Internal Mono(b)log

Jumping to the end I improved my 2012 time by nearly 15 minutes and almost did a sub-12 hr event.  I’m happy that I improved my PR, I finished strong and feeling good.

Comparing the two years isn’t totally fair: it was hotter on the run this year and windier on the ride (and the wind was inconsistent seemingly blowing from all directions).   Caveats aside lets compare the two years:

Getting out of the water I was very happy with my swim improvement.  Sub 1hr is the next goal for this distance in the swim and next time I’ll use the suit strippers to work on getting that T1 down (10 minutes is excessive… 5 would be much better).

Unfortunately, for all the things that worked well in training, my nutrition on race-day was total crap and I started feeling its effects even during the swim.  I’m not sure if I swallowed water in the swim or if it was the Passion Fruit flavoured GU gels (#fail, I’d never tried this flavour before swimming before – dumb dumb dumb and yes I do know and should’ve known better) that I swallowed before the swim start, but something unsettled my belly.  From about 1/2 way through the swim and all the way through the bike I had the “lump in your throat, you’re gonna puke” feeling.  In T1 I managed to eat a bonk breaker bar, but unfortunately from then through the end of the bike I didn’t manage to choke down more than maybe 200-300 calories.  Note: I trained with and normally consume 400-600 calories on the bike at the intensity level I was pushing on Sunday.  So rather than 500×6 hrs (3000 calories), I had a bonk breaker and 200-300 calories of the nutrition I’d planned and trained with.

Given the lack of nutrients coming in, the lack of electrolytes coming in and the energy I was expending, it’s not much of a surprise that my back started to cramp and spasm at about 80km.  I had to stop twice (briefly) to stretch out spasms that nearly pulled me off my bike and had to stop once to shake a bee out of my helmet (yea that coulda really sucked).   Also nearly hit a deer on my bike coming down Lac Superior at Mach3.. at first when I saw it I thought a fan had put a hunting decoy beside the road, but then as I approached it decided that it was a good time to cross the road.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to try to stop and she cleared the road without causing any incident.   Given the wind, and my fuelling problems, I’m ok with my bike split, but would really love to know what it’d have been had my nutrition issue not been there.

Coming off the bike and into the run my stomach had settled enough that I could start taking in some nutrition without throwing it back up.  My run, obviously, started slowly as I tried to slowly add some fuel to my system without putting so much volume in my stomach that I’d get ill running.  The run was HOT but the fans were awesome: garden sprinklers, misters, hoses out to help us athletes cool down were very very welcome.  Ice water sponges at the aide stations were also very welcome.  My run actually started to feel pretty good, especially once the sun dropped a bit and we got some shade.  My last km was done at all out sprint, my garmin has me at about a 4min/km pace (which for me is blistering).  I hit the line and was all smiles.  I felt great and had met several of my goals in the face of my fuelling adversity.

Ironman is never easy.  This one, for me, was as much a mental toughness test as it was a physical endurance one: it took a lot of will and focus to continue to push on the bike and into the run on nearly no fuel.   There was no way I was gonna stop, or even let myself pull back on the intensity unless my body just was completely unable (which it wasn’t). Sometimes bull-headed-ness has its’ value I guess.

2014 I’m not planning on doing any full-Iron distance events: just 70.3’s and Oly’s and maybe some off-road tri’s.  I really want to work on speed: especially in my run.  If I look at my typical age-group placement, I usually move forward in the rankings on the bike, then lose a lot of ground on the run.  That needs to be fixed if I want to be competitive. 🙂

Thanks again to the staff and especially the volunteers who made Ironmon Tremblant a memorable event once again!