A year ago Heather and I decided to do the Ironman in Penticton and we signed up. The challenges of having the 2 of us both training for such an epic race at the same time, as first timers, were many. We really had no clue what we were doing. When we signed up, Heather was terrified to swim with her face in the water, uncomfortable with open water swimming, and hated running. I was dreadfully slow in the water and on the bike. Oh to think back on those early days now! We seemed to always get the training done, and actually came to enjoy both the volume and the company of our fellow tri-club members. A 6 hour training ride is much more fun with like-minded people to talk to.
We decided to try and raise $5000 for the BC Cancer Foundation, as our "Why are you doing something so mental?" question's answer. We ended up raising a total of precisely $7,800! We also took on a challenge to race a Montreal couple in the event. Lowest combined time wins beer from the losers and bragging rights. We lost. Here's my story...
The Swim had over 2600 people finish, making it the largest mass start swim in Ironman history. A bonifide world record. Also of note, the swim produced it's first casualty, as an 66 year old competitor tragically died in the frenzy. I seeded myself near the front, dead center, the closest point to the first marker, the inside line, the path of least resistance! If this was going to hurt, I wanted to feel it. The horn sounds and it's everything I imagine and more. This is a warzone, and it's either swim or sink. I'm finding the current produced by so many people is really pulling me along. I get to the first marker and look back to see how far I've gone. Big mistake number one. In that split instance, the hordes are upon me and I am getting dragged down. I'm no longer horizontal in the water as other swimmers keep shoving my legs under as they try and swim over, around, and through me. I start freaking out and yelling at the top of my lungs. Another guy besides me stops and comments how much of a $h!t show this is. I look for a canoe to grab onto, but swimming to one would involve navigating through the field, 100 meters in either direction. Ironically, the next course marker was only 50 meters away so I cut in front of that guy and just started swimming very slowly and repeating to myself "keep it together, keep it together.". My heart rate goes down, and I find my stroke. I make it through the first 1600m (1 mile) portion in 25 minutes. My previous record for 1500m was 26:34, to give you an idea of the type of current generated from so many swimmers! I round the first houseboat and look down at the underwater scuba divers giving me the thumbs up. I gave them the horns, made my 90 degree right hand turn and swam the 400m to the next boat. This portion was really confusing as we were swimming into the rising sun, and there were many boats out there. It was hard to tell which boat we were targeting. Once I got around the second boat, it was relatively smooth sailing. I kept searching for feet to get behind, so I could draft, and focused on using as little energy as possible. I kept checking my watch, and I was flying. I was targeting 1h10 as a reasonably good swim time. Back when I signed up for this race I would have happily taken a 1h15. I get through the final 1800m of the swim and sprint to the timing mat in 1h08, better than I predicted. I had my wetsuit half off and I jumped on my back so the volunteers could get it off my legs. I see one of my training pals Jonathon getting his wetsuit off, and then it really dawns on me that I had a good swim! Then I ran to the change tent and put on my bike shoes, helmet, and sunglasses. I ran to the bike racks grabbed my bike and split. Somehow all that took 3 minutes of the 5 minutes I thought it would... oh that's right. We forgot the sunscreen.
So I'm riding up main street and feeling pretty good about the swim. The crowd is cheering so loud and I'm kind of zoning out listening to my carbon wheels slice through the wind as I accelerate out of town. Just as my coach said, my heart rate is high, and it would be foolish to start in on the nutrition just yet. Stick to water. So I relax and slow down... to 38km/h. Once we're out of town and riding along Skaha Lake, I start drinking my Perpetuem, and water. I have all my nutrition bottles labeled and numbered, I even wrote the calories and electrolyte content on each bottle in case I had a brain cramp, as well as how long each bottle should take to drink. I easily spin up the climb up and over Maclean Creek Road.
Then it's big test number 1 for the wheels. You see, the wheels on my bike are made of carbon and the rims are really deep. Great for aerodynamics, but very scary and unpredictable in the any sort of crosswind. The wind just grabs hold of particularly the front wheel and yanks control of the bike away. The descent out of Maclean creek road is steep, long and windy. If I could get through this part OK, it'd build my confidence for the really scary parts of the course coming up later. I absolutely fly down this hill, 70 km/h top speed in the aerobars. At the bottom of the hill we turn left and are back onto Hwy 97 in Okanagan Falls. This is the portion of the course I am most familiar with, having ridden this 50km stretch dozens of times in training. I catch back up to Jonathon and we ride lots of this part together. I'm ever cautious about going too fast, and even the fact that I have caught up to a fast guy like Jonathon is cause for concern. But Jonathon is on the same page, and holding back. He ducks out for a bathroom break and I make the turn up to Richter Pass. I remembered this hill being harder in training. On fatigued legs, I suffered up Richter countless times. On well rested legs I'm up and over the top before I even know where I am. Now it's time for uber-scary part #2: the long descent out of Richter. But once again the wheels are great.
Through the first half of the course, I'm holding down an average pace of 34km/h and I'm over the first major climb and into the rollers. I really tried to ease up on the rollers, hammering down them, but just gently spinning the pedals on the uphills. Once though the rollers, it's the toughest part of the course: the headwinds into Keromeos. These winds are always there, and always brutal. My pace plummeted to 28km/h through here, but surpisingly it didn't really bother me too much. Before I knew it, I was off on the out and back portion of the course, heading towards my scheduled 3 minute break at the special needs pick up area. This is where I reloaded on my nutrition, stretched out my back, took a pee break, and used the baby wipes to clean off my face. I also slammed half a Coke and half a Red Bull. A great idea, I felt fresh and ready to start working. Everyone around me seemed to be getting flats, I just hoped I wouldn't be one of those guys, even though I actually knew how to change out a tubular thanks to Heather's lesson the day before.
