A Plan Comes Together: Ironman Wales Race Report

I hadn't really planned to race Ironman Wales; it just sort of happened.  In the fall of 2010, a friend had said that he planned to race Ironman St. George, a notoriously difficult course, in May of 2011.  I was planning on spending the winter really focusing on marathoning, with the goal race being Shamrock in March, so I knew I wouldn't really be ready for a May Ironman.  But improper preparation has never stopped me from bullishly flinging myself toward nearly certain doom, so I went to the IMSG webpage to sign up, only to find that it had closed out moments before.  I was surprised -- it hadn't looked close to full -- but by then I had come around to the idea of doing an Ironman this year, and in my disappointed internet wanderings, I noticed that the inaugural Ironman Wales had opened for registration on that very day.  I'd never been to Wales but love that area of the world, so I decided, why not?  It looked beautiful and, if the videos and pictures on the website were to be believed, calm and sunny.

It even appeared that the resort town of Tenby, where the race was staged, offered a calming Spanish guitar backdrop, which seemed like it would be great during an Ironman run.

And so, with about 30 seconds of consideration, I signed on the line and broke my post-Cozumel vow never to race another inaugural Ironman.  Fittingly, an hour later, IMSG registration re-opened; it turns out that it was just a temporary website malfunction.  But fate is fate, and mine apparently was once again to serve as a hard-luck guinea pig in World Triathlon Corporation's macabre laboratory.

Happily, throughout the winter and spring, I found myself very much looking forward to the race.  I'd taken a much-needed year off from Ironman in 2010 after racing that distance for four years running (although I'd wish I'd done more running in the races themselves), and I was recharged and ready to go.  I spent the winter focusing on running -- I didn't do a single bike workout for six months -- and, at the Eugene Marathon in early May, managed a 3:07 PR that qualified me for Boston in 2012.  I'd set PRs in the run portion of every triathlon I'd competed in over the summer.  And, in addition, I'd set PRs in the Mountains of Misery double metric century, Diabolical Double double metric century rides, and I'd put down the fastest AG bike split at the DC Tri, so I felt ready to go.   As insurance, I'd really cranked up the cycling volume in August, at one point doing extremely hilly 300k (190 mile) and 200k (125 mile) rides three days apart, and feeling strong throughout.

Still, I had some concerns.  Most notably, early reports from Europeans who'd pre-ridden the Wales course suggested that it could be... memorable.  In early June, the race organizers had hosted a "Long Course Weekend" in which athletes could practice the swim course on Friday, the bike course on Saturday, and the run course on Sunday.  Unfortunately, it seems that there was an exceedingly strong current ripping right through the swim course, and it literally flung the swimmers hundreds of yards out to sea.  In fact, it was strong enough that the kayakers couldn't even reach them.  In the picture below, the swimmers are attempting to get from the bottom buoy straight to the top one, and the current is moving from left to right:

Swimmers trying to go straight from the near buoy to the far one.  Fail.

A number of people who attempted that practice swim were sufficiently terrified that they immediately withdrew their registrations.  It sounded, frankly, nightmarish, and early feedback on the bike and run course made it clear that this would be a race for the ages, with more hills than Placid and very steep ones (16% grade) to boot.  As one professional triathlete put it, "The bloke who designed this course is either incredibly fit or has never raced an Ironman."  Everyone agreed that it might be the slowest course on the Ironman circuit.

As if the difficulty of the course itself weren't enough, the weather reports leading up to the race looked like a sick joke.  Apparently the race would be taking place in the tail end of the hurricane system that had slammed the east coast of the United States the week before.  When you're planning for an Ironman, basically the last thing you want to read is that surfing conditions are predicted to be historically terrific, but that's what we were told: 40+ mph winds and driving rain seemed to be our destiny.  The predictions also called for 11' swells. Swell.

I had very mixed feelings about all of it.  I felt truly ready, training-wise.  At the same time, though, my last three Ironman races had been disasters; I'd just fallen apart on the runs and wound up with splits approaching 5 hours for the marathon.  I knew I could do much better, but it's very intimidating to have to prove it on an extremely difficult course in conditions unsuited to man or beast.  In a nod to the conditions, I did at least cover my bases by bringing along as Zipp 404 front wheel, in addition to my normal race 808.

PRE-RACE ADVENTURES

I flew to Wales on a redeye the week before the race, arriving on Thursday morning.  I was lucky to have Emily, a longtime friend, with me to sherpa and make sure I left the race with as many appendages as I had when I started.  

Hi, Emily!

The trip to Wales was uneventful but exhausting.  We flew into Heathrow, which meant a 5-hour drive on very little sleep.  Combine that with having to learn to drive manual with my left hand and on the left side of the road, and it was a bit of a sketchy adventure.  The Brits probably weren't used to guys in tech clothes doing push-ups and running around gas stations.  Ultimately, however, we wound up at the B&B where we'd stay for the next week.  It's the site of a 13th century church and abbey, and was truly gorgeous, with views of the ocean off of the balcony.

Ruins on the grounds of the abbey

The lodge at Penally Abbey, where we stayed, with the ocean in the background

The days before the race were relaxed but rather grim.  In the pictures above, it's not raining.  I believe that the time it took for the camera to record those two images comprised the entire non-raining timespan of the first three days we were in the country.  And it was windy as all hell, the kind that makes small dogs disappear from the ends of leashes.

The Wales expo was a step up from Cozumel's -- more triathlon gear, less native art -- but it was largely deserted.  I spent some time in the 110 Play Harder tent, where I tried on some really cool compression gear with sleeves made for their custom ice packs.  It's like an ice bath without the ice bath, and I'd have gotten some but for the fact that the pricing was higher there than it is back in the U.S.  I highly recommend checking it out.  I also made friends with Michi Hange, a 48-year-old German who, I learned, is racing solo RAAM (Race Across America) next June.  That's simply a sick endeavor: 3000 miles in about 10 days.  I began to realize that the guys racing Wales may be tough bastards.  Given my proclivity for biting off more than anyone should try to chew, Michi's comment that I "have the perfect build for RAAM" was arguably unhelpful.  :-)

Meanwhile, it turns out that conditions were of concern to more than the athletes.  At Friday's pre-race briefing, the race directors informed us that the swim might be moved from the south beach of Tenby, right below the transition area, to the northern part of north beach, which is clear across town, nearly 3/4 of a mile away.   We were told to stay tuned, and that, on Saturday morning, a final decision would be made.  On Saturday, they confirmed that the swim would indeed be moved, and that we'd therefore have to plan to run approximately 1k up a steep ramp to the top of the cliff at north beach, and then across town.   We were instructed to bring a pair of running shoes -- but not the "run" running shoes, which would be in our gear bags -- to the swim start on race morning.  It promised to be one of the longer transitions in the history of triathlon.

The swim was moved from right under the "South Beach" notation to the northern part of the orange strip denoting North Beach.  The transition area is just above South Beach.

 Meanwhile, I headed down to the practice swim, where conditions had not improved.  The water was 58 degrees, and the wind was blowing so hard that the race signs had no chance.

Thar she blows!

I did manage to get in an easy swim in my new wetsuit, a Blue Seventy Helix.  Despite the conditions, I felt solid -- the neoprene cap and boots did wonders.

I defeated the practice swim.

Victory!

From there, I racked my bike in the wind and rain.  There's nothing quite like having a transition area at the top of a cliff in the tail end of a tropical storm.

I decided at the last moment to go with the shallower Zipp 404 front wheel, along with the 808 I typically ride on the rear.  I was slightly annoyed with myself for wimping out, but I noticed a distinct lack of deep-rimmed front wheels among the athletes and decided to yield unto Caesar.  It turned out to be a provident decision.

After racking the bike, Emily and I headed out to drive the course I'd heard so much about.  The layout was an odd one: a first loop of 70 miles, and a second of 40 that duplicated the last 40 of the first one.

The ride starts in Tenby, on the far right, and goes southwest around the western loop, before heading back east and then north around the second loop.  Riders then repeat the second loop again

The first 15 miles didn't seem so bad -- a few climbs to get the legs warmed up, but nothing that would be out of place at Ironman Wisconsin or Placid.  It skirted south from Tenby largely along the coast.  One thing I quickly noticed is that the roads were extremely narrow, with no shoulders whatever and frequently with high walls or hedges on both sides.  As often as not, they were effectively one lane, such that a car had to pull half off of the road in order to pass another one coming the other direction.  These walls and rows, I assume, are designed to protect sheep and cattle from the wind, but in order to get in and out of the properties, the walls and hedges are punctuated with large gates that you can't see until you're almost on top of them.  These gates allow the wind to pass through freely, such that you can be buzzing along happily until you reach a gate and are suddenly slammed with a 40-mph sidewind.  Local athletes told me it wasn't uncommon for riders to be blown clear across the road.  Lovely.

The western loop proved to have somewhat unusual terrain -- very open and grassy.  In this region, there's really nothing to shield one from the gale, although the whitecaps in the background were very pretty.

