Race week

Thursday dawned with great excitement. Our first van trip for a race! Loaded with two TT bikes, two mountain bikes, a ton of gear, a few clothes and a mountain of food, we were off: CDA-bound via an overnight stop in Boise, ID.

We arrived in CDA a few hours before athlete check-in closed on Friday. The tent was empty. All done in ten minutes. I made it through the shop without spending a single dollar. Success!

I always laugh now about the hour I waited in line right when check-in opened at my first Ironman, Mont Tremblant, four years ago. A line filled with other first-timers full of nervous taper energy, excitement and fear. Could we really do this thing? Did we train enough? Did we overtrain? What if? What if? These days I know what lies ahead. I sometimes wish I didn’t!

The rest of Friday and Saturday were calm. We hung out in the van by the lake. Kyle did some training. I did my pre-race workouts and dropped off my bags and bike. I practiced saying my number in my best American accent to call out in transition (yes, really). We had a big second breakfast, a favorite pre-race ritual, at a great place we found on our recce visit, The Garnet Cafe. Then it was feet-up time. This is the part of racing I most dislike. I’m not good at it. Too much taper energy and too much time to sit around thinking. I have to be yelled at to sit down! We watched a movie and read a bit. Then it was time to pull the van round to the bike shop parking lot a couple of blocks from the race start/finish (thanks Coeur d’Alene Bike Co!) and attempt to sleep.

Race day

I slept surprisingly well but the 3am alarm was still too early. I’m not a morning person and anything before 7am is a struggle for me. The race started at 6am. Thank god for coffee!! By 4.30am we were headed out. There’s not much set-up to do in transition pre-Ironman because everything is already there but there are still the “what ifs” so I like to get there early.

Swim

By 5.45am I really wanted to get this show on the road. The air temp was in the 50s and my teeth were chattering. It was much warmer in the water! After a short swim warm-up I make it into the chute for the rolling start, optimistically lining up at the back of the 60 mins and under section. I chat to a girl who expected to swim around 1:02. Great, I could draft off her. Finally the moment is here, the cannon goes off and we’re let through a small gap one-by-one into the water. The lake is beautiful and the sun is rising over the mountains. Maybe early mornings aren’t so bad! I run and dolphin dive in and immediately ruin my drafting plan by swimming away from the 1:02 girl. I swim most of the first half mile or so by myself, fighting the chop and trying to keep my breathing under control. It always takes me a while to settle down so I keep reminding myself that I will feel better soon and focus on sighting and my “long and strong” swim mantra. As expected, the return leg of the first loop is smoother, I’m feeling good, swimming strong and I find some feet. Before I know it I’m on the beach and running back in for loop 2. Which was pretty much the same as loop 1 except with some slower swimmers to pass. I’m out the water in 1:07 which seems about right for the choppy conditions. As I’m running up the beach, pulling off my wetsuit with one hand and trying to block the blinding sun with the other, I hear Kyle yell from somewhere “great swim”. Since we have a no bullshit policy and he is using the cool new IM tracker app I reckon I did have a good swim. Great! One down, two to go!

Bike

I’m through transition in a blur (always a goal to win T1!) and rolling out with my bike. Now the fun starts. Uh oh, not so soon. Within a few pedal strokes I realize something is wrong. I stop. No air in my back tire. It’s completely flat. Ok, it’s not the end of the world. I tell myself to keep calm and fix it, quickly. After what felt like 20 minutes but was actually only five I was on my way again. Fueled by adrenaline and anger I headed off at about 120% of my FTP. Very bad idea!! Hammering the first 20 miles will come back to bite, big time. I put the anger away to channel during the run when I could use it positively. I’m 80-90% sure someone let the air out of my tire after I pumped it up before the race. I had joked about being the marked girl in my AG as the only gold all world athlete but I hadn’t expected that! My key metric on the bike is 5 mile average power, so I hit the lap button on my Garmin to get my data back on track. I calm down, focus and settle in. Back in the game.

