I went to Missouri looking for hills. I found them.

In early June Sherry and I drove down from Chicago to the home of our long-time friends Chris and Dick Kemmer, who live in Wildwood, west of St. Louis near Eureka (and Six Flags). I have run the hills around their house. You know when the roads go up to something called "Knob" you have some up and down. So I was not ignorant of what was in store at Halfmax Triathlon at Innsbrook, a beautiful planned community out in the country just beyond St. Charles County.

Saturday morning before the race Dick drove us out to Innsbrook for my packet pick-up. We noted the meandering lakes and wooded hillsides with large vacation homes nestled along the various shorelines. We jounced over numerous speed bumps. The car nosed up and down on the narrow roads, across dams, around turns. The planned community offered the hills I was hoping for in a race that would be good Ironman Canada.

At registration an older slim and very fit woman lined up behind me. Sister Madonna Buder! Age 74, vet of 30 Ironman races, an Ironman icon who was blown off her bike at Ironman Hawaii a few years ago. "Hi, Sister Madonna, glad to see you here," I blurbed. "Yes, it's great to be here," she replied, being nice to someone she could not place. We had been introduced at Ironman Canada by Bob Mina. "My friend Bob interviewed you for Xtri," I explained. She asked how Bob was doing and I said well, not having time to explain about Bob's melt down at the Boston Marathon, his redemption race at Columbia, his hard core crit bike racing and especially the joy of Bob and St. Linda (his ever so understanding spouse) finally being pregnant.

Sherry surprised me by volunteering for finish line duty and enlisting Chris to join her. She volunteers every year at Ironman Canada but except there and at Boston rarely watches me race. I understand. Tri and road running are more participant than spectator sports. Volunteering at least is more involving than just watching for hours.

I drove out alone early on Sunday morning. Sherry and Chris would come out to work at Noon. The drive took a full hour, a little more than I had planned, in part because I encountered a driving rain storm. By the time I parked, the rain was long gone but the sky was still more cloudy than blue. I put the front wheel on my bike, pumped my new (gently used, actually) HED race tires (tubulars!) and wheeled my red Cervelo P3 (“Zephyr”) and lugged my bag to the transition area. I stopped at the entrance to get body marked with my race number on arms and legs and my age on my calf, and to get my race timing chip.

Rack room in transition was gone near the bike exit, so I went the other way and racked just next to run out and not far from swim in. I patiently set up my transition area: bright green (visible) towel, bike shoes with socks in them in front, gels for bike on one side and run on the other, sandwich bag of sodium/potassium capsules next to each pile of gels, water bottle on one side and diluted Endurox bottle on the other, race number belt with race number on top, bike shoes behind, turned over and stuck mostly under my bag in case it rained, helmet on bike bar-end levers with glasses stuck on top of the helmet. I made sure the bike was in the lowest gear for the climb out of transition. I had already lubricated under my tri-suit and at ankles and wrists to ease wetsuit removal, but I had yet to put on sun block, so I did it then. I hung my wetsuit over my bike temporarily and tucked my goggles in the suit. I looked for my swim cap. Shoot! I forgot to remove it from the packet I got at registration when I put my numbers on my bike, helmet and race number belt. The packet was in my car. Just then, by luck, the announcer said, "If you need a swim cap, they have extras at the entrance to transition." They did not have dark blue left, so I turned out to be the only guy in my wave wearing a light blue cap.

Just about that time the announcer started shooing us out of the transition area to the beach. I grabbed my wet suit, goggles and light blue cap and walked down the hill. I struggled next to the beach, talking a long time getting my wetsuit on. I think my high-end Ironman wetsuit is terrific, but its tight-glove fit makes it tough to maneuver in and out of. A woman next to me was having similar problems. I looked at her, bemused, and said, "It's really good that the first event in tri isn't putting the wetsuit on. I'd be in bad shape if that were the case." She laughed and agreed.

Soon I was standing on a sandy bottom in shallow, cool water for a while, looking at all the athletes flowing onto the beach in front of me. Eventually I pulled up the top of the wetsuit and had a guy zip me up. I waded out a bit and swam easily for a few minutes. Nice! The water was not too warm, and was clean and clear. I loved the long glide as I stroked languidly.

Then I was back on the beach with everyone else. The announcer was highlighting various athletes doing the race and I heard a name that sounded familiar. “Suzie is here!” I thought. I scanned the crowd and eventually found her with her buddy, a pair of Missourians I had befriended while waiting in a line at Ironman Canada two years ago, great people who raced Ironman for the joy of it. We caught up for a while and then wished one another luck as we were herded behind a fence and grouped into waves by cap color…except, of course, I was the odd duck. There’s always one, right? I made a crack about this and wound up talking with John Brinker, a racer from St. Joseph, Michigan, in the age group below mine. John and I talked about how much we enjoyed his hometown half Ironman race, Steelhead, which runs in early August. He invited me up to ride with his group when we were going to be vacationing in southwestern Michigan in July. Cool!

