My plan for this year had been to ride the Giro d’Italia. I was going to do it in a similar way to the Tour de France, but with a bit more preparation. I had in fact started with the preparation (as you can see from the website – the colour scheme is staying just for the moment because this is not a goal I have completely given up on) and everything was going well, until I had a stroke of bad luck. I got a job. Yes, I had been trying to avoid it, and as an equalitarian had absolutely no problem with the concept of being a kept man and living one huge adventure, but work reared its ugly head. And it was pretty clear straight away that for me, for this year, the Giro was out of the question.
Obviously I was disappointed, but I decided there had to be something else I could do. It had to be short duration though, like a day. The obvious thought was… Ironman. Now I have done one ironman triathlon in the past, and I enjoyed it. I decided then though that I would not do another one unless I could do it quickly, which I class as less than 10 hours. Since that was not going to happen this year, it had to be something else. But, somehow, I couldn’t find anything else that fitted, just this ironman, in Regensburg, Germany, on 1st August. So OK, maybe I could do one more slow one, since it was just a bridging activity (the job contract was 12 months). I signed up and paid my money, in December 2009. Then I forgot about it, occasionally remembered it and thought I would have to start training soon, occasionally remembered it and thought I should just skip it, but generally just forgot about it.
I was spending a lot of time in Bulgaria, and far away from the one I love, so I should have had a heap of training time, but unfortunately I was also working 12 hour days. I did do a little bit of training now and then, in June I went and ran a marathon just to see if I still could, I swam occasionally in the Black Sea (not a recommended activity, I am sorry to say), probably about 5km all up, and I even bought my mountain bike over and rode a total of about 100km. And then it was mid-July. I felt like I had done no-where near enough. I hadn’t even put the aero bars on my bike. It was obvious there was only one thing I could do. I put the aero bars on my bike.
The next week I rode to work and back every day. At 65km each way it meant I did 650km on my road bike that week, bringing my total for the last two months to… 650km. On the weekend Niki and I went out and did another 100+ km, so now I was feeling well trained.
Anyway, the day was finally nearly here. With some minor last minute issues like buying a helmet with European compliance (same model as my other helmet, just a different sticker inside, but rules are rules) and realising that the new chain and fancy fast tyres I had ordered were not going to get here in time, it was all starting to happen. I worked out what time we had to leave to get there for the compulsory briefing, Niki told me it had to be several hours earlier to allow for traffic jams, I thought confidently about the autobahns, we ended up leaving earlier than I had suggested but about an hour later than Niki had said. Unfortunately the traffic turned out to be worse than I expected, and we missed the briefing by about 55 minutes. Oh well, they never say anything important anyway. Except whether wetsuits are allowed or not. For those who have never swum in a good racing wetsuit and are amazed by guys swimming under 45 minutes for 3.8km, try a wetsuit. Under 45 mins is still amazing, but not nearly so amazing. So there is always a lot of interest in this announcement, with the critical rule being that above 24.something degrees, they are not allowed.
Well, I missed the announcement, but apparently it went “the water temperature was 27.3 degrees when we tested it…”
large groan from audience…
“… last week. Now it is 22.” So we got to swim in wetsuits. I was happy when I heard that, and briefly wondered how well it would fit, given that the last time I wore it was several years ago and I had a fairly different body shape. Niki suggested trying it on in advance, but I knew better. We went and checked in my bike and the bags for the two transitions, and I had a quick look so I would know what the course was. It did look a bit complicated in parts, so I modified my race plan to make sure that there would always be at least one person ahead of me.
The morning of the race, I leapt up, headed down stairs to have breakfast (I love a hotel that looks at its guests for a weekend and decides to start Sunday breakfast at 4am!), and then headed back up to get psyched and ready. I grabbed the bottle of spray oil I had carefully prepared earlier (can you believe that Germans don’t sell it in cans in the shop? How do people live without spray oil?), stepped into the shower, and liberally coated my legs. The wetsuit went on like a dream. All good. Wetsuit around my waist, I grabbed everything else I thought I would need, made sure Niki was there grabbing everything else I would actually need, and headed down to the car to be driven to the start.
All was going well, with plenty of time, until about 6km away. At that point, the traffic stopped. Then it crawled a bit, then stopped. It kept doing that, for a long time. 2000 athletes plus various supporters were all trying to drive to the same place at the same time, and it wasn’t working.
