Ironman Texas: The Run

Conventional wisdom has a lot to say about “best laid plans.” My best laid plans, haphazardly concocted and thoroughly untested, unraveled in record time. What began as shooting for 1:45 per lap became walk 1 mile per 8 mile lap, which became walking ½ mile twice per lap, to walking ¼ mile every 2 miles to walking ¼ mile every ¼ mile to walking 1 min for every minute to pretty much just walking, all by the 2nd aid station. I tried inducing vomiting twice before I quickly deduced that I was out of options. Oh well, time for the Ironman shuffle. How long to I have ‘til midnight? 8 hours? Yeah, I’m not worried. 

Goals of running any significant distance melted pretty quickly. The same old problems coupled with a lack of heat acclimation and no training pretty much shamed me into walking right out of the gate. I wouldn’t say I walked the entire first lap, but I averaged around 12 min per mile, which is more or less equal parts walking a 16 min/mi and running a 10 min/mi. The nausea is still hanging around, but I’m not really afraid of vomiting, so I eat all the usual offenders in spite of it; namely more Ironman Perform and a couple gels. I run as much as I can, but quickly decide most of the reason why I can’t maintain focus for very long is because of the heat, which has climbed to mid 80s plus humidity. A lot of the reason why I abandoned the running so easily was because of the cost/benefit of running before sunset. I reasoned that waiting until after sunset would give me a better chance of gaining time for the same amount of effort. I was around mile 5 by this revelation and almost back to transition, so I adopted it. I did the jog/walk thing until I met Denise again, swapped my Newtons out for some flat shoes and started walking.

The run course is 3, roughly 8-mile long loops that are 98% concrete and 2% dirt trails, and I’m not even sure which is worse for running an Ironman marathon. Despite the run course captain promising us there were no hills, there is a very short but steep pitch up a pile of dirt at mile 1 and a gradual climb up a bridge at mile 2. Despite the fact that I’ve stopped caring and have already forfeited myself to walking for the next 3 hours, I was pretty impressed with the fan turnout. With a short course in terms of actual physical space, the spectators seemed to more effectively pack the course, making certain sections quite loud. I actually had a moment on course when I stopped and walked in front of a particularly loud cheering section for no other reason than because this cheering section occupied too much room. It was too long and I couldn’t make it.

Switching shoes made my feet feel quite a bit better, but also caused me to notice some of the damage of earlier in the day. The inside of my left knee was starting to hurt, and increasingly so. It’s hard to say to what degree I felt it on my first lap, but by the time I started doing running stints after mile 8, I found the pain to be stabbing and motivation-erasing. It was the kind of pain you usually don’t run through; the kind of pain that has been known to ruin your knees forever when you do run through it. Or that’s what I told myself at the time, at least.

Aside from filling you in on the wonderful cast of characters I talked to, which would almost certainly come off as boring, I walked just about all of the 2nd lap in 2:20, about 4:10 into the run. By this point, around 7:30pm I knew the sun would be going down soon. I still had every intention of doing some running on this third lap, but this knee is becoming problematic. I still can’t run on it, and I’m also now having stabbing pains in my left shoulder; no idea where those came from. So I allow myself another 2 hours of powerwalking down to mile 19 and Special Needs. Nearing there, I walked by Lake Woodlands for the last time and for the first time reflect that this is where this whole business started this morning. I think it’s a pretty cool thing to incorporate this as part of the race, to give a bit of context as to what I’m struggling for, what I’d been through so far this day and how little, relatively, I have left to go.

Getting to Special Needs, I pop and handful of NSAIDS and wash it down, as I’ve often considered doing but never actually done, with about a half bottle of Red Bull. I tried running pretty soon thereafter, but not only was the pain still there, but the Red Bull wasn’t very well de-fizzed. It takes a second of walking before it hits me. It’s a powerful numbing sensation. Where all I’ve felt over the last few hours is tiredness and pain in my knee, it’s like somebody turned down the volume on every sense I had. This drink I created… I call it the “just don’t give a fuck.” Because when you drink a JDGAF, you’re still in pain, still tired, still no closer to where you need to go. But you just stop giving a fuck about it.

I think now, finally, it was time to run.

