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The bad, The good, and the Ugly: Ironman Canada 2009

When I signed up for this event 12 months ago I didn’t suspect I would be doing it in 90 degree heat. My hat is off to those who can perform well when it is that hot. I am certainly not one of those people and never have been. I had hoped to do very well in this event. Every other run, time trial, triathlon or bike race I did this year, I did on tired legs and didn’t care about the result because I considered it a build up to this one. So when my family and I arrived in Penticton, British Columbia, Canada for Ironman on Thursday afternoon and the temperature read 94 degrees I knew that not only was my goal time out the window, but that I would be in for a very hard day.

I did have a hard day. As I sit and type this report up 12 days later, I still haven’t summoned up the motivation to look at the results or any of the data collected from my devices. Funny how your mind works: during the event I was hurting and was really happy to just finish, regardless of the time. On the trip home I was frustrated and disappointed. Now I simply think it is what it is: a nice result on a tough day. I kept myself moving and crossed the finish line at 10 hours 50 minutes, which was 20+ minutes slower than my time last year at Coeur d’Alene and well off what I had hoped to do.

Here is my race report
After IMCdA last year I wrote in my notes “don’t be afraid to line up at front of swim. I’m big and it really doesn’t matter.” I read that now and laugh. I lined up where my swimming abilities do not merit: very close to front and center of the 100+ yard wide shallow water line that 2700 of us were to funnel from and to the singular turn point one mile away. As a result, I got my ass kicked - head, ribs & shoulders, too - and repeatedly. The washing machine knocking that usually lasts 20 seconds in other triathlons I have done, on this day last the better part of 10 minutes.

When I would sit up (swim up?) to fix my kicked goggles or figure out which planet I was on after a particularly rough kick it would start all over again from the people I had managed to put behind me. After too much of this, I finally decided to go it alone and moved to swim on the other side of the buoys and then catch my breath and dive under the buoy to get around on the proper side. Of course, this didn’t work so well when it came to the large, spectator filled boats that were the two turns, so it was back into the blender.

I knew the swim had not gone as I had hoped, but when I saw the clock at the exit telling me that I was a full 5 minutes slower than the max time I had hoped to swim I was quite disheartened. I arrived in the T1 tent and just sat there stunned for what seemed like a long time, which in reality was probably only a few seconds. Damn that tent was crowded!

The interesting part of being a relatively poor swimmer and decent cyclist is I get to move through a large part of the field on my ride. I spent a lot of energy (probably too much) quickly moving through literally hundreds of people in the first few miles so I could find some open road in order to put my head down and just pedal and not have to worry about crossing the yellow line.

The beautiful course sent us South through 45 miles of relative flat and scenic Wine country before reaching the bottom of the loop and heading back North to the start. I managed to move quickly through this part of the ride and was excited to see that I had averaged over 23.5 mph for 2 hours.
<rant>In an event that is suppose to be an individual effort, why is it that there are so many groups of riders clustered together? I must have passed through at least ten groups of eight+ riders. Most of them blatantly cheating, the others skirting the line of the drafting rules. If they didn’t think they were doing anything wrong then why did their behavior suddenly change when the motorcycle referee came along? - as they did four times over the course of my ride. It is said events like this reveal character and many showed they don’t have much.</rant>

Heading back North is where the climbing starts. First Richter Pass, which is a reasonable and somewhat lengthy climb, then a series of short, but not inconsequential, rollers. After that, a quick ride down the only out-and-back section of the course to the refuel bags where you get to see a lot of people and get a sense of where you are placed. I moved through this section well and then came a long false-flat that leads onto the loop back to Penticton. This is at approximately mile 70 and where the wind picked up, the heat set in and the false-flat became a grind and you remember that this is a looong day, not a training ride or a a 70.3 event. This is followed by another climb up to Yellow Lake where the spectators were out clanging their bells and hooting you on through a narrow coned off chute. This was also the hottest part and I remember thinking for the first time just how damn hot I was as I was spinning my way up seated in a low gear.

