Finally getting around to finishing up my race report. My Garmin device managed to corrupt yet another file and Garmin support being completely useless. However, there is a tool out there which can fix your files (Fit File Repair Tool). However I am missing the last 7miles.
Lead up to the race:
I was excited for this race. My numbers on the bike and run where really promising and I was ready to tackle another Ironman. My goal was to have the best race possible and hopefully that would be good enough for a Kona spot. But if not, I knew that I would have given my best and there is not much I can do if that is not good enough.
Race strategy was to keep my HR stimulated the whole race. Average top of Z1 for the bike, start the run with a 7-7:15min/mile and then run low Z2. The idea for the run was to front load the Ironman a little since the slow down will be inevitable but we might as well gain some time on the first half.
While I was excited for the run I wasn’t that excited for the swim start. While many Ironman switched to a self seeding start because of the swim safe initiative Louisville did the start on a first come first serve basis. This meant that some people were camping out at 3am in the morning at the swim start to get a good starting position. Especially since during the athletes briefing the advice for slower people was to line up first. I didn’t want to start too far back for 2 reasons. A) I had to swim through all the slower swimmers and B) I was worried about the out and back starting at mile 18 where people would ride at vastly different speeds and with so many people there that could get dangerous.
So for a changed I prepared my bike with all the gels the day before and just racked my bike towards the end of bike check in around 4pm. As a result in the morning I only had to check tire pressure and was of to walk over to the swim start.
That also meant I had 90+min to wait in line. Amy and I were sleeping on the ground while cuddling together where hoards of people walked past us to line up. I though we were already far back, but I was mistaken. The line was supposedly over 1mile long. It was cold, but bearable. I was still in normal close and put the wetsuit on about 30min before the start.
Swim:
Swim Start
I was a couple hundred people back and they let people jump in one after another to start swimming. They had two piers one you could start from, one of them a little farther away which meant about 10m of additional swimming. I chose this one since the line was much shorter. Apparently people were worried about the 10m 🙂
Once I was getting close to the pier I saw the timing mattress and once I walked over I was anxious to get in the water. After all the time was running. But it seemed the people in front of me weren’t that much in a rush. Eventually I was able to jump in and started swimming right away. Unfortunately, the goggles were filled up with water from jumping in. I just saw enough to swim about 100m away from the docks and cleared my goggles. After that I was in the middle of it, people going much slower than I and there was plenty of body contact. I felt a little bad but on the other hand what else was there to be expected if they start the slower people first. I felt like obstacle swimming. My right eye filled up with water again but I figured I might as well keep going since I was still able to see with the left eye. I constantly had to sigh and look how I could get through the crowd. Over the first 100m it got worse since the channel got narrower and I even hat to overtake a few people who were doing breast stroke. After the island it cleared and it was more open. It was hard to see the buoy line and could only see one buoy at the time. So while I was about 50yards off I wasn’t too worried since I figured we were going straight.
Swim exit
My hand suddenly hit something soft and squishy, I was a little shocked and then the next stroke again. That is when I realized that the water was that shallow. I guess good practice for a proper high elbow stroke. My coach would be proud of me :-). I tried to hold left to get in the deeper water. Eventually I saw the turn around buoy, the turn was uneventful since I apparently had overtaken most of the slow swimmer and was swimming all by myself. So I cleared the goggles again and this time for good. For the reminder of the swim I focused on high turn over and pulling lots of water. A few times someone I overtook wanted to draft of me, but quickly lost me. The same for me once or twice a person passed me and I tried to hold on, but the differences where always too big. I guess that is what you get when you start first come first serve. I enjoyed swimming underneath the big bridges and towards the end of the swim overtook a big pack of about 10+ swimmers. I felt great.
Swim time was 1:02:58, which was only 7 seconds slower than my PR swim from (Los Cabos and Texas). Supposedly, the swim was current assisted, but if so it wasn’t by much.
T1:
With the wetsuit strippers I was quickly out of the wetsuit and started the long transition run. The water was 69 and so my feet were decent warm and didn’t hurt on the run. The changing tent wasn’t busy yet and I got help from a nice volunteer and was ready to go in no time. I ran out of the tent and saw a familiar race kit in front of me. I figured it was my friend Matt and once we came to our bikes, it turned out to be him. I said hi and we ran out of transition together.
Bike:
I was glad that I put on the arm warmers since it was pretty cold (low 50s). Matt overtook me and slowly pulled away from me.
There were 2 more people who passed me, but that was it. I was shocked by how few people I saw. It felt like the 2nd half of an Ironman where everybody was riding the same speed, that normally doesn’t happen that early in the race. Apparently, the swim was long enough to separate the slow and fast people. I cough a rider here and there but there weren’t too many of them. I once again had trouble with my Garmin bike computer. It would just not turn on. I turned it off and on over and over again. Until 10miles into the ride it finally decided to turn on.
