Race Report: Galveston Half Ironman (2 of 3)

***Some of you are privy to the drama leading up to this race, and some aren’t. For those who know the full back story, or don’t give a shit about the back story, feel free to skip to post 3 of 3 to start the actual race report.

Fast forward to Saturday. I drove the 4 hours to Galveston, the entire time sure that I was going to bag the race completely, which caused me to feel incredibly heartbroken. I love the half iron distance! It’s far enough to really have to train for, and to really have to focus on, and to warrant eating a full fucking pizza when you’re done (if you’re so inclined… which I am!) Sure I hadn’t trained NEARLY well enough, and sure I was banking on my base level of fitness to get me through the race, but I still had every intention of doing the damned thing, you know? I get to Galveston, and find the race site, and everything is OH SO TOTALLY IRONMANED OUT! It’s like “Ironman THIS” and “Ironman THAT!” and “Ironman village” and there are sponsors and tents and stuff and expos and more stuff! I swear, an Ironman branded event is the fucking DISNEYLAND of athletic events! There is an electricity in the air like you wouldn’t believe, and people are all smiley and happy, even the hard-core pros are walking around like “OHMYGOD IT’S RACE WEEKEND!”

Walking through the outdoor expo area, I see an injury clinic and miraculously, there’s no line to get in to see a doc. So I walk in, and about 2 seconds later, my kneecap joins me (it’s been having a field day meandering around on it’s own. I’d really like it to stay where it’s supposed to.) I explain the WOES of my knee to the dude, and he’s like, yeah… let’s take a look. I lay down, he starts messing around with my poor, poor leg, jostling the legs around and messing with the kneecap. –Any pain? –Nope. This is the story of the whole exam. He tests my strength on a couple of muscles then has me sit up. Then, this miracle worker of a guy gives me the best news ever: my ligaments are fine. They are nice and tight, no weakness through those and nothing to worry about with the structure of how things are holding up. My problem is a weakness in my VMO (that pesky inner quad muscle) and what I’m feeling is that it’s not able to hold my kneecap in place, so the kneecap wanders, then the outer quad fires to pull it back into position. Ewwwwwwwwwwwww. He then shows me how to use KT tape to support the kneecap and keep it from going on a walkabout (because, really, who wants wandering kneecaps???), gives me some exercises to do and says I’m good to go, but that I shouldn’t run. I already had started toying with the idea of just swimming and biking this thing, then bagging the run. I bounce that idea off of him, and he agrees that this is not a terrible plan, and actually biking is a great way to strengthen that VMO, if you ride in a certain manner.

ELATION! JOY! HAPPINESS! I’d been on a downward spiral of WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH for DAYS thinking that I’d totally fucked myself up and that I wouldn’t be able to race at ALL and still be able to train for Worlds. The wonderful thing about doing just the swim and bike is that the recovery is about a day and a half, not a full week like it is for the full event. So yeah, win-win, right? I’m practically SKIPPING through the rest of the Ironman village (but not really, because even though my knee is all taped up, I don’t want to be a COMPLETE idiot and tear something NOW.) I get my race packet and my $300 shirt, which by the way, I have to trade out for a MEDIUM, rack my boyfriend… errrr I mean bike, and head back to the hotel. Time to get all my stuff together, go eat dinner, and get some sleep. *sigh of relief*