This story really starts in 2004 in Tucson, with Peggy
telling me that her friend Aimee and I were going to start running together (my
beer-drinking, couch-potatoey-self thought that sounded like a terrible
idea). Or maybe it was in 2005 when I
was gently cajoled into training for my first sprint tri. But that’s probably too far back. So, fast forward through 10 years and a
myriad of sprint tris, a fist full of Olys, 8 half-Ironman distance races, and
two abortive attempts to get to the start of a 140.6, and land on the morning
of Friday July 31,, 2015. After
6 months of Ironman specific training, it’s finally time to head to Boulder and
get to racing.
Friday
The bike had been carefully taken apart and boxed.
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| Eek, hope it goes back together OK... |
Add my transition bag with all the other tri gear and a
(really) small suitcase with 4 days’ worth of clothes, and I was ready to head
to the airport.
The trouble with flying out of Boston before 7:00 AM (not
counting having to leave NH around 3:30…) is that the bar on the concourse isn’t
open yet. The nice part is, you can get
a pretty nice view of the city on the way out
The trip to Denver was pretty uneventful, if unreasonably
long (cheap flights lead to random connections…). After grabbing my gear from
the baggage check and picking up my rental mini-van, the first stop in CO was
Boulder High for check-in and packet pickup. I was already pretty stressed and
anxious about the race, but coming around the corner of the school and seeing
this got me all choked up…
Got my packet, picked up some (ok, a lot of) gels and a
couple of CO2 cartridges, and headed up to the hotel to check in and
take stock of what I’d been handed.
It turns out that after many years of trying to get lots and
lots of athletes through 140.6 miles the Ironman race organizers have things
honed down to a pretty good science.
There’s a place for everything, and, assuming that the participants can
get everything in its place, there’s a limited chance that things will go badly
because something’s been forgotten. Of
course, for us rookies this leads to the question “what the heck am I supposed
to do with all THIS?”
Happily, a little bit of reading and thinking about it
later, I had my bike and run gear packed into the proper bags, and had my bike
and run “special needs” bags started (with a shopping list for what I wanted to
add all squared away). A little time
spent with my level and some Allen wrenches got the bike put back together
Putting my race number on the bike was a little
surreal. I spent a lot of time last
weekend not quite believing I’d made it to the start line
A quick nap and it was time for dinner with my Aunt Mary and
Uncle Phil. Spent lots of time
carbo-loading Friday and Saturday, but dinner at The Gondolier was particularly
good. Probably a result of the excellent
company as much as the food.
Saturday
I figured most of Saturday was going to be spent with my
feet up doing nothing – turns out I was wrong.
I started the day with a quick spin on the bike down Boulder Canyon
(with the resulting grind up-hill back to the hotel), just to keep the legs
moving and make sure I’d gotten my fit right when putting it back
together. The remainder of the day was
scheduled for me by the race organizers.
Went back to Boulder High to drop off my run gear bag at T2 and catch
the course talk.
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| Ended up with about 2700 run gear bags laid out on the track |
The course talk was fairly standard fare (don’t draft, don’t
litter…), but there was the rather ominous moment when we were told that the
Boulder Reservoir was pretty warm (hovering right around 76 degrees) and there
was about a 50/50 chance that the swim would be “wetsuit optional.” This was a
concern not because I might miss out on a chance at a podium spot and a ticket
to Kona (I’m not that fast…), but rather, because I’d brought only my full wetsuit
along, and I was instantly concerned that I might have issues with heat
management in the swim.
With that rattling around in my head I set off to drive to
the swim venue to finish getting my gear drop-off done and take my first look
at T1. Turns out that T1 was a LONG walk
from where they had us park
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| Parking out of frame to the left... |
Dropped off my bike gear bag by the exit of the swim course
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| That's it there - the white one with the blue stripe |
Got my bike racked
And headed back to the hotel.
Altogether, between the walking I did at the Res, wandering
around Boulder, and going to meet my friends David and Dawn for dinner I ended
up walking about 6 miles the day before my Ironman. I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly
recommended procedure for these long races, but I can’t really think of how I
could have avoided any of it.
Sunday (Race Day!!!)