Angle, on the western-most point of the bike course.  The grass reveals that it's not so calm out.

You'll notice my hair blowing in the breeze.

The eastern/northern loop, which we'd do twice, seemed pretty hilly, with a couple of climbs in the range of 15-17%.  Still, there were cool castles tucked away here and there, as well as little villages that were bedecked in celebratory streamers and signs.  In all, I thought I could handle it.

The run course, in contrast, was a huge unknown.  Well, actually, it was all too known: four out-and-backs, where each "out" was straight up a hill for a couple of miles, then back down the hill, before looping through Tenby, which itself is hilly as heck.  I knew it would be a tough day.  I just hoped it wasn't pouring rain for the entire race.

THE RACE

Given the difficulty of the day, I decided to simplify as much as possible by carrying all of my nutrition with me, and just replenishing water on the bike.  That meant a bottle of CarboPro 1200 on the downtube (1200 calories), plus 6 gels and 3 mini Clif Bars scotch-taped to the top tube.  I got a good night's sleep, had my traditional pre-race meal of oatmeal with raisins and walnuts and topped with a Honey Stinger gel, and chased with a couple of stroopwafels.  I felt ready to go!

Inexplicably, we left the B&B to find something I never expected: it wasn't raining!  Perhaps it would be my day after all.  We parked in town near the transition area, and I got my bike set to go, putting the computer on auto-pause to minimize distractions in T1.  For whatever reason, there was no body marking.  The winds were blowing stuff everywhere and the temperature was about 55 degrees.  It was expected to peak around 60, so I was undecided whether to wear arm warmers, which I left in my bike gear bag.  We headed off on the 15-minute walk to the swim start at North Beach.

North Beach in Tenby is a world-famous coastline; it was ranked by National Geographic as the second-most pristine coastline in the world, or something to that effect.  And its rugged beauty really is something to behold.

View looking north from the top of the cliffs along North Beach.

View from the cliffs, looking south this time toward where the picture above was taken.  The colorful town of Tenby is easily seen.  Also, the cliffs are high.

As I arrived at the water, dawn was breaking over the swim course, which faced to the east, and it was really beautiful.  I headed down to the water to get in a brief pre-race swim in the cold Atlantic waters.

I make neoprene look damn good.

Off to battle!

I'm pretty sure I had theme music, which unfortunately you can't hear in this picture.

It turns out that there were other athletes in the race.

It's cold!  I don't want to go back in there.

The scene before the race was one of epic beauty.

Many Germans.  Almost no women.  I'm about the fattest guy there.

Finally they brought everyone into the starting corral, played the national anthem, and the horn sounded.  We were off!  And still not a drop of rain.  I felt great.

THE SWIM

When the horn went off, an odd thing happened.  It turns out that the race directors had arranged the course in a triangle shape, but one that was flattened against the shore.  It looked something like this (although this was the course for the original location, at South Beach).

The result is that it would be faster to run along the shore for a fair way before diving into the water to swim perpendicularly out to the first buoy.  And people saw it immediately.  Thus, when the race started, it was a combination of open water swim and cattle stampede north along the shore.  Here's a video of the chaos.

I had to decide quickly what to do, and I couldn't think of a reason why running along the shore would be illegal.  After all, it's legal to walk in the swim if you can.  I wasn't entirely sure whether it would be legal to run on the land, but if running in 1" of water is legal, why not?  I'd be curious to hear from an actual referee on this issue, because I've never seen anything like it and it's proved immensely controversial on the messageboard post-mortem.  Here's another view.

The swim proved to be pretty enjoyable despite the chop, swells, and cold temperature.  The Helix wetsuit felt amazing, and when swimming into the rolling waves on the long back stretch, I concentrated on increasing my arm turnover rate a bit and concentrating on the catch.  Even though the water temperature was 58 degrees, with the full suit and neoprene cap, I was quite comfortable, and the amount of body contact was minimal, although I did get my goggles smacked crooked on one occasion.  I finished the first lap in just under 29', and clocked 1:00:17 for the whole distance.  The run at the start might have accounted for most of the difference, but even assuming the run hadn't been possible, a time of 1:01 or 1:02 would have been a solid result.  

Happy to be swim-free!

GOAL: 1:05

TIME: 1:00:17  

ASSESSMENT:  Mission accomplished.  Stayed relaxed and swam smoothly and efficiently.

T1

Normally there's not much to say about transitions, but in this case, it was almost another discipline. Because the swim had been moved to North Beach at the last moment, we faced a 1k run up the cliff and then across town to the transition area.  We'd left pairs of running shoes hanging from racks on the exit ramp, which zigzagged a couple of hundred feet at an uncomfortable incline.  

Up and at 'em.

The Trot Across Tenby proved to be enjoyable enough, with everyone feeling pretty sociable.  

But it was definitely a haul: my T1 time of 12:07 was firmly in the top 25%.  It was somewhat sunny by that point and I was warm from the swim, so I decided to forego the armwarmers, although I did have calf sleeves for a little bit of warmth.  I grabbed Reo the Speedwagon and off to battle we headed.

THE BIKE

Ok, I admit, I carried a little bit of bike swagger coming into this race.  I'd been hammering my training rides and races pretty consistently throughout the summer.  At DC Tri, an oly, I'd had the fastest AG bike split by more than 2:00 in a group of 135 athletes, and throughout August I'd been crushing myself on difficult rides, at one point topping 415 miles in very hilly terrain over the course of a week.  I'd put down big PRs at the Diabolical Double and Mountains of Misery rides, both of which are exceedingly nasty, and throughout it all I'd always felt like I could have kept going.  I had every reason for confidence heading into the hills of Wales, and my drive of the course had suggest a challenging but not insurmoutable day.  My goal was to keep it solid and smooth but to leave a good bit in the tank for the difficult marathon ahead.  

Well, perhaps I should have had a bit less confidence, because I was about to get owned in truly epic fashion.  The thing I hadn't realized on my drive was the extent to which constant winds of around 30 mph, and gusting to well over 40 mph, can destroy one's will to live.  Usually courses are either windy or hilly, but Wales was both hillier *and* windier than any Ironman I've ever attempted.  It was hillier than Wisconsin and Placid, with steeper climbs than either, and the winds made Cozumel look positively tranquil.

The first several miles, heading southwest, were relatively uneventful, and I kept it light.  There were a couple of early climbs to keep things honest.  Here's a long grinder with the race leader blowing back by the other way, some 25 miles ahead.

As Angle grew nearer, however, it became extremely difficult to stay on the road.  I would reach for a gel and find myself suddenly blown 5' sideways and swerving just to keep pointed in the right direction.  Twice I skidded sideways simply from being blown so hard, and so suddenly.  The tail of my aero helmet was being buffeted from the side and my head was therefore being yanked around like I was on a string.  Angle itself was solid whitecaps, and we rolled down the steep grade at only 15-17 mph due to the gale.  Climbing back out of Angle, the hills proved to be much steeper, and much more of a wind tunnel, than I remembered on the drive, and sand was being driven at us at great speed from off of the dunes.

Meet the tunnel of pain.  Note the sand.

It was long.  It was steep.  And it hurt, a lot.  Yeah, we went up there.

The air up there -- top of the climb on race day.

It briefly occurred to me that, a mere 25 miles in, I shouldn't be feeling so gassed.  But I wasn't pushing too hard.  It was just a fight for every mile against the elements, and in that war, we were all losing.  The first aid station wasn't until mile 25, which, given that I was only carrying one bottle of water, was pushing things a bit, but I hoped the cool day would help me out.

One thing I noticed: cyclists in Europe are f-i-t dudes.  There's something inherently demoralizing about finding yourself surrounded by guys named Klaus and Hans on a bike course.  There doesn't seem to be the culture of Ironman participation in Europe and the UK that you find in the States: races don't sell out, but the people who register aren't thinking anything about cutoffs.  They're simply hard blokes, in the local parlance.
   

The ride back east from Angle proved to be a little bit better, with some easy cruising and wind at our backs.  I hit about 45 mph on a couple of descents, which caused some challenges of itself.  We were riding on the left side of the road, which was a first for me.  I even grabbed bottles left-handed, which was different.  But what I couldn't understand is why, on long, fast descents, guys insisted on riding right smack down the center of the road.  I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do, pass on the left (illegally), or pass on the right (illegally).  It's like they couldn't imagine that, given their Teutonic might, anyone could possibly descend faster than they.  Lack of road etiquette apparently isn't limited to the Nations Triathlon.

By mile 30, when we headed north into the second loop of the course, I was feeling pretty good.  We blew by a couple of castles that dated from the 1100s.

The castle at Carew, as seen from the bike course.

And then the slaughter began.  The climbs were long, steep, and relentless.  I came to realize that the last 15 miles of each loop would not be remotely out of place in the Savageman Half, with climbs from 12-16% grade that last, in some cases, nearly a mile.  And the descents were little better: exceedingly steep and technical, with narrow roads between stone walls that make 90' turns.  It's amazing how much more difficult it is to judge trajectory when you can't see around corners, and many people took things too fast.  There was a rash of broken collarbones from people slamming into walls, and on the run course, road rash was everywhere.  On the upside, there were a couple of really neat villages at the top of the climbs, and the locals had put up streamers and were out in force ringing bells, yelling, and playing music.  Here's one of them on the day before the race.