There is a nice reward waiting on the other side of Yellow Lake: a very fun, steep, windy and therefore precarious (on a disk wheel) 40+ mph downhill for a few minutes before the flat trip back through town to T2. I handed my bike over at the line at 5:22 bike time. Ten minutes slower than I had hoped but I was happy with that time considering the headwind for the second half of the ride.
Here is the Training Peaks data chart of my ride.

I was in and out of T2 quickly and I remembered this time to stop at the sunscreen station where 3 older women seemed to have a grand time lathering me up into a silly looking white clown. Last year at CdA I forgot and was burnt crispy at the end.

I felt great for the first three miles of the run. Better than I have ever felt running off the bike actually, and I had to consciously slow myself down several times in order to stay at a pace I thought I could maintain. …Then the wheels fell off…

The heat beating down on the course took its toll on me and I just couldn’t turn my legs anymore. I would pick up my pace, look at my Garmin and just shake my head that I couldn’t possibly be moving so slow at the effort I was putting in. I kept hoping it would get better if I was patient, but it never did. Soon I was walking through every aid station (I didn’t walk 1 step at CdA) and up many of the short and frequent hills. I would completely soak myself with water and ice every mile. At mile 20 I was chatting with another participant and he mentioned something about the smoke in the air, which up to that point I hadn’t noticed (other things on my mind or nothing at all). Apparently there was a forest fire nearby and you could see the haze hanging over the lake. I can’t say that this affected me at all.
Here is the Training Peaks data chart of my run.

I did the majority of my run training this year in the early morning hours. I suppose I could have prepared myself for the heat by running more in the heat, but then I would have had to, well, Run. More. In. The. Heat. …and why would anyone want to do that?

When I crossed the finish line I felt completely wasted and very grateful for the two “catchers” that assisted me. I felt that I fueled myself very well all day but here I felt just terrible, dizzy and in a fog. I must have conveyed this to the catchers because they stayed with me for over ten minutes until I was comfortably lying on a massage table in the shade. Happy to be done.

In my previous post I thanked a lot of people who helped me prepare for this race. I want to again thank Mike Ricci from D3 Multisport for his coaching help over the last year. I was well prepared to have a great day and still feel as fit as I have ever been in my life - not bad for 39 years old. There will be other days.

I also, of course, owe a great deal of thanks to Christy, my wife and Über Mom to our two girls, - more than can be said in this post - for allowing me the time to pursue my goal this year. I owe you big.

Until next time. Thanks for reading…

Saturday I took part in the Laramie Enduro a 111K Mountain bike race all at above 7,500′ elevation. I last participated in this event 10 years ago and remember it being one of my favorite mtb rides. I have wanted to do it again for some time, but it has become so popular that to get in you need to sign up the day registration opens in January. This year I remembered that and did so.

I drove up by myself in the pouring rain Friday night which fortunately subsided as I arrived at the campground/start-finish line. I then had a great sleep in the back of my pickup truck at 8,600′ right next to my Merlin mtb - which, as a Titanium Moots-YBB-style soft-tail with V-brakes & 9-speeds is clearly now a dinosaur among race bikes.

<rant>
I’m tired of this “absolutely no race morning packet pick-up” bullsh*t. I had to leave work early and drag my ass up to Laramie, WY before 8pm just so I could do 75 seconds worth of paperwork. There is no good reason I couldn’t have spent the night with my family then gotten up at 4am and on the start line for a 7am start. It is now enough to cause me to think twice about registering for events at all. Pump the local economy some other way. I didn’t spend a dime of money in Wyoming on principal after that.
</rant>

Just as I did at the Growler in May, I intentionally lined up at the back of my class at the start. By doing this I feel no pressure to go faster than I want on the technical single-track which could lead to a crash and lots of pain, which I don’t need. If I can pass others, great, if not, oh well. My goal at these “C” priority events isn’t to place well, but to have a good time, ride a challenging course and get in a great workout. Seems like a prudent idea considering I am a bit out of practice having only had 3 mtb rides in the last 2 years.