On the little out and back section I started counting to see how far back I was. I was exactly in 50th place when I hit the turn around. I was glad I lined up early in the swim the ride on that out and back was fast and the people behind me in the oncoming lane were all over the place and several times came into my side of the rode. After that I made it a game to count the people I overtake. I just rode in 47th place, when I dropped my chain. I stopped to mess with it while 3 people overtook me again. The annoying part was that it fell of the front and the trick with slowly spinning the pedals to get the chain back on didn’t work. In contrary the chain was stuck on the bottom part of the crank. I didn’t think much about it but tried to stay calm and go back into my rhythm. We came to the 2nd aid station and I wanted a new drink bottle. I didn’t realize that my fingers where cold until I was incapable to capture the bottles they were holding out for me. So I slowed down on the last opportunity to at least grab a water bottle to have some liquid with me. I decided to do some finger exercises to warm up my fingers before the next aid station. After that on the next hill I dropped the chain again. Now this was getting annoying. This time I gave up right away, jumped off and yanked the chain out from underneath and got it back on. Not much I could do besides stay calm and keep pushing. I liked the landscape and the road were fairly good. Eventually we turned onto 42 and I saw a sign which said 33miles to Louisville. Unfortunately, I had to do another loop until I can do the 33mile trip back. It was a little windy on that road. I had moved into 42nd place and the gaps between riders were getting bigger and bigger. Two insects flew into me. One in my face and one on the left leg (the shin). I felt a slight burning sensation on the leg right after that. I glanced down but could not see anything. I touched it and it started burning more. I stopped peddling and had a look. I saw something sticking out. I figured it was a bee sting, since the stinger was still hanging there. It was a slight uphill and I had to keep peddling. A few minutes later on the next downhill I looked at it closer and tried to pull it out. Unfortunately, I manged to squeeze the whole bag of venom into my leg. Now it was really burning. Again not much I could do. I shrugged it off and figured it was a good sign since Zac qualified in Los Cabos when he got stung by something.
Besides the rule of thumb is that 3 things go wrong in an Ironman with the goggles, the dropped chain and the bee sting I should be good for the rest of the day.
The first loop came to and end and we merged together with the people who were doing the first loop. This meant while I had ridding roughly 60miles, the people I merged with had done 30miles so far. There was an obvious speed difference and I constantly had to overtake people. It was very annoying, every few seconds I would yell “on your left” and people would still not go out of my way. I had to cross the double yellow lines several times just to get around people. It was also scary sometimes on the uphill since I could see that some of them were lacking basic bike handling skills. This race seemed to be reverse. The first loop I could zone out and now I needed to be 100% alert. It made the 2nd loop go by quicker but also much more annoying. However, the peopled helped me to distract me from how hard of an effort I was riding, and maybe I burned 1-2 matches while overtaking people. Aid stations were particular interesting since there I had to slow down so I could grab what I needed.
The worst though were the cars on course. Since they would stay behind the slow riders I had to overtake cars on the right or in one case on the left on a fast downhill. Admittedly the car was probably only going ~20miles/hours since the biker in front of him was also going slow. But I was going close to 40miles and had to ride over a double yellow line again. That is something I would never do in training, but there was no way I would wait behind that car and just waste precious time I had worked so hard for. Shortly after that maneuver I dropped my chain for a 3rd time, I had already learning to shift very carefully but it happened anyway which was getting frustrating. I figured 3 times is a charm. We turned onto 42 again and knew that there were only 33miles left. The wind had picked up and we had a strong headwind riding back. I was ready to get of the bike but luckily was still getting distracted by all the people I had to overtake. At that point I made it an effort to get a little draft of each person I overtook to reduce the headwind. I dropped the chain one more time and after that only switched the front when really necessary. On a slight downhill I was finally (a little late) able to pee a first time. Unfortunately, the hill was not long enough, but I knew there was one last hill about 12miles from town.
Eventually there was the turn off and the few riders which were on the 2nd loop peeled out of the crowd of riders. I was ready to be done and get off the bike. The headwind did certainly not help. On the long downhill I finished the business I started earlier. I caught several more of the people finishing up and just focused on keeping my HR up and finishing strong. My legs were definitely tired and the 10miles of flat riding in aero position was challenging since my back also started to tighten up.
I finished the bike in 5:18:10 and averaged 205 Watts. According to other people the bike course this year was slower (because of the wind), which shows that my bike fitness certainly has improved. I drank just over 6 bottles (5 bottles of perform/Gatorade) and consumed 1/2 power bar and 9 gels with 250mg of caffeine on the 2nd half of the bike
T2:
I got of the bike and it again was a long transition run. I saw Amy and she was very excited and emotional. I also got slightly emotional which is a good indicator that the bike took more out of me then I wanted. Normally, I don’t get emotional in IM until the later parts of the run. Changing tent was almost empty and I was quickly on the run course with the help of the awesome volunteers. On the run out Amy informed me that I was 25min down from first and probably 10min from the first in my AG.
