Ironman World Championships 70.3 and Me

Raced the Ironman World Championships 70.3 this weekend so wanted to capture some of my thoughts.

Drove down Thursday from Raleigh to Clearwater, FL for 11 hours with 3 kids in the car with choruses of “are we there yet, Mommy?”. Cut out alcohol this week but could have used a strong drink after that ride.

Went to race expo on Friday and checked my bike and gear bags. Race helmets, race wheels, cervelos everywhere. Athletes speak lots of different languages, have no body fat, shaved legs, big calves, etc. I have never seen a group of athletes like this before!!

As background, the past couple of months have been crazy from a health perspective. I couldn’t train much for two weeks in September because I had some skin cancer removed from my back and ten stitches to hold things together. Also, came down with bronchitis two weeks before the race and just finished up my antibiotics. So I had no idea how this would pan out for my race day. My goal was just to race against the clock.

Go down to practice swim Friday morning. A side-note for my girlfriends – the American guys wear their tri suits under the wetsuits but the European men wear little speedos. Hubby refused to hand-over camera :-(.

Practice swim felt good. Between the wetsuit and the salt water I actually stay on top of the water like real swimmers do. No scary sea creatures appeared during swim.

Race morning

Woke up at 3:45 and couldn’t fall back to sleep due to nerves and excitement. Get on shuttle bus at 5:20. No one on the bus was speaking English - wished I had my tri buddies with me to calm me down. Heart pounding and breathing shallow. Am I having a panic attack? Oh dear.

Get to race start, do body-marking, tire-pumping, etc. See Joanna Younts from the NCTS circuit. We hang-out together until the race starts – watch the pros start, chatter, check morning bags, I slide in to my too tight wetsuit, do short warm-up swim, etc. Having company calms me down – thanks Joanna.

The swim

Our swim wave was the biggest wave in the race making for a crowded swim. They combined females 18-29 with older ladies 40-44. In addition, the 45-49 year old males went right behind us.

The gun goes off. Run off beach in to water in to a mass of bodies, staying to outside to avoid massive crowd close to buoys. I didn’t go out too hard to try and get breathing under control due to cold water and overall frenzy.

Get out to turn-around and here come the fast, older men. Some dude swam over me and elbowed me in the back and head. Swallow lots of salt water. Yuck.

Despite the mean men and crowds of ladies, out of water in 34 minutes (that is fast for me).

The bike

Navigate through gear bags and changing tents and get to bike. Got on bike and felt fresh from the get-go. Felt great on bike the whole way and tried to keep my speed up. Didn’t look at heart-rate much but checked it a few times to make sure it didn’t get too high. Had a tail-wind for the first 10 miles and kept saying “wee!!” like I was on a roller-coaster.

The bad thing about this course is the many, many packs of riders. People got into groups of about 10-20 riders and formed peletons. Is this illegal? Yes. Did anybody seem to do anything about it? No. This was a very well-run, Ironman event so I was surprised there were not more referees on the course.

The dangerous thing about these packs of riders was when they flew by you at 26 miles an hour and were a few people wide. At one point I almost got pushed off the road by a pack of Italian riders. Suddenly the speedo dudes were not so cute.

I ate every 15 minutes on the bike (Gatorade endurance, couple bites of power bar early in bike, hammer gel and carbo pro) for those interested in food details.

The tail-wind turned in to a head-wind for the last 15 miles. ‘Wee’ turned to ‘uggh’. Finished the bike in 2:37ish. I would describe my pace as steady but not hammering (zone 3 for HR geeks like me). Volunteer took my bike from me as soon as I entered the transition area – pretty neat.

The run

The run transition went well due to the amazing volunteers. I had one volunteer spraying me with sun-tan lotion while I was putting on my shoes. The other was packing my bike stuff back in to my gear bag. I would like to volunteer at an Ironman event one day.

I wore racing flats during run – this REALLY helped since they are lighter weight and my legs felt heavy from the ride. Started off easy just trying to get my run legs moving. At about mile two I started to pick up the pace. Didn’t eat anything on run for the first few miles except water to avoid tummy trouble (an issue with me on run part).

The run was really a mental exercise for me. I was tired and it was hot and sunny (no-shade). The first part of the run was hard because I knew I had 10 more miles to go but was ready to slow down. Tried to stay in the moment and focus on running from landmark to landmark (lamp-posts, stop-signs, etc) instead of thinking about the total distance left in the run. Watched heart-race to try and keep it up. Played songs in my head, imagined my tri buddies cheering me on, tried to smile, counted people that I passed – anything to take my mind off the pain and tired state of my body.

After the first few miles, I ate oranges, water and gatorade along with some gu (with lots of water). Put wet sponges in my tri-suit at every water station to try and cool my core temperature down. May look a bit like Pamela Anderson in the race pictures – I will frame these :-)

At about mile 11, I ran by an Ironman message billboard and I saw, “K. Troester You Rock”. I can’t tell you how great that was to see – thank you to whoever sent that to ironman.com.

My kids and hubby were out on the run course. The kiddos were great and rang little bells and screamed “Go mommy” every time they saw me.

Ended up doing a 1:34 half-marathon and finished in 4:53 – a BIG PR for me.
It was a good day.