So here we go. I’m writing a blog. I was reluctant at first. There are lots of blogs out there and I wasn’t keen to add to the mounds of rubbish on the internet. But I love reading other people’s race reports and travel adventures so why not share some of our stories too? And if only two people read it then I’ll just quietly remove it and pretend it never existed.
I had planned to write a race report of Ironman Coeur d’Alene, but I got carried away so I split it in two. The race report will follow. This post covers my journey to the start line. That journey began in January. Having raced three Ironmans in 2016, I took a long post-season break of limited unstructured training during the chaos of selling my condo, quitting my job, traveling to London to get a new work visa, and moving across the country. Once the dust had settled, I was eager to find some new training buddies. Our local shop, Mike's Bikes, had long weekend base miles rides. Perfect. Just my thing. Kyle and I showed up excited and ready for a 3-4 hour ride. And got dropped within 30 minutes. We laughed at ourselves and did our own ride. I was out of shape and needed a goal. I was finally ready to commit to a third and final shot at qualifying for Kona 2017. We got home and I signed up for IMCDA.
Why IMCDA? I love to travel to new places, to race in beautiful locations and to climb hills. IMCDA had been on my short list for a while, the timing worked and it was a great excuse for a recce/training visit earlier in the year. Plus we could drive there in our new van!
Training didn’t get off to a great start. I spent February in a boot, unable to run, with a possible stress fracture that turned out to be nothing. The weird achy pain eventually just went away like it was never there. When I did start running again it was months before my run mojo showed up. I was also learning to mountain bike. So fun! But my crash to ride ratio was roughly 1:1, sometimes worse. I lost a lot of skin on my elbows and knees, sported new bruises weekly and wondered for a while if I’d broken some ribs after aiming right for a tree stump with my chest from 6 feet above it. I couldn’t swim for a few weeks after that. I switched to flat pedals to minimize further damage … and entered our local mountain bike race series. My first ever bike race. I was terrified. Fortunately the courses weren’t too technical and I just came to dread the pain of the 45 minute anaerobic workout each week. Just like VQ classes, only with less recovery between efforts and the occasional crash! After getting comprehensively out-witted and out-ridden by a 12 year old week after week, I finished 2nd in the series in my class. I put the MTB learning curve on hold and focused on putting in the miles on the road.
My 12 year old nemesis letting me do the work before outwitting me again later. She won every time!
Yes, I crashed again
In June we did our CDA recce trip. We flew into Spokane, WA and hired a car for the short drive into Idaho. We had booked a cabin at Camp Coeur d’Alene, about 10 miles from town. It was a pretty spot nestled into the trees on the lake but a bit far from town for race weekend. After messing around in a boat for a bit when we arrived, pretending to be regular people on vacation, we built our bikes and headed out for an easy spin. Only it turned into a two mile climb followed by a hair-raising descent on fresh gravel when the bike path we were trying to find turned out to be the shoulder of the I-90 and we had to go another way! Luckily our road joined up with the bike path and we rode into town on part of the IM course. It was beautiful!
We headed for the Coeur d’Alene Bike Co to pick up a few things and get recommendations for rides and places to eat. It’s a cool shop. The owners and staff were friendly and helpful and they have a keg in their workshop. Beer and bikes: the perfect combo!
As we rode back we got chatting with some local triathletes on the bike path who invited us to join them for hill repeats. Tempting but we had a lot of miles lined up for the next few days so we declined and took the easy way home instead by jumping the fence to ride a mile on the highway. That was Google’s bike route! No wonder we were confused. An hour later we were back in town having dinner and the same triathletes came in and sat down next to us. Total coincidence! We reintroduced ourselves (since we look different in our regular clothes) and spent a fun hour talking bikes and triathlon. They were super-friendly. We’d only been there a few hours and we’d found our people. We loved this place already.
Over the next three days we rode and ran the IM course, rode a loop around scenic Hayden Lake (lots of short climbs, descents and corners, fun on a road bike) and rode a century on the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, an old railroad which is now a bike path spanning Northern Idaho. It’s beautiful but flat, very flat, so we took alternating one mile pulls to stave off boredom!
All those miles needed fueling so we checked out the restaurants recommended by the bike shop. Excellent choices: they were all spot on!
- The Garnet Café: great breakfast spot tucked away from the main tourist drag;
- Fire: yummy wood-fired pizza and small plates;
- 315 Martinis and Tapas: in a pretty old house with a nice deck and patio area; and
- Collective Kitchen: great beer, we sat out a storm here enjoying a mini-growler!