The quaint town of Narbeth.

At the 70-mile point which was the end of the first loop, I was about 10' behind schedule, and I honestly wasn't sure how I'd manage another 40 miles.  Many of the pros decided not to, and abandoned right there. And the crazy thing was, I was feeling okay -- no stomach upset or nutritional issues, I was just getting my butt kicked fairly and squarely.  I've found that, in every Ironman, there comes a moment where race strategy, pacing, and time splits get thrown out the window, and the focus becomes on just surviving and moving forward, and in Wales, that moment came with nearly half the bike course to go.  

By mile 90, things were going from bad to worse -- I just had nothing left, and I was seriously considering abandoning the race.  I got off of my bike for 2' to stretch my lower back and give myself a virtual "snap out of it" slap, and found myself declining a glass of lemonade offered by an 8-year-old boy standing in his yard watching the race.  Getting disqualified for outside assistance would have been a too-fitting end for an event like this.  Given how defeated I was feeling, I suspected that my longed-for good run was a pipe dream, especially given that the run course was at least as hilly as the bike course.  But I realized that I had no justifiable reason not to continue: I'd flown overseas for this race, and I wasn't in danger of missing any cutoffs.  I was just feeling sorry for myself, and I realized that, if I had to walk the entire marathon, so what? I'm not a pro looking for money this week or next.  I'm not too good to walk if that's what it takes.  It might not be what I was looking to do, but I needed to HTFU, get back on the bike, and do what I could.  So onward I went.

The last 20 miles were exactly the death march I thought they'd be.  It felt like I was riding Savageman after doing hill repeats and an hour of heavy squats.  The last couple of climbs, "Wiseman's Bridge" and "Heartbreak Hill," were just agonizing: lowest gear, out of the saddle, torquing with the upper body and fighting for every pedal turnover.  For those of you who've ridden Mountains of Misery, the grades were like those on the third climb of the double metric, and the first one on the century.  Nasty, nasty, nasty, about 16%, and it felt every degree of that steep.

I finally straggled into T2 with my tail firmly between my legs in a time of 6:21:01.  That time was about 40 minutes slower than I'd ridden Wisconsin in 2007 and Placid in 2008, and I'm a much stronger cyclist than I was back then.  I'd thought that a time of 5:50 was most likely, with 6 hours being disappointing but not disastrous.  And it was a fair time: no mechanicals, no bonking, no nothing.  I just got crushed.  I thought at that moment that I'd have to walk every step of the run, and prepared myself for a finishing time in the 14-hour range.  I took a couple of minutes in T2 to collect myself, and off I headed to face the run course that many were describing as every inch the equal of St. George, and among the very hardest on the circuit.

TIME: 6:21:01

GOAL: 5:50

ASSESSMENT:  I got straight-up owned.  Well played, Wales, well played.

THE RUN

Heading into Wales, my Ironman run PR was a 4:36, and that had been set back in 2006 in the dead-flat ChesapeakeMan.  More recently my runs had gone from bad to worse, culminating in a 4:56 at Cozumel in 2009.  I'd been running well all summer, so I desperately wanted to lay down a strong performance.  I thought a 4-hour run was just on the edge of the possible if everything went right, but Wales is the opposite of a PR course, and the bike course had taken every bit of strength I had to survive.  Knowing that a tough day was possible, I'd hedged my bets by putting a windproof shell in my special needs, which Emily held at the designated spot at the end of each of the four run loops.  (This was not outside assistance, but the way things were expected to happen at this race.)  

Throughout the leadup to Wales, I'd realized one thing: I'd always fallen apart from the get-go, and I've known in the first few steps off of the bike that I was in trouble.  I'd suspected that, if I could just run well for the first three miles, I'd put myself in a position to carry on running throughout the rest of the race.  And, amazingly, when I headed out of T2, I felt... good.  My legs felt light and peppy, and I cruised through town thinking that maybe things weren't so bleak after all.

One thing I've finally learned, I think, is to listen to what my body is telling me, and to push myself as hard (but only as hard) as I can go at the moment.  I'd set my marathon PR at Eugene by running entirely without a watch -- purely on feel -- and I decided to do the same thing at Wales.  I figured that my watch couldn't tell me anything more than my body was; if I were behind goal pace, I'd risk getting discouraged or speeding up and blowing up, and if I were ahead of it, I'd risk slowing myself down and potentially not getting out of myself everything I had to give.  Unfortunately, the need to trust my system was immediately tested by the fact that, in T2, I looked at the Fuel Belt full of Carbo Pro 1200 and realized that I wanted nothing to do with more of that stuff.  So I headed out on the course resolved to live off of the land, whatever it brought me.

The run course proved to be every inch as difficult as people had said.  The first two miles of each loop were straight up a long hill nearly as steep as Skyline Drive or Stafford Street, for Arlington locals.  After cresting the hill, you'd turn around and run back south to Tenby, before looping around through very hilly parts of the town.

And then you'd do it again, and again, and again, each time getting a different color of hairband snapped around your arm such that you could always tell what lap everyone was on.

I decided to adopt a strategy of walking the aid stations and running between them, with occasional walk spells on some of the steeper hills as necessary.  But I resolved to run every inch of every downhill, and to force myself to run as much as I could on the ups.  The drinks on the course were water, Gatorade, and Pepsi, and at each of the few aid stations I had a cup of Pepsi, and one of water.  And a funny thing happened at the top of the first climb: I'd realized that I'd been running at a 7:30/mi pace, and that I was feeling looser and better than when I started.  I was getting it done.  And that was amazing.

But I was also getting hungry, which was a new sensation on a run.  (Much more often I've had GI distress to the point that food sounds awful.)  Not having any food on me, I decided to trust what my body was telling me yet again, and it was telling me that bananas sounded wonderful.  So at each station for the next few miles, I'd have two cups of Pepsi and half a banana.  Toward the end of the first loop, I craved salt, so  I grabbed a handful of Ritz crackers -- yes, oily, fatty Ritz crackers -- and scarfed them down with Pepsi before running once more.  It occurred to me that eating such fatty stuff might be a bad idea, but I figured that either I'm going to trust my body or I'm not, and I just went with it.

At the end of the first 6.5-mile loop, I saw Emily and for the first time in an Ironman run, actually felt good.  I didn't know what my split was, but I knew that I was feeling as good as when I'd started.  Still, I didn't have confidence in myself: I'd done so badly in previous Ironman runs that a part of me was convinced that a meltdown could happen at any moment.  Once it did, I knew, I would get cold and start stiffening up, making running all the harder.  To cover my bases, I asked Emily to bring my windbreaker to the end of loop 2 so that I could have it for loop 3 in case I needed it.  Happily, she befriended an English guy with a nice camera (thanks, Tim!) who was there supporting his sister (who crushed me in the race), and he snapped some great shots.

Cruising toward the end of loop 1.

Loop 2 was about as good as the first.  But the clouds were rolling in and the winds were blasting us, and I was very concerned about the chill.  I looked forward to getting my jacket at the end of the loop, and that desire was amplified when, on the way back to town, the rains that had held off all day struck with sudden and epic fury.

Getting.

It.

Done.

Period.

At the end of loop 2, I knew I was halfway home.  I just had to do it one more time.  And, I realized, I didn't have to go fast -- simply keeping a light jog would be enough for a huge run PR.  Time to HTFU.  I put on the jacket to stave off the chill from the rain, but two minutes later, I realized I was running.  I was fine.  And I didn't need the damn jacket.  So I took it off and tied it around my waist, and at the end of loop 3, I tossed it back to Emily because there was no way I was going to let myself shut down on the last loop.

Take this jacket and shove it.  :-)

The last loop was simply agonizing, but it was the last one, and I resolved simply to keep moving as fast as I possibly could.  Pepsi, bananas, crackers, and guts.  I concentrated on catching the next person in front of me and striding it out on the downhills, leaving nothing on the course.  Amazingly, as I crested the top of the hill for the last time, I saw bedraggled cyclists fluttering back into Tenby just ahead of the bike cutoff.  I couldn't imagine what they'd been through out there; after the race, guys who finished near me agreed that we couldn't have stomached the thought of another kilometer.

For the whole of the last lap, I'd been trading off with a blonde girl who seemed to run at a consistent pace, no matter what, come hill or descent, aid station or not.  And, as we rounded the last straightaway toward the finish with her about 10 yards in front of me, I decided to stick up for mankind everywhere and hoof it to the line.  And so I did, and thereby scored a minor victory in what was truly a major war.  Given how the day I had gone, I'd been hoping against hope to sneak in under 12 hours.  When I saw 11:38 on the scoreboard, I knew I'd put a serious run together at last.

I'm on television!

Bringing it home.

Winning.  With armbands.

