Triple Iron 422

Well, we made it!

Recovery is coming along well.  Frankly, it has been nice to not have to get up early and start training every morning. I know my wife is glad for this as well! I will be out riding this weekend for the first time since the IM events of Nov 20-22.  The two weeks to let my joints heal has been wonderful.

On reflection I am still struck by how God worked through this event.  7.2 miles of swimming, 336 miles of riding and 79.2 miles of running over three days and not so much as a blister, no discernable joint or muscle aches or pains, oh there have been days my legs felt heavy or tired, but no pain, not even the normal abrasions and “rubbed” spots one normally gets simply from wearing your triathlon uniform and wetsuit for such a long period…. nothing!  To put this in perspective, in the past when I have run one Ironman, I have lost toenails, had blisters, had places where I was saddle sore or had abrasions from my uniform rubbing my skin wrong.  But to have run three without any of those problems is only possible due to everyones prayers and God adding the surplus.  I didn’t even get sunburned after being out there on my bike and on the run for three days.  Think about it, I was in the sun literally from sun up until way after dark.  Sure I used sun screen, but with all of the sweating, swimming etc it always comes off and you inevitably have sun burned areas from being exposed for a full day….. but not even a sunburn after three days! 

Another answer to prayer was that I really needed to keep my heart rate low so that my stomach would stay open and I could keep consuming calories and keep “gas in the engine” so to speak.  On my third day of IM and on the third and final lap of the bike, I was monitoring my HR very very closely.  I knew I was getting closer to the finish line and I had to make sure I didn’t let my calories get away from me.  To do this, I had to make sure that HR stayed low and steady.  On my third loop on the bike there is a series of hills which I had ridden many times over the previous days. During that last loop as I was heading up the steepest part of the slope, I looked at my HR and it was registering only 112 beats per minute.  This is way at the low end of my zone 1 range.  To put this in perspective, my goal was to say between 130 and 140 on the bike as an average over the three days.  To have a heart rate this low, and yet still be generating the power and speed I needed to generate could only have been by the grace of God!!

It is my Prayer that God will continue to bless the FCA ministry and all of those who participated and worked so hard to put on this event!  A friend of mine described this very well when he said ” Gary, it may have been your clay feet that did the running, but let there be no question that it was God who did the blessing!! ”

Thanks again to all of you who prayed and kept praying for my family and I as we worked through this epic time.

Gary

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 10:34 am and is filed under Uncategorized . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.