The race director gave a pre-race talk. He said there were hills on the bike and the run course was flat. We laughed! Sister Madonna offered a prayer (very non-denominational, which I found interesting coming from a nun). Then a huge boom sounded, startling us all! The first wave, already standing in the water, took off to our applause. Then a few minutes later another “boom!” and the second wave was off. Now it was our turn, the older guys, to wade into the lake and await the start. We were told: “30 seconds.” “10 seconds.” “Boom!”

I had lined up more to the left in the pack to have a direct line to the buoys which plotted a stretched-out oval counter-clockwise course around the lake. I was a row or two back in the pack. This was the fairly aggressive position I had started taking in the past few years as my swim had become stronger and I realized that almost wherever I started I would get entangled with other swimmers so I might as well not try to avoid it but instead get a little advantage out of the chute.

Run, run, run, now dive, stroke, stroke, dig!, dig!, stroke, hands on feet in front of me, slide to the right and pass, stroke, sight ahead to be sure I am aiming at the first orange buoy, stroke, dig!, dig!, stroke, a body bumping me, a hand grabbing my arm, a body sliding by me on the right, elbow bumping my goggles just a little so some water seeps in. I kept swimming while lifting my head and swiping one-handed at the goggles to be sure they are seated. Stroke, stroke, pass another swimmer on my left, sight again, stroke, dig!, dig!, thinking I need to get into a distance racing rhythm soon because I can’t sprint all 2100 meters, stroke, stroke, slide off another swimmer whose space I enter, forging ahead and again sighting.

This wasn’t too bad as long as I still had my goggles. Once I cleared the opening body bumping, I got into a terrific distance racing tempo and felt very strong. I was a smooth swimming machine. The water was flat and clear, the temperature was comfortable with clouds keeping the sun mostly at bay, and I could just swim long stretches without worrying about other racers. My path had a slight right-hand drift to it, which meant that over the longer stretches between sighting I was moving a little away from the buoys. I increased the power of my pull on the left side and this helped, but I still had to make course adjustments. Nonetheless, I swam a pretty straight course and had little but sighting, some toe tickles and a few bumps to interrupt hundreds of yards of strong and consistent strokes.

I maintained a strong focus on my stroke and direction, so random thoughts, while present, did not lead to long internal soliloquies, as sometimes is the case for me in distance swimming or solo biking. Soon I had rounded the farthest buoy and the shorter stretch across the lake and was headed back, noting a very slight change in surface currents, but nothing that affected my tempo or breathing. I continued to pass some swimmers as I had on the way out, more having the cap color of the earlier wave. Few swimmers slid past me, the fastest from our wave leaving me early on.

I encountered a common problem, a swimmer just slightly slower than me who kept drifting across my line. This guy was swimming left to right and then back left in a zig-zag, making my right side passing attempts futile because he would drive me off my line. But having dealt with this so many times before I knew what to do. I slowed down, let him cross over in front of me, stoked hard aiming toward the buoy line and was not in his space as he zagged back toward the buoys.

After this it was clear sailing and I maintained my tempo. The balloon arch at the beach exit grew larger and larger and soon I was eyeing the bottom under me, trying to see where it became shallow enough to stand. I stood and was only in calf deep water, suddenly unstable. I teetered briefly, then found my legs and loped up on to the beach, unzipping my wetsuit and pushing the lap button on my watch as I ran under the arch to cheers and the announcer calling my name. Later I would see that did the swim in 37:06, 1:46 per 100 meters pace, good for me and third in my age group.

I ran up the hill, pulling my wetsuit to my waist, into the transition area and directly to my bike. Oh, did I want an Ironman Canada wetsuit “peeler” to push me down and peel off my wetsuit! But no such help was offered, so I struggled to get my arms free and then to peel the suit off my upper legs, calves and feet. This was taking forever!

I finally shucked off my wetsuit and tried to get into my transition flow. Socks on, bike shoes on, gel and salt tablets in my pocket, race number belt on with number on back, glasses on, helmet on, bike off the rack, run it through the transition area across the mount line, on the bike and go. My swim-bike transition took far too long, 3:57, slowest in my age group.

