The Good: I finished.
The Bad: Feels like my worst race. Evar. I can’t believe how many things went wrong on race day. When I first started my triathlon career, someone told me that Ironman was a mostly about problem solving during the race. I really didn’t believe it until now.
The Ugly: Finish time of 14:27
Here is how it happened.
Getting to Switzerland, The Hotel, and Packet Pickup
Travel to and from race site isn’t usually that terrible. You spend a few hours throwing your stuff into a transition bucket, pull the favorite race outfit out of the closet, grab some nutrition, and you’re off. Anything that is missing can usually be found in or about the race site.
That plan doesn’t hold up so well when the race is overseas.
To get started on this epic journey, last year Bretta and I reached out to Ken Glah at Endurance Sports Travel (EST). They have a pretty nifty package: you supply a reasonable amount of money; they provide an awesome amount of in-country hotel, transportation, food, and general on-site helpfulness. A glorious relationship. All we had to do on our end was get us and our race equipment to the airport, EST would take care of us once we reach Zürich.
As always there is a certain amount of anxiety giving your bike to strangers to transport, but the this time the airlines got the job done. We were met at the airport by someone from EST who took us to the hotel in town, and about 20 minutes from the race site. For some reason, I was under the impression the hotel would be closer, but it wasn’t too bad. EST provided shuttles to an from the race site as often as we needed.
After the getting dropped off at the hotel and settling in, it was time to re-assemble the bikes. Our local bike shop did the packing for us and went a little nuts. Lots of packing foam. Lots of stuff taped down… and about the only thing we really needed and didn’t have was a petal wrench. No worries, EST had a bike mechanic, Collin, on-site and ready to assist as needed. As a non-bike repair type person, I was surprised at how easily and quickly they snapped together.
The next morning we went out for a 45-minute stretcher/test ride in the sun. I did uncover the one thing that wasn’t tightened down well during my re-assemble—one of the bottle cages nearly popped off, but a few turns of the wrench made everything better.
Pack pickup was a snap! A quick ride to the transition area, flashed my ID (and my USAT card which provided the 1-day insurance), and they handed over the race stickers, timing chip and an awesome IM Switzerland branded backpack.
Race Day
I usually like race day. A chance to get out and be cheered on… the finish line. Ahhhhhh. This one was different. It actually started on Saturday with the rain and the other races that were using the same course.
Did I mention the rain? Rained all day Saturday. In fact, it rained so much that the people using the course on Saturday had some of their races delayed a few hours. This meant if your name fell near the end of the alphabet you couldn’t rack your bike until the racers using those racks were done… or as we like to say in English, “after 8:00PM”.
Racking your bike in the rain is a drag. The transition area was still kind of firm, but a thousand plus people roaming up and down the center isle made it a tad squishy. At least the race directors provided a spiffy plastic cover for bikes. (I liked mine so much I brought it home after the race.)
Then it was back to the hotel for food and sleep.
Sunday morning seemed like a good day. Up early. Everything was packed and ready to go from Saturday. We grabbed our stuff and headed out into the cold, dark rain to grab breakfast and then the bus to the race site. The EST folk were up super early and had the hotel pull together a great breakfast. I had the oatmeal with some raisins and maple sugar. Yum. I also stowed a few bananas for the transition and pre-swim noshing.
Made it to the race site… and everything started to unravel.
The cold rain was the worst. It was almost a race to see who could get their junk together quick enough so you could then put on the wet suit. When I got to my bike, I found my tires were still good to go from Saturday and I didn’t want to add any air—a smidge soft would be better for the wet roads—and the bike+helmet had stayed nice and dry under the plastic tarp.
As I started to put things into place for the day, I noticed a pretty important item had gone missing. The bike computer was MIA. Having trained all season to ride this race with a power meter, this was devastating. I spent a good amount of time unpacking all of my bags looking for the stupid yellow computer. Everything got wetter and wetter as I sat there in disbelief. Shoes, socks, post-race dry clothes, food… all got a nice soaking. The only thing that didn’t show up was the stupid Powertap. The only place left to check was the bike special needs bag I had given to EST to deliver around kilometer 65, but 20 minutes of search failed to turn up anyone who could help find the bag, see if the bags were still anywhere near transition, or if anyone could check the bag and bring the computer to me. I was also running out of time.
