Congrats to Frank on Firm Man #10~

Frank raced his 10th FIRM Man this weekend waking up at about 3:45, driving all the way to RI and back by himself! Here's his report.

Today I raced Firmman half-ironman for the 10th time and it was one of the toughest ones. It was cold and cloudy in the morning so there was no spectacular sunrise over Narragansett Bay this year. And it was quite windy. For the swim leg the windy was favorable as it was coming out of the East/Northeast pushing me the one mile down along the beach so fast that I ended with a sub 26 minute swim for 1.2M. Although mostly favorable the water was actually so choppy that it was rare that I caught a glimpse of the buoys. The cold temperatures and wind made the bike leg challenging. With the tail wind on the out section I rode 25-26 mph easily at times but meanwhile my feet and hands got numb. The last 19 miles back to Narragansett were almost entirely straight into the wind. That combined with the fact that my longest ride in the last 5 weks was 30 miles meant I had to dig really deep. I was really close to running out of gas around 48 miles but having done the race 10 times helped me through. Continuing along the theme of being unprepared my longest run in weeks have been 8 miles so I had to rely on muscle memory to carry me through 13.1 miles. The first 4 miles went okay, the next 6 were slower but acceptable. At mile 11, however, my tank was next to empty and I had to walk a bit at a water station to get some water and get myself composed for the last 1-2 miles. But I finished and I am quite happy with my time of 4:43:30 considering my low training volume and the conditions. Results have not been posted yet but I think I placed around 20-25th overall and 5-6th in my age group.