I reset my watch crossing the mile 19 marker and treat the last 7 miles as my race, my portion of an Ironman that history will denote I have the capacity to control. My watch reads exactly 8pm, so the math is easy. I’ve got 1.5 hours until 9:30, 2 hours until 10. I can take it easy and finish in 15, or kick it home and finish at 14:30, or possibly somewhere in the middle. So I start running. The running stints start short and get longer; the walk breaks often and get less frequent. I’ve subsisted solely on Perform and cola since the start of the run, but now add water when I feel cramps start to come and chocolate chip cookies when I feel my blood sugar start to crash.

I really do like the 3 loop run; it breaks the run up into more manageable chunks. By the time I had made the revelation to start running, it really seemed like time was on my side. Each running stint got longer and faster and I found myself passing more and more people. 9:30 seemed like a pretty significant stretch at mile 19, but by the time I had reached mile 23 it was all but sewn up. So long as I kept on pace, 14:30 was mine. And I kept on pace just fine. That usual combination of shooting for an arbitrary time goal and simply wanting to be off the damn course hurtled me towards the finish line as quickly as I’ve travelled all day.

I had my finish line celebration pretty well choreographed by the time I made it into the chute. Having banked enough time to really enjoy it, I counted on my fingers the number of times I’d been here. Wisconsin (1), Kentucky (2), Idaho (3), Florida (4), Texas (5)? Had I really done it? Was this all over, finally? I pump my fist in the air and cross the line to Mike Reilly saying, once more “Patrick Allen of Smyrna, TN… You Are An Ironman!”

Total Run Time: 6:04:11 13:54 min/mi
Lap 1: 8.4 mi 1:43:36 12:20/mi
Lap 2: 8.5 mi 2:16:05 15:58/mi
Lap 3: 8.6 mi 1:57:03 13:38/mi

Total Time: 14:26:56 93/160

This finish line is probably the sweetest since the first one. Because I know it’s my last one for a while. I’m not really tired in the usual sense, as I didn’t really push as hard as I usually do during these things. I was too tired coming off the bike and allowed myself a little too much walking to really leave it all out on course. Not that that was ever the goal.

I finish into the arms of the finish line catcher who has all the usual levels of extreme awareness. How are you? Are you okay? Are you going to faint? Are you going to have a heart attack? Do you need to go to the hospital? Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. Are you sure you’re okay? Because I’m here to help you if you’re not okay.

I’m fine, shit. Just leave me be. Do I look that bad? After she finally takes the hint and heads back to grab someone else, I peruse the athlete food, grabbing a burrito for later and downing some chocolate milk. I decide that I have the time and the motivation to go back to the hotel and shower before coming back to the finish line, so Denise and I head back towards the car. I fill her in on the early afternoon nausea that would never go away, and my repeated failed attempts to vomit it up. I tell her about the drink I created at mile 19 and how it let me borrow a new pair of legs. It’s not 5 minutes after we get out of the finish line area and off course that it finally happens. I’m able to stagger over to a bush and puke my brains out. Hurling again and again and again until my eyes water and I start to cramp. Puking up all that foul, rancid sugar, the 6 painkillers, the Red Bull, the chocolate milk and anything else that might have been sitting in there the better part of all day.

Well that feels better.

I end up just wiping my face off in the sink of a downtown restaurant. We hang out until midnight, I get my bottle of beer. It’s all very routine at this point. I’m glad I finished fast enough to do such things before midnight, but I still can’t give myself credit for a good race. It was just another Ironman. The fact that it doesn’t mean more than that is all the more reason why I shouldn’t be doing another one later this year.

So at the end of the day I’d say I’m satisfied with my race. I didn’t train for it, so it would be pretty irresponsible of me to say I’m upset that it didn’t go well. Conversely, I can’t say that I feel happy with how it went. If I had run the first 7 miles of a marathon and walked the last 19, it would be a terrible outing; I don’t see how walking the first 19 and running the last 7 is much of an improvement.

I’ve already decided I will do Ironman again. I’ll go as far as to say I’m eagerly awaiting my next one. But for now, I’m finished with them. I vow, here and now, not to return to Ironman until I’m ready for it. Ready to finish an Ironman bike in 6 hours, ready to do a marathon without walking. Ready to finish an Ironman before sunset. Ready to accomplish all the things in Ironman that have consistently been outside of my reach. How long it will take to get myself mentally, physically and emotionally ready for that is unclear at this point. But in the anthology of my life, I’m happy to finish this book and start thinking about what I want the next one to be about.

So until then, to quote Taking Back Sunday, don’t lose your faith in me.