Despite how pessimistic it will undoubtedly come off, I simply can’t adequately describe what this race was like without first describing the events that led up to it. Ironman training requires consistency, sacrifice, precise planning, extreme endurance and, most of all, enormous faith to execute properly. What was to follow in Ironman Texas is what happens when you do Ironman without any of these things.
Upon crossing the finish line in Coeur d’Alene Idaho last year, I was pretty sure I was finished with Ironman indefinitely. As the days, weeks and months chipped by, I gradually convinced myself not to take the insulting partial refund offered by the WTC and went ahead with Ironman Florida, which ended up being my best finish thus far. Equal parts being very recovered and being a fast course, it didn’t really delude me into thinking I was any fitter than the previous 3 I had actually prepared for.
Since then, there wasn’t really anything. Sincerely. The goal was to make the winter a running focus, with the Mardi Gras Marathon on the horizon in March. The popularization of Trainer Road did the opposite; I found myself doing a lot of intense but short bike efforts leading up to the spring. I had no motivation to do any sort of long, Ironman-prep workouts, especially when “crunch time” came and it was absolutely necessary to do such workouts.
Let’s see some stats for this time period [Nov 2011 (IMFL) – May 2012 (IMTX)]:
Number of races: 1 – Mardi Gras Marathon
Number of runs over 2 hours: 1
Number of rides over 2 hours: 2 (or 1, depending on your perspective; 2 85 mile days rolled into a weekend)
Number of swims over 1 hour: 1
Number of heat acclimatization attempts: 2 (30 min trainer sessions)
Number of hot yoga sessions: 0
Number of race-day nutrition practices: 0
Number of 100 mile rides: 0
Number of 20 mile non-race runs: 0
Number of bike tune-ups/upgrades/fits: 0
Essentially I did as close to nothing as I’ve ever before managed. The explanation is two fold: burnout and overworking. I have long since been living and dealing with oppressive levels of burnout at the Ironman distance, but hesitated for so long to admit it to myself. I wanted to keep going, to keep chasing this infernal dream of mine to do every one in the country before I turn 30; blah, blah, blah.
In the process turning Ironman into some demented job, some insane purpose I no longer had the power to turn away from. It wasn’t until Texas, when I, for the first time since 2008, found myself without an Ironman on the books. This was my first opportunity to do a final Ironman before allowing myself the time off I’ve needed for years.
A lack of desire to train wasn’t enough of an excuse not to train in the past. It’s a common practice in the Ironman community when you don’t want to train you HTFU, stop complaining and do it anyway. Ironman isn’t for pussies who don’t train when they don’t feel like it. If you had the time, or could make the time, and you always could, you trained. That was true for my first 4, but not for Texas. In February, I was promoted to head trainer at my day job, giving me full time hours, much better pay and much more responsibility. All this means more work hours. I’ve accumulated more 100 hour work weeks than 100 mile bike weeks since the promotion, which is a bit problematic in the back stretch of Ironman training.
A+B=C, where A is burnout, B is no free time or energy and C is simply not caring about Ironman training. I knew enough about Ironman to know I’d survive no matter what, so I came to Texas with no goals other than to finish. To finish and be done with 140.6 for a while. So, to recap, I arrived at the Woodlands as undertrained, underprepared, under-inspired and pessimistic as I’ve ever been.
That said, it was still my goal to minimize the damage.
The pre-race festivities seemed to blaze by at record speed, though I managed to fit “drive the bike course” in with everything else. It didn’t seem like long at all before I found myself up to my neck in Lake Woodlands, counting down the final 10 minutes to the gun. It was nice seeing my GUF teammate, fraternity brother and fellow Ironman Matt Gant next to me before we wished each other the best of luck. Soon thereafter, we heard the familiar countdown; the countdown I was hearing for the 5th time, and he was hearing for the 3rd. The 10 second countdown signaling that it was once again time to shuffle ever forward in pursuit of the finish line.
Ironman Texas: The Swim
Lake Woodlands was a bit of a mixed bag; a fair split between the good, the bad and the ugly.
The good: it was damn near the perfect temperature. We ended up shivering waiting on the gun, but it was the definition of comfortable for an Ironman pace swim. And with no current, it was as easy as it could have been, given its shortcomings.
The bad: at 80+ degrees F, it is not and eternally wouldn’t be a wetsuit-legal swim. If you had planned on making it 2.4 miles, you’d have to do it without any personal flotation devices.
The ugly: despite racing for half a decade on all corners of the country, I’ve never seen darker water. I’ve never before been in a race where I couldn’t see my hand in mid-stroke. So in that sense, Lake Woodlands was a first. Lord only knows what’s lurking at the bottom of that water…
The rightmost bank of the start was quite shallow, allowing me to take a handful of steps before hopping across the start line. This time around, I was content to let the overly eager participants go first and hang in the back for a while; no ancillary benefit to getting my ass kicked searching for a draft pack. The course reminded me a bit of IM-Louisville, a combination of a one loop and a point-to-point. You swim down to a turn buoy and swim back to very near the start before banking right into a canal. I had no idea how far apart these dividers were from one another, but at least knew enough to look for them as checkpoints.
I concentrated early on finding a nice, easy pace that I could maintain for the whole swim and felt like I was making pretty good time. It was a pretty easy trip out; not much contact, no mishaps of swallowing a ton of lake water and no one lighting my world up with a fist or a heel of their foot. In fact I still felt quite comfortable reaching the first turn buoy likely around 1 mile into the swim leg. There was the predictable traffic jam at the turn, but we were soon swimming directly in line with the sun for a quick 100 yards before turning NE back to the pier and canal.
I managed to pull off a trick that’s eluded me as of late, peeing while swimming, on the trip back. This was a cool feeling in an efficiency of movement kind of way, but ultimately the trip back was just boring. I wouldn’t say I was tired, or sore or particularly wanting and needing to be out of the water, I was just bored. So bored I could barely stand it. I stopped more than a handful of times to try to peer down the never-ending stretch of buoys looking for the turn for no other reason than to have something to look at. This sucks. Will it never end?
Finally the course veered right into the narrowness of the canal. I’d heard lots of stories about how violent it gets in here, and was prepared for it. As it turned out, it wasn’t considerably more violent than any other part of the swim, making Texas one of the more tame swims for me (though the wetsuit wave starting 10 minutes after us and running through the field was markedly annoying). What I found unpredictable about the canal was that the squeeze was pretty gradual. I was expecting to have to funnel in very quickly, making swimmers go sideways to file in to what appeared to be a 10-foot wide channel. In reality, it tightened like a funnel getting skinnier and skinnier as we neared closer and closer to the transition. The increased physicality came more from the wetsuit swimmers than from the cramped quarters, but it did feel like I was running into more people over the last part.
The change of scenery helped mollify my boredom and the swim became bearable again for a time. In all fairness, it was a very cool section of the swim. The canal not only broke up the swim well, but also made it my favorite swim course so far. Still, it wasn’t enough to make me like the last half mile of a 2.4-mile swim interesting. I was still very much counting down the last few hundred yards. Soon enough and not just too long after the canal finally clamped down to the under-handed throw width I saw earlier in the week we turned left and climbed up the stairs into transition.
Climbing the stairs proved to be pretty difficult and I was mildly disappointed to see my relatively slow swim time. In hindsight, I did stop and sight a lot. I also didn’t train, but I think I’ve covered that already. I grabbed my bag and hustled into the change tent. I’m not sure what happened exactly, but my Cool Wings weren’t in my bag, despite being in there earlier that morning when I checked my gear bag. Maybe it fell out; maybe I absent-mindedly took it out. Either way, I took a second to mentally prepare myself for the horrific sunburn I was about to get. I took a second at the porto potty (which was a LOT more, shall we say, productive than I expected), slathered with sunscreen and took off towards my bike.