I went to bed about 8:30 and actually slept fairly
well. But I was still up well before my
3:30 alarm went off
All of Saturday’s activities had pretty much eliminated the
need for me to do anything on Sunday morning (which, I suspect, was the point),
so I concentrated on getting a good chunk of the baguette I’d bought eaten
(with some super-fancy organic Nutella knock off to make it go down
better). I got my Gatorade and potato
packets out of the fridge, grabbed my morning clothes bag (where I’d stashed
all my swim gear) and special needs bags, stuffed a couple bananas in my pocket
and headed out to catch the shuttle from T2 to the Reservoir.
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| Making sure I didn't forget my timing chip like last time... |
Despite my getting out the door a little after 4 AM I was
far from the first one to the buses. As
I walked from the parking garage to the race venue I joined an ever-thickening
stream of people all filled with an infectious nervous energy. Everyone from the first timers (“I should
just puke now and get it over with…”) to the seasoned vets (“I don’t care about
my position in this race, I’m going to Kona on the Legacy program”) was
friendly/supportive/awesome. One of my
favorite things about triathlon is the quality and character of the people who
participate in it.
The swim (2.4 mile, single loop course)
As I was getting my bike loaded up with my potato packs and
a couple bottles worth of Gatorade, the race announcer came on the PA to tell
us that the water temperature that morning was officially 78 degrees, and that
the swim was now wetsuit “optional.” Since I hadn’t swum in open water without
a wetsuit all year, this officially meant two things to me: I was out of the
running for any age group awards, and my shot at Kona was going to have to come
from some other race. More personal concerns were that, with the wetsuit wave
not lining up in a time-seeded order, my plan to draft slightly-faster-than-me
swimmers was probably out the window, and also that such a warm swim might lead
me to overheat and have real trouble finishing the distance. Stress level goes
from 10/10 to a Spinal Tap style level 11.
It was actually a relief when the announcer told the
non-wetsuit folks “Go, go, go.” As the
folks in front of me started piling in the water and swimming off into the
invisible distance (first turn was almost a mile out and couldn’t be seen from
shore…), I was able to get a grip on myself, make a few wisecracks to the
people waiting around me, and settled my mind to race as I’d trained.
As it turned out, I’d put myself pretty close to the front
of the wetsuit wave. If my guess that half
of the racers chose to wear wetsuits is correct, then I think that at least
1200 people were lined up behind me. Since
I’m pretty-much a middle of the pack swimmer, I was guessing that meant at
least 500 people were going to try to go by me over the course of the
race. I think that this probably
contributed to my trying too hard (or, at all) for about the first 300 meters
or so. By the time I’d gotten to the
third buoy I was feeling the heat build in my suit, and my breathing had turned
to sucking in water about a third of the time.
So I stopped, pulled my neck open to let a little water into the suit,
caught my breath and gathered myself before striking out at a much more relaxed
effort. It was still a warm swim, but I
was no longer redlining.
It’s just
possible that 500 people DID go by me, but it’s a wide enough lake that I only
wrestled with about 7 or 8 as they tried to pass inside my stroke range. It got pretty chaotic out there at the turns
though - the field really compresses towards the buoys at those points, and
there’s a fair amount of what can only be called “combat-swimming” there. The half-way mark (where the buoys changed
from yellow “outbound” to orange “inbound”) seemed to take forever to
arrive. Oddly though, the second half
seemed to go much more quickly. I
suspect that in the actual event my two halves were pretty evenly split, but I
think that getting out of the chaos that was the swim start and getting a
chance to just settle in and stroke made the last 1.2 miles much more pleasant.
Swim result:
1:21:59
105/371 division, 675/2041 men, 833/2765 overall
T1
Out of the water, checked my watch, was happy with the
result. This race had wetsuit strippers,
and the couple that helped me were pretty aggressively nice. They insisted I allow them to do everything
for me and got my suit off in a jiffy. Relieved
of my neoprene wrapper I ran into the changing tent, pulled off my swimsuit,
got myself geared up for the bike and headed out. A quick stop at the port-o-let for a
biological and it was off on the bike for a 112 mile spin
T1 result: 11:36 – I’d have been happier with under 10:00,
my plan had been to be on the bike at about the 1:30 point, so at this moment I
was about 0:03:30 behind my projected schedule
The Bike
The bike course consisted of two loops around a 41 mile
course, with a 30 mile third loop that would take us back to Boulder High for
T2. The overarching theme for the bike?
It was hot. Really hot. And way more humid than I thought Boulder
would be. Happily there were lots of aid
stations on the course and I was able to drink to thirst for the whole
distance, which helped a lot.
