Ironman St. George Finisher's Story

An announcement was recently made that Ironman St. George will no longer be a full Ironman distance race.  It's being reduced to a 70.3 race, and they've asked for submissions for finisher stories.   Here's what I wrote and submitted:

Ironman St. George, 2010, was a life-changing day for me.   I walked into the race not really knowing how I felt about the sport of triathlon, and the universe conspired to give me that direction at mile 37 of the bike course.

The days leading up to St. George were what anyone would expect going into an Ironman.  I got a cold a week before the race.  I was stressed about every detail—I was worried that I would get sunburned while simultaneously freezing to death on the bike course while facing horrible winds on one of the 13% grades the race was promoted to have.    Luckily, none of that happened.  The winds were reasonable, the sun was tempered by sunscreen, and the 13% grades…well, they actually happened.  But they weren’t as bad as everyone made them out to be.

What did happen to me was a broken spoke on my rear wheel somewhere around mile 35 of the bike course.  I heard a loud “THWANG” and the guy passing me and I both looked up and both dismissed it since neither one of us could figure out what had happened.   Suddenly my effort level picked up—I assumed it was just that the incline was more than I perceived it to be.   People started passing me, and I sweated more heavily.   I decided about a mile later to hop off my bike and see what was going on, and I found out that I had broken a spoke.    Since I was riding a reduced spoke count wheel, the lack of balance in the wheel pulled it far enough out of true that it was rubbing against the frame.  Opening the rear brake was useless, but I did manage to get it to spin freely by putting the wheel back into the frame in a lopsided manner.  I thought “Great!  I’ve only got 77 miles to go—I’m sure this will hold.”  And it did, for about a quarter of a mile.    I tried again and made it another quarter mile.   And then I tried again, and went another quarter mile.  

I studied my bike, and tried a number of adjustments, and eventually remembered reading that you might be able to bang a wheel against a rock to get into shape to finish a ride.   I wonder what was going through the minds of people who were passing me as I slammed my wheel repeatedly into a rock on the side of the road. 

At this point, my bike computer was at 37 miles, and I made my peace with the race, and decided to flag down someone for technical support, and assumed they would just tell me my day was over.   I saw 2 of my friends during the 40 minutes that I waited, and wished them luck and told them to keep going—it was a long day.   I didn’t break down and cry, but I became very upset that the chance to finish what would have been my second Ironman was being taken away from me.  I vowed to come back to the race with a vengeance if I didn’t finish.   I think those were the very moments I actually became a triathlete.  Until then, I was just someone doing triathlons.

Bike support on the course was amazing.   The guy who fixed me up got me a loaner wheel, swapped out my cassette, and even took the time to place my speed magnet so my bike computer would work.   I lost a sum total of about an hour due to my broken bike wheel, so I wasn’t going to have my fastest bike split ever, but some quick calculations told me I could still make the cutoffs for the race, and I busted my butt to do it!  I would find out the next day that I made the intermediate bike cutoff by about 10 minutes—the realization was frightening to me.   I made the final bike cutoff by a larger margin, and realized I never bothered to find out what the first run loop cutoff was, so I decided I needed to push the pace a little on the first loop.    I saw my partner and several of my friends on the run course—I was happy to still be a part of it.    I wound up running a marathon PR that day, bettering my previous standalone marathon time by about 15 minutes, and in the process bettering my previous Ironman PR by about 20 minutes.

Something just clicked inside of me when I was stranded at mile 37 of that bike course.  Ironman makes me feel whole—and the near loss of the opportunity to finish St. George steeled my resolve to continue as a triathlete.  Since that race in 2010, I’ve been working with an amazing triathlon coach, and under her guidance, was able to take 3 hours off of my best Ironman time in 2011.    

I have that wheel, complete with the broken spoke, hanging in my garage to this day.    I’m grateful it decided to speak up so I could find my way in this sport.