The post-race meal was admirably appropriate: fish and chips with Mars bars and tea.  It was all delicious.  I didn't know what any of my splits had been, but I'd thought my run may have been as good as a 4:05-4:10, which would have been a 30-minute run PR on a brutal course.  When I found out later that night that I'd run a 3:57:16, I knew that I'd just run the toughest mental race of my life and succeeded in every respect, bike course be damned.

TIME: 3:57:16
GOAL: 4:00:00
ASSESSMENT:  Giddyup!

FINAL THOUGHTS

This was my best race.  I beat my Cozumel time by a minute, and that course was dead flat.  I beat my Cozumel run time by an hour.  And I did it on a savage course and under some of the most challenging race conditions I've ever experienced.  In short, I had every reason to quit, but I fought through it and turned the race around completely, from debacle to enormous personal victory.  I've proved to myself that I won't fall apart on an Ironman run, and with this psychological breakthrough, I have every reason to think that I can smoke this time in Cozumel in all three disciplines.  I've learned how to keep going: Now it's time to go fast.

I took three big lessons from this race.  First, no matter what happens, keep yourself in the game and give yourself a chance to do something you didn't think you were capable of.  I was a shattered human being on the bike, but I got off and destroyed my run PR, something I'd have bet a lot of money was simply impossible.  If I'd have dropped out, or just walked out of T2, I'd never have known what I was capable of doing.  

Second, in an Ironman race, there will always be a time when things look truly bleak.  It happens to everyone, and in that moment, it's difficult to imagine that it will end in anything other than disaster.  Just keep  eating, keep drinking, and keep moving; things will improve if you let them, and if you stay focused on small steps.  Get to the top of the climb or through the next mile.  Run to the next aid station.  You can go from utterly destroyed to feeling great much faster than one might guess, but only by keeping an open mind to the possibility, a sense of humor when possible, and some perspective.

Finally, trust your body.  Heart rate monitors, power meters, and nutrition plans are great.  But none of it's as good as your inner sense of what's going on with you, right then and right there.  If the thought of another gel makes you sick, find something else.  Don't drink soft drinks?  Great, and congrats -- but you may find that Coke is a miracle beverage on an Ironman run course, and you shouldn't rule it out on principle.  I'd never eaten a banana on a run before Wales, and I'd certainly never ingested Ritz crackers during an athletic event.  In the abstract, I'd have said it's a terrible idea.  But I realized on the run that bananas and crackers sounded terrific, so I trusted that sense and I didn't have a jot of stomach trouble as a result.  Likewise, watches and heart rate monitors will tell you how hard or how fast you're going, but so what?  If you pace yourself strictly according to a watch, that might be too fast or too slow for that course on that day.  Heart rate can be confounded by any number of factors, from heat to nutrition to fatigue and caffeine.  Your heart rate on a 2-hour training run often gives little insight into what it'll be at mile 15 of an Ironman marathon.  Our bodies are smart machines.  Go in with a plan, but as Mike Tyson said, "Everybody's got plans... until they get hit."  I think that focusing on electronics and gadgets can sometimes distract us from what's really going on inside of us, and can prevent us from reaching that flow state where things really get done.  

I'm happy to say that, after taking a week or so to reflect on Wales, go completely off of my dietary restrictions, and not training at all, I'm raring to go like I haven't been in a long time.  Bring on Rev3, and bring on Cozumel.  Time to rip up some PRs.

Reconsidering electrolytes for Cozumel

For years, I've been convinced that, as a "salty sweater," it was necessary for me to take in considerable amounts of salt during hot-exercise training and racing.  At Mountains of Misery this year, I took in nearly 800 grams an hour for the 10-hour ride in 85-degree sun, and felt great.  Likewise, at Musselman Half, I PR'd the run on a very tough course in extremely hot conditions, and I was taking a similar amount of sodium (among other things).  Recently, though, I've begun to rethink whether it's all necessary.  Joe Friel has been convinced for years that we can basically do without electrolyte supplementation as long as fluid is consumed only to thirst, rather than to excess.  His position relies heavily on the research of Dr. Tim Noakes, an interesting interview with whom can be found here beginning around the 35-minute mark.

At Ironman Wales last week, I decided to give Noakes a try, and I took in no sodium beyond what was contained in four gels.  For hydration, I had water, and for calories, CarboPro 1200 and gels.  The course and conditions were simply macabre -- a race report will appear here soon -- but I nonetheless set a 40-minute run PR without a hint of cramping.  I'm still trying to figure out what I think about it all heading into Cozumel in two months.

A useful video on descending technique

Every couple of months, I lead a clinic on descending technique for newer triathletes on the team.  This video gives some extremely helpful illustrations of many of the topics we cover.  Many thanks to whomever created it!

Damon's Bicycle Gearing Guide

Newer cyclists often have a hard time understanding fundamental principles relating to bike gearing.  It's an important subject that has a massive bearing on one's enjoyment of cycling, and I struggled for years to find a clear and concise explanation of how things work.  Failing to find anything like what I wanted, I wrote one myself, which is available here.  Enjoy!

Memories of the Mosquito Coast: Cozumel 2009

BACKGROUND TO COZUMEL

This year was, by design, my last "Ironman push" for a little while. Heading into 2009, I'd been racing IM for three years already and training for IM for four years, since summer 2005. In fact, I'd done -- and have done -- more Ironman triathlons than sprints and Olympics combined. Over the last few years, I'd had fun, especially with the bike part of training, and my swim had come along nicely. But my overall times weren't coming down much; my iron-distance PR had come in my very first race, the 2006 ChesapeakeMan, and my half-distance PR had come in 2007.
 
The lack of progress had gotten a little frustrating. It's one thing to enjoy the lifestyle, which I do, and the people, whom I do very much. But I've always been competitive and goal-driven, so it was de-motivational to invest the sweat equity without seeing concrete results out there on the course. At IMWI in 2007, I'd gotten severely motion-sick in the swim, perhaps due in part to caffeine overdosing, and had thrown up five times in the swim, and again right in front of the wetsuit strippers. Not quite the start to the day I'd intended. At IMUSA 2008, the same thing had happened. In neither race did I put in a run to speak of, which was perplexing given that my "road race" results for running were pretty good, including a couple of 1:07 Cherry Blossoms. In fact, in 2008, even my cycling times were slower than they were in 2007, despite upgrading from my old aluminum Cervelo P2SL to a new Specialized S-Works. So this year I decided to do everything I could to change things around and have a successful year, with the idea that, come what may, I'd shift my focus for 2010 and leave Ironman alone for a little while. I sold the Specialized, on which I'd always felt sluggish, and instead got my now-familiar green Elite Razor Carbon. And I started working individually with Ken Meirke, figuring that, if anyone could exorcise my running demons, he could.
 
Heading into Ironman Cozumel, the results had been mixed. I knew my running form had improved, but I blew up badly in the Austin Marathon's heat and hills, finishing around 3:50. The Cherry Blossom had gone better, with a 1:06 (PR). My May of Insanity (in five weekends, 3 half-ironman races, the Mountains of Misery Double Metric ride with 14,000 feet of climbing, and a century ride/20-mile run weekend) had pushed me to new levels of exhaustion. I'd even taken a week off of work in June to put in a 400-mile bike week, an adventure that culminated in being caught riding a disc wheel, in the middle of nowhere, in the most violent electrical storm I'd ever witnessed. (FYI: It turns out that lightning makes a distinct fizzing sound and shoots off showers of sparks). After all that, I thought I'd done what I needed to to PR at IMUSA, but the opposite happened: another sick swim, a massive bonk on the bike, and my slowest IM finish to date. Argh! (Down, pirates, down!)

But I still had Cozumel at which to bounce back, and I did the best I could this fall to stay amped up for it, and to bang out the training after the setback at Placid. It was tough at times, but I stayed reasonably diligent, including throwing in a 3-week race block of Savageman Half bike relay/ChesapeakeMan Aquavelo/Bassman Half, all of which went decently. I ran the Marine Corps Marathon as a workout, not a race, and still PR'd by a solid 15 minutes with a 3:33. Most important, I went to IMFL to cheer, and found the atmosphere electric and contagious. You guys were so inspirational that I couldn't wait to launch myself into the fight at Cozumel.
 
In short, heading into Cozumel, I was healthy, well-rested, and had every reason for optimism. I was aiming for 10:30, and thought a 10-hour performance wasn't out of the question if only I could run in a race the way anything like I did in training. My main concern was that, with it being the FIRST Ironman Cozumel, logistical snafus were possible, perhaps even likely; I had visions of the American competitors scurrying from bush to bush on the run course, hands clutching their butts, trying to outrun Montezuma. Or maybe all of the gels would be tequila flavored and include a little worm. Who knew?

THE FIRST DAYS IN COZUMEL

 
I flew to Cozumel on Wednesday, and the flight was quick and low-stress. The the boarding area in Dallas, though was quite ascene: the passenger list comprised primarily deeply tan guys with wicking visors and less body hair than the women they were with. I figured that, in case of an emergency water landing, we'd do better than the average crowd, but that a good number would likely get eaten by staying strictly within Zone 2 while swimming away from the sharks.