1 down, 2 to go.
Swim Time: 1:26:23
Swim Place: 83/160 in AG
T1: 9:08
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Ironman Texas: The Bike
The 1 loop Ironman bike made a spectacular comeback in Texas, taking full advantage of the hundreds of miles of not much of anything on the outskirts of the Woodlands. The first 30 miles of the bike are relentlessly flat, before some gently rolling hills poke out of the National Forest. Driving the bike course, my mind pretty effectively dulled after mile 60. Sufficed to say the course is mostly flat with a number of very gentle climbs. And it all looks pretty much the same.
The worst part of the course was the fact that the wind was backwards. You get to enjoy a 3 mph tailwind during the first 40 miles of the bike and fight a 10 mph headwind for the last 45. For the first two hours, I feel like I have wings. Keeping my easy Ironman rhythm, I’m averaging right at 20 mph even after hitting the rolling hills. My speed oscillates from 16 mph climbing the hills (and coming out of aero for the first handful of times) to 28 mph shooting down the other side of them. I kept clipping away the miles and checking my average speed. It’s very easy to break up the miles when you’re doing 20 mph; the math always works out very easily. It’s 3 minutes per mile, and the numbers almost always end in a 0. So for the first few hours, I was in pretty good spirits.
I didn’t have enough Infinit to get me through any significant portion of the bike, so I brought energy bars to do the job. Unfortunately I had dropped 2 hours worth of food in the first 10 miles, leaving me to more or less depend on what they had on course. The Ironman Perform has caused me problems in the past, but seemed to be keeping just fine so far. I know Bonk Breakers are relatively inoffensive, but I don’t get my paws on one until the 2nd half. So I basically subsist as long as I can on what I’ve managed to not lose and just rely on the course after that. What’s the worst that can happen, I throw up? Ha! That’s a funny story I’ll get to in a minute…
The food I am able to take in is either too much too quickly, or in the moment unfamiliar to my body and I can’t help but notice a side stitch for the first hour and a half on the bike. Side stitches on the bike are kind of a fun experience. On the run they’re so debilitating, so painful as they’re being constantly tossed around and re-aggravated. On the bike you barely notice that it’s there. Just a bit of tension in the side, but it never really hurts worse, makes you want to stop or even slows you down; you just kind of take a casual notice to it and keep going. I cross the mile 40 marker in 2:00:04 and turn out of the tailwind.
The forest is pretty cool, giving us not only something to look at but quite a bit of shade for a little while. While the roads were kind of intimidating in a car, being on a bike and having relative certainty no cars would appear around the next bend was quite exhilarating whipping around the turns and taking full advantage of the flat terrain. At the start it appeared to be a good mix of farmland, forest and state highways. Things were happening pretty quickly until mile 40. They slowed down to what they probably should have been thereafter. After one of the bigger turns I saw Gant on the side of the road. I didn’t have much time to think about what had happened, but I later recalled that he routinely races without any tubes or bike equipment of any kind. Maybe he learned a lesson sitting on the side of the road out there. From the look of the time and average speed of his first bike segment it looks like he spent a while out there…
The stretch from 50 to 65 is kind of hard to recall. I lost track of the turns, more or less completely forgot where I was at any given time. I definitely couldn’t remember where Special Needs was. The gels I had packed weren’t providing too significant a carrot to chase, but the Delta E could not get here fast enough. It’s brutal stuff to take down, but I eagerly squeeze out every last drop when I finally get my hands on it. By this point, around mile 60, I could feel my energy levels drop off in the first significant way. To be honest, 60 miles in was farther than I expected to get before having to dig a little bit. I got as mentally strong as I could before the turn at mile 65 into 25 miles of direct, non-interrupted headwind.
I broke this section up into 5 five-mile stretches, each one getting me marginally closer to T2. Not much to be said from here on in. Where I had earlier averaged 20, I was now doing well to hold much more than 14. A 10 mph wind doesn’t seem like much, but it was on the back end of an increasingly hot Ironman bike ride. My back, butt and knee are getting sore and I just finished up the last of my earlier purchased food. One of my goals was to pee twice during the bike ride and again in Transition, so I was glad to have to stop around mile 75 to do so; this means I’m not dehydrated to the point where I can expect system shutdown early in the run. Each 5-mile patch passes slower than the last, but I finally make it to mile 90 and turn out of the headwind into a somewhat headwind. Essentially, it’s into the wind all the way back. Mentally I broke around mile 85. I just didn’t care about time too much anymore. For the first time in my Ironman life, nausea started to creep up during the bike. I tried to induce vomiting at the last aid station to no avail. Guess we’ll have to save that for the run.
The short version is I eventually outlasted the course and made it back to T2. The last 10 miles happened to be on the whitest pavement I’ve ever seen before, blinding me and probably most everyone else, but we made it back in once piece. Immediately upon hopping off my bike, the outside of both my feet were very, very tender, tender to the point to where I doubted my ability to run off of it. I did a bit of a jog-walk to the transition area and it finally alleviated. Taking my time, I dusted off my feet and changed into my run clothes.
The swim and bike are done. The realization that you now have to run a marathon is very often a crippling one, but to me I was glad to say that very little would be left up to chance from here. In the swim, you can get kicked in the right spot and break your goggles; you can cramp up and hyperventilate; you can catch an unwanted water bug and spend the rest of your abbreviated day puking up everything you eat. On the bike, you can blow one too many tires; you can snap a cable or break a chain; you can crash with another bike, or a car, or simply not pay attention and run yourself off the road. But on the run, not much can really prematurely end your day. So long as you have enough time and you’re smart with hydration, nutrition and temperature management, you can always keep moving. You can control it better.
That’s what I was thinking as I began my run. The only thing I deserve to do, the only thing I’ve ever really cared to do, was to finish. And, at this point, it’s just a matter of time.
Bike Time: 6:40:32 16.78 mi/h 91/160
First 56 mi: 3:07:06 17.96 mi/h
Second 56: 3:33:26 15.74 mi/h
The worst part of the course was the fact that the wind was backwards. You get to enjoy a 3 mph tailwind during the first 40 miles of the bike and fight a 10 mph headwind for the last 45. For the first two hours, I feel like I have wings. Keeping my easy Ironman rhythm, I’m averaging right at 20 mph even after hitting the rolling hills. My speed oscillates from 16 mph climbing the hills (and coming out of aero for the first handful of times) to 28 mph shooting down the other side of them. I kept clipping away the miles and checking my average speed. It’s very easy to break up the miles when you’re doing 20 mph; the math always works out very easily. It’s 3 minutes per mile, and the numbers almost always end in a 0. So for the first few hours, I was in pretty good spirits.
I didn’t have enough Infinit to get me through any significant portion of the bike, so I brought energy bars to do the job. Unfortunately I had dropped 2 hours worth of food in the first 10 miles, leaving me to more or less depend on what they had on course. The Ironman Perform has caused me problems in the past, but seemed to be keeping just fine so far. I know Bonk Breakers are relatively inoffensive, but I don’t get my paws on one until the 2nd half. So I basically subsist as long as I can on what I’ve managed to not lose and just rely on the course after that. What’s the worst that can happen, I throw up? Ha! That’s a funny story I’ll get to in a minute…
The food I am able to take in is either too much too quickly, or in the moment unfamiliar to my body and I can’t help but notice a side stitch for the first hour and a half on the bike. Side stitches on the bike are kind of a fun experience. On the run they’re so debilitating, so painful as they’re being constantly tossed around and re-aggravated. On the bike you barely notice that it’s there. Just a bit of tension in the side, but it never really hurts worse, makes you want to stop or even slows you down; you just kind of take a casual notice to it and keep going. I cross the mile 40 marker in 2:00:04 and turn out of the tailwind.
