It is already 3 weeks since I did my second Ironman. Since the race I was busy recovering and having fun in Switzerland. Now I am back in Seattle and settling into a normal rhythm again while preparing for my next Ironman. So it is about time that I publish this race report.

After the Issaquah triathlon, were I fell during the bike part, the preparation for the Ironman in Coeur d’Alene (CDA) was like an emotional roller coaster ride. I did some doctor visits to ensure that there is no real problem and he suggested to rest for 6 weeks. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury to rest since I would be racing 3 weeks later. So for the next three weeks I was doing some combination of training, recovering and tapering. I often had pain during my swim workouts and was worried that it would impact my Ironman. I also wasn’t sure if I should rest or just ignore the pain while training, at least the doctor assured me that I most likely can’t do any long term damage.

Based on my training data, I received the pace plan from my coach which estimated a 10:25-10:40 finish time. I was disappointed since I did my first IM in 10:15. But I agreed with the strategy (HR zones) the only thing we adjusted are the wattage caps he had set for the bike. One thing to consider for the comparison is that the swim of my first IM was about 20min fast (current) and the bike course was pancake flat. (Note: that the importance of the pace plan is not the finishing time but rather the pacing strategy like HR, Watts, Pace information. Race time can vary depending on all the external factors weather, fueling, course etc.)

Amy was visiting and we drove together to Coeur d’Alene and got ready for the race. Everything seemed to be in place till I noticed on Saturday afternoon that I forgot my HR strap. After some excitement we were able to locate a store which could sell me a replacement strap. This meant that I had to resynchronize my bike computer in transition area in the morning which I mostly failed because of all the other signals around me. So I had to do it during the race when I started to ride. Even with all these changes, I was surprisingly calm. I knew I put in all the work and was as prepared as I could be.

Swim:

I went to the start and ran into Zac a triathlete which I met before at the Texas70.3 and at the Issaqua triathlon. We discussed strategy and wished each other good luck. We were standing about 4 rows back on the very left off the beach. We were all surprised by the canon sound since there was no countdown. It was chaos right away. I swam to the left of the buoys trying to get out of the mass. There were so many triathletes around there wasn’t much I could do than just hold my position and move forward. There was a lot of contact happening and it wasn’t pleasant. My HR was through the roof and I had a very hard time to stay calm. I didn’t even notice that the water was really cold, but I was also wearing neopren hat and booties which certainly helped. For the first 1000m it was just a constant struggle to find a spot to swim. I remember one time when I was shoulder to shoulder between to other people and there was a person swimming from the left to the right in front of us (about 45degree angle) and all 3 of us just swam over him. I kinda felt bad, but there was nothing I could do about it because if I would have stopped people coming from behind me would have pushed me down. I experienced that first hand at the first buoy. There was a little jam at the first buoys and a lot of pushing. I got pushed down swallowed water and the goggles were full off water. I had to focus hard not to panic. Luckily there was a kayak to hold on catch my breath and put my goggles on again. I was nervous for the next buoys slowed down a little before hand to be more relaxed and have some spare air. That made for a better experience except for the guy in front of me who considered my chest a wall to push himself off from. Once again my thought that the swim is the unfairest part of triathlon was confirmed. In the second loop of the swim I was finally able to relax a little and do a proper swim stroke. Unfortunately, the wind picked up and there were lots of waves. As a result of that I started my fueling early. Good thing it wasn’t salt water 🙂
I finished the 3.8km in 1h10.

T1:

I came out of the water and my chest started hurting when I started to run. I had to stop and breath for a moment, luckily the pain eased off quickly. For a second I was worried that this pain would affect my race but there was nothing I could do besides keep going. The fact that I was super cold didn’t help. I tried to have a quick transition but the cold finger made it challenging.

