Ironman Florida: Pre-race and the Swim

November 5, 2011

My first action race morning was to click on Facebook and update my status. I’m “about to run Ironman Florida on the least amount of training ever for a race. Good thing or bad thing? Only one way to find out!” It seemed like the truest thing I could have said at the time. Would it be a good thing? Would it be a bad thing? Would it matter? Would this race matter to me? These questions swam in my head as I ate breakfast and readied my nutrition bags. Our condo was .75 miles from transition, so I didn’t feel compelled to leave until 5:30. May as well kill time here than there.

I get down to the site a little before 6:00, giving me not much more than an hour to get everything ready. Then again in Ironman you pretty much pack everything important the day before. All I had to do was drop off my nutrition and update some bags with trivial and forgotten items. Of course, I spent half of my allotted free time in the porto-potty line, leaving me a bit rushed to do the rest of everything. I finish up right around the time they’re kicking everybody out, which I suppose is typical for me. Most everyone around me cares more about this race, and is therefore much more nervous. You take the good with the bad…

Everything done, I waddle down to the beach just as they’re forbidding anyone else to enter the water; the pros are about to go. I park up next to swim exit and hop in long enough to get wet and “break in” my suit. The next 10 minutes are a blur: the pros go, the anthem plays, the countdown begins. I happen to see my friend and training partner John in the mass of people right before the start and we share pleasantries. Soon enough, though, we leave each other to handle business. In no time at all, the gun fires and we’re off.

I started really wide right and tried to make concerted efforts to stay right as long as possible. After about 150 yards, I notice things are becoming much more physical. Turns out I followed the whole crowd right to the inside line and am now in a 2,800 man mosh pit. Balls.

For whatever reason, everyone wanted to hit me in the exact same spot, the left goggle. I caught feet, fists and elbows right in the eye; enough times to make me swear I’d end up with a black eye (I didn’t). Admittedly my goggles didn’t need the extra help to start leaking, but all the abuse exacerbated the problem. I found myself draining my goggles before the first turn buoy, so one can deduce just how many times I had to drain it over the final 2 miles. Good thing I’m not going to be anal about today.

So apart from that, the swim continues. As predicted, though a little pleasantly surprising, the water heated up pretty significantly once we reached the deep water, turning from just mildly chilly to absolutely perfect. The good news was interrupted pretty quickly thereafter with the first jellyfish sighting. We’d been warned in the pre-race dinner about these little critters; apparently there’s always some unwelcomed marine life that ends up spectating the swim. We were told to keep calm, that the stings will hurt but they won’t kill you. Or they didn’t think so, anyway. Those who didn’t choose to quit that very moment weren’t given much of an opportunity to be afraid; these things were EVERYWHERE! I stopped counting after 6 before the first turn. Luckily, they had enough sense to dive a few feet underwater, out of arms reach. I got pretty darn close to several of them, but managed to log 2.4 miles without a sting.

I’m getting to the point in my Ironman career where I can anticipate how far away the turn buoy is just by how many people are slowing down in front of me. Without just too much effort, I reach the first turn and do what everyone else is thinking about. I actually cut the course a few feet, which I don’t feel great about. It was just easier to do at the time and I could have reached out and touched the buoy if I was so inclined. I’ll round it next time as pentance.

The trip east toward the second buoy, I was warned, is right into the sun. The sunrise in PCB isn’t nearly as abrupt as the sunset and it hadn’t quite crested the taller buildings yet. Good news for me, locating the giant red inflatable was quite a bit easier than dodging the jellyfish. Turning and heading back, the jellyfish thinned and the sun came out to play. The water is much more fully illuminated on the back half of the first loop and I’m able to see a lot more varieties of fish, which is definitely the coolest thing I’ve ever seen during a swim leg. Apart from the hoards of jellyfish, I saw stingrays and 2-3 different kinds of fish. Something to look at, nice.

It seems to take a really, really long time to make it back to shore, but I eventually do and shuffle my way out of the Gulf; for a few seconds, anyway. I’m already a tad nauseous from the inevitable salt water cocktail I slowly drank down. Who would have thought a simple cup of store-bought distilled water was all I needed to get over it? Glad I took the time to stop. I looked at my watch and saw 35 minutes for the first lap, which was way faster than I was expecting. Let’s see just how fast we can make this! Onto lap 2.

The water was a lot cleaner this time around, as it usually is. I was able to extend my arms now, put a little effort into the swim. I wanted to believe I wasn’t slowing down, but it’s so hard to tell out there. I’m not entirely sure where I began to notice, but I managed to pop a stitch in my wetsuit where the right armpit meets the chest. The wardrobe malfunction created a burr that rubbed the piss out of my underarm; my GOD did this thing hurt! I was feeling it pretty well by the start of the second lap, and kind of figured it’d end up opening the skin on the second lap (it didn’t). Looks like I now need to buy a new wetsuit to go with my new goggles; so lame.

It’s the same story as before: kicked in the goggle, dodge jellyfish, dump water out of my eye, my arm hurts, don’t vomit! Kept going, found the turn buoy and fought the sun one last time. The swim was unspectacular. Fish were cool, jellyfish and nausea were not, but uneventful on the whole. Starting to wish the IM swim was closer to 2.2 miles these days, but I eventually find my way back to the shore. Working my way towards the banner, I check my watch and see 1:15. Not that I’m disappointed, it seems about right, but I can’t help but wonder how I managed to lose 5 minutes off my first lap pace. Oh well, not for me to say.

I climb my way out of the Gulf one last time and begin the process of tearing my suit off. The wetsuit strippers are a big help, as always (they’re awesome!), but I don’t seem to be making great time getting up to the transition area. There are a lot of people taking their sweet time at the showers, so I decide to do the same when it was my turn. It’s quite a little jog up to the T1 bags, and then quite a bit more to the changing tents. Unlike many of my other Ironmans, I decided against a one piece suit for this one. It added some transition time, but I slapped base layers, a jersey, bike shorts and arm warmers on a salty, wet body; all of which takes time. I managed to bum some chamois cream, which was a pretty great thing.
11 minutes after I’d exited the water, I find myself carrying my bike across the magic tape line. I can now climb aboard and start the next 112 mile leg of the hardest single-day endurance event on the planet. I manage to drop my chain before climbing on, and a spectator tells me to not to stress about it. Don’t worry bro, I’m not stressing; not by a long shot! :-)

Swim Time: 1:16:20

T1: 10:59