The forest is pretty cool, giving us not only something to look at but quite a bit of shade for a little while. While the roads were kind of intimidating in a car, being on a bike and having relative certainty no cars would appear around the next bend was quite exhilarating whipping around the turns and taking full advantage of the flat terrain. At the start it appeared to be a good mix of farmland, forest and state highways. Things were happening pretty quickly until mile 40. They slowed down to what they probably should have been thereafter. After one of the bigger turns I saw Gant on the side of the road. I didn’t have much time to think about what had happened, but I later recalled that he routinely races without any tubes or bike equipment of any kind. Maybe he learned a lesson sitting on the side of the road out there. From the look of the time and average speed of his first bike segment it looks like he spent a while out there…
The stretch from 50 to 65 is kind of hard to recall. I lost track of the turns, more or less completely forgot where I was at any given time. I definitely couldn’t remember where Special Needs was. The gels I had packed weren’t providing too significant a carrot to chase, but the Delta E could not get here fast enough. It’s brutal stuff to take down, but I eagerly squeeze out every last drop when I finally get my hands on it. By this point, around mile 60, I could feel my energy levels drop off in the first significant way. To be honest, 60 miles in was farther than I expected to get before having to dig a little bit. I got as mentally strong as I could before the turn at mile 65 into 25 miles of direct, non-interrupted headwind.
I broke this section up into 5 five-mile stretches, each one getting me marginally closer to T2. Not much to be said from here on in. Where I had earlier averaged 20, I was now doing well to hold much more than 14. A 10 mph wind doesn’t seem like much, but it was on the back end of an increasingly hot Ironman bike ride. My back, butt and knee are getting sore and I just finished up the last of my earlier purchased food. One of my goals was to pee twice during the bike ride and again in Transition, so I was glad to have to stop around mile 75 to do so; this means I’m not dehydrated to the point where I can expect system shutdown early in the run. Each 5-mile patch passes slower than the last, but I finally make it to mile 90 and turn out of the headwind into a somewhat headwind. Essentially, it’s into the wind all the way back. Mentally I broke around mile 85. I just didn’t care about time too much anymore. For the first time in my Ironman life, nausea started to creep up during the bike. I tried to induce vomiting at the last aid station to no avail. Guess we’ll have to save that for the run.
The short version is I eventually outlasted the course and made it back to T2. The last 10 miles happened to be on the whitest pavement I’ve ever seen before, blinding me and probably most everyone else, but we made it back in once piece. Immediately upon hopping off my bike, the outside of both my feet were very, very tender, tender to the point to where I doubted my ability to run off of it. I did a bit of a jog-walk to the transition area and it finally alleviated. Taking my time, I dusted off my feet and changed into my run clothes.
The swim and bike are done. The realization that you now have to run a marathon is very often a crippling one, but to me I was glad to say that very little would be left up to chance from here. In the swim, you can get kicked in the right spot and break your goggles; you can cramp up and hyperventilate; you can catch an unwanted water bug and spend the rest of your abbreviated day puking up everything you eat. On the bike, you can blow one too many tires; you can snap a cable or break a chain; you can crash with another bike, or a car, or simply not pay attention and run yourself off the road. But on the run, not much can really prematurely end your day. So long as you have enough time and you’re smart with hydration, nutrition and temperature management, you can always keep moving. You can control it better.
That’s what I was thinking as I began my run. The only thing I deserve to do, the only thing I’ve ever really cared to do, was to finish. And, at this point, it’s just a matter of time.
Bike Time: 6:40:32 16.78 mi/h 91/160
First 56 mi: 3:07:06 17.96 mi/h
Second 56: 3:33:26 15.74 mi/h
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
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
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
Ironman Florida: The Bike
This was the first one-loop Ironman bike I’d ever raced, and the first time I’d didn't recon the course, so I really didn’t know what to expect. The wind was blowing out of the northeast and was strongest on the coast. Both of these things would end up being beneficial, but both ensured I’d face the toughest situations early on. The course actually reminded me quite a bit of the course at Madison; you snake along on a two-lane road (by that, I mean you return on the same roads you leave on) until you reach a looped section where you lose contact with returning cyclists. The most glaring difference is that in Florida, you only do the loop once.
The route heads northwest along the coast for a few miles before heading north. Perhaps I could feel a little bit of a push in the early sections, but it was mostly a ferocious crosswind from the left. The only reprieve was when you passed the larger buildings, but the wind seemed to pick up doubly when you were back in its path. Either way, there was no mistaking which way the wind was going over the next 50 miles; into the wind. Straight into the wind. I took the liberty of lapping my Garmin every turn to get a gauge of how much the wind would affect my pace. We’ll play with the numbers as we go along.
It was a pretty significant goal of mine to pee 3 times on the bike; I made it a point to tell several people about it. All 3 Ironmans that have gone poorly had left me pretty dehydrated at the end of the bike. In pondering my conundrum, I rationalized that one likely reason I always end up with GI distress is because I can never get the osmolality right in my drinks. Said another way, I don’t take enough water with my gels and sport drinks. Certainly my gut has a handicapped ability to digest the calories I’m shoving into it, so maybe I won’t get as sick as quickly if I make sure I drink enough. It was just crazy enough to work.
Unfortunately, I tend to follow my own advice a little too well. I managed to pee 3 times alright; I stopped at all of the first 4 porto potties I saw. I’m not going to say I was really flying in the early, windy sections but I will say that I was not going as slowly as the time clock would have you believe. According to my post-race Powertap file, I accumulated 16:32 of total time on the bike course not actually moving. I wasn’t heartbroken by this; a chance to stretch, to relax, to enjoy being off the bike. I just won’t say it was the fastest way to T2.
And so, it was at the first aid station, the first bathroom stop, when I let temptation get the better of me. I’m really a purist when it comes to the sport; I don’t endorse cheating and tend to think people who get caught doing it deserve the penalties they get tagged with. But in triathlon, as in life, there are certain rules I simply don’t agree with. The anarchist in me, and seemingly every one of my upper division professors in college, urged me to stand up against such rules. I don’t endorse cheating and I don’t like cheaters, but as of the first aid station I became a hypocrite.
I’m not going to put my offense in print. Most people who would read this will end up asking me, and I’ll probably tell them. But I’m not going to write it, because I will probably do it again. I will say, however, what I did NOT do. I did not draft, nor block, nor litter. I did nothing to make my bike faster, more aerodynamic, more comfortable or more advantageous in any way. I did nothing to disgrace the city, the race, or my fellow racers. I did nothing that gave me any physical advantage over my competitors. It was merely something that made the ride mentally easier for me to get through. And for that I offer no apologies.
It took me 1:30 to make it across Hwy 79 to the second turn onto 20, for an average of 15 mph. After 16 miles into a headwind, you turn right, headed east, into another headwind. It was pretty frustrating holding such a high wattage, such an aerodynamic tuck, and seemingly not getting anywhere. I was glad it wasn’t the opposite; that we’d get the tailwind on the back half; but it still made the ride seem much, much longer. Turning “out of the wind” and fighting more of the same for the next 11.5 of straight, flat road as far as you could see. I have no idea how long the road stretched having not researched the course, but lap my Garmin at the turn 43:39 later; an average speed of 15.75 mph.
For a very short 7 miles, the course turned right again and took us south onto Hwy 77. It was the first tailwind of the day, and the first sampling of what the final drag back to beach would feel like. Having taken so many bathroom breaks and stretch breaks, I had no problem staying low and staying fast, I held 18.7 on less wattage. A left hand turn onto 388 took us into the wind again. I knew enough about the course to at least know the shape of it. This stretch took us east to an out-and-back, then we headed north before turning west. Once we turned west, it was a very long stretch west and a very long stretch south, both of which were with the wind. Something to look forward to.
