning to do it and I thought we could train together. It turned out they decided not to do the race, and as usual for me the past few years, work got in the way of training. The bike workouts and runs pretty quickly fell by the wayside earlier this year, and I made it to the pool a total of zero times. Now, that’s how you prepare for a half-Ironman. I knew going into this race that I had no performance expectations and the only reason I didn’t bail on it after training fell apart was that I worried they would not get permits to race on Kennedy Space Center again. This was likely be a one-shot chance, and I might as well go down and enjoy the course.
My wife long ago told me she had implemented a new rule: No training, no company at races. If I can’t get it together, she would stay home. So here I was, driving south on I-95 alone.
On race day, I took things way to casually. I was careless in transition, failing to put skin lubricant on properly. I skipped the sunblock before the bike course, opting to lather a small amount only on my arms between the bike and run. Both of these were mistakes I would pay for dearly later in the day and throughout the coming week.
Just before my swim wave was lining up for the start of the race, I realized that pretty much every other athlete was wearing a wet suit. With a water temperature the day before of 77°, I assumed I would be fine and opted to leave it at home. Before the race, the water temperature was measured at 72° and I started to panic a little. I’m kind of a wuss when it comes to cold water. Once I was the Indian River for the swim start, it actually wasn’t bad at all. Within a couple of minutes I was actually quite comfortable. I did notice that the wind was picking up significantly, and when I would breathe, the gusts were enough to slow my forward movement in the water. I came out of the swim about 10-12 minutes behind schedule, which caused me to rush in the transition area since my expected times would only put me a short bit ahead of the 8:30:00 course cutoff.
In transition, I skipped drying my feet on a hand towel I would normally keep at my transition area. For most triathletes, this probably isn’t a huge deal but I blister easily. My feet were cool and wet through the entire bike course, which felt nice but I knew would be a problem on the run. The winds on the bike course quickly picked up and were probably 15-25 mph sustained. Much of my time on the bike course was at or just above single digit speeds. When I was doing 12-14 mph it was not uncommon that I was blazing past people. I think most of the untrained or novice triathletes on the course had some real frustrations, and the ones who were better prepared undoubtedly spent more energy on the bike than they wanted.
The bike course was the highlight of the event for me, consisting of time on the Merritt Island National Seashore and Kennedy Space Center. Looking back at it, while it was nice to cycle on the Seashore, it wasn’t drastically different than being on A1A down in Ponte Vedra Beach, and the views on Kennedy Space Center were neat for a shorter period of time than it took you to cycle past them.
I debated whether to even go out on the run course as I came in from the bike. I knew my feet had been wet for quite a while and there was an increased chance I would blister. I had a little more than 3 hours before the course cutoff, so I decided to go out and see how I felt on the first of two out-and-back loops of the course. The run course was nothing spectacular and there was no relief from the hot May sun. As I mentioned earlier, I had done a really sorry job of putting sun block on and I was already starting to pay for it. The chafing that I experienced during the bike course was now very noticeable as well.
As I came in from the first loop of the run, I calculated that it took me around 1:40 (most of it was walking) and I would have to do the second loop as fast or even slightly faster. This wasn’t likely and I decided to call it a day. Sometimes it just isn’t meant to be.
As I drove home, I realized that this was likely to be last race for at least quite some time. I am just not in a place in my life right now where I can dedicate the time to training for triathlon, especially the longer courses. Maybe I’ll do a sprint or Olympic distance event next year, but it’s unlikely I’ll set my sights on another Ironman until my work/life balance is in better control or I change industries entirely.
The race was OK. It wasn’t a particularly great course (not nearly as awesome as I had expected) and the race experienced the normal inaugural event chaos, though this is to be expected. I don’t know that I would race it again or recommend it highly to other triathletes. It wasn’t a bomb or anything.
