"Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to witness one of the greatest spectacles in all of sport!"
These are the muddled words I hear over the loudspeaker while standing on the beach with 2100 other athletes minutes before the start of Ironman Coeur d'Alene (IMCDA) 2008. And I kind of seize on that word "spectacle", because spectacles are great for the person watching. They're not always so great for the people in said spectacle. Oh well, let's get on with this thing.
Just like at Ironman Canada last year, there was no real warning for the athletes. At some point the announcer is talking and the cannon goes off rather suddenly. Start the watch, here we go.
I was a little concerned about the beach start. So many athletes packed into such a small space and rushing into the water can be...unfriendly. But honestly the start wasn't bad. People made their way into the water in a fairly orderly fashion. What happened over the next 61 one minutes was anything but. I had prepared myself for a rough 5-10 minutes as the swim got going, but there was just no open water to be found at any point. I'd get a good swim stroke going, then I'd run into somebody or get clocked in the head or the arm or have someone up on my legs. Deep breaths, long strokes, stay relaxed.
The swim course is a 2-lap rectangular swim. Between the laps you have to get out, go over a timing mat, then get back in. It was very slow on the way out and faster on the way back in, due to a current and some wind that was picking up. The scrum never really broke...
IMCDA was my third Ironman in 16 months, with the prior one being in Canada in August 2007. After IMC, I took some down time and then worked out a plan with my coach for the 10 month training cycle. Run a lot over the winter, targeting a January marathon. Race the bike a bit in the spring, targeting a month of racing. Continue to focus on improving my swim. All of these things did their jobs and I've gotten much better across all disciplines. Looking back at my training logs from last year, the differences are pretty dramatic. I was really looking forward to IMCDA and what an Ironman would be like as a fitter, more experienced athlete.
We arrived in Coeur d'Alene, ID the Thursday before the race. Having grown up in nearby Spokane, this was almost a home town race for me. The weather obliged and we were treated to sunny, mid-70s weather as we kicked around the town and got ready for the race. Deb found an amazing house to rent about 3 blocks from transition. A five minute walk. And that's if you got stopped at the light. Two other couples joined us (not racing) and it was all Ironman, all the time. My last few workouts went well, but I wasn't as focused on this race mentally as prior races. It wasn't over confidence as much as some kind of "it'll work out" attitude. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my checklists from prior races so we kind of had to re-invent everything. It seemed like it was under control. I was ready to just get out and race, but it never seemed real that the race was just days away.
...about half way through the first lap of the swim, I felt my timing strap working its way off my ankle. I swam inside the buoys, flipped over and tried to pull it off. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but it wouldn't come off anyway. So I flexed my ankle to hold it, and swam the rest of the lap with it the way it was. This was awkward and didn't help my pace but it worked, and I fixed it on the way into the next lap. This was a good taste of how the rest of the day would go. Small, irritating issues that were fortunately manageable.
I got out of the water a 1:11, my slowest Ironman swim by two minutes. After hoping to swim 1:02-1:04, I was not so thrilled with this number, but it was clear to me that it was slow for everyone so I didn't worry about it and went on my way. I was just happy it was over with, and was looking forward to the non-contact portion of the race.
It took about 15 minutes to get my legs moving on the bike and the first two hours were great. I was riding my target power and it was like I was shot out of a cannon. I was passing hundreds of people and riding comfortably. I hit the first turn around - 34 miles - with an average speed of 20.7 miles per hour, even after all of the hills in the prior 15 miles. This was going very well - I felt like I was holding back, big time. Right on plan. The CdA course is hilly headed up north, then flat to slightly downhill south back into town. I was looking forward to doing 22 or 23 miles an hour all the way back into town...
Saturday night before the race, we had a nice light pasta and chicken dinner and were in bed by 9:30. Everything was done and we weren't rushed or doing last minute things. We slept well, but were woken by pouring rain a few times during night. June 22 is the longest day of the year. That's good when you're waking up at 3:45am. It was almost light by 4, and the skies had cleared. Perfect weather. I couldn't manage to get my planned 1,000 calories down and gave up at around 600. I felt miserable for the next hour. Breakfast is the worst part of Ironman.
