Swim - 1:08:11 (predicted - 1:08:30!)
T1 - 0:06:32 (predicted - 005:00)
Bike - 5:51:32 (predicted - 6:05:00)
T2 - 0:03:27 (predicted - 0:05:00)
Run - 4:21:28 (predicted - 3:45:45)
Short version - After getting mugged during the first 100 meters of the swim start I settled down and swam according to plan. Things when a little sideways when I went too fast on the bike, and consequently I barely held it together on the run.
Longer Version: Alarm went off at 3:30 am, and coffee, oatmeal, and english muffins with peanut butter for breakfast. 4:30 am and B and I drove downtown, parked, and walked in to body marking -- race numbers on your arms, age group on the back of your calf. Then to the bikes to make sure tire inflation was ok, and everything was working. That's when B's day got interesting. His new bike computer, designed to work with his new power-meter wheel, wasn't working. He took it down to the mechanics and told me "this is my problem -- you need to worry about your race. Go." I didn't see him again until mile 10 of the marathon . . .
My bike was in good shape. I went inside and re-packed my transition bags, so that when I got into the changing area, I would be able to dump the bag on the floor and have the first thing I needed at the top of the pile. That accomplished, I headed down to the swim start, with my wetsuit and other swim stuff in a bag that also had a change of clothes for post race. M and J cabbed to the site, and met me about 6:15 am, helped me get zipped into my wetsuit, and at 6:30 I was one of the first athletes in the water.
IM Wisconsin has, I am told, an odd swim start in that all the athletes have to go across a mat and into the lake, and then there is no place to hang out and chill until the race starts -- you have to go into the deep water and tread for the 30 or so minutes. I spent most of that floating on my back, watching the sun come up. It was nice, inasmuch as I was able to relax with the nerves of the day still kicking, but I spent a few moments getting my head into a good place, and trying to pick out a tactically sound place for the swim start.
I had planned on starting wide right, near the front of the line. The idea there being that the fast swimmers were going to go to the inside or near the first buoy, the slow swimmers would wait at the back, and the middle swimmers, like me, would be pretty well spread out. Alas, something went horribly wrong here. I didn't get wide enough right, or the field was just too dense -- have you ever tried to get across a really crowded dance floor, or party, where everyone was really rocking out, throwing elbows, and kicking you in the face, while trying to hold your head underwater? OK, I don't go to many of those parties anymore, but great googily moogily, I felt like I was deeply, personally violated in a completely anonymous way in the first 2 minutes of the race. I had read about people being kicked in the face, and in the 1/2 ironman I did there was some pushing for position at the corners, but this was brutal. Thankfully after 200 meters or so it started to thin out where I was.
The same phenom happened as I came to the first turn, and it was a matter of forcefully defending my space in the water until I could really start swimming again. I then spent most of the rest of the race wide -- a good 20 -50 feet outside the line of the buoys, and I think that was a good decision if one that was suboptimal in terms of race time. But say it cost me 2 minutes overall, not swimming in straight lines I mean, I can't imagine I wouldn't have lost some of that in traffic.
Out of the water, smiling a pleasant smile as I realize that I just about exactly predicted my swim split. Waiting in a long row are about 40 volunteers who work in teams to get athletes out of their wetsuits - a service that hasn't been offered at any of my other races. I ran up to them, and in best theatre quick-change tradition, held up my arms. Now, in theater, someone will strip you from the waist up while someone else strips you from the waist down -- this will not work when wearing a full-body wetsuit. With a smile, they quickly helped me out of the wetsuit and sent me on my way.
I run up the parking garage exit ramp, lined with cheering spectators, three levels to head inside the Monona Terrace (a Frank Lloyd Wright building, very cool), grab my T1 bag, and into the mens changing tent. In the week leading up to the race I decided to bike in a University jersey that I acquired in August -- too late to do a long run while wearing it. So, I also decided to take the time to change into a different shirt for the run, because the last thing I wanted was to be bleeding from chafing as I tried to finish the race. A trade-off of time for comfort, and, I think, another good call (on which more later). Jersey on, helmet on, socks on, bike shoes in hand and off to the bikes. A volunteer pulls my bike from its rack while I put on my shoes, I grab the bike and run to the mount line, get on the bike and ride down the entrance ramp (no spectators here, thank goodness!) and out onto the bike course.