I kept pretty distracted during the ride, continuing to eat, drink and clip the miles away. I stopped trying to keep track of my bathroom stops; it was too much of a headache. I’m taking not as many now, but still seems like I spent a lot of time on the side of the road. The final trip east was at 14 mph, but included a pretty long stop at Special Needs. I took this opportunity to drop off my extra clothes (gloves, base layer, arm warmers), pee again and drink down my energy drink. Remounting my bike, I’m off towards the right hand turn onto Blue Springs Rd. The last little bit clips away at not much faster than 16.5 mph, but at least didn’t involve any more bathroom breaks.
The much-awaited mile 60 and the left turn back onto Hwy 20 allowed me to cruise at or above 20 mph pretty easily. Even with a couple stops, including several minutes checking my bike for something rubbing (never did find out what it was, but something was squeaking), I averaged 18 mph. Ignoring the 5 mile out and back, I held 19.88 mph over the rest of the course. My right IT band really suffered through the last hour and a half of the ride, but I kept aero as much as I could stand and held on for dear life. My reward, of course, was a very windy 6 miles into T2. I hoped to hold low power and spin it out over the last stretch, but the wind was too strong; I wasn’t going anywhere. With patience, I finally saw the Waffle House over the horizon and turned off of Front Beach onto Beach Rd.
I wasn’t sure what to expect on this bike from a time perspective, but clocking a 6:45 was a solid goal set about 60 miles from home. I wasn’t sure how that would compare against what I might have done with a proper training regime, nor how it would stack up against my age group compatriots, but I knew enough to immediately recognize it as the first sub 7 hr Ironman bike. That’s about all I was thinking when I dismounted and handed my bike off. So, despite the fact that I was already nauseated and pretty tired, I managed a smile when I stopped my Garmin at just under the mark.
Bike time: 6:45:23
Per the Garmin: 6:44:40; 111.73 mi; 1319ft total climbing; 147 bpm
Per the Powertap: 126 AP; 131 NP; 2,966 kJ (which is amazingly close to the 2,964 kJ IM CdA took)
Making that tight turn to pick up my T2 bag was asking a lot, but I soon found my way once more to the “get naked room.” As I did on the bike, I elected to put on a full runner’s kit in lieu of a triathlon suit; I donned a tech shirt and running shorts, along with my typical visor, compression sleeves and race shoes. It took every bit as long as last time, peeling layers off of a sweaty, salty body and putting on all new ones, but I got all dressed in good time. Had a chance to chat up some of the other riders while I changed, which is always pleasant. Eventually, I was primped and prepped and ready for a night on the town. I try my best to quickly find marathon pace as I hit my Garmin, ready to take this one step at a time.
T2: 8:47
The route heads northwest along the coast for a few miles before heading north. Perhaps I could feel a little bit of a push in the early sections, but it was mostly a ferocious crosswind from the left. The only reprieve was when you passed the larger buildings, but the wind seemed to pick up doubly when you were back in its path. Either way, there was no mistaking which way the wind was going over the next 50 miles; into the wind. Straight into the wind. I took the liberty of lapping my Garmin every turn to get a gauge of how much the wind would affect my pace. We’ll play with the numbers as we go along.
It was a pretty significant goal of mine to pee 3 times on the bike; I made it a point to tell several people about it. All 3 Ironmans that have gone poorly had left me pretty dehydrated at the end of the bike. In pondering my conundrum, I rationalized that one likely reason I always end up with GI distress is because I can never get the osmolality right in my drinks. Said another way, I don’t take enough water with my gels and sport drinks. Certainly my gut has a handicapped ability to digest the calories I’m shoving into it, so maybe I won’t get as sick as quickly if I make sure I drink enough. It was just crazy enough to work.
Unfortunately, I tend to follow my own advice a little too well. I managed to pee 3 times alright; I stopped at all of the first 4 porto potties I saw. I’m not going to say I was really flying in the early, windy sections but I will say that I was not going as slowly as the time clock would have you believe. According to my post-race Powertap file, I accumulated 16:32 of total time on the bike course not actually moving. I wasn’t heartbroken by this; a chance to stretch, to relax, to enjoy being off the bike. I just won’t say it was the fastest way to T2.
And so, it was at the first aid station, the first bathroom stop, when I let temptation get the better of me. I’m really a purist when it comes to the sport; I don’t endorse cheating and tend to think people who get caught doing it deserve the penalties they get tagged with. But in triathlon, as in life, there are certain rules I simply don’t agree with. The anarchist in me, and seemingly every one of my upper division professors in college, urged me to stand up against such rules. I don’t endorse cheating and I don’t like cheaters, but as of the first aid station I became a hypocrite.
I’m not going to put my offense in print. Most people who would read this will end up asking me, and I’ll probably tell them. But I’m not going to write it, because I will probably do it again. I will say, however, what I did NOT do. I did not draft, nor block, nor litter. I did nothing to make my bike faster, more aerodynamic, more comfortable or more advantageous in any way. I did nothing to disgrace the city, the race, or my fellow racers. I did nothing that gave me any physical advantage over my competitors. It was merely something that made the ride mentally easier for me to get through. And for that I offer no apologies.
It took me 1:30 to make it across Hwy 79 to the second turn onto 20, for an average of 15 mph. After 16 miles into a headwind, you turn right, headed east, into another headwind. It was pretty frustrating holding such a high wattage, such an aerodynamic tuck, and seemingly not getting anywhere. I was glad it wasn’t the opposite; that we’d get the tailwind on the back half; but it still made the ride seem much, much longer. Turning “out of the wind” and fighting more of the same for the next 11.5 of straight, flat road as far as you could see. I have no idea how long the road stretched having not researched the course, but lap my Garmin at the turn 43:39 later; an average speed of 15.75 mph.
For a very short 7 miles, the course turned right again and took us south onto Hwy 77. It was the first tailwind of the day, and the first sampling of what the final drag back to beach would feel like. Having taken so many bathroom breaks and stretch breaks, I had no problem staying low and staying fast, I held 18.7 on less wattage. A left hand turn onto 388 took us into the wind again. I knew enough about the course to at least know the shape of it. This stretch took us east to an out-and-back, then we headed north before turning west. Once we turned west, it was a very long stretch west and a very long stretch south, both of which were with the wind. Something to look forward to.
I kept pretty distracted during the ride, continuing to eat, drink and clip the miles away. I stopped trying to keep track of my bathroom stops; it was too much of a headache. I’m taking not as many now, but still seems like I spent a lot of time on the side of the road. The final trip east was at 14 mph, but included a pretty long stop at Special Needs. I took this opportunity to drop off my extra clothes (gloves, base layer, arm warmers), pee again and drink down my energy drink. Remounting my bike, I’m off towards the right hand turn onto Blue Springs Rd. The last little bit clips away at not much faster than 16.5 mph, but at least didn’t involve any more bathroom breaks.
The much-awaited mile 60 and the left turn back onto Hwy 20 allowed me to cruise at or above 20 mph pretty easily. Even with a couple stops, including several minutes checking my bike for something rubbing (never did find out what it was, but something was squeaking), I averaged 18 mph. Ignoring the 5 mile out and back, I held 19.88 mph over the rest of the course. My right IT band really suffered through the last hour and a half of the ride, but I kept aero as much as I could stand and held on for dear life. My reward, of course, was a very windy 6 miles into T2. I hoped to hold low power and spin it out over the last stretch, but the wind was too strong; I wasn’t going anywhere. With patience, I finally saw the Waffle House over the horizon and turned off of Front Beach onto Beach Rd.
