Sorry for the long post, but there are so many things I wanted to mention. Besides I figured that people who read my blog are reading it to know what is going on in my head and what I experienced. If you are just interested in the result jump to the bottom and use the result link.
Front: "Guido's Ironman Support Team 140.6" Back: "Guido runs like a Swiss Watch"
After Ironman Couer d’Alene (CDA) I wanted to do better. I was amazed at my apathy in that run and didn’t want to repeat that. A big focus of my race preparation was how I could prevent this from happening again. I had two points which I wanted to approve upon. First I wanted to focus on nutrition and keep fueling even if my stomach is upset. For me not only pushing the pace on bike and run is important but stuffing food down my throat. The second aspect was to keep a strong mind and not give in to the weakness of my body during the later parts of the run. I knew I would have the best marathon if I wouldn’t walk. So all in all I wanted a better race execution than at Ironman CDA.
One aspect which should help me with that at this race was my fan crew! Amy’s relatives had a surprise for me. At a pre-race dinner they showed me the support T-shirts and bells to cheer me on. I was excited what could go wrong with such a support team!
Swim:
After the swim at IM CDA I was a little nervous and didn’t want to get beat up that badly at the first buoy as last time. Furthermore, I hopped to get into my swimming rhythm as I did in the swim across lake Washington (2.5miles in 63min). My plan was to stay to the outside and rather than having too much of a hassle with other swimmers but focus on moving ahead. I lined up to the right more or less in the first line after treating water for about 10min the cannon went off and we were on the loose.
Swim start
It was a little chaos initially since some of the faster swimmers just move to the left to merge in with the fast swimmers closer to the buoy line. (My goggle fogged up, but didn’t want to stop to clean them. And in fact didn’t for the rest of the race.) But after a couple hundred yards it started to calm down. I was swimming between some other athletes which all seemed to go in the same direction but I had no one to draft off. I took the first buoy wide almost 10 meters away just to stay out of the mess. Than we swam into the sun and it was really hard to see the buoys and were to go. I just relaid on the other swimmers. Next turn I stayed wide again but only about 5 meters out. Than I was on the second straight which was one mile long. I was looking for someone to draft off, but the faster swimmer all seemed gone already. To my surprise that is when it started to get really crowded and a lot of body contact. As it turns out others were slowing down while I was holding my pace so I had to swim through people. The next two turns I again took wide, but only a few meters. I though it was going to be a slow swim, but I glanced at the clock while approaching the exit where I saw 68min. I came out of the water in 64 position in my age group (AG) with a time of 1:08:50, not as good as I hoped but okay.
T1:
Once out of the water I had to run up the “Helix” to the top of the parking lot, that was fun but there were too many athletes and spectators in the way which made passing and a quick transition hard. I still managed to put in a speedy transition (5:52) for the amount of distance we had to cover.
Bike:
For a change I decided to wear arm warmers on the bike since I didn’t want to be as cold for the first 2h as at Ironman CDA. It was pretty windy and the path at the beginning were narrow and had some sharp turns. It took me a while to get comfortable with my aero-wheels. I still haven’t gotten over my two accidents in July yet. This became apparent through the whole ride. I would pass people on the flat and up hill and then they would overtake me on the downhill. This happened for quite a while with another QT2 guy (Trent Hayden). Eventually I lost him at a long and fast downhill. I was riding over 60km/h and other people were flying past me on these curvy roads. But my goal was to get to the starting line of the marathon safe and well fueled. So I was okay, loosing a couple seconds if that meant to get there safe.
I wasn’t particular fond of the bike course because of all it fast turns (I know a couple months ago I would have loved that, I eventually will have to get over my accidents and get back to my aggressive riding style) But I loved the spectators on the hills. It almost looked like some of those climbs at the Tour de France, were you can’t see the side of the rode because of all the people who are cheering you on. They also had some great signs like: “Pop a wheely!”
My support team was also on the course and I saw them twice on the two loop course it was great seeing them especially since there were so many of them all in matching red t-shirts making lots of noise with their cow bells 🙂
After about 140km my bike started to make a weird squeaking noise. I figured that it comes from the rear breaks, maybe some of my sports drink made the breaks sticky and they wouldn’t move back into a neutral position. The noise wasn’t consistent and only happened once in a while. But eventually I had enough off it and got off the bike to wiggle the break by hand. This didn’t cost me too much time but was a little annoying none the less. To prevent this from happening again, I decided not to use the rear breaks anymore.