Although the flight to Cozumel wasn't long, stepping off the plane revealed how far I'd come in climate terms. I know it's probably hard to believe for my legions of adoring groupies, but in real life I'm a big nerd and wear glasses, and those glasses fogged over within about five seconds of leaving the plane. The humidity was like a suffocating pillow, and looking around at the Cozumel airport, it resembled something out of Indiana Jones -- not much by way of airplanes, but plenty of guys with machine guns wandering around. (They did not, at least, appear to be Nazis.) And, most oddly for a tropical island renowned for its gentle ocean breezes and moderate temperatures, it looked like The Nothing had just rolled through. Everything and everyone was soaked to the gills and debris was strewn about. In fact, even *inside* the airport, there were squads of crack flood-control specialists desperately trying to push huge puddles of standing water into open grates in the floor. How that much water got inside the terminal was a bit of a mystery -- the ceilings weren't wet -- until a couple of us realized that the runways had cunningly been crowned so that the water ran off directly into... oops. We had plenty of time to fathom the potential implications for race organization while the one customs guy on duty grew increasingly skeptical that, oh sure, everyone just so happened to be traveling with a bicycle whose case we preferred he not open.
 

Eventually I located a van-style taxi big enough for my bike box, and we made our way to my hotel, which was located up the coast about four miles -- the precise four miles that comprised the run course, it turns out. On the drive, the water on the road was standing so deep that at places it crested the center of the hubcaps on the van. Apparently, that very morning, an epically violent storm really *had* rolled through, bringing winds near 70 mph and pretty much shutting down the whole city. By then it had moved on, but the winds had remained: they were blowing at 25-30 mph constantly, with gusts up to 50 mph. The postcard-perfect beaches were most emphatically closed and had the red warning flags to prove it, not that it was tempting to swim in the muddied and rip-current-infested waters in any case. "Tomorrow will be better," I thought, as I fell asleep to the sound of wind howling loudly at the window.

Tomorrow wasn't better. Tomorrow was not better at all. Tomorrow was a malicious, taunting thing. I awoke to the sound of wind howling, but I'd agreed to ride a 40-mile loop of the bike course with a friend of mine, so I set about putting the bike together. Everything was there... except a skewer for my front wheel. The expo wasn't until the next day and I was four miles from town, so I briefly thought of trying to ride the bike very gently down the road sans skewer, in search of a bike shop. Thankfully I wasn't quite that dumb. I next seized on the idea of trying to zip-tying the tines of my fork together against the hub of the wheel, and was right proud of my MacGyver-ness until it occurred to me that the zip-tie would have to go through the hub and then... back up and over and then... through the spokes... which would mean... Oof. Yeah, I knew that. :-) Thankfully, my friend just happened to have an extra front skewer I could use. Who carries around an extra front skewer, anyway? But thank God. We headed out.

PRE-RIDING THE BIKE COURSE

The bike course passed through downtown Cozumel, which struck us as very tourist-friendly, I guess you could say. And during the 2-3 mile stretch through the town, the coastal road was paved with a sort of concrete with an ornate pattern carved into it: The carvings looked like birds. But to bike tires, they felt a little like rumble strips. We noted that it could make parts of the race course tricky, but thought we could deal with it. What we couldn't deal with was a series of 6" deep, 12"-wide trenches that spanned the entire road, and which we encountered going a little faster than we should have. The first one seemed like an unfortunate road repair that we desperately hoped would be fixed, but by the fourth and fifth, it felt like a damned conspiracy to maim the gringos. Finally we realized what was going on: They were frantically removing speedbumps by hand in advance of the race. That struck us as a pretty reasonable thing to do -- if, perhaps, with the assistance of some road signs or something -- so we picked our way through the wreckage and continued on.

We encountered a squad of guys quickly painting the curbs along the course. "That looks pretty good!" we thought. Then we encountered another squad of guys, painting the trees.

The bike course is almost 3 complete loops (40, 40, and 31 miles respectively), that start on the east side of Cozumel island, run south along the coast, then up along the east coast of the island, and finally cutting across the center back to the start. Normally the wind comes cutting across from the northeast, meaning you get blasted when you're on the back stretch of each loop, which is uninhabited. But due to the unusual weather system, the winds were coming from the west, so the loop didn't seem bad at all. There are really cool "blowhole" geologic formations along the east coast of the island, which causes giant jets of water to shoot straight up 20-30 feet whenever a wave crashes against the shore. It was pretty neat.

Overall, we thought the course was pretty reasonable if a little windy in places, and could lend itself to some fast times. If only we'd heard God snickering.

THREE DAYS OUT

Expo Day! I'd decided to get a new cassette for my rear wheel -- maybe an 11/23 or 12/23 instead of my existing 12/27, because I found on the practice ride that I often wanted to be between my existing gears. So I headed to the expo to get registered, get a cassette, and stock up on race-day essentials. I'd been to several Ironman expos, and they always have everything on earth you could need, most stuff you could want, and lots of stuff I wouldn't think anyone could ever want.

But those were North American expos. The Cozumel race expo reminded me a little of how Canadians are portrayed in South Park Everything was just a little... off. For one thing, the race mechanical support was a guy on the sidewalk outside with a toolbox. For another, the biggest share of floorspace in the expo was consumed not with triathlon needs, but with Mexican triathlon art. Some of it was pretty cool. All of it was pretty expensive. And none of it was the cassette I wanted, so I went to the guys selling tubes and tires and asked where I could get one. They looked at me in confusion, so I assumed the word for "cassette" was different in Spanish. Turns out that wasn't it at all: They understood me just fine, but were confused as to why I thought they'd be selling such a thing. No one else knew of anyone who had any for sale. To this day, I'm not sure how anyone buys a bike in Cozumel, because apparently cassettes simply don't exist there.

I decided I'd just ride the cassette I had and suck up the bad gear ratios, and instead decided to ensure I had enough electrolytes. Except... yeah. None of those either. Sigh. Not like this is an
Ironman in the tropics or anything. I was able to buy a pretty nice bike jersey, after overcoming the salesman who tried to convince me that they simply hadn't ordered any sizes other than small and extra small.

Discerning that things weren't going my way, I picked up my race materials and neon orange "ATLHETE" [sic] wristband, and headed back to my hotel. The race gave out pretty cool fleece jackets as swag, which was pretty neat, even if they were cut a little paunchy. Moving on from admiring that, though, I noticed that they hadn't included in my materials any special needs or gear bags. Ruh roh.

Back at the hotel, I tried to relax out on the beach, but the driving winds made it simply painful to be outside with the blowing sands. For the second night in a row, I fell asleep to the sound of it
whipping through the gaps between the doors.

TWO DAYS OUT

 

I awoke to the sound of howling winds. "Oh, come the heck on," I thought. This was the third day in a row it had been like that, and again, the beaches were closed. The pre-race swim was canceled due to winds and raging currents. Red flags on the shores, and no one was outdoors. The only difference is that, this day, there were whitecaps on the waves as far as the eye could see. It was extremely difficult to believe that it I was in any sort of paradise, and I asked the guys at the front desk whether that is just how the winds were there. "It's funny," they answered, "but whenever Cozumel hosts a big event, this always seems to happen!" I continued to hope things would get a little less funny by race day, which was looming ever larger, like a big looming thing. Whenever I checked the weather online (weather.com, accuweather, and everything else), they assured me that Cozumel was presently experiencing clement breezes of of 8-10 mph,

with gusts up to 12. Then I'd wander outside and literally have to lean forward and push with my quads while holding my hat on in order to make any progress. It felt like a mild form of insanity.

That night was the pre-race meeting, which was well done in that it was short and to the point. Bassman could take something from their book. And afterward, they had special gifts for the competitors: Gear bags! Things were looking up!

And the winds howled.

THE DAY BEFORE THE RACE

I awoke to a strange sound. Subtle, but definitely there. Rising and falling... WAVES. I could hear waves! And, more to the point, I couldn't hear wind! Apparently the system had blown itself on out, and the result was the much-rumored tropical paradise where I'd planned to spend a week. The main task of the day was bike check-in, which was at Chankanaab, a national park some ten miles from the host hotels. In a nice touch, the race chartered commercial buses to pick people and their bikes up at the race hotels, drive them to Chankanaab, and bring them back.

Check-in was a breeze, and I hung out in the sunshine for thirty minutes or so, watching people swim with the dolphins in an enclosure right next to where the swim would start and end. Just that moment, I couldn't understand why anyone would do an Ironman not in Cozumel.

The rest of the day, I re-read Once a Runner (perhaps trying to motivate myself on that front!), ate a lot, drank infinitely less than I wanted to, and generally kept off my feet. Got to sleep early,about 9:30, looking forward to a terrific day. I felt perfect!

RACE MORNING

I often get serious cases of raceday nerves; in fact, the problem's gotten worse in the last couple of years. It's not fear of finishing but rather, I think, the anticipation of a hard and painful effort, and the expectations I have going into it. In any case, I've lately had a lot of trouble eating the morning of races without winding up very sick just before the race and during the swim.