I rode down a short stretch and then the road turned left, uphill away from the lake. Good that I had shifted into my small ring before the race. I easily cranked up the hill and then got onto the main road and continued uphill for a bit. Then the road briefly flattened and I shifted into my big ring for harder gears where I could power my way past some of the riders ahead on the course. What? I shifted, but nothing happened. Let's try that again. Nope, the shifter just wiggles and nothing happens. I am stuck in my small ring. The effects of this were immediately obvious when the road swooped downhill. Normally in a big gear I would push downhill to increase my speed quickly. Now I found my legs spinning chipmunk like, and I had to coast very quickly as the speed outmatched my ability to spin at such high cadence. I thought about Lance Armstrong's cadence--he tends to spin at a higher rate than most other racers. I thought of the former US Cycling coach who would not let his riders even use their big ring until May each year, teaching them to spin. I guess I was going to find out how a race at high cadence would be.

The first six miles were very up-and-down, with the down hills fairly short. My gearing was not too bad for this, since the ups required being in easier gears and the down hills being so brief that little advantage could be gained from pushing a big gear. I was negotiating these hills when one swooped steeply downward, to the left and then immediately back right again, a blind curve in the woods which suddenly opened up onto a sunny road across a dam. A rider was down, crumpled on the ground, his bike cracked up against the railing edging the left side of the road. Spectators were running to help him. I slowed quickly, taking a lesson from his fate, hoping he was OK, and then remembering that this was a two-lap course so I would enter this treacherous zone again.

A few minutes later a biker passed me and said. “You lost your spare tire a while back.” I very briefly thought of turning around for it—dropping anything on the course was a reason for disqualification, if you are seen by an official doing so—but the biker added, “No one else saw it.” So I just lamented losing my new tubular spare tire and hoped I didn’t flat later on in the ride. Something to tend to after the race: I needed a better way to carry to tire than just stuffing it between my small bike bag and seat.

Soon I was out of Innsbrook and on to country roads. The pavement was smooth and the roads were fairly flat, with a few decent hills but nothing like the resort area. This is where I really missed my big gears. I spun as fast as I could and maintained good speed, but was still slower than usual. Also, with all the spinning my legs started protesting even before the mid-point in the ride, hips and quads aching a little, signs of possible cramping to come. When this happened I changed my sitting position and pulled my knees in more in an effort to change the muscle usage enough to fend off the cramps. It worked, at least on the bike.

We again rode through the resort hills (I slowed at the “crack-up” turn and there was no sign of the accident) and I was being passed with some frequency by faster bikers, a higher number than was usually the case for me in a race. At the mid-point my average speed was around 19 mph, good but not great. Out back on the country roads my speed rose some, and despite the high spin rate I was enjoying the ride. But then a little wind crept in and we reentered the resort to finish the bike. My speed decreased inevitably, and soon I was looking at 18.9 mph, probably my lowest bike speed in a race in years except for Ironman Canada. (With out the big hills and using my big ring---though not using my highest gear much of the time, but that’s another story--I averaged 21 mph two weeks later at Springfield Ironhorse.)

As I rode toward the transition area a van driven by “Mom and Pop” was slowly motoring down the middle of the road. I assume “Ethel and Edward” were wondering what the heck was going on here. I was yelling “Move it!” when they suddenly saw in their rear view mirror that I was on a Kamikaze course for their back bumper and they accelerated past the point where I turned in to the transition area.

I wheeled up to the dismount line, hopped off, found my legs and pushed my bike into transition, running the full length to my rack spot. I didn’t stop to look then but saw later than I rode the 56 miles in 2:44:54. I was determined to have a better second transition than the first and I did, with some flow in my movements: bike racked, helmet off, bike shoes off, run shoes on, swipe the used gel packets out of my pocket, grab the new gels and salt tablets and stuff them in, off I go! Except I had to use the port-a-potty, which added more than a minute to my transition time, for a total of 3:42. The best laid plans…

I ran out of transition and up the hill to the main road. As I was turning left a car drove alongside me. “Go Bear!” yelled Sherry and Chris, who were looking for a place to park! What were the odds? “My race is going OK but I had a mechanical problem on the bike and I had to spin way too much but I’ll be fine,” I blurted, trying to encapsulate what had already been about 3:46 of racing in one run-on sentence. They cheered me on as I rolled down the road, struggling to find running rhythm on deadened legs.

The first six miles of the run were uneventful, even if they were difficult. The hills were certainly steep and some had length to them, like I run at the Morton Arboretum in the winter, except a little longer and a little steeper. It was hot, as well, though the heat was not something I focused on or even gave much thought to. In retrospect, the heat, which was getting into the 90s, as much of the hills was my nemesis on this run. But that did not register on my brain in its zen-like focus at that time. I tried to maintain a good pace and pushed up the hills and ran down them like I tried to at Boston, with some forward lean so as not to brake unintentionally, just rolling with it. I was a little disappointed to see myself turning out slightly over 9 minutes per mile pace, but attributed that to having to spin hard for 56 miles on the bike. I ran through the water stops, alternately grabbing cups of water and Gatorade, and I took two salt tablets early on in the run, just as I had on the bike.