I sat impatiently in the car for a while, wondering what to do. We kept moving forward 10m at a time, but it was very slow. Precious minutes were ticking by, until the deadline to be in the compound. Finally, I decided to walk. I changed my shoes, grabbed my swim goggles and cap, leapt out telling Niki I would see her somewhere sometime, and started walking. I was overtaking a lot of cars, many of which still had worried looking racers sitting in them, looking at me (and the others walking around me) and clearly wondering what their best option was. After a while, a guy on a scooter came merrily by, with a space on the back. I stuck my thumb out for a ride. He stuck his thumb up to say ‘yeah, cool, isn’t it?’. Idiot. As you can tell, my nerves were starting to fray… I kept walking. I was overtaking a lot of cars. But then, they started keeping up with me. Shortly after, they were overtaking me again! I was no longer using the fastest transport available, and the solution was obvious. I looked around, and there was a car with two racers sitting grimly in the front seat (the wrist bands were pretty obvious) and a big empty back seat. I stuck out my thumb. They looked deliberately away, and kept going. Love that spirit. I tried the next car. A sporty red BMW driven by a woman with no wrist band. She looked, shrugged, and then nodded and stopped. I ran around and jumped in, saying in my best German “Thanks, I appreciate it!”
Just around the corner, I realised why things were going faster. We were at the car park. Everyone was being turned off the road into the carpark where they could spread out and speed up. But we were still a long way away, and I had lost a heap of time! I was still going to have to hurry! As I grasped the door handle and drew a breath to say thanks, but I would run from here, my benefactor grabbed a little laminated bit of paper from the dash and said “luckily I have this.”
I looked. I was confused. What good was paper? Huh? It is now pretty clear to me that my mind was going into race mode. A second look showed that the paper had the logo of the race on it. And the letters VIP. And now she was showing it to the guy telling everyone to pull off the road and park. He stepped back. I smiled. She drove. Brilliant. As we got to about 300m away, I thought of a problem. “Um, can I borrow your phone?” I asked?
I could, and Niki answered just as she was getting out of the car. I quickly explained to her exactly where my timing chip was, then hung up, gave back the phone, thanked the woman, and ran off to see how I could access my bike to pump up the tyres.
At the gate, the guard was determined. Absolutely no way I was allowed into the compound without my timing chip. Please, just to pump up my tyres? No. If you watch me go straight to my bike and then straight back out? No. Is there anyone else I can talk to? Only race information. And where are they? In that corner of the compound over there. Oh well, I guess I will have to go ask them.
Of course, I did go straight to race information, just in case he was watching. I then asked if they knew where I could borrow a pump, complete with mimed pumping action. Sure, the girl replied, someone out there will have one, just ask! Complete with nodding head. So I went to my bike, found some guy organised enough to have carried his pump with him on the walk from his car, pumped my tyres, and then relaxed.
In view of the fact that people were still arriving after waiting in traffic they had not actually closed of the entry to the compound as they had promised to do, but still I thought it best to wait inside just in case Niki didn’t arrive and they wouldn’t let me in again to get to the start. I should never have doubted. She arrived with plenty of time, I strapped the chip around my ankle, and then slipped on the top half of my wetsuit. Pretty much.
So before my last ironman (when I last used the wetsuit), I had been swimming a lot, and I had a swimmer’s physique. Today, not so much. I had plenty of room around the shoulders. Fair bit around the upper arms. Not so much around the torso. Still, it felt kind of OK, and I figured it would settle once the water got into it. Then some warm up stretches (I had just missed the warm up swim, probably a mistake with hindsight) and waiting around for the start. I heard the commentator talking about 1,999 competitors here today in their wetsuits, and one guy without. I gave him a clap, which travelled through the crowd. Don’t know how he swam, but I hope he won.
Then, all of a sudden, the gun went. I ran into the water. About waist deep, I dived in. Within two seconds I had been kicked in the face, so I stuck my head up and did head-up freestyle for about 100m. I was right in the middle of the washing machine, and not feeling good. The wetsuit hadn’t settled, it was squeezing my chest and my breathing was not working right. I was struggling and fighting. A guy swam sideways across in front of me, heading 90 degrees from everyone else. I had no idea why. I tried to put my head down, but it just felt all wrong, so I stuck it back up and kept struggling. I tried a bit of breast stroke. I had gone about 250m by that time, and I thought I really had to start swimming properly. I put my head down. Stroked left, stroked right, stroked left and opened my mouth to breath, and copped a mouth full of water off someone else. I coughed and choked, and went back to head-up style. Another few hundred meters, and then I saw a guy who was really not enjoying himself. Off to my right and a little back, he looked stressed and panicked with eyes wide. He wasn’t going forwards, and his hands were splashing on the water in front of him. This guy needed help. By the time I figured it out I was probably 5m away, 3 sideways and 4 in front. It was going to be tough to get back to him, but I called out to let him know I was on my way. Then, someone else was there. From right behind him a guy grabbed and lifted him a critical extra few inches out of the water, and said something (dunno what, was probably German, I could just hear sound). The first guy calmed down, and they headed sideways to the bouy. Suddenly I realised where the other guy had been going with his 90 degree course.