My solution to this in Cozumel was to eat less than I had in the past, to spread out my calories over time, and to keep things very simple. For breakfast, some v8 juice with saltines, peanut butter, and honey. No coffee. On the bus to the starting area, I slowly munched my way through a small can of Pringles, and drank water with a little bit of Carbo Pro in it. And it worked!!! Not a shred of nausea. Part of it may have been that, perversely, I was *looking forward* to the swim, which is rare for me, and rarer still for an Ironman event. I wasn't anticipating the rubber-suit, can't-see-anything rugby-scrum experience that most IM swim starts entail. Whatever the reason, it was the first time in a long time that I'd felt really good heading into the swim.

The transition area was sprawling, and very nice. Instead of one big square area, it was a parking lot with lots of little paths and sections, and the race organizers had put great grass-like mats everywhere so that it was the best of all possible worlds. The only real snafu was the porta-jon situation. For 2,000 athletes, they had six jons in the transition area. And each of those had two rolls of paper in it. Doing the math, it wasn't pretty, and I mean that literally. I managed to score the last four squares of paper available, but by then, the line was still about 200 people long. I bet the bushes got well fertilized that morning.

One low-level stressor at Cozumel that was different from most IM's is that we had no access to our gear bags the morning of the race. In addition, we couldn't have anything loose on our bikes or on the ground next to them. It made planning more of a challenge, and I forgot one thing: my fuel-belt vial full of SaltStick electrolyte capsules. I stuffed that in my bento box, then wandered down to the swim start as the Mexican National Anthem blared away.

On my way to the water, I had a moment of dejection, because I'd forgotten the earplugs I brought to try out (along with Bonine, it was my latest attempt to help the nausea issues). But as I got toward the water, the guy right next to me finished putting his own earplugs in and had one left, which he spontaneously offered me. Score! This really was to be my day, I thought. The last of the toilet paper *and* an offer of earplugs!

THE SWIM (PR: 1:01, Goal: 1:05-1:07)

The daybreak was just perfect: sunny skies and 70 degrees. And the water in Cozumel was even more perfect -- crystal blue and clearer than a swimming pool, with Nemo and his brightly colored friends flitting about. The swim was a one-loop rectangle that was essentially smashed against the western shore of the island. We'd start just off a dock, swim north into the current for about 1/4 mile, out into the ocean for 100 yards or so, then straight south with the current for 1.25 miles, then head in toward shore, and back north against the current for another 3/4 mile.

The "dock" that was the beginning and ending point was really more like a very large square pier, and in the center of the pier was the famous Cozumel "swim with dolphins" attraction. So, as we walked along the dock to the far end along the boardwalk, we could literally look left and right and see dolphins cavorting around and chirping at us. Once we jumped off the pier and got situated, we could duck under the water, look to our right, and see the dolphins looking back at us through the mesh net that contained them. They sounded as excited as we were about the whole thing.

This was the first ocean swim I'd ever done, and also the first non-wetsuit IM swim I'd done. I got a Zoot Speedsuit, which seemed comfortable and non-restricting, and the water was a balmy 81 degrees. It's really difficult to describe how happy people were to be there: While we waited for the gun, people were ducking underwater and swimming around, watching the fish in the coral below us. It couldn't have been further from the typical murky lake experience.

My goal was about 1:05 for the swim. I'd gone 1:02 and 1:01, respectively, at IMUSA the last two years, but that swim is notoriously fast; the waters are calm, it's wetsuit-legal, and that white underwater cable makes swimming off-course a non-issue. I figured that the salt water buoyancy would help offset the loss of the wetsuit somewhat, but it wasn't realistic to predict I'd be quite as fast in an ocean swim as I had been at Placid. A 1:05, I thought, would be just dandy.

I seeded myself about three rows back and, when the gun went off, charged north into the current. I concentrated on keeping my elbows high and trying to catch as much water as I could with each pull, and sought the feeling of launching myself forward with each stroke while keeping my head low. And I felt just terrific. The speedsuit, which had no arms, was comfortable as all hell, and I *loved* the unrestricted sensation in my shoulders and torso. It was like swimming in a pool but just much, much nicer. Instead of looking down into the murk and entertaining oneself with whatever thoughts, I could pretend I was snorkeling, and just remembered to sight every now and then to keep going in the right direction. Not a single person touched me in the first 200 yards of the swim, which I think must be unheard of in an IM mass start. But things were so clear that everyone could just keep their heads down and maneuver.

I rounded the top of the course and headed south with the current. That "hot corner" was the only congested place on the course, but even then, it was a snap to avoid pummeling. We could see where the buoys were from 50+ yards off because we could clearly see the ropes that were anchoring them to the bottom of the ocean, and each one had a diver right next to it, camped out on the bottom watching us. Because we weren't hyper-floaty from wetsuits, it was easy to dive down a bit to flailing arms and legs.

The long backstretch of the swim, which was current-assisted, was just remarkable. At one point we passed right over a field of starfish on the bottom, maybe 30 feet down, in the middle of which were a couple of stingrays peacefully resting. Every now and then we would pass through bands of colder water (maybe 5-8 degrees cooler), which instantly turned everything blurry in a fascinating way: the blurriness appeared to be caused by the different water temperatures swirling around each other below us, so things appeared not foggy so much as fractured and tumultuous. Then, we'd hit a wall of warm water and things would be perfectly clear again.

I felt like I was moving along pretty well, and did everything I could to take advantage of the conditions. The remarkable clarity of the water made drafting as easy as it would be in a pool, so I'd hold on to a pair of feet for 100 yards or so, then see another group up ahead and bridge up to them, and sit in some more as I watched the fish. I only needed to sight once every 200 yards or so, because it was simple to see the packs of swimmers' feet up ahead.

Meanwhile, I kept waiting for my usual queasiness to set in. It just didn't happen. Maybe it was the Bonine; the clear water; the non-buoyant speedsuit; or something else. But I felt just great, and powered ahead.
 

Rounding the third and fourth turns to head back north, we looped around The Atlantis, a submarine on which tourists can take rides around the coral reefs. It's not often spectators get an underwater view of the swimmers in a race!

Finally, we headed back north into the current. I still felt amazingly good; my suit was chafing around my neck a bit because I'd stupidly thought I didn't need Body Glide, but otherwise I would have been very happy to go around for another loop. I had no sense of what my time was, but regardless I felt like I executed the swim perfectly. As we neared the dock again, we were greeted with schools of bright blue fish swirling around below us. One big old fish that must have weighed five pounds swam lazily right next to me for twenty yards or so, watching the proceedings. All told, Cozumel must be the most spectacular swim in the triathlon world. I don't know what else could possibly be in the conversation.

I climbed back onto the dock slowly, making sure that I didn't send my head spinning as I'd done at Placid, but again -- I felt great. I walked/jogged lazily the 100+ yards along the dock to the timing mats, looking around for a race clock (I wasn't wearing I watch), but I didn't see one. Finally, as I crossed the mats and was grabbing my bike gear bag, I heard the announcer say, "We're still under 55 minutes! Great swims so far!"

Uh... under 55 minutes? I'd never even done a half in sub-30. I wasn't sure what to think -- sure, we'd had some current in our favor, but also against us going the other direction. Was the course short? I didn't know. It didn't feel short.

FINAL TIME: 54:49 (PR, obviously, and probably forever) (AG rank 37/~200). Given the run to the timing mat, I probably left the water in 53:XX. The fact that 36 people in my age group beat my ridiculous time suggests something was up with the course, but I was hardly complaining -- I'd swam exactly the way I wanted to, and intelligently; my time was what it was. Regardless what the explanation is, I will say this: from now on, the Lane 1 swim jocks at practice had damn well better say "Get out of my way, SIR!" when lapping me. :-) Oh yes, there will be trash talking.

THE BIKE (PR 5:26; Goal 5:20)

I expected a lot of myself on this bike course. It was supposed to be flat and windy, but in the notoriously windy conditions at the ChesapeakeMan AquaVelo in September, I'd been on a sub-5:15 pace until I had a mechanical late on. And that was with no pre-race taper at all. I saw no reason why, properly rested, I couldn't get in around 5:20 with plenty of snap in my legs for the run.

My nutrition plan was a new one, but was straightforward. I loaded up my bento box with 11 gels. On the half-hours, I'd take a plain one. On the hours, I'd take one with flavor and caffeine. The goal was to keep things simple and not too sweet. I used one of the new Profile Design aerolite drink systems between the bars for water. The gels would only get me 200 calories an hour, and had little by way electrolytes; to solve those problems, I used an aerodynamic seat tube bottle full of V8 juice with a couple of scoops of Carbo Pro.

