Ironman Florida 70.3 Race Report

After arriving in Florida on Friday, I had grand plans of possibly going to the race site and scoping things out or just having a day out on the town to myself.  What needed to be done was some tedious paperwork and note writing to insurance companies.  Instead, I slept.  I arrived at the hotel at 2pm, opened my laptop, and just as quickly closed it.  What was supposed to be a 30 minute cat-nap turned in to a full afternoon and evening of pure sluggery.  Is “sluggery” a word?  Slug-like sounds lame, so I hereby deem “sluggery” a word.

Moving on.

Saturday, the day before the race, proved to be a bit more eventful than originally planned.  Here was the plan:

1.     Check in at the Ironman village

2.     Rescue my bike from Tri Bike Transport and say loving things to it

3.     Go for a quick spin around the area on said bike as I had yet to actually ride it outside

4.     Resume sluggery in some form

The actual plan went something like this:

1.     Check in at the village

2.     Drive the full bike course to get familiar with it (good idea)

3.     Rescue bike as planned

4.     Become witness to the chaos that is my life…

The chaos started when I noticed my front brakes appearing to be too loose, almost like they had been released to change the tire.  The problem was they hadn’t been released.  I tried to fuss with it for a spell and quickly felt inadequate.  It doesn’t take long.  I then found a smart looking beau (and by smart, I think you know what I mean) and he too felt inadequate.  No problem.  I went over to the mechanic and asked him to take a look.  I was told the wait was 2.5 hours and a flat charge of $50.

What the what?  I was thinking this would be an easy fix, something akin to tightening some gadget or doohickey.  2.5 hours and $50?  No, no, I said.  I’m sure I can figure this out myself.

As it turns out, I couldn’t.  Neither could an impressive collection of cheerful athletes and spectators.  At one point we had somewhere’s around 10 people poking and prodding my poor bike.  It was like a multi-user prostate exam.  How embarrassing.  In the end, we failed.  Sheepishly I walked back over to the mechanic and got back in line.

While in line I called my coach.  That is what he is there for, right?  Random questions asked over the phone about mechanical issues with a bike.  He was concerned that it was not a simple fix at all but rather that my brakes might need to be bled.

What is this, medieval medicine?  I thought we were done bleeding people (and bikes) centuries ago.  When mentioning this to the mechanics they woefully reported they didn’t bring their “bleeding kit” with them.  I waited for a punch line but they kept a straight face.  I took it to assume there really was a thing called a bleeding kit. 

And here’s where the story gets annoying… (too late).  After some serious consideration of doing the race with only my rear brakes intact, and intense convincing by my coach that this would be a bad idea, I packed up the bike and drove to a bike shop an hour away for a bleeding session.

Well praise the Lord, after all that my brakes were working again.  The only problem was that it was now approaching 7pm and I had yet to resume the sluggery.  Dammit!  Oh well, I guess this means there will be no test drive of the trusty steed.

Fast forward to race morning.  You know when you hear something so distinctly that you would swear you heard it one way?  Such is the case with how I heard the closing time of the transition area in the morning.  I swear the dude said transition would close at 6:45am.  As it turns out, he apparently said 6:25am.  Imagine my delight to hear as I was leisurely walking towards transition, bike and gear bag at the ready at 6:20, that transition was closing in 5 minutes.  I believe I had a quick outburst of obscenities, likely poisoning the innocence of  near passersby.

In a mad dash I ran to transition area pushing down at least 3 elderly volunteers, dug out my junk from the gear bag, wrestled a pump away from a weaker looking athlete, and for good measure ran in 2 small circles while waving my hands in the air.  By the skin of my teeth, I made it in time.  How relaxing.

My swim start was 7:42.  Translation: stand around and count how many times you have to pee before getting in the water.  The final tally was impressive if I do say so myself.

The Swim:

We all know I’m not a great swimmer.  Middle of the pack is usually about right for me.  I’m not interested, or capable, of fighting it out with the strong swimmers.  Nor am I interested in getting clobbered repeatedly in the face by a stray foot attached to a breast-stroking swimmer in the back.  The joy of waved starts is that you’re surrounded by all of the above.  Fast people who started after you who find the most direct path to the finish line is directly over your body, and slow people you’re passing who have fantastically dense calcaneal bones that smartly find their way to the bridge of your nose at regular intervals.

That said, it was refreshing to see different colored caps now and then that started in front of me.  It was one of the more physical swims I have had in recent memory, which may be due to the weird course.  Instead of a big “U” shape, we went in a big “M” shape.  Lots of buoys to navigate = lots of swimmers in a small space.  There were more fists to the back of the head and heels to the face than I generally prefer.