By the end of the third hour I had passed enough riders to be placed in the top 30 or so. I was cruising through 8″ wide track through tall grass in a prairie and came around a bend to see a fallen tree perpendicular across the trail. Usually such obstacles are well marked with orange tape and some warning. Not this one. After an earnest, yet failed, attempt to bunny hop it, I quickly was flying through the air, sans bike. Fortunately I landed in the soft meadow grass and was back aboard within seconds, unhurt. However, a few cranks later I reached for my brakes and couldn’t find them. Instinctively I repositioned the lever (I leave them loose so when I crash, which is often, they turn down rather than break). Still weren’t there, then I looked down to see I had snapped my front lever. 70% of my braking power: gone, and I still had a looong way to go. 10 minutes later 5 of us got lost and added another 1.5 miles trying to re-find the trail. I was quite pissed at this point.

The rest of the day was an exercise in how to ride gnarly, rocky & rooty singletrack at a speed that I wouldn’t kill myself on. The last hour I did a lot of walking.

Training Peaks visual graph of my day

After spending 2 of the last 3 weekends at altitude on 6+ hours rides, I am really looking forward to fresh legs and a 7,000 loss in elevation: IMC minus 28 days…

My friend Derek and I and our families headed to Steamboat Springs for the Tour de Steamboat, a ride to benefit the Sunshine Kids Foundation whose mission it is to add quality of life to children with cancer.

We arrived 10 minutes late to the start and after pushing to catch up with the group for 10 miles realized we had joined the back of the group embarking on the 56 mile Tour, which added 7 miles to our day which was already slated for 110 or so.

After about 55 miles and over Rabbit Ears Pass, I pushed hard up the second of the two big passes on the day, Gore Pass, which just may be the nicest climb I have ridden in Colorado: very scenic, nice variety of grade, never ridiculously steep, can’t see the top from the bottom and 6+ miles long. On the other side a group of four of us were pushing and it got quite windy up a long false flat.

The goal for the day was to practice pushing a fast pace when tired so I began a couple 15′ intervals 4 hours in. Later I dropped off the back to stay out of the other’s draft and within 10 minutes or so my gap from them had grown to a few hundred yards and I knew that they wouldn’t slow for me thinking I was just recovering around until my next interval. This was the first time this year I have hit a real low like that and had to dig hard to get myself out. I was happy to be able to do so and bridge back up to them. It was valuable experience knowing how to mentally suck it up and push past some physical issues, another great reason to ride often in a group - can’t replicate this by yourself. I felt fine after drinking a bit of plain water.

All day I tried to eat in excess of 500 calories per hour just to see how it would feel. It seemed like I was constantly either sucking the Infinit bottle or squeezing a one of my pocket full of GUs. Not a comfortable feeling and I was definitely tired of it toward the end.

All and all a good day: 121 miles, 7,100 elevation gain. IMCanada minus 42 days…

Fun event, great day, I didn’t crash and hurt myself. I actually felt pretty good swimming, the best I ever have. Chris noted I arrived at the beach 15-20 in my start wave, which was only half of my 35-39 age group. It still 5 minutes off what it would take to be competitive in my age group but a definite improvement.

The bike ride was a good one. Like the rest of the event, I didn’t feel particularly fast or have any low moments, just plugged along at a consistent 7 out of 10. Up Olde Stage grinding and wishing I had more than a 21 rear cassette, then down Olde Stage wishing I had more than a 53 chainring and 11 cassette, then approaching the turn onto highway 36 I encountered 2 state police troopers giving me the stop sign… Never been stopped by the police in a race to allow car traffic to pass. Makes sense, but bizarre. Seemed like forever in reality is probably was 45″ spent standing unclipped from my pedals waiting for the officer to wave us on. 1st overall had just passed me at the top of the hill and 4th overall would pass me shortly after I resumed. Had a fun time trading 40+ mph barely) draft-legal pulls down Nelson with CHowie. When we turned onto 63rd where the rolling hills started it was adios, Craig, have a great ride and he dropped me like a hot coal.

My bad running form on display. Been working on correcting this arm swing and loosening up my hamstrings so I can get more leg kick. Average and uneventful run, couple minutes slower than I had hoped. I slid into the top 10 AG for the first time of 201 entrants, 171 finishers. results. *thanks to Brightroom Event Photography for the images.

Only one more pinned-on-number-event before the big one…