The first 5 miles or so of the bike course is a false flat
with a fair amount of elevation gain despite there not being a much of a visible
hill in front of you. I found myself
having a fair amount of trouble getting my heart rate down post-swim – the
climb to the top of the first big hill was spent with an HR in the 150’s. I like to blame it on the hill and the effort
of the swim, but it’s as likely that I was just pushing a little too hard in
the heat of the race. Even when I got the chance to go downhill I was still
pushing 140’s. Considering that my long
rides had all been spent trying to keep things under 130, I was starting to
worry that I was setting myself up for real issues later in the day. As it was I just kept spinning along at what
I thought was the correct RPE, but I didn’t get to what I thought was a
reasonable HR until about the 90 minute mark. By this time we’d gotten past the
first iteration of the notorious Nelson Rd. hill climb and the road turned
pretty much flat and fast for the return to the start of the second loop.
The first 19 miles of the second loop, culminating in the slog
to the top of Nelson Rd, took almost 10 minutes longer than it had the first
time, which is probably a testament to how much harder than plan I had come out
of T1 (well, that and I had a SAG stop to take care another biological and took
the chance to wash the Gatorade off my aero-bottle and arms). In spite of the slowdown I had made it to the
60 mile point right around the 3:30 mark and was still feeling strong and
fresh. The descent back to the flat land
and spin back to the start of the third loop felt like it took almost no effort
at all, and I was looking forward to getting those last 30 miles out of the way
to get on the run.
The thing that might not be obvious from the elevation chart
though, is that the actually nasty climbs on this course are all on the third
loop. Nelson goes on for a long time,
but it’s not steep. So it slows you
down, but doesn’t really hurt much. On
the third loop the course climbs over the same ridge twice (going east and then
coming back west in to town). On the
first traverse you can see the hill coming from at least a mile away as you
descend towards it from the top of a lesser hill. I told another of the cyclists “The ones you
can see coming are never as bad as they look.” I was almost right. It wasn’t AS
bad as it looked, but still required a pretty good effort to get to the
top. Lowest gear, mashing away at the
pedals got me over it ok, but I could tell it had taken something out of my
legs. The second traverse (up Lookout
Rd.) was worse. It came after 95 miles
of riding in the heat, and was both steeper and longer than the first time
up. Getting to the top was pretty much
pure misery, and I could definitely feel a bonk coming on. Happily, there was a snow-cone station at the
top of the hill. I gladly took one from
the volunteer, and after a quick bite to make sure it wasn’t full of syrup I
dumped half onto my neck and the other half down my pants. That went a long way towards fixing my body
temp, and definitely revived me. The
last 17 miles were pretty relaxed. A lot
of downhill riding at high cadence and low HR, trying my best to relax and set
up my run.
Bike result:
5:51:41
101/371
division, 593/2041 men, 688/2765 overall
Somehow I’d managed to pull out a 19.1 mph bike split. I have no idea how that happened. Through my training I was hitting 112 miles
at about 17.5 mph, and that was without anything like the same elevation gain. While I was happy to pull into T2 under 6
hours, I was more than a little worried about how I was going to run with that
effort in my legs.
T2
Got off the bike at the dismount line and ran with it a
fairly long way to the school track where I’d dropped my run-gear bag the day
before.
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| That's me in the blue - very snazzy |
Handed off the bike to a volunteer, ran down the track to
the grab my bag, and out the other end of the stadium into the men’s changing
tent. Only thing of note was, it turns
out that A+D Ointment turns liquid if you leave it out in the sun all day. So I ended up greasing up with a runny liquid
rather than a thick paste. In the end it
didn’t seem to matter, so that was OK.
Yet another visit to the old port-a-potty and it was time to go see how
an Ironman marathon felt (quick note about the port-a-johns – those things are
great morale builders, because no matter how bad it is outside, coming out of
one always makes the day seem better…).
T2 result: 13:24 – I have no reasonable explanation as to
why this should have taken almost a quarter of an hour. However, my original plan called for me to be
on the run around the 8 hour mark. Even
with this slow transition I hit the run course at about the 7:40 mark, so I had
a solid 20 minutes in the bank.
