Ironman Canada is one of
the most historic, spectacular, and well known Ironmans in the world. It is also a notoriously difficult race in
which to gain entry. It was a no-brainer
when five of us from Springfield had an opportunity to sign up last
summer. OK, mostly a no-brainer…the
$600+ entry fee was a little ridiculous.
I’m not completely sure why people (myself included) pay so much to destroy
themselves for 8-17 hours, but the race production company sure does make you feel like a rock
star while you’re doing it.
Everything at an
Ironman is spectacularly well organized, from packet pickup to the pasta
dinner to the race itself. Because of
the number of athletes, you have to drop your bike off the day before the
race. You also have to organize all of
your gear into five separate bags that will be used throughout the race
(morning bag, swim-bike bag, bike-run bag, bike special needs bag, and run
special needs bag).
If you are the Type
A planner, then you will love this. If
not, then an Ironman is pretty much a logistical nightmare (see left).
I arrived race morning,
got body marked, checked my bags one last time, and meandered down to the
water. With what turned out to be 2800+
athletes on race day and too many spectators to count, this was easier said
than done. 2800 athletes also turned out
to be the largest mass swim start in history.
As opposed to most triathlons, which usually use time trial or wave
starts, all athletes at an Ironman start at once. So the swim can be a pretty scary
experience…you just can’t put that many people together and expect no
contact.
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| Get out early or it gets ugly |
The gun started and I
have to say the 2.4 mile swim was pretty uneventful. Some mild contact, but I just focused on
drafting behind others to conserve energy.
I lined up on the far left end of the beach where all of the athletes
looked freaked out. I think this was the
key, because the ones with a “kill” look in their eyes are the ones who do the
pummeling in a swim. Although I got
pretty tired on the 2nd half, it went by pretty fast and I beat my
Arizona swim by 4 minutes in 1:12:53.
Glad to have a wetsuit for the 71 degree water, and not bad considering
my longest swim in training was about a mile and a half.
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| I'm that guy over there |
Transition is one of
the funniest parts of the day. You go in
a changing tent (separate for men and women) to strip off swim stuff and put on
your cycling clothes, all with the time running. As I entered the tent, it was just a mass of
half naked, type A guys yelling and
trying to dress. There were volunteers
attempting to help but, due to the nudity, no one wanted to get too close. In Arizona, the water and air temps were
pretty cold and I couldn’t grip with my hands.
The volunteer had to pull my shorts up for me, which is a fairly
embarrassing and silly thing to go through.
This time I was able to shoo my volunteer away to help someone else.
After exiting the tent,
a volunteer handed me my bike and I headed out to the bike course. We rode south through town on streets that
were absolutely packed with spectators yelling.
It was really exciting and hard to hold back.
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The Ironman Canada bike
course is one of the more challenging on the circuit. It can be broken into five major parts… the
initial 40 miles of flats, a 6 mile long mountain climb (Richter Pass) followed
by 12 miles of “rollers” (what we call significant hills here), 24 miles of
flats, a 10 mile long mountain climb (Yellow Lake), and finally a 12 mile
cruise back to town downhill.
If you don’t conserve
energy early on, you’re toast. So I put
it in all-day pace, got aero, and enjoyed the scenery. When we hit the base of Richter pass,
everyone seemed to hit the accelerator.
I’m a decent climber, and granted I was nursing a sore leg, but I didn’t
pass ONE PERSON on the six mile stretch up the mountain. I distinctly remember several 60 year old
ladies flying by me (you can tell because the race organizers write our age on
our calves - so you can decide whether you want to try to keep up with someone
in the race in your age group). A
friend who had been tracking us later informed me that of everyone he tracked,
I had the least slowdown from the first half of the race to the second. So that made me feel better about getting
passed by the Grandmas.
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| View from part of the way up Richter Pass |
Upon cresting the top,
you hit a super fast downhill with plenty of visibility. It’s basically an excuse to let it all hang
out for several minutes and go really, really fast. I did anyway…48 mph. A bit wobbly and scary. I don’t want to think about how much skin a
person would leave on the asphalt crashing at that speed.
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| The bike course really tuckered out my kids as well. |
The next section of
seven rolling hills made it very difficult to get into a rhythm. Each was steep enough that you had to work a
bit to get over the top, but if you took full advantage of the preceding
downhill you could minimize the effort.
I worked this section fairly hard and passed a ton of people back.
At this point we were
riding alongside a small river in a valley between the mountains. Each side of the river had miles of orchards
and vineyards. Really pretty. And apparently a lot of bees. I heard of several people, including my buddy
Kurt, who were stung in that section.
The last climb, Yellow
Lake, snuck up on us. It started out so
gradually I forgot I was even on it at first.
Several other riders and I had been passing each other back and forth on
the previous stretch and so we all became friendly and chatted a bit on the
climb.
Anyway, Yellow Lake was
long. But as we got closer and closer to
the top, the spectator density went off the charts. People on both sides of the road were
screaming, ringing cowbells, and dancing around in ridiculous costumes. I really fed off the spectators and that made
me want to ride harder. This is where my
quads started cramping up and I ran out of my own nutrition (honey stinger
chews) so I grabbed an energy gel from a volunteer as I rode by.
I’m fairly certain that
nutrition donated to races is basically the flavors they can’t sell
otherwise. I always seem to get the
gross flavors. I sucked down the gel and
about gagged…double caffeinated espresso.