I wasn’t sure what to expect on this bike from a time perspective, but clocking a 6:45 was a solid goal set about 60 miles from home. I wasn’t sure how that would compare against what I might have done with a proper training regime, nor how it would stack up against my age group compatriots, but I knew enough to immediately recognize it as the first sub 7 hr Ironman bike. That’s about all I was thinking when I dismounted and handed my bike off. So, despite the fact that I was already nauseated and pretty tired, I managed a smile when I stopped my Garmin at just under the mark.
Bike time: 6:45:23
Per the Garmin: 6:44:40; 111.73 mi; 1319ft total climbing; 147 bpm
Per the Powertap: 126 AP; 131 NP; 2,966 kJ (which is amazingly close to the 2,964 kJ IM CdA took)
Making that tight turn to pick up my T2 bag was asking a lot, but I soon found my way once more to the “get naked room.” As I did on the bike, I elected to put on a full runner’s kit in lieu of a triathlon suit; I donned a tech shirt and running shorts, along with my typical visor, compression sleeves and race shoes. It took every bit as long as last time, peeling layers off of a sweaty, salty body and putting on all new ones, but I got all dressed in good time. Had a chance to chat up some of the other riders while I changed, which is always pleasant. Eventually, I was primped and prepped and ready for a night on the town. I try my best to quickly find marathon pace as I hit my Garmin, ready to take this one step at a time.
T2: 8:47
Ironman Florida: The Run
9 minute miles felt like a pretty easy pace at the start, but I sort of figured it was too fast. I tried to actively slow myself down, but it didn't happen for a couple miles. It was pretty clear I didn't have the raw endurance I'm used to for IM races, and the pace started getting pretty difficult right away.
The run course at Florida reminded me a bit of Louisville; essentially a dead flat out and back on city roads, snaking through residential and downtown commercial buildings, and boring as snot. I knew enough about the course to know that there's a loop through St. Andrew's State Park right at the end of the out-and-back, and that I should fear it very, very much. So, step one is to simply get there and scope it out.
It didn't take long for my pace to slide. It took probably a mile to get my HR up to race pace, then I progressively slowed over the next few. By mile 4, I was ready to start walking. I didn't walk, didn't even allow allotted walking breaks, but I couldn't help but wonder if I'd end up clocking a new slowest marathon ever.
It didn't help things that I was feeling pretty crappy right out of the gate. The nausea that usually doesn't join the party until lap 2 of the run, started ruining my good time within the 2nd mile marker. Such a situation caused me to realize something for the first time: I don't really NEED gels out there. I mean, let's consider this: I'm of the opinion that I don't get enough water in me to fully digest the gels on the run; that I'm always running dehydrated and not allowing my body to absorb the calories I'm taking in. Why, then, would I want to use gels? Why not just stick to IM Perform? Well, let's try it, huh? I threw back a cup of water and a cup of Perform at each of the first 9 aids stations and a miraculous thing happened.
My nausea calmed down.
I began to feel less tired.
And
-surprisingly-
I'm peeing again!
Of course, the Perform doesn't last forever; it's pretty vile stuff that late in the day. But my problems were delayed a few hours, and I was happy for that.
I was really taken aback by how boring the run was. Maybe there's not much you can really look at in Panama City (besides the ocean, and we've seen plenty of that), but man it was boring. We just wove in and out of side streets that all looked alike. I was looking for the entrance to the park and not seeing anything I was looking for. I waste away the first out section in such a state, and finally reach the entrance around mile 5.5. I lap my Garmin and see how long it will take to get through it. The park, for all the warnings I got about it, was actually my favorite part of the course. Something about the tall, weird shaped trees reminded me of a lion or tiger exhibit at the zoo; one of those REALLY big ones you navigate by car. So I was running along wondering what kind of exotic creatures may be lurking in the bushes. The things we do for entertainment.
I complete the 2 mile park section in about 21 minutes, and keep that in the back of my mind for the second lap. Not too long out of the park, I have what I immediately swear to myself is my last sip of Perform; we're switching to coke at mile 10. 4 GU packets still jingle-jangle in my pockets in case I get in trouble, but coke has never steered me wrong. Well, except at CdA when I choked on my Pepto tab, but I can't blame the coke for that.
The last 5 miles back into town went from me thinking I could run the whole thing, to me being pretty damn sure I can't even run the whole 5 miles. I do a little shuffling as I make it back into town, but mostly running. I want to run the first loop in 2:30 and let the second loop fall where it may. Whatever, this is a fun race. I make it back to Special Needs FINALLY and begin dressing warm. I kind of anticipated needing some warmer clothes for a slower back half, and after not having it at CdA I knew enough that it was worth packing some extras. I added a long sleeve shirt, some gloves and changed shoes. The shoe change was because it's not comfortable, or good for your legs, to walk in Newtons. I didn't plan on running the last bit, so I put on some flatter Saucony's. I can still run in them if it comes to that, but more than likely I'll be walking. Which is fine.
I decide to go ahead and pop my energy drink and take some pepto tabs before I head back out. I decide I'm going to run 5 minutes and walk 5 minutes. If I can run an 11 min pace and walk a sub 20 min pace, then I can still shuffle in to around a 6 hour marathon and around another PR. So off I run onto my first 5 minute jog section. 5 minutes seems like an awful long time both on the running and the walking sections. The running section got spoiled pretty early on by puking. I don't know what it is about taking pepto tabs my body finds so offensive; like it takes it personally that I don't let it take care of the nausea on its terms. This time, though, I decide that I'm going to keep running after throwing up. I've bonked doing that before, but I have gels. No worries; let's blaze a new path.
The 5 on/5 off is too long, so I switch to 3/3. This is plenty fine for the next 5 miles to the park. I'm still drinking coke and water and still have not bonked, nor dipped into my gels. I start to feel kind of better again as I near the park and decide to go for it. The loudest piece of advice I got prior to this race told me to GET OUT OF THE PARK ON THE SECOND LOOP! If you start walking in the park, it feels like you never leave. The park really got into some people's heads. Regardless, it made me fear it, and made me strategize around it. I decided to run as much as I could when I got there. This was an interesting endeavor; I hadn't really willed myself to run that far that late in an Ironman before. The closest I'd come was running mile 14.5-15.5 at CdA; this was running mile 18.5-20.5 through a lion enclosure. I kept going, kept up the pace and almost made it! I couldn't go anymore around mile 20, but soon found myself out of the park and counting down the miles to go. I've earned a nice walk break before I start the shuffle again.
But then it happened. Something that's never happened before. I was passed by a racer coming out of the park running about the same pace as I (when I was running). He said "if we can manage a 12-13 min/mi pace, we can break 14 hours." My first thought was "what? No we can't!" Then I got to thinking about it for a second. Idk, maybe we could, if I ran the whole way. But the whole last 10k? Impossible. No thank you. My shuffle is getting me there just fine.
And that was the end of the conversation...
For a little while...
About a half mile, in fact. I took a bit of time to really digest that notion. I felt like I could run more; the park proved I could. I was only 5 miles from the finish line, which would only take an hour to run it. This was my last race for a while; it's not like I had to be cautious. In fact, I'd never really finished an Ironman running before. Why is that? What do I have against finishing one of these strong? Why do I think it's so impossible?
So I make a very loud prayer to keep me safe and keep me strong over the last little bit. I have no idea if this is possible or if trying will leave me face down in the dirt like it did last June. But I'm going to try it. I'm going to air it out and see where it got me.
And off I run.
I'm still stopping at the aid stations to grab coke; I've pretty much given up on water and I'm throwing away my gels. With all the running, I'd long since taken off my gloves and long sleeve shirt and put them away. It's so like my luck: when I need them, I don't have them; when I have them, I don't need them because I'm running at mile 22 of the marathon. I make it about 2.5 miles before stopping for a walk. It didn't seem necessary to pound myself continuously for another 3 miles, so I took a few minutes, got in some more coke and picked it up again at mile 24. It became increasingly obvious to me that I was going to go sub 14, which was unbelievable after shooting for 14:50 a few hours ago. The sub 14 pace soon became too easy, and for a time I went for 13:45. That didn't last for long, as the numbers didn't make sense in the closing miles. So I took a walk break here and there, stopped to pee once. Had only I'd known what my final finish time would have been.