In our pre-race discussions, tactical planning sessions, and general preparation for this race, B focused almost exclusively on the bike section. "Go too hard and you will pay, exponentially." This has been drilled into me, and I believe it. You may recall that I was quite frustrated at doing the math and realizing I was unlikely to be able to bike 6 hours or faster -- and B's assertion that "Oh, you could bike the course in 5:50 -- but you'd probably go 5:50 on the run if you tried." I came out of the water in 457th place, and a lot of people - more than 100 - came out of the water between 1:07 and 1:09; a whole mess of us got out on the bike course at the same time.
Now, race rules say that you can't ride within 7 meters of the cyclist in front of you unless you are passing them -- you have 20 seconds to pass, and if you ARE passed you have 20 seconds to drop back to the 7 meter distance. If you are too close, you are "drafting" - riding in the wake of the person in front of you to conserve energy - and can be assessed a 4 minute penalty. About 40 of us flat out disregarded this rule for the first 20 miles of the race -- it wasn't that we were drafting - trying to draft for advantage, I mean. But a lot of the folks who swam the 2.4 miles in 55 - 65 minutes just weren't biking as fast as we were, and so we were always passing somebody. As long as you're passing somebody, the theory seemed to go, you didn't need to drop back from the person who was right in front of you.
As I say, this went on for a good hour - I felt good! Then I said to myself, "mile 20 is WAY too soon to assess how I feel! Shut up and think about the whole race!" And, thinking about the whole race, I decided I was riding too fast. The pack was moving somewhere between 21 and 22 mph, I figured, and that was 2-3 mph faster than I had planned on going, even through the first part of the course, where it wasn't too hilly. So, I decided to let the pack go. THAT was hard. Gearing back, deciding to slow down when in the moment I felt good -- I attribute that decision to good coaching, 'cause I wouldn't have done it on my own I think. B's constant refrain of "bike smart, run fast" helped me out there -- something that really hit home when I rode through the first place where M & J were waiting to wave at me. We had predicted times for that point, based on our idea of how fast we ought to be going, projected transition times, etc -- I was early. M tells me I was only 5 minutes early, but in the moment I did the math and I figured that I was 15 - 20 minutes early.
At which point I nearly freaked out, thinking my day was over, but I just didn't know it yet. I had planned on biking the first loop of the lollipop in 2:15 or so, and by my reckoning had just done it in 2 hours flat -- WAY too fast. So, I tried to take even more off; I still felt really good, except for one moment of panic. At one point on the second loop I pushed my helmet up on my forehead -- the helmet doesn't fit me particularly well with my hair cut really short - and I noticed that the headband inside the helmet was dry. Usually, at this point in any ride, it is drenched in sweat. Not sweating is, in technical medical terms, a Very Bad Thing. I trained all summer with a watch on a 15 minute timer, so that I would remember to take two gulps of Gatorade - as well as water whenever I wanted it, and with food. I think I missed a couple of those alarms, as well as it being a cool, partly cloudy day deceiving me as to my hydration needs; in any case, I immediately doubled my fluid intake to every 7 minutes, and having 2 drinks of gatorade AND a drink of water instead of just the gatorade. Possibly it was the fact that I was drinking from sports bottles -- like you would buy in a gas station, instead of real bike bottles, and I just wasn't getting as much for each gulp as I expected. In any case, I didn't end up having any further problems with that, and by the end of the bike I was sweating again.
My body still felt good at mile 65, mile 75, and even into mile 90, back onto the stick and heading back to Monona Terrace. The wind was pretty stiff coming back into town, the first time I really noticed it, and looking at the bike splits, it seems that pretty much everyone lost 2 or 3 mph heading back to town, so it wasn't just me being tired.