It turns out that V8 juice is just about the perfect thing for hot weather. It tastes great warm, like vegetable soup, and each 8-ounce serving has more sodium and potassium than two Salt Stick tablets (and about as much as ten Endurolyte tablets). The taste of it also cuts right through the sugary build-up you get when you're eating gels all day. I had one bottle of V8 on my bike and another in special needs. I also had a backup plan, which was a fuel belt flip-top pill bottle full of Salt Stick tablets, which I shoved into the pocket on my bike shorts.

BIKE LOOP 1

The first loop was 39.5 miles, and it started heading south along the west side of the island. We had the wind at our backs, although it was partially blocked by trees. The pavement was terrific, and I was feeling on top of the world. I passed about 20 people in the first five miles, holding stead at 190-200 watts, which is high Z2. Speed up near 24 mph.

Mile 6: The first aid station. They had aid stations every 6 miles, which was great. But they were a little bit of bedlam, because they were staffed largely by kids, and these kids had never seen a triathlon, much less been in one. I rode through the station just behind two other guys, but stayed left because I didn't need anything. The ground was already soaked, with bottles and tops strewn everywhere -- not a good sign for the very beginning of the race. The guy in front of me tried to grab a bottle of water (bike bottle style) from a girl who looked about ten. He was going about 10 mph, but missed the bottle entirely because she moved at the last second. He then went for the next bottle in front of him, but the girl volunteering was so determined to help him that she sprinted after him for a few feet and then tried to fling the bottle full of water forward into his outstretched hand. Needless to say, she missed, and it clattered to the ground in front of his bike, causing him to swerve and miss the next bottle as well. As I rode by him, he was shaking his head with a baffled "What the hell just happened?" expression on his face.

Mile 10: We rounded the south side of the island and headed north, into the wind. It was blowing to the southwest, at about 20 mph. My speed dropped from 23+ to about 18 as I kept my wattage constant and my head down. The road also turned from nice smooth tarmac to much rougher, undulating chip-seal -- this part is of the course is definitely not flat -- which sapped our speed even further. The east side of Cozumel island is basically uninhabited wilderness, and the wind really whips in off the ocean, causing massive waves big enough to surf in to come crashing ashore. The blowholes were shooting water skyward like geysers, so much that we were getting peppered with spray. The road was about 50 yards from the ocean, up on a raised
embankment probably 10 feet above sea level. To our east was the ocean; to our west was nothing but scrub brush for miles. In other words, we were the highest thing around, fully exposed to the sun and wind for a full 15 miles as we plowed northward. Still, the waves were pretty to watch, and I was reeling people in steadily.

Mile 20: My nutrition plan is going great, with the alternating gels and carb-spiked V8 juice sitting very well with my stomach. I decided to add a couple of Salt Stick capsules from the bottle in my pocket... but it's fallen out somewhere. Sigh. I hoped the V8 juice would be enough for electrolytes (the course was serving only *regular* Gatorade, not Gatorade Endurance, and Gatorade makes me ill in races). As it turns out this would become a real issue.

Mile 30: We speed through the city of Cozumel for the first of three times. There are great crowds, all of whom are shouting "Gravel! Gravel!" In alarm, I slow down and look for the gravel, but see nothing, so I accelerate. Still, more cries of "Gravel!" An odd way to encourage someone, I pondered. I figured out only much later that they were yelling "Vamos!" Ah. *Ahem* Yeah, I knew that.

Mile 39: We whip back south, over a couple of speed humps that they somehow missed, and with a slight wind benefit charged into lap 2. (The "wind aided" sections of the course, unfortunately, were largely between trees, while the into-the-wind sections were out in the great wide open). Average speed of 20.4 for the first loop. About 0.6 miles slower than I wanted to be, but my wattage was right where I wanted it, so I resolved to take what the course would give me.

BIKE LOOP 2

Mile 50: Now things were heating up, into the high 70s, and the sun was in full force. It was also very muggy; even at 20+ mph, in Zone 2, I was dripping sweat from my nose. Imagine being on a trainer next to the pool at swim practice. The nutrition was still going really well -- the V8 juice was the best tasting stuff I'd ever had during a race -- and my legs felt strong. I'd nudged my average speed back up over 21 mph, then we hit the winds, and my progress dropped to 17 mph. The winds had picked up yet more, and I had to consciously lean hard to the right -- toward the shore -- in order to stay upright. It was a fight to stay in control. "Only 15 miles of this stuff," I thought, trying to be optimistic. But it's harder, because I know full well the desolate pain that lies in store.

Mile 61: I'm out of V8 juice, and need my special needs bag, which was supposed to be exactly halfway through the course. But there are no special needs bags at mile 61. Hmm. Head down, pedals churning, plowing into the wind. 16 mph.

Mile 65: I find the special needs bags, which are stacked up on tables near the side of the road. I pull up and call out my number, but no one is listening. The volunteers all seem to be looking for something. After 30 seconds, one of them turns to me, and I yell "292!" He wanders to one of the long tables, which is covered with about 200 bags, and he starts looking through them, one by one. After a couple of minutes he returns to me and says, "Does your bag have anything on it so we can tell what it is?" I said, "Well, it has my race number." He started poking through bags again. Sensing this was going nowhere, I climb off my bike, lean it against a table, and start frantically digging through bags, which are in no particular order. Finally I find mine buried under a couple of others, grab my V8 and 5-hour energy, and charge off into the increasingly gusting winds. Fully 3:30 spent not moving. Damn frustrating. Average speed has dropped almost 0.5 mph while I was stopped. Apparently, later on, reports were that the ground was completely covered with discarded bags, and people were basically taking rest stops looking for their
stuff.

Mile 67: I pass a local woman riding a beach cruiser along the side of the bike course, with traffic. She's sitting upright on her bike, which has the traditional wide handlebars, fenders, and huge knobby tires. She's clearly having a hard time with the wind, and isn't going much more than 5 mph. As I pull up, I see a race number on her back. Oh dear.

Mile 69: I pass five members Panamanian national triathlon team, as far as I can tell from their identical jerseys. They're fighting the diagonal winds by invoking a Tour-de-France worthy eschelon formation in their pelaton. Classy.

Mile 70: A song leaps into my head unbidden: It's Rush's "The Analog Kid," a song I haven't listened to in years. There's precedent for this. In the 2006 ChesapakeMan, I was happily buzzing along when -- for chrissakes -- "Step by Step" by New Kids on the Block started blaring in my brain, and wouldn't stop for a solid thirty miles. I hadn't heard that since middle school. I learned then that the mind does strange things in these events, and it's best to just go with it. In any case, "The Analog Kid" is a pretty great song for such an occasion, with a soaring chorus beginning "You move me, you move me...," which is about perfect for bombing down the road in the aerobars. I played every note of that song in my head for about twenty minutes, and felt like I was flying. Things were just perfect.

Mile 75: Toward the end of the second loop, as we were approaching town again, my average speed had increased to 20.7 mph despite the rest stop fiasco. Then, Rush left my head and my brother Jaron popped into it suddenly. Within thirty seconds I was smiling through the tears as I blew through town, to cries of "Gravel!" With a nod to Shakespeare, I resolved to indeed cry gravel, and let slip the dogs of war.

BIKE LOOP 3

Mile 80: Okay, the ride was officially getting very old. The sun was in full blaze, the winds were 25-30 mph, and I was getting tired of gel. My feet were also on fire, having had no chance to coast at all in the entire ride. I was increasingly forced to stand in the pedals just to stretch my back.

Mile 90: We rounded the south part of the island, and plowed into the wind for the final time. Once more into the breach! By this time, the roads were pretty empty, and it took all the energy we had to navigate the aid stations safely. I went to pass a guy, and a gust of wind hit, nearly throwing him right into me. People are swerving trying to control their bikes while getting nutrition. We're all plowing into the gale at about 15 mph, leaning over to stay upright.

Mile 95: The beach is no longer beautiful. I no longer want to see waves with whitecaps crashing into the shore. The first loop was pretty. The second was background. But the third starts to feel distinctly like Groundhog Day, the movie, only each time we're doing things much worse. The landscape is desolate and stretches to infinity.

Mile 105: I pass two more people, with each pedal stroke setting the balls of my feet ablaze with pain. "I can't imagine how these guys are feeling," I thought. Not to mention the people on their second loops, who were looking distinctly despondent.

Mile 111.5: Whipping through town. Almost there! Another half mile, and I should be in just over 20 mph. (My GPS was consistently reading 1/2 mile shorter than the course markings).

Mile 112: Where is the dismount line?

Mile 113: WHEN WILL IT END??? CAN YOU HEAR ME, GOD???

Mile 113.5: Simply a diabolical ride. The volunteer waves me to the left, so I follow the cones and realize that he's sending me around again. No chance in hell. I cut through the cones to the dismount line.

FINAL TIME: 5:38:09 (19.87 mph) (AG Rank 21/~200). Ugh. Fully 18 minutes slower than my goal. I'd held a higher wattage than the notoriously windy ChesapeakeMan, and yet my time was 23 minutes slower. There was nothing remotely fast about the Cozumel bike course; in fact, mentally, it made Lake Placid look like a recovery ride. The tent in T2 contained a lot of bewildered-looking dudes who appeared to be asking what on earth just happened to them, and wondering what else this race would have in store. If only they knew.

