In that long a race you have a lot of time to think. I have visualization cues that I use to remember some great performances and that pushes you through the walls that get built up when things turn really challenging. The swim was rough, swimming twice around a triangle, with a headwind on two of the sides, and a slight push on the third. I thought about how comfortable I was in the water, even though I couldn't hit my usual stroke pattern or cadence from getting tossed around. I visualized a beautiful race swim I'd had earlier in the season along South Beach, when the ocean was like glass. I thought about swimming an annual event called the "Mile Swim" in Stony Lake in 2007, and how it was really one of the first long distance swims I'd done in about 35 years. And I thought about my first triathlon, May 6th, 2007. How the swim killed me that day - I couldn't even complete the 400 yards by swimming freestyle, and had to switch to breaststroke a couple of times as my spindly arms were just not up to the challenge. And yet, this Saturday, the same arms just kept pulling me tirelessly forward for 2.4 miles, doing their part for the day.
The bike is so much more complex. Your day can end pretty quickly if you have a problem. You're riding, potentially, on a course you haven't seen before, as I was this week. I rode the first 5 miles of the course on Friday, since I knew that I'd be seeing it twice on the ride in the race, and covering part of it on the run three times as well. That was about as familiar with the course as I could get. Because of the dependency on the mechanics of a bike, you're listening to everything. You're wondering if you maybe should have switched to a new rear tire. You're watching the road intensely for surprises in the surface. You're reading the cambers on the turns, the grades on the hills, both up and down, the windshifts and prevailing directions and trying to anticipate just the right amount of braking for a corner so you don't decelerate too much, or go in too hot. You're asking yourself how you feel... are you pushing so hard you won't have anything left for the run. Are you hydrating enough, or too much, and the same about nutrition - is it 45 minutes since your last gel and time for another one? And you're hearing the inevitable voices - oh, you're doing Clermont... those hills are a killer... you'd better make sure your small chairing is accessible... you'll need it (it wasn't and I didn't)... you can't do that ride with a 54 (I did). And I thought a lot about Austin, where I'd done a 70.3 race three weeks earlier, and there was a headwind for 46 miles on the bike. Austin, and a 60 mile ride last Sunday made my race this week - I was acclimated.
And then, it's just a matter of running a marathon. Back in 1999, when I started running in Canada, running a 10k (6.2 miles) was a stretch goal. I think my first 5k race was run at 22:00 and I just completed the Komen run last weekend in 19:06, 8 years later. I still remember how my first 10k run gutted me. Thousands of running miles later I've done a number of marathons, none of them after 7.5 hours of already exhausting exercise. But I felt surprisingly strong after the ride Saturday, and on the last half hour on the bike I believed I could pull off a sub-4 hour marathon to finish under 11:30, and prepared myself for that pace. I slowed a little between miles 13 and 18, but found my speed again in the final 8 miles. And when I passed a runner at mile 24 and he tried to stay with me and draft, I turned and said "there's no way you're drafting off of me", and just lit it up and sprinted the final 2.2 miles to the finish. The looks on people's faces was all shock and awe as I came through the crowd in the final mile... i think they were so used to watching every racer do the triathlon trudge at that point. In the end, I was only two minutes out of 2nd in my division, and I thought of all the places I could have made that up - in an 11 hour race there's no way of really knowing where your competitors are - you just have to keep trying to pass people. Nobody passed me on the bike, nobody passed me on the run, that's how I like my visualizations to play out in reality!
I was surprised I wasn't more emotional at the finish or during my first Ironman. I remember vividly when I ran my first marathon, how at mile 22 there was nobody else around me, it had been raining in biblical proportions for the last 10 miles, I was trudging and sloshing along, my feet literally floating in my shoes, and there was a trailer at the side of the course in Kennedy Park on South Bayshore in the Grove, with a PA system playing out Bob Seger's woefully overexposed GM soundtrack chorus "Like A Rock". Music is such an emotional cue for me, and that song, at that moment, did me in that day - just the realization that I was about to do something I hadn't really had as a life goal, but threw it out there, challenged myself and was on the threshold of completing it. And so Saturday, when I fully realized I was on my way to completing an even greater challenge, somewhere around mile 25 on the bike, I allowed myself just a moment of that same emotional reflection, and then got on with the race. But that was it... I knew going into this event that I could do it. Barring an injury or breakdown, I believed that it was only a matter of time before I completed an Ironman, and that time was right then and there. Existentialism and the God motif truly is alive in triathletes - but that's a subject for another post.
It was, however, completely appropriate that I finished my first Ironman in Florida, where I've sought and now fulfilled part of my destiny. I entered an Ironman earlier this year, which was to be my first - Vineman, in Sonoma, California. It wasn't meant to be however... as in the three weeks leading up to the race, when I'd won a Sprint Tri race, and a week later, set a new PR in a half marathon run, I got increasingly sick with what was later diagnosed as a bronchial infection. I don't know whether I subconsciously didn't want to do Vineman or not - but all along I had wanted to do my first Ironman in Florida. This is where I discovered my passion for the sport, where I train, and where I race. California and I had no connection to each other related to sport - we were business and pleasure pals.
So it's done. I don't know what I'll throw at myself next. I will do more Ironman events, as I'm relentless about improving. I already know what upgrades I'll be doing to my bike in the off-season. My legs felt ready to run today... amazing. I contacted a swim coach this afternoon, I'll be back in the water in the morning, back at a spinning class and on the weight machines tomorrow evening. It's 13 days to my final race of the year, the 70.3 Miami Man and I want to break my PR set in Austin. I have a few rashes, a little sunburn, and I'll lose two toenails this winter, but I'll be an Ironman for the rest of my life.
0 comments:
Post a Comment