3 Things from Israman (including a funky Garmin)

• FIRST: My Garmin wasn't reading exactly, but it shows my crappy swim pretty well. In my Israman race report, I noted that I started in a horrible spot, veered way to the outside, and found a LITTLE bit of rhythm around 500 meters into the swim. My Garmin data doesn't seem to be super accurate, but you can see me swing way to the outside at letter "A" below:

"B" was my slowest 100 ever as I had just turned back for shore, swallowed a lot of water, and got back to the outside again to catch my breath and calm down.

And then "C" was where I noted in my race report that I looked up and was headed straight at oncoming swimmers! (The the full iron distance swimmers were starting their second lap.) Oops.

I actually swam much "sharper" to the outside at "A," and I think I even cut farther to the inside at "C." How can I say my Garmin wasn't delivering very exact information? Well, just take a look at the elevation chart of my swim:

Apparently I swam 40 feet under early in the race. Maybe THAT'S what slowed me down.
(The hill at 1.1 miles is ligit: that was running up and back down to T1.)

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• SECOND: I keep calling my swim "crappy," but it was easily a 70.3 swim PR. I hit the timing mat in 35:57 officially, but I was hoping for something around 33:00. In my 3 other 70.3 distance races, I swam the following:

- 44:35 at the Chisago Lakes Half Iron Triathlon in 2007
- 38:13 at the Square Lake Long Course in 2008
- 38:44 at IM 70.3 New Orleans in 2009

I just needed to see that to put it in perspective. Those two 38:xx swims were FANTASTIC for me 5 years ago. But I've made progress since then, and now I was disappointed with my poor swim and 35:57 finishing time.

(Two sidenotes here: This 1.9K swim in 35:57 was 1:53/100 yard pace, but I did a 2.5K OWS race in 2010 in 47:57, which was 1:45/100 yard pace. But I DID spend a lot of time in the water that year. And I don't know if I've ever mentioned this next part: when I was learning to swim, I had ONE pace. I did my first half ironman noted above in 44:35. Then 6 weeks later, I did Ironman Wisconsin where I swam 1:29:10. Do the math: that's the EXACT SAME PACE as the half ironman 6 weeks before [44:35 x 2 = 89:10 or 1:29:10]. Weird, huh?)

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• THIRD: Here's a photo of my team biker:

Go Rany, go!!!

This photo wasn't available at the time I put up my Israman race report, so I had NO images of my biker, and I felt kinda bad about that. But there he is! So here's a photo of our SMILING team at work:

Thanks again for the AMAZING trip to Israel, Kinetis!