My first bike segment, 0 - 40 miles, I rode an average of 20.32 mph.
Second segment, 40 - 83, 19.27 mph.
Third segment, 83 - 112, 17.48 mph.
For my money, I managed to salvage the day on miles 40 - 112, by dialing it back from the 20.3 mph, which is faster than I rode over the 56 miles of the 1/2 IM, over a course that wasn't as hilly. But I didn't know that yet.
Oh, one last bike note -- I had worried quite a bit about a flat tire on the racing wheels I was using. Bikes have two different kinds of tires, and I was riding for like the 5th time on the kind that glue on to the wheel, rather than the kind that clinch the edges of the rim when you inflate them. I've never changed a flat with those tires, and I was sure that, despite my knowledge of the theory involved, I would prove unable to change a flat if I got one, and would lose all kinds of time waiting for a mechanical assist from the race volunteers, who were out on scooters and vans. It turned out that the only problem I had at all was once dropping my chain when shifting from the big ring to the little ring going up a hill -- at mile 111. Cost me about 25 seconds -- whew! I came off the bike in 425th place, having passed 32 people net on the bike (plenty of people who swam slower than me passed me on the bike, but the net gain was 32 places).
I rode up the helix to monona terrace, slipping my feet out of my shoes while riding up the tight left turn, handed my bike to a volunteer, and raced into the ballroom. Grabbed my bag, into the changing room, and sat down. I was slightly disturbed by the fact that both my quads were shivering - shivering seems like too much of an understatement, really -- they were shaking. Trying not to let that really sink in, I changed shorts, shirt, shoes, grabbed my hat and my race belt (which had my number pinned to it, and two energy gels in a small pouch) and ran out onto the course. I note for the record that my net transition time was almost exactly 10 minutes, though T1 was longer and T2 shorter.
Getting out onto the run course, with people cheering, and the energy of the crowd, and the worry about knowing I was in trouble from having biked so hard, I tried to settle into a rhythm. I saw that it was about 2 pm -- which meant, I thought, that I could still manage a sub-11 hour finish if I could keep the run together. I passed the first mile marker at 8 minutes and 6 seconds, -- WAY too fast, the goal being to run 9 minute miles for the first 13 miles and then 8:45s for the rest -- and tried to just jog, nice and easy. But.
The bottom of my right foot hurt -- it felt like a bruise from the bike pedal. And both of my quads hurt. In mile 2. I have done many "bricks" in the training process, going from the bike to the run. Sometimes I felt good, sometimes I felt bad, but I never, ever EVER felt this bad. I want to say that even on the days when I decided that I felt to crappy to DO the brick I didn't feel as bad as I felt running from mile marker 1 to mile marker 2. And, with the knowledge from this spring of the way my body failed in mile 21, I knew it wasn't likely to get any better.
It was, on some level, tempting to quit right there. Or, to just start walking, which in my mind was tantamount to the same thing. This idea was not helped by the fact that all around me people were pulling up and walking. For every person who ran past me, I ran past two or three people who, hands on hips, were shaking their heads and walking already. I have several thoughts on why I didn't pull up and start the long walk right there -- I still would have finished; still could have claimed (still would have been) an Ironman. The record doesn't make a big difference between 11:30 and 15 hours -- people would have understood. They would have said "dude, the fact that you did it at ALL!"
If you know me at all, you know what I think about that.
All through the training process I have bitched to B that the weakest muscle I have, the one that really, all along, I've been training, is my mind. My . . . heart, my will, if you will. The ability to gut it out and finish, even though it hurts, even though there is no objective reason to do that thing that I was trying to do at the time -- one last lap at the track, another 100 yard repeat at the pool, getting up at 5:30 to GO to the pool, or get on the bike, or doing another interval at race pace on the bike, doing a brick off the bike -- all things that I failed to do during training. But, not for nothing, all things that I did do as well. About mile two I said to myself, "ok -- run until you have to walk. HAVE to walk. Not want to walk. Then walk until you CAN run. not want to run."