Than after 160 the bike handling started to feel funny the bumps felt different. I quickly realized that I was loosing air. I jumped off the bike and changed the tube. Initially I started swearing but quickly became very focused on changing the tube. I felt it was the fastest change I ever did, but the Garmin file told me afterwards that it took me 4min14sec to change it. At least the volunteer told me that he though it was quick. But I also noticed that many other athletes rode past me in that time. The one thing which bugged me was that a week ago I read in the LAVA magazine about these quick sealant which could be used to fix the tube without changing it. The magazine stated that an athlete can not afford to not have one of these injectors. I started riding again and decided not to think about it anymore, there was nothing I could do anyway. Besides, I noticed it right before a very sharp turn who knows if I actually could have made the turn if I didn’t notice the lower pressure. I was only hoping that my new tube would be okay to finish the bike part.
I finished the bike part in 5:36:12 in 29th place in my AG. which is about 7min slower than in Couer d’Alene. Considering that the course was harder and the flat tire. I am pretty happy with that time.
T2:
The second transition was really smooth and very quick. But I opted to pee in a porter potty since I didn’t want to run a whole marathon in wet shoes. So I took me 2:50 till I was on the run course.
Run:
Enjoying the first loop
I was supposed to start with a 7:20min/mile no faster! But unfortunately my GPS watch didn’t have a signal at the beginning. So I was flying blind. I was trying hard to go easy but still ended up running the first mile in just below 7min. Even after trying to slow down I still did the second mile too fast. But I wasn’t too concerned since at least according to my HR I was doing fine. The plan was to have a higher average heart rate on the second half of the marathon. According to my coach this is very difficult to do but leads to the best marathon times. My mind game was to tell myself that the first half is just to get me to the start line of my hardest half marathon. Also I didn’t want to walk a single step!
The first loop was uneventful. The course was still pretty empty I focused on fueling and nutrition as planned and overtook a lot of people in my AG. I was feeling great but I knew from previous Ironmans that this can change quickly.
I started the second lap and a guy in front of me who just started his first lap started walking (I was thinking that is going to be a long day for him). Where as the first lap I was able to drink what I needed the second lap was much harder to get what I wanted. So I pretty much took what was able to pick between all the other competitors who were walking. At this point my stomach wasn’t happy anymore but I knew that I couldn’t stop drinking and poured down what ever I got a hold of (Water, Perform, Coke). Even harder were the 3 gels which I forced down during the marathon. There was this last steep hill between mile 18 and 19 at which point I had about an hour left to the finish. If I wanted to not walk at all I obviously had to run this hill and so I did. At mile 20 I told myself it is only a 10k which should take me about 45min and I should be done so I slowly pushed harder and relied upon my feeling rather than my HR.
It became harder and harder to keep pushing my tired legs. Let aside that my stomach wasn’t happy either. I still kept pouring down whatever I get at the aid stations. I was happy about every mile marker I passed an recalculated how long the suffering would last. I knew that I didn’t have a perfect race with the flat and that I lost some time, but I didn’t want to have to tell myself if I only push harder on the last couple miles so I kept pushing even harder. At mile 25 my I started to have some slight cramping but just a little it didn’t lock up completely. Even though the last two miles had a lot of uphill I still was able to speed up and I ran the last mile in under 7min. I didn’t even care about the finish experience anymore, I just wanted to stop. Good thing they had two volunteers there who would hold me upright and walk me away. Once I crossed this finish line all my strength seemed gone and I honestly couldn’t have stood on my legs anymore. My legs were just burning and felt power less. I did the marathon in 3:14:43 which was the 2nd fastest time in my AG.
Shortly after crossing the finish line I met up with my support team but I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I sat on a chair and was sipping on my chocolate milk. Not sure how long that took, but Amy wasn’t too happy. She hasn’t seen me in that state before. I knew from previous experience it would take me a while and than it would all be back to normal.
Result:
Overall time was 10:08:25 which puts me in 10th place. I’m happy with my time! I am proud of my marathon time and that I was able to execute well through the whole Ironman. Interesting fact is that the previous year the last spot for Kona went with 10:09:xx. But with the competition I had this year I start to wonder were I can shave off another 25min to have a shot at Kona?
Almost forgot to mention that this is also a Marathon PR! =)
Thanks to my awesome support team!
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