Once the adrenaline subsided I was cold in my wet kit. A lot of the first 15 miles of the bike was in the shade and it was still only about 60 degrees. I couldn’t feel my feet but I figured it didn’t matter, they’d come back soon. They did, after an hour or so, and it gradually warmed-up and turned into a beautiful day. For the first 56 mile loop, I focused on hitting my numbers, keeping my cadence high, following my nutrition plan and enjoying the scenery. I had no idea where I was in relation to my competition but it didn’t matter yet. There were some girls a few miles ahead of me but not that many. The slower swimmers would have started behind me though and could be ahead of me in the race but behind me on the course. I just had to race my race.

After 40 miles out on the highway, the crowd support on the return back through town to start the second loop was amazing. It’s very hard to ride steady when you feel like you’re in the Tour de France! Soon after the turn around at mile 63 I started catching people. I passed four or five girls in less than 10 miles and began playing cat and mouse with a girl in green in my AG who I thought had already ridden away from me. Always a great boost! I felt good going up and over the big climb at mile 75ish but around mile 80-85, in a mentally tough false flat section with some crosswinds, I had my first rough patch. Every Ironman has them, you just have to get through them. My saddle was becoming increasingly painful in the aero position, it was becoming harder to keep up my watts and every mile to the aid station I had earmarked as my “pause and reset” point seemed to be getting longer. Did my Garmin stop working? Is my power meter reading correctly? Is my back brake rubbing? Nope. It’s just mile 85 of an Ironman bike leg. The last 20 miles were hard. The girl in green in my AG rode away from me for good. And it dawned on me that I probably spilt some of my nutrition whilst I fixed my flat so I could be short on calories. (Ironman brain can be fuzzy!) In hindsight, I was definitely showing signs of not enough calories. My mind was taking control over my body. I was focusing on what hurt and not on keeping my watts up. I wanted off the bike.

I made it back over the big climb one final time and cruised the last few miles into town for a bike split of 6:05. A bit slower than my goal but not too bad with the flat. I’d take it! I saw Kyle on the way into transition and heard him shouting all sorts of information but I couldn’t process any of it. I just smiled and ran past. I still needed to get my head back in a better place so I made a porta potty stop in T2. Sometimes it’s worth taking instead of trying to win T2!

Run

Out onto the run and Kyle was there again (#1 sherpa!). I smiled and waved. I wanted to ask for the information again but I didn’t have the energy and I didn’t know if I wanted to hear it. I felt like shit. My legs weren’t sore. I knew it was probably in the 90s by then but it didn’t feel that hot. I just had that crappy feeling of not wanting to run. Running seemed way too hard. By mile 2 I was walking. And yelling at myself to run. I didn’t want to run though. I was feeling terrible. And sorry for myself. This was going to be a long marathon. 24 miles is a really long way to walk. I ran another mile or so. Then I was walking again. At mile 4 I finally realized that I needed to do something to get out of this hole. The six gels I was carrying were unappealing (always a sure sign that I really need calories). Coke? A bit drastic at this point but I had nothing to lose. At the next aid station I downed two cups of it. Within 5 minutes I was running up the hill I had just walked down. I took two more cups at mile 6 and kept running. I was on a roll. This was it: coke or bust! I’ve drunk coke on the run before but never until much later. I had no idea if I could stomach it for over three hours. I saw Kyle around mile 8. He told me I looked better than the other girls in my AG. I didn’t know what position I was in and I still didn’t want to know. I made it to mile 13 for my next coke stop. I was running faster and feeling good. I still didn’t really feel hot but I was dumping water and ice over my head every mile and taking advantage of every hose and sprinkler so I guess it was hot.