THE RUN (PR: 4:36, Goal 4:00)

The run course was a 3-loop out-and-back along the coast. At the end of each loop, I knew, was my all-inclusive hotel, with bed and buffet. The possibilities seemed endless. :-) I'd been running very well lately, with a pretty effortless marathon PR in October, and coming off a flat bike ride, I thought I ought to be able to charge down the road successfully. But the air was so thick it felt like I was running through my V8 juice, and there was no shade in sight. I tried to keep it moving.

RUN LAP 1

Mile 1: There are aid stations every 1k (0.6 miles) or so, which seems great, and generous. They're fully stocked with water, Gatorade (regular), Coke, powerbars, and gels. Finally, each one had several small cans of mosquito repellent. Hmmm...

Mile 2: My legs are burning and I'm dripping with sweat. I put chunks of ice under my hat, which feels alternately good, and like I'm getting an ice cream headache.

Mile 3: I'm run/walking. Dammit. I was just concentrating on getting my core temperature down, but this part of the course was completely shielded from the wind, and it felt like DC in August. Hot, sticky, and unrelenting. I wished I had the electrolyte pills that I'd dropped, but knew I had more V8 in my special needs bag, at least. In the meantime, I looked for salt at the next aid station  and discovered to my horror that they had... none at all. No electrolyte pills. No chicken broth. No pretzels. No crackers. Each station had two small tins of salted peanuts, which by then were strewn all over the ground. Oh dear crap.

The rest of loop 1, I ran from aid station to aid station as best I could, but my legs were in agony and tightening up rapidly. My 4-hour marathon goal seemed like a pipe dream. I was sucking down Coke and water, but what I really wanted was salt.

RUN LOOP 2

Mile 9: Only another half-loop to special needs, I thought. I saw Ed and Talia taking pictures and cheering, which was great! It's impossible to walk when those guys are around.

Mile 10: The aid stations were rapidly descending into what appeared to be war zones; the short loops meant that they were being bombarded constantly with two-way traffic. They quickly ran out of Coke. Then they ran out of Gatorade. The peanuts were long gone. Even the mosquito repellent had been snatched up. This race was starting to give off a distinctly Survivor-like vibe.

Mile 13: Calves cramping like rocks, my running stints were getting shorter and slower. Reaching the turn-around, I looked for the special needs bags, but saw nothing. I just wanted my freaking V8 juice, because it was the only source of electrolytes on the entire course, and I was caked with salt. It felt like we were hiking in the Everglades.

Mile 14: The swarms descended. I heard a buzzing in my ear, then saw one on my arm. The mosquitoes' race had begun, and their aid stations were fully stocked. There was not the slightest breeze to keep them off, and everywhere, people were swatting and clawing.  Here's a picture of my back taken the morning after the race:

Mile 16: Nearing the end of the second loop. There was still no sign of the special needs bags, yet we were almost 2/3 of the way through the run. None of the volunteers understood what I was even talking about. Honestly, I began to get very frustrated and discouraged. My race was falling apart in front of my eyes, and I just couldn't move forward. The swatting grew more vigorous.

Mile 17: A young-looking racer from Mexico, walking beside me, asks me in a despairing voice how far a marathon is. Suddenly, I feel better.

RUN LOOP 3

I'd finished two complete loops of the run course, and there were still no signs of the special needs bags. The aid stations were basically out of everything except water, gels, and powerbars, and I wasn't drinking the water because I was getting lightheaded and didn't want to risk hyponatremia. And, in truth, I was getting pretty darn angry. I'd trained my ass off for a year, and had executed a perfect race. I hadn't gotten sick, I'd stayed disciplined on my pacing and nutrition, but here I was, cramping up so badly that I had to stretch against a tree after every time I tried to run.

There's nothing more fundamental in a race than delivering what you promise, and providing the necessary nutrition to keep people moving forward safely. What we'd been promised in terms of run support was special needs bags halfway through each segment, and aid stations fully stocked with electrolytes. Yet here I was, 10 hours into the race, in incredibly hot, swamp-like conditions, fighting off swarms of mosquitoes while I searched desperately for my special-needs bag (the second special-needs fiasco of the race), and the volunteers at aid stations were running around, picking up water bottles off the ground, and dunking them in coolers to refill them. What the hell was going on? I guessed that a lot of people would require medical attention in very short order.

Mile 18: Finally, I found a volunteer who understood the term "special needs," and pointed down the road, toward the turnaround. Had I missed them there on the second loop? Was I that spaced out? I tried to pick up the pace to get there as quickly as I could, and found myself hopping to the curb as my calf locked up. Agony.

Mile 21: The turnaround, for the last time! Only 4.5 miles to go! Nope, no special needs here. The sun had gone down, and concerned citizens were standing outside my hotel with mosquito repellant they'd purchased themselves, dousing whomever wanted it. I said "yes, thank God!" and thanked them profusely. They said that some people were literally in tears because they were coated with mosquitoes and couldn't escape. Some paradise. I'm attaching a picture I took of my back the day after the race. Keep in mind that those bites occurred in the space of just over an hour.

Mile 22.5: I find the special needs drop, which is in a parking lot off the course. There are no signs, and no one else seems to have noticed it, or to have gotten their bags. No one is manning the area. The bags are tossed loosely into piles of 100. I briefly debate whether it's even worth it to stop, what with the finish line being in only 3.5 more miles. But, I realized, my goal time was a distant memory, and I might not reach the line at all if I didn't get some salt in me. So, I spent a few minutes sifting through them, and got my V8, which I was coming to think of as lifeblood. Then, I shuffled it on home, trying not to trip on the mounds of empty water bottles drifting across the road.

Mile 26: What a complex feeling. Joy, relief, and disappointment all rolled into one. And pride, too, for having executed the race as well as I knew how. It was my 5th Ironman finish line, and the last I planned to see for a little while. As I charged down the finish chute, I threw my head back and cruised across the line. It was over.

As I wandered through the finishing area, I wasn't feeling good. The medical tent was huge and looked a little inviting, to be honest, so I looked in. There were about 20 cots, all with guys looking dazed, and hooked up to IV drips. And the race still had 5.5 hours to run.

RUN TIME: 4:56:47, AG Rank ?/~400.
TOTAL TIME: 11:39:35, AG Rank 52/~400.

CONCLUSIONS

Well, I didn't get anywhere near Kona, or even within an hour of my goal time, despite a scandalous swim result. Once again, I didn't get it done on the run. I realized on the run course that, although I'm blessed with some amount of natural ability, the truth is that mentally I'm not very strong these days. Out there on the run course, knowing that I was in agony and my goal time was nowhere in sight, I searched desperately for a reason to keep running, when walking seemed both safer, given the conditions, and more enjoyable. I found that I couldn't come up with a good reason why I should. I have an incredible amount of respect for the guys on our team who regularly pull that off, including Chris, Sebastian, and Courtney (sub-4 at Arizona!). It's just impressive.

Part of it, to be sure, is due to the sweltering conditions, for which living in the north does nothing to prepare us. Despite the flat Cozumel course, the Kona qualifying times at Cozumel were slower than they were at Lake Placid. The race organization fell short at some very critical moments, and there appears to be a DNF rate for this race (or at least my age grou) of 15-20%, which is simply huge. I have to think that some number of those people probably wound up in a lot of trouble. But I'm not ready to use the conditions as an excuse; the winners also faced them, and part of me thinks I was too eager to use my frustration with the race support as an excuse not to push through the pain when I had the chance.

In any case, I think it's clear that I need to shift my priorities for a little while. I've discovered that I like motivating and encouraging others perhaps even more than I like racing myself, so I'm trying to do as much as I can to help the team do fun and useful things, and I'm moving into a little bit more of a leadership role. In terms of my own racing, for next year at least, I'm dropping down to the shorter distances and making a run at Age Group Nationals in Tuscaloosa. I'm looking forward to really putting in short, hard efforts that will shock my system in ways Ironman training just doesn't. Along the way, I'm determined to build up the mental toughness that you need to be successful at this game. I'm excited about that new challenge!

On the way back from Florida, I was talking to an effervescent BOPer who said she was surprised that the "A"-type racers on our team experience the frustration and pain that the newer athletes do. Well, I'm hear to tell you: As REM put it, Everybody Hurts. We all have our own reasons for, and methods of, overcoming the significant challenges we face in these events. But as Greg Lemond put it when asked whether the top professionals suffer less than average riders, "You never hurt less. You just go faster."

Somehow, despite my disappointment at the result in Cozumel and resolve to refocus for a little while, I continue to think there's some magic in the Ironman. You pass through almost the whole canon of human emotion in the course of a day: ecstasy, grief, perseverance, agony, sympathy, accomplishment, resolution. Hell, Ironman bike rides have evoked in me both New Kids on the Block songs and memories of my brother, who passed away a few years ago. There must be some magic in the mist, as Hollywood might put it. Everyone who's racing your first IM, you have a lot to look forward to.