Great Illini HIM RR
This is a small race in the lower middle of Illinois. It had about 100-ish people doing the half and probably another 100 doing the olympic. I wasn't concerned about the smallness of the race but I probably should have considered it when deciding on my race plan. It was forcast to be 100 degrees on race day, and it was. Ugh.
Pre-race: Stayed with my sister in her dorm (yay College!) as the race was near Eastern Illinois. 800 calorie smoothie for dinner. Woke up at 4:30, sipped on a 600 cal smoothie and did my pre-race stuff. Got to the race site about 6 and set up my stuff. Turned on my garmin for the run to load the GPS then switched it off. Ran through the gears on my bike, and of course, it wouldn't shift into the 3rd cog, and barely stayed in the 4th- the two gears that I use the most for flat courses. Tried to fix it the best I could, but it just wasn't happening. Took my gel, headed down to the swim start, got in the water, and basically someone yelled Go! Interesting.
Swim: 45 minutes. Considering it wasn't a wetsuit swim and I haven't been swimming I was pretty happy with my time. I had a little trouble sighting, but overall it was an easy non-eventful swim. In fact, for the majority of it I swam completely by myself, and eventually had to check and make sure I wasn't the only one still swimming in the lake! I was told later by my sister that I was actually in the middle of the pack out of the water, and one of the first women, so that made me feel better!
T1: nothing much here except for the prayer I said as I got on my bike. It didn't help.
Bike: 3:10. VI 1.04 Pnorm 117 (goal 120) Rode 58 miles 
because the course had to be changed to different roads because of repaving, and they didn't exactly mark the distances well. It was a 2 loop affair, and there were only 2 aid stations and they were not spaced well. The first was at about mile 22 and the second was at mile 29 at the turnaround. By mile 22 I was just running out of water. For some unknown reason they thought that while bikers were making a U-turn at mile 29 that would also be a good time to try and give them nutrition. And the volunteers working the aid station consisted of two 12-year old boys who were trying their hardest but struggling in getting stuff to the bikers (of course there were plenty of teenage "volunteers" sitting around on various points of the course, but I didn't see any of them do a thing...). Needless to say, I missed my water handoff at mile 29. I should have stopped and refilled, but I wasn't thinking and continued forward thinking I'd be ok until the next aid station. Did I mention it was 100 degrees? I wasn't ok. I ran out of water at mile 30 and didn't get water until mile 44. Not good. I was still feeling ok, and managing to hit my watts with little problem considering I'd been riding in one gear the entire time due to the aforementioned gearing issues.
T2: glad to get off the bike. Go to turn on my garmin and it won't come on. WTF?!? I know it was charged, and I know I turned it off before the start. I fiddle with it some more and nothing. Put on my shoes, fiddle with the garmin more, still nothing. I grab my basic timex watch and my water bottle and head out. At this point my muscles are feeling oddly fatigued. I make a note to watch my pace.
Run: DNF. I started out down the country road for the run. It's a C-shaped 2x out and back. Thrilling. I'm going at my easy pace of about 10 min/mi because it's so hot. But I'm still struggling to breathe, it's really hot, and I can feel my heart racing. I'm carrying water, but it's not helping. At 5 minutes I decide to do a run/walk. Still not helping, I can feel my core temperature rising fast. I hit aid station 1 which is thankfully at mile 1. Also, I'm glad that they have ice. They don't have much else aside from ice, heed, and water though. Ugh. I put a ton of ice down my sports bra hoping that it will bring my temperature down. At this point my breathing is pretty shallow and I'm feeling off. I start forward alternating running and walking, though it's mostly walking. About 5 minutes later I start having severe chest pains and I'm also getting a little foggy. Considering the rest of the course I had no idea if there was going to be another aid station at mile 2, or who knows what. I decide that this is not a situation I want to be in, especially considering the sparseness of the course assistance and the unhelpfulness of the volunteers. I turn around and start walking back to the transition area. It took me 40 minutes to walk 1 mile. I got back, got into some air conditioning, and started to drink some water. Medical assistance consisted of a couple of EMTs who didn't even want to get out of their air-conditioned vehicle to answer my questions (essentially when am I going from heat exhaustion to heat stroke...google was more helpful).
Post-race: I was disappointed, but knew I made the right choice. Overall I lost 8 pounds and am still down 3 today. I felt awful the rest of the day, and ended sleeping for 13 hours once I got home. Can't say my body feels stellar even today. By the way, got home and was unpacking my stuff the next day, hit the power button on my garmin and it turns on fine with full battery power. So pretty much it was just too hot for it to turn on (and it wasn't in the sun, I keep it in my bag so it won't overheat, but it still did. Geez!)
I'm pretty glad my season is over. I'm tired of training, and frankly have had several disappointing races. I need some time to recharge my mojo 
Comments
Having done the Oly there last year I didn't experience that bike aid station situation, but it sounds like a real mess. That's too bad, someone could get hurt like that.
@Mike- My brother went to ISU in Bloomington, and when I got back he was like "of course it was 100 degrees, the weather down there is always awful like that." I thanked him for the heads-up after the race