The finish line at Florida was a big buzzkill. Well, not the line specifically as the lead into the line. I figured I was in the home stretch when I turned onto Front Beach Rd at mile 25.5, but by the time you backtracked to Thomas Dr, they make you circumnavigate a restaurant and file in the back way. So at mile mark 26, you run out of the neon lights, out of the wall of spectators, out of the noise and the faint glow of the finish line and out into some stupid pitch-dark back road with a construction site on one side and a parking lot on the left. Not cool, race organizers.
The finish chute, once you get there, was pretty par for the course. I never really have the capacity to fully enjoy and appreciate the final 100 feet as much as I feel I deserve to, but I point to the sky, pump my arms and smile like a guy who just took 1:10 off his PR. I'm the happiest I've been since my first IM finish as I get shuttled through the chute. I get the standard medal -> shirt -> hat, none of which I have grand plans for, but start to worry my finish line catcher with a hacking cough I can't seem to control. Did I mention I have a cold? That I've had a cold for 2 weeks? Maybe I should have pointed that out earlier. Like I needed one more thing working against me today.
Run time: 5:26:24
My marathon PR is 5:07:XX, if you can believe it. And I've never ran a sub 6 hr IM marathon.
Total time: 13:47:53; A PR by 1:11:56
For the first time in my Ironman life, I finished early enough to go home, shower, change clothes and come back for the late night finishers. This is the best news of the day. I won't make a big deal about how hard it was to get back to the condo in such a late state of exhaustion >.<
What's important is that I had a great race. Definitely the only Ironman I can truly say I'm happy the way it panned out. Let's bookend this blog with Facebook updates.
"has NEVER gone that deep (into the pain cave), and for the first time avoided "worst case scenario." Not a perfect race, but a pretty damn good one! So satisfied!"
The run course at Florida reminded me a bit of Louisville; essentially a dead flat out and back on city roads, snaking through residential and downtown commercial buildings, and boring as snot. I knew enough about the course to know that there's a loop through St. Andrew's State Park right at the end of the out-and-back, and that I should fear it very, very much. So, step one is to simply get there and scope it out.
It didn't take long for my pace to slide. It took probably a mile to get my HR up to race pace, then I progressively slowed over the next few. By mile 4, I was ready to start walking. I didn't walk, didn't even allow allotted walking breaks, but I couldn't help but wonder if I'd end up clocking a new slowest marathon ever.
It didn't help things that I was feeling pretty crappy right out of the gate. The nausea that usually doesn't join the party until lap 2 of the run, started ruining my good time within the 2nd mile marker. Such a situation caused me to realize something for the first time: I don't really NEED gels out there. I mean, let's consider this: I'm of the opinion that I don't get enough water in me to fully digest the gels on the run; that I'm always running dehydrated and not allowing my body to absorb the calories I'm taking in. Why, then, would I want to use gels? Why not just stick to IM Perform? Well, let's try it, huh? I threw back a cup of water and a cup of Perform at each of the first 9 aids stations and a miraculous thing happened.
My nausea calmed down.
I began to feel less tired.
And
-surprisingly-
I'm peeing again!
Of course, the Perform doesn't last forever; it's pretty vile stuff that late in the day. But my problems were delayed a few hours, and I was happy for that.
I was really taken aback by how boring the run was. Maybe there's not much you can really look at in Panama City (besides the ocean, and we've seen plenty of that), but man it was boring. We just wove in and out of side streets that all looked alike. I was looking for the entrance to the park and not seeing anything I was looking for. I waste away the first out section in such a state, and finally reach the entrance around mile 5.5. I lap my Garmin and see how long it will take to get through it. The park, for all the warnings I got about it, was actually my favorite part of the course. Something about the tall, weird shaped trees reminded me of a lion or tiger exhibit at the zoo; one of those REALLY big ones you navigate by car. So I was running along wondering what kind of exotic creatures may be lurking in the bushes. The things we do for entertainment.
I complete the 2 mile park section in about 21 minutes, and keep that in the back of my mind for the second lap. Not too long out of the park, I have what I immediately swear to myself is my last sip of Perform; we're switching to coke at mile 10. 4 GU packets still jingle-jangle in my pockets in case I get in trouble, but coke has never steered me wrong. Well, except at CdA when I choked on my Pepto tab, but I can't blame the coke for that.
The last 5 miles back into town went from me thinking I could run the whole thing, to me being pretty damn sure I can't even run the whole 5 miles. I do a little shuffling as I make it back into town, but mostly running. I want to run the first loop in 2:30 and let the second loop fall where it may. Whatever, this is a fun race. I make it back to Special Needs FINALLY and begin dressing warm. I kind of anticipated needing some warmer clothes for a slower back half, and after not having it at CdA I knew enough that it was worth packing some extras. I added a long sleeve shirt, some gloves and changed shoes. The shoe change was because it's not comfortable, or good for your legs, to walk in Newtons. I didn't plan on running the last bit, so I put on some flatter Saucony's. I can still run in them if it comes to that, but more than likely I'll be walking. Which is fine.
I decide to go ahead and pop my energy drink and take some pepto tabs before I head back out. I decide I'm going to run 5 minutes and walk 5 minutes. If I can run an 11 min pace and walk a sub 20 min pace, then I can still shuffle in to around a 6 hour marathon and around another PR. So off I run onto my first 5 minute jog section. 5 minutes seems like an awful long time both on the running and the walking sections. The running section got spoiled pretty early on by puking. I don't know what it is about taking pepto tabs my body finds so offensive; like it takes it personally that I don't let it take care of the nausea on its terms. This time, though, I decide that I'm going to keep running after throwing up. I've bonked doing that before, but I have gels. No worries; let's blaze a new path.
The 5 on/5 off is too long, so I switch to 3/3. This is plenty fine for the next 5 miles to the park. I'm still drinking coke and water and still have not bonked, nor dipped into my gels. I start to feel kind of better again as I near the park and decide to go for it. The loudest piece of advice I got prior to this race told me to GET OUT OF THE PARK ON THE SECOND LOOP! If you start walking in the park, it feels like you never leave. The park really got into some people's heads. Regardless, it made me fear it, and made me strategize around it. I decided to run as much as I could when I got there. This was an interesting endeavor; I hadn't really willed myself to run that far that late in an Ironman before. The closest I'd come was running mile 14.5-15.5 at CdA; this was running mile 18.5-20.5 through a lion enclosure. I kept going, kept up the pace and almost made it! I couldn't go anymore around mile 20, but soon found myself out of the park and counting down the miles to go. I've earned a nice walk break before I start the shuffle again.
But then it happened. Something that's never happened before. I was passed by a racer coming out of the park running about the same pace as I (when I was running). He said "if we can manage a 12-13 min/mi pace, we can break 14 hours." My first thought was "what? No we can't!" Then I got to thinking about it for a second. Idk, maybe we could, if I ran the whole way. But the whole last 10k? Impossible. No thank you. My shuffle is getting me there just fine.
And that was the end of the conversation...
For a little while...
About a half mile, in fact. I took a bit of time to really digest that notion. I felt like I could run more; the park proved I could. I was only 5 miles from the finish line, which would only take an hour to run it. This was my last race for a while; it's not like I had to be cautious. In fact, I'd never really finished an Ironman running before. Why is that? What do I have against finishing one of these strong? Why do I think it's so impossible?