The Run
The run course for Ironman Boulder is on a walking/biking
path that runs through a park along the Boulder Creek (mostly). It’s a really nice shady place to run, though
some folks likely find the concrete pavement to be hard on the legs. It’s also pretty flat, not counting all the
spots where it dives to go under roads. Oh,
and the little trip up into Boulder Canyon is a bit of a grind.
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| This looks bad, but it's not as bad as it looks (well, for the first lap) |
My strategy for the run going in was to take it easy and
just run to the next aid station, slow to a walk to make sure that I get all
the food and drink I want into my mouth, repeat 25 times. The first half this went pretty much
great. I was running at 9:00-9:30/mile
and my slow roll through the aid stations was pulling my average pace down to
around 10:00/mile. My biggest concern at
that stage was heat management, so I carried on with my snow-cone routine – ice
in the hat, ice down my shorts at every aid station.
The second half (or, really, the last 14 miles or so) things went a little sideways. The half marathon mark seemed to take forever to come along, and I felt like I’d never seen a less happy sight than the sign that said “Keep right to finish, keep straight for lap two.” My energy level was pretty good, but my quads really started to hurt, especially going down the sharp little underpasses – I spent about the last 7 miles just walking down all but the shallowest hills. In order to keep my motivation level up I started noticing which runners I was passing repeatedly (mostly because I would take longer than them in the aid stations). I made it my goal to try to get those guys dropped. I don’t know any of their names, but the guy in the green Pearl Izumi tri kit, the guy with the Steelhead 70.3 gear, and that one doctor from Nevada (the only one I actually talked to…) really kept me going. I finally dropped the PI guy somewhere around the 16 mile mark. Steelhead’s run turned into the Ironman shuffle with about 10K to go and he fell to the rear, but the good doctor and I kept a running banter as we’d pass each other for about another 4 miles. At about the 24 mile mark though he went by me as I was slowing to go down another hill and I couldn’t respond. I have to admit that I felt a slight twinge of defeat at that instant. I thought for sure I was going to be the stronger of us two. Still, with less than 3K to go to the finish I was feeling like I was probably going to make it.
As it turns out, the sign that said “Keep right to finish,
keep straight for lap two” was only an unhappy sight once. The second time around it meant 2/10ths mile
to the finish, and that was a very happy thought. I climbed the last steep little hill out of
the park and out into a regular maelstrom of cheering. I can’t say enough about the spectators who
came out for this race. From the small
towns out on the Great Plains that clearly treated the race as a chance to have
a town party, to the folks who thronged the park to yell encouragement at a
stream of total strangers, to the amazing number of people lining the finishing
chute to cheer home us middle-of-the-pack finishers, the people of Colorado
seem to have really embraced this race.
I can’t remember feeling much happier than I was running down the last
bit towards the finish line, high fiving all the kids who had their hands
out. In spite of all the worries I’d
had, it turned out that really I’d had an almost completely perfect day.
Run result:
4:38:46
76/371
division, 418/2041 men, 495/2765 overall
Turns out I’d run past about 7% of my division, 9% of all
the men, and 8% of the total race. I had
gone into this thinking I could run 10:00/mile while secretly hoping I could
get to 9:30. My actual pace turned out to
be 10:38, which is a hair disappointing, but I have to say I was happy with the
effort that got me to that pace.
Total race time
12:17:26
76/371
division, 418/2041 men, 495/2765 overall
The plan had been to get to the run at the 8:00 mark and
then see where I landed after 26.2 miles.
My initial thought was that I’d be able to finish right around the 12:30
mark, with a worst case scenario of 13:00.
So, despite my faintly disappointing run and my rather lengthy
transition times, I have to say I’m delighted to have finished at 12:17. The things that surprised me the most were: how
fast I was on the bike, how long the run felt, how quickly the second 1.2 miles
of the swim went by, and, most surprising, how much I really enjoyed doing the
race. It was hard, it hurt towards the end, but it really encapsulated the idea
that you get out in enjoyment the work you put in in training. It made all the hours of workouts worthwhile.
So, for next time (oh, crud, there’s going to be a next time…?): I need to spend more time on the hills – both
on the bike and when running, I need to practice Ironman transitions (full
change) – I really shouldn’t be spending 22 minutes in the changing tents, and
probably I should spend some time at Masters swim between now and the next
round of IM training – no point in carrying on being a poor swimmer if I can
help it. If all that comes together and
I can have another similarly perfect day, then maybe sub-12:00 is in sight.
What a great achievement!!!
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