I saw Kyle again on the way into the park at the end of loop 2 and chucked my bottle and all the gels at him. I was committed to coke now. On the way back out for the final loop (c. mile 18) he told me I was in 5th but that I could catch both 3rd and 4th if I kept up my pace. The catch: 4th was behind me on the course, so I would never see her; 3rd was ahead of me but I had started before her so I needed to catch her and then finish a couple of minutes ahead of her. She was in a red Coeur kit, #48. Or was it #49? My fuzzy Ironman brain tried to process all this. I knew there would be at least two Kona slots in my AG. Maybe three. I was on a mission. Within a mile I caught a girl in my AG in a red Coeur kit but I couldn’t see her number. I passed her at an aid station and ran straight through trying to look fast and strong (all relative at this point). I needed to put two minutes into her. I could work out how much of that I’d gained at the turn around. But then I saw another girl in a red Coeur kit coming towards me. And she was #48. Was that her? She was way too far ahead for me to catch. I got to the turnaround, took a time split and then promptly forgot it when I caught the first girl’s number: #56. What?! That couldn’t have been her then. I lost it briefly, suddenly exhausted, and started walking again. Then I remembered, I still needed to make it to 4th. I couldn’t give up. Every second and every place counted. I got running again. At mile 24, I caught another girl in a red Coeur kit. How many girls were wearing that damn kit?! Was that her?! She wasn’t moving that fast, I could find the two minutes. Speed and energy materialized from nowhere and I took off. Then I clocked her AG and number. Nope, not her. The energy immediately dissipated but I ran for home with everything I had.

The pain disappeared as I rounded the corner onto Sherman Ave. The Ironman finish chute is an amazing place whatever the day has brought and I had it to myself. I worked the crowd, high-fived Kyle and threw my arms up as I crossed the line, happy that I had given it everything I had after a rough start to the run. Kyle was at the finish, still tracking the other girls. Did I catch her? Who was she?! Where was she?! It turned out I had actually started over three and a half minutes ahead of her. That time passed in a blur. #56 crossed the line. It was her, not #48 or #49! The tracker updated. I had made it to 3rd! By 17 seconds. After over 11 hours of racing, every second counted.

Post race

At that point, I was proud of my 3rd place and I didn’t care about Kona. We had booked flights and accommodation months ago with the excuse that it would be a good business trip if I didn’t qualify. The idea of enjoying the World Championships as a spectator, promoting our company and relaxing on the beach was suddenly much more appealing than racing another Ironman. It was only seven weeks away. I couldn’t get my head around it. I was exhausted. Everything hurt. I could barely walk. Of course I would take it if there was a slot but right then the idea of doing Kona was miserable.

We celebrated with my post-race faves of pizza and beer at Fire (officially our favorite restaurant in CDA: we’re practically regulars after three visits in two trips) and ice-cream from Sweet Peaks (delicious!) which we ate while cheering on more finishers on Sherman Ave. Despite my feelings then about Kona, we were fanatically stalking the two oldest ladies out on the course, checking their predicted finish times every time they crossed a timing mat. There was one in 65-69 and one in 70-74. There would be one slot for each but if either of them didn’t finish then that slot would likely go to my AG (the largest by far) if it didn’t already have three. As we crashed out in the van, conveniently still parked at the bike shop two blocks away, Paula North, 65-69, finished with plenty of time to spare in 16:16 and Dexter Yeats, 70-74, was pacing herself perfectly to come in just under the wire. I was torn: I actually wanted those ladies to finish! Completing an Ironman at any age is a huge accomplishment but at that age it is just incredible.

We awoke the next day to find that Dexter had finished in 16:56. Good for her! We headed to the awards ceremony early. The slot allocation was already up. Three slots in my AG. My post-race thoughts of a relaxing vacation in Hawai'i vanished. The disappointment of Wisconsin last year was finally banished. And it didn’t matter about slots rolling after all. I was going back to Kona! I couldn’t quite believe it. At the third attempt, I had done it.

And here’s the funny part of the story. The 70-74 slot ended up rolling to my AG too. Dexter had already qualified for Kona. Yep, that’s right, this 73 year old lady had already raced another Ironman in the past 11 months and completed IMCDA in the knowledge she was doing Kona in seven weeks. Amazing! No wonder she was pacing herself perfectly. I wanna be like her when I grow up!!

IMCDA race report: coke or bust!

coaching - camps - FUN