At about mile five I was brought out of my zen focus by a guy running by with "57" on his calf. My age group, first guy in it that I had seen! He was moving. I picked up my pace and finally started to match him, moving into what I figured to be the 8 minute per mile pace range, but he was 50 yards ahead. At this point a woman, who had been running fast and then walking off and on, passed me for umpteenth time. "I'll bet you are getting tired of passing me," I said. "You're running well," she replied as she motored ahead. "I’d be doing better if I could catch that guy in my age group who just passed me. Could you go talk to him and slow him down?" She replied, laughing, "Sure." This was more work than my legs wanted, but I could do it. But could I close the gap? I thought, the race will come back to me. So I just stayed at it and, sure enough, on the next long hill he suddenly started walking halfway up and I passed him and kept going. Yes!

The next uphill was long and steep. I started to motor up. Oops. That’s an inner quad cramp coming on, I thought. I needed to walk. No choice or I would wind up standing dead still in agony. So I walked. Pretty soon who went by but Mr. 57. Darn! I crested the hill and very gently trotted. Ok, no cramp. So I picked it up a bit and soon the mid-run turnaround approached, Mr. 57 in the distance but not coming closer, unfortunately.

The turnaround took us downhill off the road on the grass, and then back up on to the road going back the way we came. As I ran onto the grass, there was Sherry, cheering hard for me. I did not convey that I was cramping, but just greeted her, smiling, and ran back up hill. Just then a small cramp started, which I tried to ignore as I got back on the road. I t would be bad form to cramp in front of her! About 50 yards later it flared into a big cramp. I stopped for about 30 seconds, hoping it would fade. It did. I gently started running, bereft because people I had passed in the first half of the run passed me. Just as I started, Sister Madonna passed me. Great, I thought, a 74-year-old nun is beating me! Of course, I did not recognize then that she was on lap one while I was beginning lap two. But at that point she was outrunning me.

I slowly picked up my pace to the water stop about a mile out. I made a pint of grabbing both water and Gatorade and drinking both cups down as I ran through. There was Sister Madonna, walking. I passed her and never saw her again. (I know, it’s pathetic to be thrilled to out-run a nun, much less one that is well my senior.)

As the run progressed I held back my pace and changed my stride and turnover, seeking to dissipate the cramping. For the most part, it worked. By leaning forward, lifting my knees higher, tracking my feet closer to one another, shortening my stride and increasing my turnover I could even run uphill, slowly, without cramping. I still walked the steepest parts, along with most other runners by then, many of whom were also cramping. In retrospect, many of us were trashed by the heat.

I didn’t both to look at my mile splits as I worked through the second half. It felt long and slow, and the areas which were not shaded were hot to run through. I partly unzipped the front of my tri-suit and soldiered on, feeling like I was in an Ironman run, not a half Ironman run. Soon enough, though, I was in the end stretch, being passed and passing people at the same time. I congratulated those with faster paces and offered encouragement to the walkers. I certainly was not using all my aerobic capacity so I could talk without a problem!

I turned off the road and up the finish chute, glad I was done. I picked up my pace a little but not much. How would it be to cramp to a stop 20 yards from the finish? I definitely did not want to risk doing a Julie Moss-type Ironman Hawaii crawl to the line!

As I crossed the line Sherry assessed my condition, saw I was OK and put a medal around my neck. Chris gave me some liquid to drink. This was personal service!

After the race I hung around the beer truck where they posted the results. Yeah, really, I l kept looking at the results. (Yes, I did pour myself a couple of beers!)

Soon I realized that I had scored second place in my age group with a finish time of 5:49:08, despite a very slow run time of 2:19:31, 10:39 per mile, which even at that was third fastest in the age group. I guess it was hot! (For comparison’s sake, I averaged 7:29 per mile in my cooler tri two weeks later.) Even with just riding in my small ring I had the fastest bike split in the age group. I was third in the swim. Go figure.

As I was having a bike guy look at my dysfunctional gears, Sherry had to collect a prize that I won: free entry into three Max events races in 2006. She was embarrassed that she was not properly attired, but her volunteer shirt and hat worked in her favor as she was complimented for volunteering. When I collected my placement prizes they included a $50 gift check to a tri-store web site. I won cash! My hurting had an unanticipated payoff beyond the satisfaction of finishing.

On the way back to the Interstate I passed a temperature sign. It was 94 degrees. I guess it was hot at Halfmax. And hilly. I think I wanted that for Ironman training. Or did I?