For me, this was great. Although until then I had not realised it, I was feeling panicked and had no confidence in my ability to do the swim. The wetsuit was not helping my breathing, but nor was thinking I couldn’t breath. But now I realised that when I saw the guy in trouble, my first instinct was to help. As one of the world’s most selfish people, there is no way that would have happened unless some part of me knew I was fine. Then the rest of me figured it out as well. I was weak. My wetsuit was dragging and flapping where there should have been strong biceps holding it tight and pushing me through the water. I was short of breath, where I should have had strong lungs taking in loads of oxygen for power. And I was still in a washing machine, with arms and legs flying all around me. But I was fine. I put my head down and swam. I was not going fast, but I was up to respectable speed. I angled towards calmer water, and settled into a rhythm.
Around 1.7km things were going well. I was stroking smoothly, I had got clear of a lot of people, I was pretty sure I had moved up in the field. There was just one little problem, nothing to worry about, I had some weed caught on my ankle. I could feel it dragging across my foot as I kicked. ‘Must be caught in the wetsuit’ I thought. Not that I could think of how it would catch on that. ‘Oh, of course, caught on my timing chip. But how did it get on there? It certainly wasn’t there at the start…’. Of course, nothing was caught on the timing chip, the strap had come undone. I realised this at what was probably the last possible moment, and grabbed for it frantically. As I did I span around to see who was about to mow me down. I had enough of a gap behind me to let me actually grab the chip, but not time to do it up before having to dodge people. It is surprisingly hard to do up a strap around your ankle while treading water and dodging oncoming traffic, but it got done. Then back to the swim. Around 2.1km I really got into my rhythm, and managed to drag myself back up to about the middle of the pack. That lasted until about 3km, when I started getting chafing from the wetsuit. Nothing major I thought, but enough to throw my stroke off. Still, I came out of the water in the end, one hour, 11 minutes and some seconds after heading in. I have done the same distance in about 55 minutes in the past., but for today that was good enough. Looking back on the results it actually had me coming out in 771st place, which is still the front half of the field, so I am happy with that. Time for the transition.
The way this transition worked was that everyone had an identical blue bag with a sticker on it showing their number. The bags were hanging from hooks on a big row of racks, in numerical order. I ran to my hook. There was no bag hanging from it. I knew there had been, I had hung it there myself the day before. Someone must have taken my bag! I began thinking about what to do. Ride in my wetsuit? No, too hot. Ride in my swimmers? No, rules say no bare shoulders, and besides, I needed my race number. The other person must have the wrong race number! And they were ahead of me. That meant… Around this time, I looked down. There were a few bags under the rack, clearly knocked down by the faster guys. Mine was the top one. Cool. I grabbed the bag, ran into the changing tent. No room on a bench to sit down. I dropped my bag. I had already opened my wetsuit, now I just had to slide out of it. This would have been funny to watch. After over an hour of swimming, with adrenaline surging and my pulse racing, my balance was not good. I spent a lot of time hopping. I managed to avoid falling on anyone, and as soon as I finally got the thing off a space opened up on the nearest bench. I sat, and continued getting changed. Transition for an ironman is different to transition for a shorter race. For 20km on a bike you can put up with a little discomfort, but over 180km I really wanted to be comfortable, which for me meant putting on full knicks. Plus of course, lots of sunscreen. But the up side is that there are helpers there. One came over and asked if he could help, and I said sure, put some of this sunscreen on the back of my neck for me. I saw him recoil, but didn’t really get why. It wasn’t until later when I had a shower (and washed all that salty sweat into it) that I realised just how bad the chafing on my neck was. But still, he did a bit and I did the rest myself. And it did feel a bit tender at the time. Then I grabbed some food to shove in my pockets, picked up the shoes I hadn’t been sufficiently organised to attach to the bike (It has been three years since I did a tri, OK?) and ran. I got to the bike, wheeled it out of transition (a long way), put my shoes on, climbed on board and rode over the timing mat. Total transition time: 9 minutes, 36 seconds. For those of you who have not done an ironman, the transitions are long, but not usually that long. For those who have done one, please stop laughing. There were only one thousand, four hundred and eighty six people who did it faster on the day, and anyway, I got through it!