Run:
The wind had just blown over that barrier in front of me.
I started nibbling on my banana but had to force myself to actually swallow it. It was probably quite a view for all the spectators 🙂 My legs were tired, but running didn’t feel to bad. I definitely didn’t want to start too fast and settled in just over a 7min/mile which quickly dropped to a 7:30min/mile when we turned into a headwind. There were a few people ahead of me and I noticed that I was closing in on them. Another QT2 athlete overtook me on the run and I was debating if I should run with him. Considering that my HR was already were it was supposed to be I decided against it. However, he ended up walked some of the early aid stations to get nutrition in and I would catch him and then he would overtake me again. But soon enough he had a decent gap on me.
I had to overcome some mental challenges in the early miles. Normally, I’m chipper for the first 10 miles and just tick them off. Not this time, in the early miles already I was wondering if I could run the marathon and wanted to walk really badly. I pulled out all the mental tricks I knew and did some self talk and told myself that this was only temporary and it will pass again.
I focused to get enough nutrition but didn’t want to walk aid stations. After several miles I started feeling better and my pace started to drop close to a 7min/mile. Even more so after the turn around when we had a tail wind. I wasn’t feeling that well and hurting and decided to walk the first aid station at about mile 8. Which I have never done that early before, but I felt I needed it and to my surprise after that walk I was able to run even faster. I picked it up and was able to run through the next aid station. I was making great progress and decided to walk aid station when I needed it an otherwise keep running. My stomach was getting more and more upset, maybe also because of the additional nutrition. In addition to the quads were burning and I ended up walking longer each aid station and soon enough even between aid stations. I started to drink coke and chicken broth around mile 16. I also decided to eat some potato chips… I did not know that they taste so good during an Ironman 🙂 I knew with all the walking my chances for a Kona slow were gone which took out the wind of my sail for a while. I decided it was time for a
Start of the 2nd loop
strategy change. Instead of running 7:30min/mile and walking when I needed it I just started running 9min/miles. To my surprise that seemed to work better and I didn’t have to walk that often. I missed the chicken broth at the aid station after the 2nd turn around and asked a volunteer if there was any. She told me it was at the beginning but she could get me some. I figured why not. Well she didn’t seem in a hurry so I decided to walk backwards towards here to speed up the process. I had to smile at the idea that I was making progress in the wrong direction and addicting distance.
Somehow I pulled myself together and told myself that it is a privilege that I/We can do this and I should enjoy it even if it doesn’t go well. I decided to keep moving forward and that I will enjoy the finish line. I made peace with that I won’t qualify in this race and just tried to make the best out of the situation.
My run speed was now around 8:30min/miles and my HR was in the middle of Z1 which I though was very confusing that I was still able to stimulate my HR especially with going that “slow”. I decided to run the last two miles without walking, man was that a struggle, my legs were hurting and it took some good will power to move forward. But eventually I saw the finish line and tried to enjoy it as much as I could.
With all that walking I was expecting my marathon time to be around 4h. To my surprise I still ran a 3:37:33.
The final time all together was 10:07:14 which puts me once again in the same ballpark as most of my races.
After math:
Happy at the finish line
Amy was there at the finish line and I was really happy to be done. I went back to the hotel to shower and fell asleep right afterwards despite all the caffeine I consumed. While Amy picked up my bike (thanks!) However, I got up later on to have a beer along the finish line and cheer in the last finishers at Midnight.
The next day at the awards ceremony and slot allocation I was sad that I didn’t qualify (which was expected). Amy was traveling for the rest of the week while I went home alone. I wasn’t sure if I would be sad and just feel sorry for myself. However, the exact opposite happened. I was super happy and in good mood since the race. Haven’t been that happy for almost a year, at least not that consistently. It seems like I found my old self back. Who said, that an Ironman can’t be a good therapy 😉
While mentally in great shape, physically I wasn’t. I was very sore for 3 days. Aside from the normal blue toenail, I also had chafing on my stomach from the race belt which is still visible today and a cut on my foot (presumable from a fold in the sock) which finally healed today. Confirmations that I pushed myself since I hardly noticed those during the race.
Interesting facts:
- I somehow managed to lose the Ironman wristband during the race. The one you normally need a scissor to cut off. I assume I pulled it off in transition.
- I thought the race was clean and nice and people respected drafting zones up front. Until I started the 2nd loop. I didn’t know how bad the drafting is in the middle of the pack. I guess partially it is because there were that many people there. But it was still a surprise to see that, I assume many of them don’t necessarily draft, but just don’t respect the drafting zone rules.
I also found two videos of me.
I cross the finish line in the official Ironman video
Some person must have liked me, I appear 3x in this video
Nice areal footage from the swim exit
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