Deb and I went down to transition and had some confusion about where we were supposed to put our special needs bags, and we couldn't find a body-marker. Fortunately, the long lines at IMC taught us a lesson and we brought a magic marker and marked each other after seeing how other people were done. This was kind of fun and made for a good back up plan. We got our stuff situated then went to stand on the beach and wait for the start. No real hurry and we had plenty of time.
...my great progress on the bike wasn't to last. The wind that had caused the Rumble in the Lake was blowing directly north. And we're riding south. Doing 20 miles per hour into it was hard work. Before long I started to feel it a bit on the bike. At mile 40 I realized that I hadn't taken any electrolyte tablets - had totally forgotten about them. Not a disaster, I just got them back into my plan. But my stomach was getting unhappy again and I was again getting behind on calories.
I bumped my wattage goals down a bit and tried to get into a rhythm. My heart rate was still very low, much lower than my exertion would have predicted. I was starting to suffer. I just kept at it, and things continued this way for the rest of the bike. Low HR. Bad stomach. At about mile 70, my left aero bar pad and bracket broke off almost completely so I had no where to rest my elbow (when I told people this, it seems everyone saw it in the road "oh, that was yours!"). Through the hills on the 2nd lap I was really dragging ass and some people I'd dropped got back up to me. At about mile 80, my back started getting tight and sore. I kept trying to force feed myself my calories, it was ugly. As we headed back into town, I picked up the pace again. I figured the damage was done and that I should just get it over with...
If there's one thing that I'd really worked on, it was my running. I had run very close to a 4 hour marathon at my other races but really lost a lot of time in the last few miles when I'd run out of gas. I wanted to avoid that and have a good run without a 6-8 mile death march at the end. From talking to other people, it seemed the key was being very conservative early on and then building into a pace. Most people are used to going fast on the bike and then they run too fast. This catches up with you quickly. I did a couple of runs after my long rides where I would run as easy as I could. I was surprised to see that these runs would end up at somewhere near an 8:15 pace, which works jusssst fiiiiine, so that's what I was shooting for.
...T2 was a great set up at this race. My buddy Owen was volunteering as a bike catcher and was there to take my bike. He asked me how I was and I gave him a 5 word executive summary of my experience over the last 5 and a half hours. It's a direct line from the bike drop off, through the bike-to-run bags, to the tent, to the run start, so its a very efficient process. I had my fastest Ironman transition ever at 2:15, and this included walking from the bags to the tent (bike cleats plus basketball court, not so good for running). I think I got between 1100-1200 calories in on the bike, maybe less. I assumed I was going to get crushed on the run when this ticking time-bomb of calorie deficit caught up with me. Hey, what the heck. Let's go find out!
What's funny is that I hadn't really recon'd the run course at all. I knew it was pretty well flat, I'd run the main part of it, but was kind of foggy about how you got from transition to that main part of the course. Most of the course follows the lake (incidentally, it goes along the same route as the bike course) and it's on a nice asphalt trail that's flat (no road crown) and smooth. For two sections of the course -- about 4 miles total of a 13 mile lap -- I was basically exploring. This made it a little more interesting. Immediately out of transition, I see my buddy Scott Greene coming the other direction. He'd passed me on the bike (expected) and I was glad to see he was 10-or-so minutes up the road on me. We made eye contact and gave each other a nod on the way by.