And you know what? If you are willing to ignore the fact that your legs hurt, they will keep working. My time slowed down -- but honestly, not that much. Mile 2, 9:06. Mile 3, 9:36. At the mile four aid station, I decide that the thing to do is to walk briskly through the aid stations, drinking gatorade, water, and getting cold water to throw on my head, and then start running again. Until the next aid station. This was something I had read about in blogs, and seen someone do at the 1/2 IM in New York in August -- the guy actually ran just a hair faster than me, so I, running through the aid station, would pass him, and then at about the .5 mile mark he would slowly come around me, then he would walk through the aid station and I would pass him again. So, I knew it could be done. The trick, I remember reading, was not to think of the walking as "rest," but to keep moving. Starting after coming to a full stop on a long run is brutal hard, I know, so I did my best to keep that energy up, and it really served me well as a strategy. The miles started to flow past. I saw M and J at the first turn around point, mile 6.35, and gave them a high five, but said 'I biked too fast, barely keeping it together." That segment was 1:00:20, which, I thought, was pretty good, but unlikely to hold. (9:30 / mile)
At this point I was looking for B -- if he had made the race start at all, he should have been finishing somewhere around 4 pm, and because of the nature of the run course, it was odds on that I would see him going out for his second loop while I was on the back half of my first leg. And, hooray, there he was -- I was between mile 8 and 9, he was between 21 and 22 (I think) -- and now I had a goal -- beat him to the turn around. Which I did, and then didn't see him for a whole 7 minutes again. My second leg, 6.35 - 13, took 1:06:47 (10.02 /mile).
The third leg was the hardest, I think, although the broad strokes of the rest of the run are a bit of a blur. I felt like was going to cramp up in both my calves at about mile 15, and that feeling never went away, although I never actually cramped up. The one big hill, at mile 5 and mile 18, I walked up both times, second time around I stopped and used the port-a-loo before the hill, costing me 2 minutes and making that segment my longest mile split, at 13 minutes. 13 - 19.23 took 1:04:58 (10:25 / mile).
The last leg actually got easier as I got closer to the finish. Realizing that my strategy of walking through the aid station was working, that I was functionally running 9:30s with a ~40 second recovery every mile and that, barring complete body failure, I was going to finish the race under steam provided some late-game inspiration. A blister started to form under my left foot, and in efforts to wiggle my sock around with my toes while running i nearly triggered the dreaded calf cramp, so I said screw it, I can run on a blister for 3 miles. I decided to run through the last two aid stations, doing the math and deciding to try to get under 4:20 for the marathon -- which I didn't quite manage. Still, final stretch from 19.23 - 26.2 was 1:09:23 (9:57 / mile), and a total run time of 4:21:28.
That's the race report. I let some guy finish two seconds in front of me, pulling up instead of racing past him, so that his finisher picture wouldn't be screwed up -- little did I know he was in my age group, and I could have finished 62nd instead of 63rd, 348th instead of 349th! Still, by gutting it out, I managed to pass 76 people who got off the bike in front of me -- well, more than that, since some people who biked slower than me ran faster. Mostly, I got the satisfaction of not giving up.
B? Oh, you know. Won the 35-39 age group, 3rd amateur, 16th overall finisher. He passed the 1st place pro female at mile 23 of the run; and he did it all without his bike computer - look for the next instalment for the long story there, but a great day for B, and he's qualified for Kona for 2010. He goes to Hawaii in two weeks and races another IM in 18 days . . . Good luck B, and thanks for making me do those damn double runs! Four miles descending from 8:00 to 6:00 per mile on the same day as the 20 mile long runs? Brutal -- but hella good prep for running a marathon while you hurt . . .
Post-race report to follow. Because it was AFTER the race that things got really interesting . . .
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