My 2011 Season

 It's taken me a while to put together some thoughts on my triathlon season from last year, and well, to reflect a little and come to terms with everything I accomplished. It goes without saying that 2011 was an outstanding success for me. I acheived PRs in every distance of every race I competed in (except swim meets--those best times are from another life). I dropped 24 minutes off my best Olympic distance race, 57 minutes off my best Half Ironman, and 3 hours (well, technically 3:01) off my best Ironman time. I could not be happier with the way things went, and yet, I have been left a little bit baffled on what to do with all of this.

When I started racing long distance triathlon, I had a vision of breaking 13 hours in an Ironman as an amazing accomplishment to one day achieve. Though I never put this down as a formal goal of mine in the first couple years of racing, it was the elusive target that seemed to be reserved for higher end, more talented athletes. Doing my first 2 Ironmans, I had more realistic goals in place--for the first one--I simply wanted to finish under the cutoff times. And for the second, I was returning from 3 rounds of surgery and wanted to knock some time off my last effort, but couldn't really come up with a concrete amount. My times of 16:05 and 15:45 achieved my goals for those races.

It became apparent as I was training and racing this past year that I would be able to have a significant drop at Ironman Arizona--my goal time for the race waffled between 13 hours, 12:30, and at one point, if all the planets lined up correctly, I might have been able to squeeze out a 12 hour effort. All of these times seemed surreal to me, because of how much faster they were than anything I'd done in the past. In the back of my mind, there was one thing I knew--taking an hour off your best time is a great accomplishment, taking 2 hours off of it is amazing, and what I did--well, by taking 3 hours off my best time, I achieved what I had previously set as my lifetime goal for racing Ironman. My time of 12:44 leaves me undoubtedly happy with the outcome, but in a bit of limbo as far as what to do next.

So, what do you do when you acheive your lifetime goal? I think you make the decision of whether you're finished, or if it's time to set a new lifetime goal--and I'm not finished. So, I need to decide what to aim for next. People who don't really know the sport of triathlon ask me if I want to go to Kona, and my response is usually something like "Sure--and I'd like to win the lottery and an Olympic gold medal while I'm at it." There's a difference between fantasy-world dreams and concrete goals, and qualifying for Kona is an elusive target that's reserved for higher end, more talented athletes than myself. So what do I want to do? I want to finish an Ironman before the sun goes down. I want to go a sub 5 hour Half Ironman. And I want to better my running capabilities to break 4 hours in a marathon. These may or may not be achievable in 2012--we'll have to see how the training and racing goes this year.

Should parking time limits drive our workout choices?

I sometimes find myself doing things that are a little difficult because of the way society has set things up.  Yesterday, I had a treadmill run and weights to do for workouts, and decided to just do those one right after the other at the gym.   Reasonable, right? 

Well, that's actually where it gets a little difficult--my treadmill run was an hour long, and then weights would take anywhere between 40 minutes and an hour, for a rough estimate of 2 hours of time working out.  Every gym I'm able to go to has a time limit of 20-30 minutes on a treadmill, but I've gotten used to figuring out how to avoid that.   Usually, just going at an off-peak time takes care of it--otherwise, moving from one treadmill to the next throws people off.   I happen to know from experience that if you want to run 16 miles on a treadmill, the staff will start to give you the stink-eye at about the hour and thirty mark regardless of what you've done to avoid their scrutiny.  I also happen to know that if you want to run 16 miles on a treadmill, you should seriously consider having your head examined.

The next part is that many gyms in the LA area have a parking situation that requires you to be in and out of the parking garage within 2 hours.  This left me with zero time for stretching before the run and zero time for showering after doing weights.   I'm not a fan of injuring myself during a run, and my coworkers are not fans of me showing up to work after 2 hours of sweating without taking a shower....so, between the run and the weights, I ran out to my car, drove out of the parking structure and then drove back in and parked in exactly the same spot I was at before.