The transition was so quick, I actually had transition legs, which was new for an IM. No problem. I hit my first mile in 7:46, then two miles at around 8:05, then settled in for 6 or 7 miles at 8:15, literally holding back as much as I could muster. I was frantic about my calorie situation, and was taking in as much as I possibly could. Water, coke, and gels. My HR was still oddly low. After about 10 miles I'd forgotten about my experience on the bike. I was running pretty comfortably. It was mostly a mental game more than a physical one - "okay, that wasn't so bad, let's run one more 8:15 mile". I needed to go to the bathroom but kept putting it off, trying to run one more good mile. At mile 11 I stopped (coincidentally the aid station we worked last year), used the bathroom, then stretched my quads and groin. This helped immensely, and I decided I'd do it again at mile 20. As the miles clicked off, I started to slow a bit to 8:30 miles. This seemed OK as my HR was stable and I was keeping good pace and passing a LOT of people, many of whom were in my age group, which mattered. I kept seeing friends on the course and off. Teresa Rider and Ben & Cindy Bigglestone were down on Lakeshore Avenue (not together but near each other) and were giving me an earful each time I went by. It was awesome.
Before I knew it, I was to mile 20 and I stopped and stretched again for 20 seconds or so. Deb passed me going the other way on her first laps and I thought maybe I could catch her (one of these days...). Mile 21 has a nasty uphill that I walked the steepest part of. It was the right thing. I was running low on gas, and on the downhill I immediately caught and passed the people that ran the whole thing. At mile 22 I wanted to stay with a guy in my age group and ran a harder mile, which really turned the screws on how I felt.
At mile 23 it's just a 5K to go - so close - and I could see the top of the Coeur d'Alene hotel by the finish off in the distance. I knew that all I had to do was run 9:30 miles or better to get in under 10:45. Easy squeezy, right? Not so much, it was getting ugly. At mile 25 I saw Ben, Cindy, and Teresa again. One of them yelled "just two miles to go!" Wha...? I thought about it for a second and knew they were wrong but ran down the road muttering "no...not true...one..mile...just ONE mile..." like Rain Man. It's here where I really started to hurt. It's amazing that after all that ground covered, 26.2 miles is just a little too far. Each little uptick in the road seemed like Mt. Everest.
IMCDA has an amazing finishing stretch, Sherman Ave, slightly downhill with thousands of people along the road and in the bars and restaurants. I trudged up the last little hill and turned onto Sherman. My coach, Scott was there and gave me a high five. At IMC, I kind of trudged to the finish line and I didn't want that to happen again so I sucked it up and ran as well as I could to the finish with my head and shoulders high. My biggest regret from the day is not slowing down just a touch to take it in a bit more. But I was worried about someone from my AG catching me. At the time, I was busy trying to figure out how far it was from the Ironman banner to the finish line. It's like 100ft, but that's what I was worried about. It's all a blur now.
The marathon made my day. I only really suffered for a few miles and I cut 15 minutes off my last IM marathon and finished the day 1:11/5:39/3:47 for a 10:44 total time, 10 minutes faster than IMC 07 on a much, much harder course. I was 330/2588 overall at IMC and was 168/2066 at this race. Likewise I improved to 21st in my AG, versus 63rd at IMC and 37th at IMAZ. Time aside, this was a much better race.
As mentioned in my prior post, this race took me a few days to chew on. At some level, my training had been going so well that I had an idea in my head that I'd be able to cruise the swim and the bike and then go let it rip on the run. Obviously, that's a stupid thing to think. We're all incredibly good at fooling ourselves, aren't we? Racing, almost by definition, hurts. And it should hurt.
Sunday in totality was really, really hard. My coach pointed out to me that "you don't need to feel good to go fast", which is a hard but important lesson to internalize.
Even just 5 days out from the race, I'm already itching to train again after I rest and recover. An easy swim in the pool this morning felt really, really good.
As always, I'm incredibly blessed to share this experience with my lovely and talented Ironpartner Deb who just tore it up out there on Sunday, knocking another 35 minutes off of her time. And the support that I get from my friends and family - Mom, Dad, Paul, Susan, Casey, Owen, Polita, Mark, Ann, Steven, Courtney, Joyia, Wayne, the whole CpC gang, Ben & Cindy, Teresa, and SJ, is truly amazing.
Monday morning we walked around Coeur d'Alene, looked at pictures, loaded up the car, and said goodbye to another Ironman. I headed back into work Tuesday morning, careful to avoid any stairs. And I had tater tots for lunch. Mmmmm, tater tots.