The next part of the course is very challenging, a 30km gradual upward slope towards the big climb at Yellow Lake... or so I thought. This part of the course also seemed much harder in training. Yellow Lake was really cool, fans had lined up on both sides of the road en mass and parted for each rider a la the Tour De France. The first time I even realized I was climbing the hill, I was already at the "overhead powerlines marker" that our coach had pointed out indicated half way. Then the crowd kind of got me going and I hammered the second half out of the saddle. It would have been rude not to. I honestly expected the bike to be much harder on me. I am not a strong cyclist. With the work done, I crested the hill and went to work on getting as low of a bike split as possible. The last 20km is all downhill so I just tucked in and coasted along at 60km/h. Along the last part of the course, another of my training pals, Stewart, comes flying past me like a bat out of hell. I just let him go and start working on my preparation for the epic run that lies ahead. I break my best case scenario prediction of 5h50 for the bike, and finish in 5h49!
The bike finish line kind of snuck up on me and I wasn't ready for it. Before I knew it a volunteer literally yanked my bike away from me and ushered me to where I was to get my running shoes on. The only problem was that in my disoriented state, I forgot to grab my run nutrition gel flask (which doubled as back up nutrition on the bike), and electrolytes. I realized this giant gaff while sitting in the change tent. I briefly considered running back to my bike for them, but then I made another bad call and decided to try and survive on course aid, until I could get reloaded at my special needs bag at the half way point of the run. Giant mistake, I hadn't trained with Pepsi, I hadn't trained with pretzels, I hadn't trained with Gatorade. I used water, gels and endurolytes, and now I had access to 1 of the 3. I had grossly underestimated the distance of an Ironman marathon, as relative to a normal marathon. Anyway, I remembered to get lathered up in sun screen this time, and somehow this transition took an embarrassing 7 minutes. I must have taken a nap.
Once out on the run course, I just tried to go on autopilot mode. I didn't expect to work until at least 10k and I didn't expect to experience any difficulty until at least half way. My plan was to run in a low heart rate zone until halfway. Another giant mistake! Sure I ran in a low heart rate, but I didn't factor in exertion. Running easy in zone 2 was hard, especially when I was beginning to cramp up. My legs got progressively fatigued to a point where I literally couldn't run fast enough to even be in zone 2 heart rate. I made it through 10k in 48 minutes, then I hit the wall. Hard. Everything started to hurt at once, and I began the walk of shame. I began to see my friends coming back the other way, in pain, but still running strong. How would I ever get there? I still had 32 daunting kms to go. The funny thing about being able to run a normal marathon relatively fast is that you don't really get a good sense of the distance. 4:15 - 4:30/km is not really enough time to get familiar with how far a km really is. I now figure 10 minutes is how long you need to get intimate with how long a km is. You have time to study every bump in the pavement, every tree you pass, and every competitor that passes you, as they take a piece of your pride away with them.
At one point I was looking at 1h50 as a worst case scenario to get to special needs. It ended up taking 2h14 and keep in mind the first 10k took 48 min. Once at special needs, I got my precious Endurolytes and went into damage control mode. But it was too late. Shortly later, I spotted Heather coming up to special needs. She was going to run me down, just like everyone had joked about all through training. Then I saw Lee, a guy in our training group who can run 3:30 marathons off of conservative well paced bike rides. He was going to run me down. Then I saw Leslie, a really strong woman from our training group who had dusted me on Yellow Lake at training camp and now she too was going to run me down. Then I saw my coach. He basically said hop on the back of someone and just keep going. It's going to suck, but just keep going. And I did just that. Along comes Stan from Calgary, 45 years old, 4 time Ironman. I jump on his heals and we get to talking. We are both having terrible luck out there as we run through the forest fire smoke together. He starts talking about how we could crack 12 hours if we work together. It's going to take being consistent and team work to motivate each other, but we can do it. Hell, 11-something sounds better than 12-something, even though I wasn't really going for a specific time, but by now I'm just looking for any kind of way to end this pain. So we start walking the aid stations and jogging the downhills and the flats and finally we are out of the hills and making our way to town. Stan's brother finds us on one of our walk breaks and starts trying to talk him into going for his 11:40 PR. Stan's not having any of that though. I finally find my legs and start hitting a pace of 4:40/km again. Now it's just 8k to go, and once again I crash and burn as my leg muscles decide to stop me in my tracks. Stan catches back up, and I briefly start jogging, but I can't hold onto him. I decide that I'm going to break 12 hours no matter what. Every step is excruciating pain, whether I walk or run, so I decide to run. I somehow get this comical stride going where I'm sort of balancing out every painful knot in my legs against each other. It's not pretty but it works, and 6 minutes per km is much better than 10. I round the corner for the last "victory lap" along Lakeshore Drive, a cruel 1 mile out and back stretch where you can see and hear the finish line, but you still have to work so hard to get there. But just like at Yellow Lake, the crowd here picks me up and I turn in my 2 fastest km of the entire race. I even find the energy to dust a few of the guys who had looked so strong only 2 hours ago. Once in the finishing shoot, I high fived the kids on the right, then the kids on the left then I crashed onto the ground in agony and got wheeled away in a wheel chair. This was my 50th race, and the first time I've ever left it ALL out there on the course. Times before when I thought I had, I was mistaken.
I cracked 12 hours, 11:55:29 which was good enough for 711th place out of 2600 finishers, and 93rd out of 219 males aged 30-34. Heather didn't run me down. Lee didn't run me down. Leslie didn't run me down. I made my mistakes on the back half of the race, but I can live with them and learn from them for next time. Now I just have to get the beers sent off to Helene and Eric.
Double or nothing, guys? 
Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9 ... 4aa45308b6
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Congratulations Ironman! 