Back into the transition it was raining harder. My stuff was not throughly soaked and I was both sweating from running about AND pissed as hell I’d be riding minus any information. No speed. No Watts. No nothing. At the last minute I kind of made peace with the idea and told myself I would just ride easy and hope I didn’t blow it before the run. I then cleaned up my transition as best I could and started with the wetsuit.
It ripped. Pulling a now-damp neoprene suit over a wet cold body isn’t easy. As I grabbed the top bits to tug it over my hips I felt the material give way. It had opened a 6-8 flap along a seam near the right hip. &^%#!! Luckily, Bruce has just wandered by to see how it was going. I knew he had gotten a small tear in his suit fixed the day before and after a few rushed seconds he started towing me towards the BlueSeventy tent. We found the guy with about 30 minutes to go before the race start. The older German guy made a few faces but thought he could get it fixed in time. Off came the suit and the wait started. While waiting Bretta, Vicky, and my mother all showed and all seemed well. Let the guy do his thing, 5 minutes to pull the repaired wetsuit on, and I’d make it to the start with a few minutes to spare. With about 15 mins to go before 7:00 AM, they all headed down to the race start and I sat there fidgeting waiting for the repair to be done. They said I could put the suit on, but don’t pull it up and on until the last possible minute.
Okay. Back on track, still 10 minutes to get to the water.
On the way there, I ran into Abby and Rich from EST and she wanted to help with the final zip up of the suit. Very cool. On go the sleeves and we took a few seconds to admire the repair. As soon as she grabbed the zipper, I feel something get loose near my lower back. The zipper teeth had slipped free from the other side of the zipper. I kind of freaked and a minute of tugging revealed there wasn’t a way to get two halves back together. With less than 5 minutes until race start I run…and I do mean run… back to the repair guys to see if anything could be done.
No. It wasn’t something that could be repaired.
I stand there for a second or two and was about to just strip my now unusable wetsuit off and just do the swim in my tri-shorts when they say, “take one of ours”. Whoa. Two more guys show up out of nowhere and the four of us strip off my old suit and jam me into a spiffy new BlueSeventy Synergy. I’ve never been man-handled to clothing before and as I was a bit rushed, I sadly couldn’t enjoy it as much as you might think.
Suit now on, I start running full speed to the start. About a ¼ mile run (and I had to hop a barrier!). There are still a goodly number of non-races slowly walking down the path so I started yelling “Make a hole!” only to just hear just as loudly “Hallow!” coming from behind me. Some other dude was having just a bad as morning. People started moving out of the way—and only a few people had to be shoved aside.
We reached the shoreline of rocks just as the announcer said go… only about 100m of swimming from the actual in-water start line. The two of us were the last people to show up and we hit the waterer running
The swim was a washing machine. Swiss don’t know how to swim politely. The turn buoys made everyone come to an almost complete halt. I swear I could have dog paddled around the corner faster. Everyone kicking and pushing around the turn made up for it by forgetting the course was a rough square… so instead of making a 90-degree turn towards the next point, a goodly number of swimmer did a 120 towards the last point… and this opened up a good amount of space. I could see them through the rain slowly coming back on course. The next turn was better as I had started to move through the field. Thank the Gods most triathletes can’t swim very well.
The last turn on the first loop of the swim was a made under a bridge. Then it was up a small ramp and then, like Lemmings, everyone leaped back into the lake and towards the first buoy for another lap. By this time we had all settled into groups of like-speed swimmers, so the second loop was a lot less violent.
Getting out of water, I took a quick peak at my watch—1:15? My slowest swim ever and the balls of my feet tingled a little from the run on the pavement to the race start.
T1 was icky. The rain was still falling steadily, it was cold, and the mud was slippery. Pulling on my socks, shoes was slow. The cycling top and long-sleeve wind jacket seemed to take forever and the whole time, I could only seem to focus on how much it was going to suck to ride without knowing my Watts. For all my problems, T1 only took 4:53.
The bike was awful. I was cold from the get-go. The first 30km or so were a flat ride through town and around the lake. My legs never seemed to warm up and I was overly afraid of going to hard. The EN Kool-Aid calls for an easy bike and I had nothing but feel to go on. Also, about 10 into the bike I realized I probably could have grabbed my Garmin and used heart-rate to help me guess level of effort. Rushing is terrible thing to do.
I probably shouldn’t complain about the rain too much. I helped me go slow. Hard to go fast when you’re concerned about sliding or overshooting a turn and thus sailing over a cliff.
About the only thing that do go well during the bike was my nutrition. Gu, Power Aide, and Kind bars went down at a regular pace. I didn’t get hungry and because of the cold I seemed to need to pee quite often. All good things during a 112 mile ride.