Bike:

Amy complained that I was going to fast to take pictures 🙂

It was cloudy and in the 60s when I started riding. I had only a singlet and was regretting not to bring along any arm warmers. I was still cold from the swim and had a hard time to warm up. It reminded me of my first IM where it didn’t warm up till I was almost done with the ride. I didn’t care and just focused on race execution and trying to ignore that I was cold. On the first long climb (5km) I just went steady and overtook many other athletes. One told me that he was jealous of my gear choice (11-28) the only thing I was able to think: “At least you have arm warmers”. 2h into the ride the clouds lightened and the sun started to shine. Everything started to look better except my stomach started to complain. I was following my fueling plan but something wasn’t quite right, so I switched to water for a while which seemed to help. From that point on it was a constant struggle to get my fueling in. Eventually I decided to skip 1/2 Powerbar and just take a piece of banana at the next nutrition station in the hope that it will get better. Overall I peed 5 times on the bike which indicates that I was drinking enough. In the first loop the bike I was a constant overtaking and getting re-overtaken by athletes. On the second loop people stopped re-overtaking me and started to fall back, all I did was just keep following my pacing plan. After all my long rides during training, I really enjoyed this hilly bike ride. I put out an average power of 192Watts with an average HR or 137. While the HR was a couple beats lower than planned my watts were higher than expected and so was my bike split. After 5h29min I jumped off the. bike I was ready to run!

T2:

Blazing fast T2. I only needed 80seconds. Only one person from the male pro field was faster than me 🙂

Run:

I started the ran on top of HR zone 1 as planned. I was feeling really good and moving along. I tried to follow my nutrition plan which wasn’t easy because of my stomach. I was pretty lonely out there. There weren’t that many people on the course yet and the sun was burning. I was supposed to eat a Bloks every two miles. I did so at mile 2,4, and 5. I noticed that at mile marker 6 that I screwed up. Unbelievable who would have thought that counting could be that hard. So I planned to take the next one at mile 8 but forgot about it till mile 9 where I took a gel instead. I was still feeling pretty good and moving forward. I I finished the first half in roughly 97min and was feeling good but tired. I told to myself just keep that pace as long as you can. About two miles later I had to pee and after this little rest my body was tempted to stop all the time. So I decided just to power walk the nutrition station which were about a mile apart. That worked well till mile 18 where a “big” hill was. I power walked the whole hill which certainly cost me a lot of time. Afterwards I started running again, but something had happened to me. Even though I did mental preparation and prepared myself how I would motivate myself if the race would get though but suddenly I didn’t care anymore. I became apathetically. I literally said to myself: “If I don’t qualify for Kona because I walk right now, I am not going to regret this”. In hindsight that is really weird and further analysis indicated that I was glycogen depleted and that my brain was planning tricks on me. While walking I started to drink more Cola and a couple miles later I started to move faster again till I managed to run the last 1.5miles without stopping. In the finish chute a guy tried to overtake me, while I was enjoying the crowd. I obviously couldn’t let that happen and sprinted him down. The annoying part was that he wasn’t even in my age group. What an idiot as if these few second mattered, I would have understood if he at least was in the same age group. I finished the marathon in 3h34min and the overall race in 10:19:15.

Post-Race recovery in the lake

With that time I finished 14th in my age group. The last spot for Kona went with a time of 9:45. I need to get another ~35min faster. At least I know that I can get at least 15min by proper race execution and fueling. The rest is done by more/better/harder training… bring it on 🙂
Result:

Bike HR and Watts (Bike file was corrupt and missing the GPS data)

Run HR and Pace

Result website

After match:

The sun was burning down on me for a couple hours and I got a really bad sunburn. After a day I had blister all over my back which indicated that it was a 2nd degree burn and now 3 week later after I peeled the first burned layer the second layer of skin is still burned and sensitive to the sun. My chest feels better by now but is still hurting in swim trainings. But at least my legs are doing great! Sometimes I really wonder how healthy this sport is 🙂

The two dots on my legs are: left over road rash from issaqua + sunburn through the hole (from accident) in my tri pants 🙂

Sunburn... I'll spare you allthe gross pictures when it got really nasty