So I make a very loud prayer to keep me safe and keep me strong over the last little bit. I have no idea if this is possible or if trying will leave me face down in the dirt like it did last June. But I'm going to try it. I'm going to air it out and see where it got me.
And off I run.
I'm still stopping at the aid stations to grab coke; I've pretty much given up on water and I'm throwing away my gels. With all the running, I'd long since taken off my gloves and long sleeve shirt and put them away. It's so like my luck: when I need them, I don't have them; when I have them, I don't need them because I'm running at mile 22 of the marathon. I make it about 2.5 miles before stopping for a walk. It didn't seem necessary to pound myself continuously for another 3 miles, so I took a few minutes, got in some more coke and picked it up again at mile 24. It became increasingly obvious to me that I was going to go sub 14, which was unbelievable after shooting for 14:50 a few hours ago. The sub 14 pace soon became too easy, and for a time I went for 13:45. That didn't last for long, as the numbers didn't make sense in the closing miles. So I took a walk break here and there, stopped to pee once. Had only I'd known what my final finish time would have been.
The finish line at Florida was a big buzzkill. Well, not the line specifically as the lead into the line. I figured I was in the home stretch when I turned onto Front Beach Rd at mile 25.5, but by the time you backtracked to Thomas Dr, they make you circumnavigate a restaurant and file in the back way. So at mile mark 26, you run out of the neon lights, out of the wall of spectators, out of the noise and the faint glow of the finish line and out into some stupid pitch-dark back road with a construction site on one side and a parking lot on the left. Not cool, race organizers.
The finish chute, once you get there, was pretty par for the course. I never really have the capacity to fully enjoy and appreciate the final 100 feet as much as I feel I deserve to, but I point to the sky, pump my arms and smile like a guy who just took 1:10 off his PR. I'm the happiest I've been since my first IM finish as I get shuttled through the chute. I get the standard medal -> shirt -> hat, none of which I have grand plans for, but start to worry my finish line catcher with a hacking cough I can't seem to control. Did I mention I have a cold? That I've had a cold for 2 weeks? Maybe I should have pointed that out earlier. Like I needed one more thing working against me today.
Run time: 5:26:24
My marathon PR is 5:07:XX, if you can believe it. And I've never ran a sub 6 hr IM marathon.
Total time: 13:47:53; A PR by 1:11:56
For the first time in my Ironman life, I finished early enough to go home, shower, change clothes and come back for the late night finishers. This is the best news of the day. I won't make a big deal about how hard it was to get back to the condo in such a late state of exhaustion >.<
What's important is that I had a great race. Definitely the only Ironman I can truly say I'm happy the way it panned out. Let's bookend this blog with Facebook updates.
"has NEVER gone that deep (into the pain cave), and for the first time avoided "worst case scenario." Not a perfect race, but a pretty damn good one! So satisfied!"
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Ironman Coeur d'Alene - Pre-race and The Swim
June 26, 2011
The morning could not be more typical of a pre-Ironman race. I woke up before my alarm in the most ineffable mix of awake and exhausted. The simple fact that I was not allowed to go back to sleep made me feel like I wanted to, but the knowledge of what was to come likely would have prevented me from doing so. In either case, I drug myself out of bed and dressed warm for breakfast and messing around. I popped on 300, but didn't end up watching it much at all. After breakfast, I busied myself with using the bathroom as many times as I could and readying my nutrition and special needs bags. We get out of the cabin at 5am and I get up to transition by 6.
This is the first time of my 3 140.6 attempts that I don't find myself rushed and flustered. I have way more time than I need to do a handful of tasks, so I do as much walking around as I can to help kill time. It's still rather chilly in NW Idaho at this hour, low 50s, and I wonder how long it will take to warm up on the bike. Most of the morning, as well as most of the last 3 days, have been preoccupied by a general sense of dread that I'd forgotten something critically important. Up until now I have not yet found out what that was, so I have to trust that I do, in fact, have all my bases covered. Trust your instincts, man!
In good time, they close transition and herd us onto the extremely wide beach at the waterfront. I can’t help but think that it’s an incredibly strange place to put a beach, but it’s there and allows the always-preferable mass start. It takes a very long time to navigate the sea of sheeple across the one timing mat, but I make it in good time by going around most of them. I end up on the beach with about 15 mins to go, which is more time than I’d prefer to be there. In addition to my wetsuit and two swim caps, I have a silicone cap that goes over my ears and wraps under my chin. Not as warm as a neoprene cap, but more versatile and I was sure enough for today’s 56 degree dip in Lake Coeur d’Alene. With 5 minutes left, I dump most of the two gallons of hot water, which is now barely passable as room temperature, into my suit; more glad that I don’t have to carry them anymore than any benefit they may have provided. They play the national anthem… I think. I couldn’t hear anything with my caps on. We were given the one minute warning, so I dumped the rest of the water in and positioned myself 4 rows back, about 25m to the right side of the buoy line. I didn’t hear the gun go off, but figured either it had, or 1,000 people had false started; they’ll probably let it slide this time.
Upon immediately entering the water, I find it’s not as uncomfortably cold as it was yesterday, which is nice. It’s still way colder than I would have wanted it to be, but I’m confident that I can handle it. It did not take very long for the washing machine to begin. The problem with the Coeur d’Alene’s beach start isn’t the start itself, but the first several hundred yards. Despite having hundreds of yards of beach upon which to line up, all 2,400 athletes wanted the quickest line to the buoys. So quickly into the swim, we all converged. And it was violent. It was painful. It was dangerous. It was the worst swim I’ve ever been involved in. I love mass starts, I love the physicality, but I wanted out of this one. This took it to a whole ‘nother level. To make matters worse, apparently everything hurts 10X worse when you’re swimming in frigid waters. Every kick to the face, every punch to the head, every time I’d run into another, hurt like crazy. And trust me, there were a LOT of them to go around.
The only benefit of all the commotion was the draft, which seemed to more than cancel out the reverse pull of the current. Rather than stay in a pack, I found myself fighting for clean water and finding it, only to run into a pack again within a hundred yards. Nothing but air bubbles that opened up in the monster slowly eating its way south. It was a predictably large clusterfuck at the first turn buoy and I was beginning to get very sick of all the physicality. Turning and heading east was directly into the sun; good thing I had feet to follow.
It didn’t last long and we soon turned north back to town. The 1,000 yards back were less eventful and I had hoped I would be able to settle into my own pace now. It became increasingly difficult to really see where I was going, and soon found myself sighting off of the wrong buoy, off course by 30 yards! I worked my way back into the fold and looked forward to getting out of the water. It seemed to take a long time to pull myself back in, despite a pretty noticeable push from the current, but I soon began to decipher recognizable sights; namely that large inflatable swim finish awning. I soon see the bottom of the lake and touch sand for the first time since the start. I dolphin dive in and leisurely stroll out of the lake; there are too many people in front of me to sprint. I notice my watch says 37 minutes for the first lap. I don’t know if that’s good or not, but I am glad to be out of the water.
At least for a few seconds. After rounding the corner, we jump back into the water for lap two. This is every bit as unpleasant as I thought it would be. It’s amazing to me how much my feet are hurting from the short jaunt on the sand. What little stimulation the sand had on my frozen feet had been magnified to feel like a hundred knives being driven into the bed of my foot. The pack is still intact and I’m still running into someone every few minutes. And it still hurts like hell. Last time I ever neglect to cut my fingernails before a triathlon. It’s not too long into the second lap that I’m swearing and ready for retaliation after every little bump. I’m not really feeling spectacularly cold, but I’m starting to think I should have better prepared for this.
