Ironman New Zealand Race summary

I will write more once I return to the states in 10 days but I don't have much time on the internet and the limited amount I do have is being used on work related things.

I finished in 11 hours and 24 minutes which is respectable and a great starting point from where to improve. I'm quite slow on the swim and this race was no different although from all the practice I've had, I finished the swim feeling fresh and ready for the long bike and run. It took me 1 hour 17 minutes to do the swim and it's partly because I started far off to the left where there weren't many swimmers but it meant that the length of the swim was longer. The bike was fairly uneventful for the first 40 km until I was stung by a bee on the left side of my face. During the next hour I stopped twice, once to massage some feeling into my face and then again to have it looked at as I'm allergic to bees. I was given ice to hold to my face while riding and decided not to stop and get any medication. The bike overall went quite well and I think I made up a lot of time due to my anger during most of the ride (b/c of the bee sting.) For the marathon, I achieved my goal of running the whole thing even though my shin splints started to bother me about 10 km into it. My overall splits were:
3.8 km swim = 1:17
180 km bike = 5:38
42 km run = 4:17