Race Report: Back to Ironman Racing!

It wasn't pretty, but I'm back racing after a 2 year hiatus and I'm LOVIN' it! If you just looked at the results, you'd see I had a decent swim, a good bike, and a terrible run. And that's true, but there's more to it.

Going strictly from a racing point-of-view, I had a solid swim - not great. Starting in the 20th wave meant there were literally thousands of racers ahead of me. That's means, I started to catch up to slower swimmer after only 5-6 minutes! Passing people when your swimming with hundreds of other racers, with limited visibility is not the easiest thing and it costs time. Other than that, it was a good swim. My PB for 2KM is 29 minutes, so 31:12 is not far off.

Coming out of T1, I made a silly mistake that cost me some more time. As I was jumping onto my bike and put my feet into my shoes (I keep the shoes attached and run barefoot through transition, then jump on the bike and put my feet into the shoes - it saves a lot of time). Anyway, as I did that, my left foot slipped and my shoe popped off and I had to jump off the bike, sit it down and run back to get my shoe. Silly, silly, silly.

OK, so to the bike. Well, again, starting at the back of the pack meant there were a lot of bikers to pass. There are pros and cons to that. Pro: It's fun to fly by a bunch of people and as you pass them, you can get a short draft, which helps a tiny bit each time you do it. Cons: sometimes, they are spread 3-4 wide across the road and it takes a lot of extra care and stress to pass safely.

There were 2 major things that I knew very early into the ride; 1: my legs felt really good and I was riding really well, but 2: I could feel very early on that I was NOT going to able to run well. That's a new feeling and one that I did not expect nor care for much! The past few months, the run was the only thing I was fairly confident in - the swim/bike were the unknowns... weird.

Anyway, so the bike course: the first 30km or so are nice and fast with lots of chicanes, so you really feel like you are flying! The best way to describe the feeling is to watch this video of Fabian Cancellara from the 2007 Tour de France Prologue - skip ahead to 0:50.


At around the 30km point the course gets considerably more difficult as it starts to head inland toward the hills and just to make it more fun this year, the next 40km were into a big head-wind. During this section, there are 3 major climbs and combined with the wind forced a lot of people get off and walk their bikes up! Luckily, thanks to all the "climbs" I do at my spin classes, I was able to stay out of the saddle and just climb up the left of the road, past nearly everyone on the climb - it was fun... in that "torturous" kind of way :)

Thankfully, the last 20km were back to the coast, flat and fast with a partial tail-wind. I did my best to recover as best I could, while at the same time, keeping my speed up (~45kph). I came into T2 in a good position, but I knew I had a tough 1/2 marathon ahead of me...

Oh! I forgot, there was 1 more thing that I'd never experienced on the bike before: a stitch! I've had plenty while running, but I can't remember that ever happening during a ride before! It started about halfway through and stuck with me right until I started the run... not a good way to try and START a 21.1km run!

Anyway, so I won't get into much detail about the 1 hour and 33 minute sufferfest that was the 1/2 marathon, other than to say it was probably the most I have ever suffered for that LONG a time AND while running that slowly! My plan was to try and run 6:30/mile pace, which would give me ~1 hour, 24 minutes - a time I've run 3 times before is 1/2 Ironmans. But, starting off, unable to take full breathes due to the stitch and feeling like garbage anyway, my first mile was 6:35. That quickly dropped to 6:54, then 6:55, then 7:07. I managed to get rid of the stitch around the 5 mile point, and tried to pick up the pace, but there was nothing in the tank. I actually felt like I was running better, but the times just kept getting slower: some up to 7:30/mile.

For the first time, I was getting passed by a bunch of people! Typically, in a tri, only a few people will pass me, if any at all (besides pro's)! I wanted to stop so bad, but would not let myself think about that or the finish, that would only make it worse. I managed to get to the last mile without falling over or completely blowing up and made myself pick it up to finish. The last mile was 6:41 and I passed 2 guys down the finishing chute (I hope there's a pick on the race website of it! haha). Jenn took this picture of me in the last 300m (zoom in and look closely for my Volkwagon symbol, haha).

Once I finished, I found Cliff and found some water in the "recovery" tent. Now, this was awful: they had a country band playing the worst music, super loud and were serving all the finishers the grossest pizza I've ever seen. The combination of the smell and noise was literally making me nauseous. I grabbed 2 water bottles and waddled back outside to find Jenn and my buddy Brian.

Anyway, it was a very rough day, but I after an hour or so, I was lovin' it! It was so nice to back racing again! Plus, I managed to get a sweet "jersey-tan-line"! err.. I mean "burn-line"!

I can take a few things/lessons from the day:
1. My biking legs are there! Spin/cycling classes have really done their job;
2. I need get a LOT more running miles in - I need more 'base';
3. I need to get fitter;
4. I need to practice my race-day nutrition (I'm pretty sure the on-site Gatorade had something to do with the stitch); and
5. Most importantly, I do, in fact, enjoy doing this!

Cliff had an awesome race, finished 5th in his AG, and qualified for the World Ironman 70.3 Championships in Clearwater in November. I was there in 2007 and maybe I'll try to get back again this year. That's means I'll probably race another IM 70.3 in later summer to grab my qualifying slot.

Good to be back! I'll post some race pics once I get them. See y'all out training!
Chris