At least now I was on my bike. But all around me were fancy tri bikes, with deep rim aero wheels and slippery tubing, ridden by guys in skinsuits and full aero helmets. I was on my road bike, with clip on aero-bars and normal road gear. Maybe it was not going to be so fun after all.
As we hit the road though I had at least got my feet and pedals sorted out, and I managed to leave behind a few guys still doing that. Then I got a big cheer from my cheer squad to boost my spirits, and crept past a few who were still getting warmed up. We came to a bit of a climb, and I saw a few guys realising that the fancy disk wheels that make them so fast on the flat still weigh a lot, and I passed them. And some guys who’s aero frames were aero because of the extra kilogram of carbon to give them sweeping profiles. The thing about my road bike, is that it is ‘only’ a road bike, but it is at least ‘only’ a bloody good road bike, and it likes hills. This course had about 1500m of climbing all up. Not a great deal, but quite a lot for an ironman. And right then, I was feeling good on the bike. I was passing people constantly on the first climb. There were lots of food and drink stands, and I was grabbing drink as I went, and eating food I had with me. Not quite enough though, I think.
At about 120km, near the top of the second climb, I started feeling really flat. I backed off and frantically ate and drank everything I could get my hands on, and it started coming good, but I was also cramping a bit. So I tried to stay calm, and just kept at a moderate work level. Some of the guys I had just passed came back past me, and some of the ones I had been seeing quite often because we were about the same pace disappeared of into the distance ahead, but I decided I had to just ignore that and concentrate on keeping everything in working order for the finish. I was pretty happy to notice that after another 20 or 30 km I was actually feeling better. Given that I was still riding through this time, and still passing a few people, I saw this as a pretty good thing. For the last 30km I was able to pick the pace back up a little bit again and managed to finish in 5:24:39, which is a fairly respectable bike time overall and had moved me from 956th at the end of transition one to 564th, so that was OK. Well, to be honest, it was pretty good. You see, I hadn’t done much training for this race, and had expected to be slower than this, so really I had to be relatively happy.
Of course, I had not really practised the next transition either, so it wasn’t exactly lightning quick. Nothing really went wrong in this one (except not enough sunscreen on my calves, but I didn’t even notice that until the next morning) but it still took me 8:16, which was the 1370th fastest time of the day. At least I had enough of a gap that only 51 people actually physically passed me there, and then I was onto the run.
Although I was expecting to be pretty slow overall, I did have a specific goal for this run. I wanted a marathon PB. The thing is, I hadn’t trained much for the swim or the bike, but running was one thing I had done a bit of. Given that I have only done four other marathons, and all of them were slow, a PB didn’t seem unreasonable. The time I had to beat was actually the time from my last ironman, and I thought at the time it was somewhere around 4:23.
It was a great fast course, four laps that each took in the old town, where spectators were packed three or four deep, some really nice park land where the spectators were still pretty thick but it was also cool and a bit calmer, and crossing the Danube twice. The biggest hills were onto the bridges over the river, and even they were not too steep. My own personal cheer squad (consisting of the love of my life, Niki) was also there in two places each lap to spur me on. Can't really ask for much more than that in a fast course.
So I started out fine, with the first lap coming in 56:34. I was walking every aid station and running the rest, but I had after a full day of eating gels and sports bars I was feeling a bit unsettled in the stomach, so I had an unscheduled stop in lap 2. this took the total time up to 1:07:33 (I am pretty sure lap 1 was actually a bit shorter as well because of the course layout) and then started feeling a cramp on lap 3. By then I knew that if I stopped to stretch one muscle every other one in the leg would also cramp, so I just backed off a little more and kept going. I could also feel a bit of rubbing on my heel and a little blister forming (despite my best attempts to lubricate my entire foot!) but neither were really giving me much grief. Still, the lap took me 1:06:33 all together. Lap 4 was much the same, I managed to pick the pace up a little bit towards the end, but it was too little too late. The total lap time was the slowest of them all, 1:14:19. Interestingly though if you look at my relative places for each lap they go 643rd, 921st, 610th, 594th, which shows that I was not the only one feeling a bit tired by this time. I came in at 4:25:00.8 according to the official timing, which I thought put me outside the PB by just under 2 minutes. Interestingly enough, I had a quick look on the web since then, and my total run time for that other race seems very long, even allowing for it including a transition, so it may be that I was just a bit delirious and had made a mistake in calculating the PB. Regardless, it was a bit of a shame to miss the target, but still great fun.
Overall, it took me 11:19:01, which is quicker than last time. I think if I ever do another one though it really has to be under 10 hours…
