The lead up to this race wasn’t great. I got sick in the 2nd overload weekend and probably got back to training to quickly and wasn’t feeling great for 2 weeks. But I was able to train. The Wednesday before the race I didn’t feel great during a swim training and cut it short. It started to feel worse and on Thursday stayed home since I was feeling pretty bad. From then on I skipped all workouts up to the Ironman. I spend most of the time on Thursday\/Friday in bed. On Friday when I went to sign up and saw the line I was tempted to go home again, and maybe try again later. I wasn’t feeling good and queuing in a line (and sun) sounded like a horrible idea. But thanks to being an AWA (All World Athlete: I finished top 1% last year) there was a special line and I didn’t have to wait at all.
\nI even slept a major portion of Saturday. I was getting better but certainly wasn’t back to healthy. I rode my bike on Saturday to check it into transition (~3 mile ride). It didn’t feel too bad, aside the fact that I was breathing hard on every little hill (like an untrained person). My number was rather low (157), normally with my last name or age group I get a much higher number. I didn’t think much about it, I figured they assigned them in order we signed up. Once in transition area I noticed all the disc wheels left and right of me. I was wondering if these days every Ironman athlete has a disk wheel. I found out on race day morning, they had a special bike rack for all AWA.
\nMy coach said there is a chance that I will just feel fine and I should give it a try. The race strategy was to race purely by heart rate to factor in my healthiness.
\nI was curious if he had some guidelines for giving up a race, since I questioned if I could compete and I have another Ironman lined up just 3 weeks later. John told me not to give up when I feel bad, but rather when I feel okay again. The reason behind that is, that even on the best day there is a rough patch where you don’t feel good.<\/p>\n
Swim:<\/strong><\/p>\n The picture says it all…<\/p><\/div>\n Race morning was usual business and I felt okay. I had a good swim start and swam in the clear for a while before I ended up swimming in a big group. Swimming just felt okay. Within 15min I noticed that I had to breath much harder than normal and my pace felt slow. Especially considering how many people were around me. I also had to cough a couple times, which is always interesting while swimming. But somehow I figured out the timing that I didn’t have to stop swimming. I felt pretty crappy coming out of the water, which is evident of the picture they took of me. T1:<\/strong> Bike:![\"The](\"http:\/\/zgraggen.name\/racing\/wp-content\/up\/2014\/08\/0765_016826.jpg\")
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\nI finished the swim in\u00a0 1:06:41 min which is not too bad, but over 2min slower than last year in the same race. After swimming exactly the same time (1:02:51) in IM Texas<\/a> and IM Los Cabos<\/a> I was hoping for something in that range. But I was also aware that wasn’t all the much in the grand scheme of things.<\/p>\n
\nNothing major, wasn’t fast nor slow. I was pleasantly surprised that at least 1\/2 of the AWA bikes were still there.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Initially the bike felt good, but on the climb to Callaghan I got a really dry throat and a more regular cough. That is the first time I thought about giving up. I decided to just do that race focusing on heart rate and actually enjoy the race. I did okay on the climb and had a quick decent. But on the road back to Whistler I noticed that my Watts were much lower than normal and people just kept passing me. I knew some of the people and knew that I should be able to ride better or at least similar to them.<\/p>\n