We had a great trip to CDA and I was looking forward to coming back to race. I’m sure we will be back for the 70.3 in the future too. We loved everything about the town: its parks, the lake, cute downtown, great restaurants and friendly people.
Coeur d'Alene: beautiful!
A few weeks later we did the 5 day, 300 mile Cycle the Sierra, a great ride right on our doorstep. Perfect training for July’s challenge: the 3 day Haute Route Alpe d'Huez. We had signed-up for that in January in a blaze of excitement about riding in the French Alps without really digesting the facts and figures detailing how many kilometers and how many meters of climbing. As the Haute Route drew closer we looked properly at the ride details for each day, converted the figures to miles and feet, and started panicking. We put mountain bike gearing on our road bikes and rode up every hill we could find.
The trip to France was amazing. We enjoyed great French wine and food, took a cooking class in Lyon, the culinary capital of France, and spent a couple of days in beautiful Annecy. (We tried hard to be regular tourists there but on the day we had planned to take a boat across the lake, we missed it, didn’t want to wait two hours for the next one and ended up renting dodgy commuter bikes and riding 23 miles around the lake!) The Haute Route was hard though. Harder than we expected. Day one was a time trial up the famous 21 hairpin bends of Alpe d’Huez. Zero chance of us taking it easy, whatever we pretended beforehand. We were racing, of course! Kyle 1, Emma 0, legs already tired. Not the best preparation for the 95 miles and 14,000 feet of climbing on the schedule the next day.
Day two was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than Ironman. Harder than the Horribly Hilly Hundreds. Harder even than my ill-advised first Birkie (also known as “the seven most miserable hours of my life”), the only event I’ve ever done which I would have quit if I could have done. Only I couldn’t. Because it’s point-to-point, there’s no SAG wagon at the back and if I’d stopped and curled up in the snow, I might not have been found until Spring. But back to the Haute Route. I honestly didn’t know if I would finish day two. The climbs were long and steep and I wondered if my legs could keep turning the pedals. The second 20 mile climb (up the Col de la Croix de Fer) almost finished me off and we still had to climb 12 miles back up Alpe d’Huez. I had a new, unparalleled respect for the Tour de France riders. How on earth did they ride so fast up these mountains and do it day after day?! I cursed average gradients. I never want to see an average gradient for a climb that includes downhill stretches again. 4-6% is manageable for extended periods. 8-10% for several miles is hard. Even with mountain bike gearing!
Day three was easy in comparison: “only” 45 miles and 9,000 feet of climbing. I moved up a place in the overall standings, to 7th out of the 9 female finishers. First was Olympic silver medalist Emma Pooley. Second was also an Olympian. I was happy just to be a finisher in that company. Riding in the Alps was an incredible experience. The mountains are majestic and the views are breathtaking. We’re on the fence about another Haute Route but we will definitely be back to conquer more climbs in the Alps.
The Alps: so many mountains to climb!
Back from France, I needed to focus on this Ironman! I had only done one other triathlon this season, a local half-ironman in May, which had turned out to be a total shambles. So I hadn’t really raced for a while. I had also taken a very different approach to training this year. I hadn’t ridden on the trainer at all since I moved. I had been mountain biking, done some gravel rides and ridden thousands of miles on my road bike. I had joined the Kinetic Cycles team and loved the camaraderie and hard efforts of the KRR (road ride) and KGR (gravel ride) but maybe I should have ridden the TT bike more?! I put in a couple of soul-destroying solo long rides on 100+ degree days. I should be good, right?
I had experimented with cutting down my run volume in 2016 (the “anti-run plan”), and it worked for me. But this year it had been even lower. Had I done enough running? I was running well by now but the Ironman run always terrifies me. You never know what will happen out there.
Then there was swimming. I’m a rare triathlete who loves to swim and I pay my dues in the pool but over the summer I had got slower, and slower, and slower. I was beginning to get frustrated. I put it down to deep fatigue and assumed I would pick up speed when I started tapering. Only I didn’t. Ten days before IMCDA I finally switched back to my one piece swimsuit from the two piece one I had been wearing all summer, just in case that was a factor. Bingo! The two piece suit might have been better for my tan lines but it was acting as a drag suit, costing me 5-6 seconds per 100 yards. Phew, I can still swim ok!
So there you go. I hadn’t followed a typical Ironman training plan but I was in good shape mentally and physically. I hadn’t had any injuries since I stopped crashing my mountain bike, not even a phantom injury in race week, and I was ready to see what I could do in CDA.