A few observations about the IM-Swiss bike course.
- The three named climbs on the course (the Beast—a nasty 3K climb with grades between 6% and 9%; the Beauty—a 5K-ish 2%-4% climb just after the Beast; and Heartbreak hill—a 9% 1K switch back near the end of the loop) all rock!!! The Beast falls just after a rolling bit of the course. It is hard, but far from impossible. It felt like I had just gotten my climbing legs under me and it was over. The Beauty is probably the hardest of the three only because it is so long. I just never seems to end. Lastly Heartbreak hill is the most fun I’ve had climbing on my bike—it is so short, you can really crank up the effort knowing it will be over soon. Plus, spectators swam near the top of Heartbreak cheering you on the whole time—very Tour de France as they crowd in yelling and screaming.
- There were cowbells! Laboring up the Beauty there are fields on both sides of the road. You can hear (and smell) the cows. Lots of “moo”-ing and bell banging and they watch you go by. Even the sheep had little bells that made noise as you went past. Very cool.
- Downhill in the rain is horrifying. Instead of a nice quick downhill letting your legs relax you spend the time with a death grip on the bullhorns hoping the hill ends before your hands and/or brakes give out. Or that some fool in front of you doesn’t wipe out and bring you down with him.
My first loop came in at 3:12. A little fast I thought based on my training rides, but pretty good considering the hills and the rain. I was also very, very cold at this point. My legs would start shivering whenever I coasted. The rain was still coming down, but it looked like maybe it would stop… any minute, but it never really did.
Lap 2 was more of the same. I tried to keep a steady, low effort bike going. Luckily, the rain did let up and here and there we’d see spots of dry pavement starting to appear. This made the downhills less scary.
The last 20K of the bike ride also uncovered a small surprise. As I was feeling around in my Bento box (tucked under the seat, attached to the seat post) for what should have been the last Gu of the ride I pulled out my bike computer. Yea, apparently, the “safe” place I put it while packing on Saturday was the Bento box figuring that no way would I forget my nutrition on the bike and no way I could fail to find it there. This made be very unhappy as I headed toward Heartbreak hill. The Powertap was with me the whole time and I didn’t know it. Poop!
Second loop was little slower than the first at 3:29. Fifteen minutes over 56 miles with nothing to go on by feel isn’t too bad and my total time of 6:42 was only bit longer than my projected 6:00 to 6:30 at my goal Watts. In the rain and cold with no way to measure effort or speed, not too shabby.
T2 was okay. In and out with a time of 5:56. I changed my socks into something a little dryer (only a little because they got to spend 6-hours in the rain under my hat, but still dryer and warmer than the ones I wore during the bike) and lost the cycling jacket/top in exchange for a run friendly top. I also discovered that almost 7 hours on a bike in the cold rain, most of it in the aero position causes my back to completely lock up.
I’ve had lower back issues during my last two longer races. The Marine Corps Marathon was slowed greatly at mile 18 with spasms. Ditto with the Goofy Marathon back in January of last year. I was hoping to avoid it this time around… or least have it delayed until near the end again, but no such luck.
:(
As soon as I started to run, the problem started. My legs felt fine but the pounding after a kilometer or two started to send twinges across the lower back and down my legs. By the end of the first loop, I knew it was a lost cause. Again.
This led to another mental pity party that lasted for 2 or so kilometers. But, I figured, hey, I’ve made it this far. I’ve got 7+ hours to walk my way through three 10K loops with lots of fan support and free food every 2-3 kilometers. Might as well suck it up and get moving.
Walking 20 miles does indeed suck.
Then, at the very end, it started to rain again. It provided a certain symmetry to the day as a whole.
Still, I finished. It wasn’t pretty, but I beat most of the pros (they DNFed after the bike due to the cold), had worked through some nasty distractions as the start of the day, and finished the 140.6 miles in less than ideal conditions. I’ll take it.
Many thanks to everyone who helped me get to the start line. Special props to Bretta who put up with all my junk during the months leading up the the race (all while training for her very own IM-CH race). Hopefully, I’ll be smart enough not to do this again… but no one ever accused me of an overabundance of smarts. ( <grins>… how about Chesapeake Man next fall?! … anyone?)
ps/ Select race pic are on Flickr, hopefully we can add a few more in the coming days.
Tags: Ironman, Race, Triathlon // 1 Comment »