This all makes me wonder--if I didn't have a coach telling me what workouts to do, would I have gone to the trouble I did?  Probably not.   I think I would have allowed the 2 hour limit on parking to drive my workout decisions.   So, I'm just glad my coach is in charge of that, and not a city bureaucrat who decided that 2 hours was sufficient for everyone.

Hello, head--here's a brick wall. Look familiar?

About a month ago, I had what I believed at the time was a recurrence of an injury I'd gotten from falling down a set of stairs sometime during 1999. The result of drinking too much at a party that my roommate and had I thrown (a trailer-trash them party), it was far from my finest hour.

The injury was something that my doctor had previously classified as a "butt-sprain," since it was a spasm of one of the muscles that attaches the butt to the lower back--which muscle to be specific, I don't know--but at least my doctor had a sense of humor about the whole thing. I'd written off the recurrence of that injury as a random, every-once-in-a-while event that happens every few years. It knocked me completely out of training for a week, and then took the better part of 2 weeks for me to return to full force.

So, fast forward to yesterday, and it's back again. Truth be told, it started coming back on me on Thursday, and I blindly and stubbornly ignored it, and went ahead training anyway. I've been having a string of good workouts, and I could not believe that this was going to sideline me--history dictated that the recurrence of this thing was once every few years, not a couple of weeks.

The reality is that I now believe this injury is caused (or at least mostly caused) by my phenomenal inflexibility. I can't touch my toes. OK, I can touch my toes, I just have to bend my knees (a lot) to make it happen. I need to use a strap to be able to pull on my toes when doing a typical hurdle stretch. When I went to my bike fitting, my bike fitter evaluated my flexibility as "low," and I think it's only because he didn't have a lower category to put it into. If you're looking for a bike fitter--call Jim Manton at Final Fit in Fountain Valley--he's awesome.

So, I'm going to stop causing myself insanity. Specifically, I'm going to stop expecting my body just to take care of this because I don't like it even though I really don't do anything about it. I'm going to adopt a nightly stretching routine, and get back to the level of flexibility I had when I was a kid. OK--I may never be able to do the splits again (I was a gymnast as a child), but I should be able to touch my toes.

It's less severe than it was a month ago--I'm hopeful that today's massage, some rest, and a good whopping amount of ibuprofen will allow me to get back to some level of training tomorrow. But even if I can't, I'm not going to let this repeat again.

Napa Half Iron Recap

On Saturday, I completed my first triathlon of the season.   The race was the Napa Valley Vintage triathlon, which is a half iron distance course.  To sum it up--it was a hard day for more than a couple of reasons, but I'm very happy I did it and pleased with my performance.

My day started as I expected--I woke up, drank a cup of coffee, microwaved a breakfast sandwich, and got ready to put my stuff in the car.  It was about a 30 minute drive to the race site and we got there about 6:45 for an 8am race start--a little close for my tastes, but it's a small race and getting set up for a half iron is really no different than for a sprint.  I pulled my bike off the car and went to top off the air pressure in my tires, and my rear tube blew out.  The valve just fell apart on me, with the screw portion of it blasting out of the tube.  I've had this happen on a couple tubes recently so if anyone knows that I'm doing something wrong to cause it--please tell me!

I switched out my tube, pumped up the tire and reseated my rear wheel.  It was rubbing against the frame and I couldn't figure out why.  I decided to walk to the transition area (about a mile) and get set up and then figure it out.   Got in at 7:20 and was very conscious that I had precious little time left.  I got my bike set up, ran to check-in and then returned to finish getting ready.   At this point, I hurriedly finished setting up my transition area and then took a look at my rear wheel.  The break from fiddling with my wheel gave me the fresh perspective I needed--I saw that I had a bulge. The tire hadn't seated correctly when I pumped up the tube.  I deflated the tire and then pumped it back up.  Problem solved.  Thankfully, this was the only technical issue I had all day.