For a non-coffee drinker, it was pretty bad. But I had done some math in my head and knew
I was going to be down on calories so I grabbed another 2 gels and gulped. Any guesses as to the flavor for both? Double espresso. What were the chances? Well, I’d say 100% because I only ever get
the nasty stuff at races.
A person could
theoretically turn around and go back to the aid station but who wants to lose
the time? After all that climbing, I
just wanted to get off the bike. So with
3 caffeinated gels in my stomach in a short time period, I hit the top of
Yellow Lake and proceeded to absolutely fly down the mountain and back into
town at 30-40mph. This last 12 miles
gives you a chance to rest the legs and settle the stomach
(theoretically). Final bike time was
6:05:21, for an 18mph average. In
retrospect, this might have been a bit too fast (I only went 10 minutes faster
in Arizona, on a ridiculously easy course).
My secret goal was to beat my friend Jeff’s bike split from a couple of years
ago and of course it’s usually a sign of stupidity (or what they call
“man thinking”) going into a race thinking like that.
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| Saying hi to family at mile 1 |
Talking to some
veterans convinced me to change into clean, dry running clothes for the
marathon. Being comfortable is well
worth an extra minute or two in an all day race. As I hit mile one, I saw my family and
stopped to say hi and hug my boy. My
wife’s parents made the trip with us to help watch the kids (Gabriel is almost
3 and Grayson is almost 4 weeks old).
They would later tell me that the entire event was spectacular, and
although they knew there were crazy people in the world, they didn’t realize
there was another whole level of crazy.
Apparently, there were people already stumbling and looking incoherent
even at mile 1.
I headed out with a
slightly sour stomach but not thinking much of it. This marathon is an out-and-back course and
we had the same awesome crowds cheering as we headed out. My plan was to run 8 minutes, walk 1-2
minutes, and repeat. The run-walk method
worked exceptionally well for me in Arizona on little run training so I hoped
it would again, because this time my long run was 3 miles. If this sounds quite stupid, you are correct,
but with some chronic issues it was the best I could do.
I actually got through
10 miles of run-walk-repeat before my stomach totally shut down from the
caffeine. Gas, bloating, burping, the
strong sense that it would be awesome to vomit.
A girl who I had been running with was having similar issues. We talked about trying to make ourselves gag
but were both too chicken. And who
knows, maybe that would have made things worse.
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| At least someone was having fun at this point. |
At that point, it was a
struggle to walk for more than a few minutes without stopping. Fortunately, there was regular shade and aid
stations every mile. Everyone says to
drink de-fizzed cola with a sour stomach.
Unfortunately, the person in charge of the aid stations didn’t tell the
volunteers to de-fizz the cola. So it
took me 3 aid stations to discover that fully carbonated cola just makes a
gassy stomach worse. And of course lined
up below each aid station was row after row of 2 liter bottles with lids
tightly in place. I probably should have
said something but wasn’t sure I had the energy.
I finally realized I
needed to let my stomach settle so I switched from powerade and cola to water
and fruit. It was a little tough to do
this as I knew I would really be going into caloric deficit by doing so. I didn’t see any other choice so slogged
through it.
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| Finishing hard |
This is the time in a
race that veterans refer to as a “bad patch.”
They say every race consists of “good patches” and “bad patches”, and
long races are all about accepting the bad ones, knowing that eventually they
will pass.
After 6 miles/2 hours
of walking alternating with laying on the ground (I would say at least 60% of
the people around me were walking as well – someone told me it got up to 95
degrees F that day, which explains a lot), my stomach began to settle and I
began to perk up.
I began chatting with a
guy from Arizona and we decided to try running together. It’s amazing how much working with another
person can help your energy and your attitude.
We both began to steadily increase our pace from about 10 minute miles
to 9 minute miles. Around mile 20 I
really started feeling good so kept steadily increasing the pace, finally
finishing the final mile with a 7:00.
There was no logical reason to work that hard at the end…my marathon
time would be a 5:45:35…and a big part of my limp over the next few days was
surely from that surge at the end, but it felt really good to finish
strong.
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Final time 13:17:16. 1 ½ hours slower than Arizona, but two
important lessons learned…pack enough nutrition for the entire race and stick
to your nutrition plan. Duh. This isn’t exactly rocket science, and it’s embarrassing
considering I tell this to new runners just about every day. Yet if you don’t plan everything out in
advance to the letter, small mistakes can become big problems.
After I finished, a
volunteer grabbed me and attended to my every need. She retrieved my finisher shirt and hat,
brought food, help me get a finisher photo, got me in for a massage,
everything. This is one of the coolest
parts of doing an Ironman…the rock star treatment. I read afterward that there were 4000
volunteers for the 3000 racers.
I felt pretty drained
at the end and a nurse who saw me while getting a massage threatened to give me
an IV if I didn’t drink a bunch of water and eat some chips right then and
there. So I did. I guess I got lucky because there were some
people in bad shape. Kurt, who beat me
by 45 minutes, spent 4 hours in there before he finally got an IV. I was out in 30 minutes. Somewhere deep down I think this is pretty funny.
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All five of us made it
back to the states in one piece, and like any long race, we all learned
something valuable. We also were
reminded that doing long, stupid things to your body is much more fun with your
buddies.
So that’s it. All in all, Canada is definitely a bucket
list race for the triathletes out there.
Canadians are super friendly, the dollar is fairly strong, and it’s a
race you will never forget (even if it’s because you cried a little and thought
you were going to need an Ambulance at the turnaround).
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