With very little patience, we round the turn for the last time and head back toward the beach and T1. By this time, I’m really starting to worry. The cold has taken its toll. I’ve swallowed way too much water and am starting to feel nauseated. I don’t think I’ll need to puke just yet, but I need to start being more deliberate when I breathe; I’m just not paying attention anymore. My depth perception is absolutely shot and every buoy looks like the last one. At one point near the end, I stop and tread water just to see how far away that damn beach is; it’s at least 500 yards. For the first time I really consider taking the DNF, if it meant being out of this and into warm clothes. After far too long in the frigid waters, and long after my mind started to go fuzzy, I finally neared the beach and was able to lift myself out of the lake. And I’m struggling to recall a time when I’ve ever been happier to finish a swim leg.
Swim time: 1:18:26
The run up the beach is a walk, and a dizzy one at that. I slam my shoulders into athletes and the barricade a few times trying to get to the wetsuit strippers. I felt like an animal, moving forward without any consciousness or sense of purpose; continuing only because I had rehearsed it so completely in my mind.
I am a shaking, wet mess in T1, which thankfully is extremely humid with the wet, warm bodies in there. It takes me a while to get everything out of my bag and onto my tremoring self, but I eventually manage it and head towards the bike. Had I to do it again, I would have spent some more time in the heated tents and regained my composure. But I did a swim-bike yesterday and warmed up pretty easily, so I didn’t think it would be a problem. I had made up my mind to skip the T1 hot tents before the swim began, and was way too out of it to make my own decisions when the time came. So I climb on my bike, turn on my Garmin and begin the ride, all completely fueled by reflex.
T1: 7:40
The morning could not be more typical of a pre-Ironman race. I woke up before my alarm in the most ineffable mix of awake and exhausted. The simple fact that I was not allowed to go back to sleep made me feel like I wanted to, but the knowledge of what was to come likely would have prevented me from doing so. In either case, I drug myself out of bed and dressed warm for breakfast and messing around. I popped on 300, but didn't end up watching it much at all. After breakfast, I busied myself with using the bathroom as many times as I could and readying my nutrition and special needs bags. We get out of the cabin at 5am and I get up to transition by 6.
This is the first time of my 3 140.6 attempts that I don't find myself rushed and flustered. I have way more time than I need to do a handful of tasks, so I do as much walking around as I can to help kill time. It's still rather chilly in NW Idaho at this hour, low 50s, and I wonder how long it will take to warm up on the bike. Most of the morning, as well as most of the last 3 days, have been preoccupied by a general sense of dread that I'd forgotten something critically important. Up until now I have not yet found out what that was, so I have to trust that I do, in fact, have all my bases covered. Trust your instincts, man!
In good time, they close transition and herd us onto the extremely wide beach at the waterfront. I can’t help but think that it’s an incredibly strange place to put a beach, but it’s there and allows the always-preferable mass start. It takes a very long time to navigate the sea of sheeple across the one timing mat, but I make it in good time by going around most of them. I end up on the beach with about 15 mins to go, which is more time than I’d prefer to be there. In addition to my wetsuit and two swim caps, I have a silicone cap that goes over my ears and wraps under my chin. Not as warm as a neoprene cap, but more versatile and I was sure enough for today’s 56 degree dip in Lake Coeur d’Alene. With 5 minutes left, I dump most of the two gallons of hot water, which is now barely passable as room temperature, into my suit; more glad that I don’t have to carry them anymore than any benefit they may have provided. They play the national anthem… I think. I couldn’t hear anything with my caps on. We were given the one minute warning, so I dumped the rest of the water in and positioned myself 4 rows back, about 25m to the right side of the buoy line. I didn’t hear the gun go off, but figured either it had, or 1,000 people had false started; they’ll probably let it slide this time.
Upon immediately entering the water, I find it’s not as uncomfortably cold as it was yesterday, which is nice. It’s still way colder than I would have wanted it to be, but I’m confident that I can handle it. It did not take very long for the washing machine to begin. The problem with the Coeur d’Alene’s beach start isn’t the start itself, but the first several hundred yards. Despite having hundreds of yards of beach upon which to line up, all 2,400 athletes wanted the quickest line to the buoys. So quickly into the swim, we all converged. And it was violent. It was painful. It was dangerous. It was the worst swim I’ve ever been involved in. I love mass starts, I love the physicality, but I wanted out of this one. This took it to a whole ‘nother level. To make matters worse, apparently everything hurts 10X worse when you’re swimming in frigid waters. Every kick to the face, every punch to the head, every time I’d run into another, hurt like crazy. And trust me, there were a LOT of them to go around.
The only benefit of all the commotion was the draft, which seemed to more than cancel out the reverse pull of the current. Rather than stay in a pack, I found myself fighting for clean water and finding it, only to run into a pack again within a hundred yards. Nothing but air bubbles that opened up in the monster slowly eating its way south. It was a predictably large clusterfuck at the first turn buoy and I was beginning to get very sick of all the physicality. Turning and heading east was directly into the sun; good thing I had feet to follow.
It didn’t last long and we soon turned north back to town. The 1,000 yards back were less eventful and I had hoped I would be able to settle into my own pace now. It became increasingly difficult to really see where I was going, and soon found myself sighting off of the wrong buoy, off course by 30 yards! I worked my way back into the fold and looked forward to getting out of the water. It seemed to take a long time to pull myself back in, despite a pretty noticeable push from the current, but I soon began to decipher recognizable sights; namely that large inflatable swim finish awning. I soon see the bottom of the lake and touch sand for the first time since the start. I dolphin dive in and leisurely stroll out of the lake; there are too many people in front of me to sprint. I notice my watch says 37 minutes for the first lap. I don’t know if that’s good or not, but I am glad to be out of the water.
At least for a few seconds. After rounding the corner, we jump back into the water for lap two. This is every bit as unpleasant as I thought it would be. It’s amazing to me how much my feet are hurting from the short jaunt on the sand. What little stimulation the sand had on my frozen feet had been magnified to feel like a hundred knives being driven into the bed of my foot. The pack is still intact and I’m still running into someone every few minutes. And it still hurts like hell. Last time I ever neglect to cut my fingernails before a triathlon. It’s not too long into the second lap that I’m swearing and ready for retaliation after every little bump. I’m not really feeling spectacularly cold, but I’m starting to think I should have better prepared for this.
With very little patience, we round the turn for the last time and head back toward the beach and T1. By this time, I’m really starting to worry. The cold has taken its toll. I’ve swallowed way too much water and am starting to feel nauseated. I don’t think I’ll need to puke just yet, but I need to start being more deliberate when I breathe; I’m just not paying attention anymore. My depth perception is absolutely shot and every buoy looks like the last one. At one point near the end, I stop and tread water just to see how far away that damn beach is; it’s at least 500 yards. For the first time I really consider taking the DNF, if it meant being out of this and into warm clothes. After far too long in the frigid waters, and long after my mind started to go fuzzy, I finally neared the beach and was able to lift myself out of the lake. And I’m struggling to recall a time when I’ve ever been happier to finish a swim leg.
Swim time: 1:18:26
The run up the beach is a walk, and a dizzy one at that. I slam my shoulders into athletes and the barricade a few times trying to get to the wetsuit strippers. I felt like an animal, moving forward without any consciousness or sense of purpose; continuing only because I had rehearsed it so completely in my mind.
I am a shaking, wet mess in T1, which thankfully is extremely humid with the wet, warm bodies in there. It takes me a while to get everything out of my bag and onto my tremoring self, but I eventually manage it and head towards the bike. Had I to do it again, I would have spent some more time in the heated tents and regained my composure. But I did a swim-bike yesterday and warmed up pretty easily, so I didn’t think it would be a problem. I had made up my mind to skip the T1 hot tents before the swim began, and was way too out of it to make my own decisions when the time came. So I climb on my bike, turn on my Garmin and begin the ride, all completely fueled by reflex.
T1: 7:40
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