All in all though, not a bad swim.  I climbed out of the shoreline sludge in 46:42, about what was expected.  Wouldn’t hurt my feelings to shave off 5-10 minutes though in future races.

The Bike:

Beginning my inaugural outdoor ride I was filled with excitement to see how my training was going to affect my performance and get a feel for my badass new bike.  Right off the bat, I noticed 3 problems.

-in my morning rush to get in and out of transition, I forgot to fill my water bottles.  First stop in 15 miles…I was gonna be thirsty.

-despite my seemingly strong efforts, I was getting passed like I was barely trying.  That hurts the soul as much as the legs, I find.

-my oh-so-fancy powermeter capabilities were not working.  All winter long figuring out my FTP and training zones, designing a race day plan on ideal wattage, spending embarrassing amounts of money to set this up, all for not.  Looks like I was on my own and had to rely on perceived exertion and cadence.

Not much I could do about problems 1 and 3.  I’d just have to get water later and I’d just have to deal with not knowing my exact power.  Problem 2 though was becoming rather vexing.  I felt like I was working somewhat hard and I was getting passed over like the jello mold at Thanksgiving.  My instinct said to push harder!  My training was solid and I should be able to keep up with these people, right?  But Lord knows, I will never forget the lesson learned in IMMT by pushing too hard on the bike early on.  I kept my perceived exertion where it should be and ignored the troves of athletes passing me.

My patience lasted for 5 miles. Then it stopped lasting.  Assuming my training was what it should have been and that something was wrong, I pulled over.  Imagine my delight at the irony of what I found.  My front brake, that just yesterday was not capable of reaching the wheel, was now ever so slightly constantly touching the wheel!  No wonder I had been passed so many times.  I was pushing against a lightly deployed hydraulic brake for 5 miles.

I unlatched the wheel, gave it a shimmy and shake, and saw I was in the clear.  Smooth sailing from here on out, right?  Nope.  Not 2 minutes later I was feeling slow again.  Pulling over, I see my brakes back to their old games.  I unlatched.  I shimmied.  I shaked…shooked…shook.  On the road again and feeling good.  It didn’t last.  For whatever reason, my newly fixed front brakes were now too fixed.  I had not choice but to release them.

The irony is delicious, no?  After all I went through the day before to make sure the damn things were working only to have to release them during race day and rely solely on the rear brakes.  To answer the age-old question: can you do a half Ironman with only rear brakes? The answer is yes.  Probably still better to have both sets, just sayin’.

With the stupid brake thing now fixed, it turns out I am kinda fast on the bike!  I was passing people, always saying cheerful things to them as I did, and was feeling great.  I wonder how my time would have been different had I not started the bike portion as I did, but I was still pretty happy with my result.  I averaged 19mph and came back to transition in about 2:52 bike time.  Not bad for an April race.

The Run:

Apparently I was not able to accurately estimate what 200 watts should feel like.  I started the run on, how shall I say, jelly legs.  Perhaps due in part to the amount of jelly donuts I had eaten over the winter, but presumably more so due to pushing a bit too hard on the bike.

I also hadn’t ran/rode the run course assuming it was going to be flat.  It’s Florida.  There are no hills in Florida, right?  You see where this is going.

The second half of the run loop (of which there were 3 loops of the run course) was indeed wonderfully flat.  The first half of the loop had some bitchin’ hills in it.  Add that to jelly legs and weather and humidity I hadn’t felt since last August and you can imagine how delightful my run was. 

My expected average pace was an 8:30 min/mile average or better.  I came in closer to 11:00.  There just wasn’t enough gas in the tank and those hills got walked.

As it turned out, the run was my highest age group ranking of all 3 disciplines.  Apparently all of us struggled with the run, which helped stop the hemorrhaging of confidence I felt at race’s end.  Still would have liked to pull in at least a sub 2-hour run.  Ended up being a 2:17 half marathon.

Post race pondering:

As a whole it was a great race and I’m proud to have finished where I did this early in the season.  I have a lot of work to do between now and my second attempt at the beast that is Mont Tremblant in August. 

The good news is that this race doubled my enthusiasm and energy to keep pushing forward.  This time last year I was just really starting my training, which never really reached respectable levels.  This year, in a word, I feel like I’m crushing it.  It’s a nice change to remember why you love something.  It’s a nice change to remember I love being a triathlete. 

Next event is a 7-day bike ride from San Francisco to LA, covering 545 miles in June.  The real countdown however has a big Canadian mountain at the top of it.  4 months until Ironman Mont Tremblant.  I plan to take no prisoners and eat no poutine. 

Ok, that’s a lie.  I’ll definitely eat poutine.  Maybe I’ll wait until after the race though…