I sunscreened--got Brian to do my back (Thanks Brian!), and got my wetsuit on.  I headed to the start line and got in the water just about when they called us all back to start the race.  I wound up at the front of the line and decided to stay there.  Prior to the race start, they had us all sing "America, the Beautiful" and--well--let's just stay that triathletes, as a rule, are not singers.  The gun went off and I found myself in the lead for about four minutes before I decided to pull back and let the guy drafting off me take over.  I remained in his draft zone out to the first buoy where we turned into a set of waves that rivaled anything I've swum in before including ocean swims--this was a lake swim, and I'd prepared myself mentally for a nice, smooth-as-glass one-point-two miler.   This would be the first time that day that I would need to rapidly adjust my expectations.  The long arm of the triangular swim was all into the waves and it didn't matter which direction you breathed--I swallowed water on both the right and left side when I was ill-timed with the random, wind-driven crests and troughs of the lake surf.  I understood completely during this swim why triathlons often cancel lake swims due to high winds.    I finally rounded the seconded buoy and headed back to shore--at least where I thought the finish line was.  I couldn't see a finish buoy and was told later that it was repeatedly getting blown out of place.  I exited the water and looked at my watch to see 33-something which was a disappointing time, but I knew the conditions had been rough. I would later find out that I was 3rd out of the water and the fastest time was a 31--two pieces of data that changed my perception of my own performance to something dramatically better than I had first thought.

Brian saw me at T1, and he said that my coach would tell me I need to work on my transitions--and I remember thinking "and she would be right" but what I said was "I don't care." In my rush to get ready prior to the swim, I had a pile of stuff to put on (note to self--buy a Tri-singlet and wear it for the next race).  I got on the bike and started off on my ride.  There's not much to say about the ride--it was hard. There was a lot of up and down, and I was constantly slamming from my highest gear to my lowest gear. Rapid change of expectations #2--I would not be having a sub 3 hour bike split.   I had to stand on some of the climbs because they were too steep to handle from a seated position.  A flatter portion of the course existed somewhere after the 30 mile mark. My aero position felt really good there.  The bike finished out with a fairly hilly final 8 miles but it was the final three and a quarter that really stood out to me.

I'd gone through the bike ride with a focus on it being the hardest part of the course.  The run elevation profile led me to believe that it would be pancake flat and that belief came crashing down around me when I biked past the runners that were ahead of me.   The single flat part of this whole triathlon was the transition area.   Luckily, the run course was at least "rolling" and not aggressive.  It would merely take intelligent pace management--which is something that I have rare instances of accomplishing well in my past.  I ran up the hills as conservatively as I could and then recovered on the downs as much as I needed too.  Rapid change of expectations #3: my planned goal of 2:05-2:10 on the run would need to fall away.  I spent the first 10 miles of the run preparing for a good effort on the final three.  I split 1:09 for the first loop and 1:08 for the second.  Pacing was well accomplished--and it turns out that I had my fastest run split for a half iron.

My day was much harder than I expected. I'd gone out to the race thinking a sub-6 hour effort should be possible, and for many reasons, wound up not making that.   But my perception of this race remains intact.  In speaking with my coach after the race, she asked me if I accomplished what I wanted to and I said something like "I'm not sure why I specifically did this race."  But the reality is that I do know why--it's why I do triathlon in general, and it's why I do a lot of the hard stuff I do in life--it's about the challenge.  It just turned out on this race day, the challenge was a little harder than I had foreseen it. I adjusted and rose to the occasion.  And I'm happy.

Overtrained and recovery

A little over a month ago, I ran the best marathon of my life, and more to the point I ran what was probably the biggest test of will that I've had in a long time. To put things in perspective, I ran a 4:21 marathon, which is a far cry from anything marathoners would consider as fast--but it was an hour and 10 minutes faster than anything I've done previously (we'll just bypass the discussion that would ensue from knowing that my 5:32 previous best marathon was done at the end of Ironman St. George).

The reality is that I'd never run through "the wall" before--having walked substantial portions of the three previous marathons I've done. The best word I can use to describe this experience is "exquisite." The effort level required here paralleled that of hitting the wall at the 130 meter mark of a 200 fly but knowing that you have over an hour left to run instead of 70 meters to swim. Each step from mile 20-26.2 was like lifting weights. I approached the finish time knowing that I would miss my goal of 4:20 by a trivial amount and I didn't care--I'd just blasted the hell out of my previous personal best and that was all that mattered. I met my friends at the finish line and sat down and they helped me get up afterwards.

The days that followed revealed soreness in my legs that has been unrivaled by any other race in my past. It hurt more after surgery I had for a hernia, but I was strung out on oxycodone for that--Aleve is no oxycodone.

A week later, I was jazzed. My legs felt better and I was ready to get back to training for a triathlon I'd registered for that would be a month after the marathon. Cranking at 200 watts on the bike felt different, but I told myself it was nothing--I could still blast my previous efforts at VO2max pace so I was probably imagining being uncomfortable on the bike. I started having problems sleeping and decided to take melatonin to fight it, and that seemed to marginally do the job. Some nights I would sleep well, and some nights I would pop wide awake at 2am and take more than an hour to get back to sleep. I'd drug myself with Benadryl and deal with the Benadryl hangover the next day. It was all part of the package--I told myself that my being tired was simply the effect of getting back to training and some mild stress at work.

A week prior to my race in Palm Springs, I began an easy training week, and had the worst week of sleep I've had in a long time. 3 nights that week were less than 4 hours and the other nights had mid-way awakenings lasting an hour or two. I got a massage the weekend before and my calves seemed like they didn't care. Any attempt at easy efforts of speed were greeted with legs running like they were buried in a vat of chocolate pudding.

I drove to Palm Springs anyway--and set up shop at the hotel. The plan was to get a good night's sleep and then hit packet pickup the next day. Brian and I grabbed dinner and then stopped by the grocery store for some necessities--including my standard comfort food of cookies and milk. I first tried to go to sleep about 10pm, and finally gave up about 1am when I ran out to get some benadryl to knock myself out. I was greeted by a tweaker in the grocery store buying pringles--and a group of women who had a grocery cart full of every pre-packaged gallon container of koolaid in the store. Nobody buys health food at 1am in Palm Springs.

After taking some benadryl, I came to terms with myself for what I'd done for the past month--and scribbled out an email to my coach--essentially saying the race was a mistake and admitting that I'd pushed too hard and thought I was overtrained. Beyond the sleep issues, I was cranky and depressed. I felt a sense of calm once I hit send, and finally fell asleep. Maybe the benadryl kicked in then.

I awoke the next morning in a bit of a fog--Joanna had emailed me back with an email that was clear in point--don't race. I was shocked. The rationale was clear--I was overtrained and this happens all the time in triathlon.

Coming to terms with what I have done to myself over the past month has taken some serious soul searching. I'm not an elite triathlete--I am, in fact, nowhere near that level, and would be lucky to call myself a middle of the packer. The idea that I could train hard enough to put myself in a position to have to bail out of a race was foreign to me, but not completely unheard of--I at least had my former life as a swimmer to draw on experience from. Conceptually, the physiology of exercise is related to effort levels in comparison to an individual's ability--training above your own capacity results in the same consequence whether you're the best in the world or just the best in a section of square footage in your own home. If I tell that to myself enough, it might sink in.

So, since that weekend, I've been recovering with some easy workouts--I did not race. I'm sleeping erratically. I tend to hit a good night and then toss and turn the next. Workouts,easy as they are, feel forced. I dug a hole deeper than I imagined, and now I have to rest to get out of it.

Triathlon is a lifestyle choice for me--it gives me an opportunity to strive for something--to dream a dream of getting better at times, but mostly just to enjoy the opportunity of a day of long training, a day at the races, and a day of relishing in the accomplishment of the races. I was my own worst enemy in the month that followed my marathon PR--but I am only human.