Ironman Mont Tremblant 2014 Race Report

Dear victims of neglect and shame, I owe you an apology.  It has been far too long since we last caught up, and for that I am ashamed and deserve a public flogging.  Life happens, fires require extinguishment, blogs get neglected.  It’s a tragedy of Shakespearean quality.

So what better way to come back into your lives than with a race report!  The following is the gory account of my recently completed 4^th full Ironman distance tri: Ironman Mont Tremblant 2014.  Let’s call it, “Sugar, Bludgeoning, Gooseflesh, and Rocketfuel!” (the name will make sense later…)

Back Story

I did this same race last year and still have the scars to prove it, both physical and emotional.  It was a terrible race for me.  I had woefully undertrained and got what I deserved.  I finished the damn thing but was completely miserable almost the entire duration.  I would write about it here but it’s just too painful.  See my previous posts if you’re a sadist and want to enjoy my pain.

After that debacle last year, I immediately signed up for 2014.  I needed a redemption race.  I needed validation.  I needed medical attention.

So my preparation this year was going along quite smoothly during the winter and leading up to a half IM in Florida this past April 2014.  I was proud of my bike performance, had a decent enough swim and run, and was feeling like I was on the right track to smashing IMMT!

Then I stopped training for 2 months and gained 20 pounds.  Oops…

As mentioned before, life happens.  During this time I was just keeping my head above water.  Clearly the way to do this was to eat copious amounts of processed carbohydrates.  What could go wrong?

Around early June I finally snapped out of it and got back on program.  I again felt motivated and ready to CRUSH Ironman Mont Tremblant.  The only difference now was that several parts of my body would jiggle merrily when I moved too abruptly, and I would gasp for breath after climbing 2 flights of stairs.  I had some work to do.

Compressing a very long and arduous couple of months into one paragraph is the only way I know to convince you to keep reading.  I trained.  I stopped eating like a maniac.  I focused.  I spent hours looking in the mirror and practicing my angry triathlete face. 

And now the calendar told me it was one week until race day.  Oh boy!

Side note: I’ve always thought that really serious triathletes could be spotted by the baby skin-hairless quality of their entire body.  That’s right, true triathletes had one common enemy: the dreaded hair follicle.  At previous races I was always slightly ashamed to be sporting my hairy legs, trimmed and well groomed or otherwise.  I could feel the eyes of judgment from the other competitors.  I knew what they were thinking: “Look at that poor hairy fool with his dreadfully hairiness.  Doesn’t he know how critical it is to shave ones legs to become a real triathlete?”  Then they would walk away, making not a sound of friction or wind resistance between their impossibly smooth appendages and the world around them.

That being said, I decided this was the year to get serious.  The only problem was that I was super uninterested in having razor burn on my legs. 

Solution: waxing!  That’s right, I decided to pay someone a pretty good amount of money to angrily rip the hair from my body, right out from the root!

I’m not terribly religious, but this must have been hell.  I made promises in that room to God, Buddha, Ganesh, and Anne Rice.  I also realized that I clearly didn’t know human anatomy nearly as well as I had originally thought.  I will go on record saying that the hair follicles on your inner thigh are directly connected to your appendix.  I swear they went that deep, at least.

So now I was ready!  I had trained.  I was less jiggly.  I was smooth enough to be in someone else’s clothes without them knowing while they were still wearing them.  Let’s do this!

The race site

Mont Tremblant absolutely does it right, end of story.  The locals are so pleasant and happy to see their town overrun by a few thousand people in compression garments with ravenous appetites.  The village is like a miniature Disney attraction that is just too adorable.  The scenery is astoundingly beautiful.  If there are better places to have an Ironman race, I am not yet aware.  Go there, you must.

The RACE!

The Swim (aka: the bludgeoning)

The swim takes place in this pristine lake surrounded by mountains and evergreens.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was almost enjoyable.  Don’t worry, I know better.

You see, I am a slow swimmer.  I did this past swim in 1:39.  Well before the cutoff time but really pretty abysmal.  The problem with being a slow swimmer, especially one who is male and between 30 and 34, is that your wave starts the swim immediately after the pros and immediately before the other 2000+ swimmers get in.  A good number of those 2000+ other athletes swam much faster than a 1:39.  I know because each one of them let me know they were passing by punching, kicking, elbowing, scratching, clawing, and biting their way over my slow ass.  My favorite is when someone unknowingly swims up upon you and in a matter of seconds has somehow mounted you from behind.  Imagine my surprise and delight to be swimming along and suddenly realize someone has managed to swim up between my legs and is now using their entire body to press me underwater.  It’s like a normal Friday night in college, but in wetsuits.  Actually, I think the wetsuit thing was also tried in college, but that’s for a different blog.

I know none of these freakishly fast swimmers intentionally tried to kill me.  I’m sure it wasn’t their purpose to crack my skull with their furiously beating feet.  And yet, I’m pretty sure I came close to meeting my maker in that water. 

Call me crazy but I miss the days of one giant mass start.  Those who know they are fast can fight it out in the front.  Those, like me, who know they are not fast can find a nice safe spot in the middle of the pack where the possibility of getting a watery beating is somewhat diminished. 

Either that can happen, or I can just learn to be a faster swimmer.

But just to drive it home, here is the site of me getting on my bike after the swim.  Notice how many bikes are around me?  Yeah, that means that all of the other swimmers were already well on their way into the bike ride.  How embarrassing!

The Bike portion (AKA: 6.5 hours of gooseflesh)

Canada is cold.  I accept that.  But in August?  Apparently so.

I knew going into this bike ride that I had to play it safe.  My goal was 6.5 hours-ish for the bike portion and I knew I was capable of that.  I put my head down, kept my power output right where I knew it needed to be, and tried not to get upset when people would blow past me.  There was a nice gentleman who kept passing me like a champ going up hills, only to stop peddling on the downhill when I would pass him.  He was 60 years old.  Did I let this bother me?  I wish I could say no, but it was driving me crazy!  All I wanted to do was to just push really hard and smoke him, but I knew that wasn’t the race I wanted.  I ignored him, and everyone around me, and just rode my bike.

I was doing really well and staying on top of my nutrition plan and power numbers.  About 85 miles in though, I started to get a little tired.  I was ok, just ready to get off of the bike.  That’s when I had the first milligram of caffeine in two months. 

ZOOM, ZING, WHEE!  I had a HoneyStinger gel with 32mg of caffeine, not that much by most peoples standards.  And yet, I suddenly felt wonderful!  I wasn’t tired anymore, the pains and aches in my back and neck almost went away, and I totally smoked that old dude!

I finished the bike portion in exactly 6 hours and 30 minutes and was feeling great!

The Marathon (AKA: rocket fuel)

Running is what I love.  Every race I’ve done, I always feel good getting off of the bike.  Running is home base. 

My goal for this race was to hold around a 10-minute mile, or come in around 4:30.  My training hadn’t been fantastic with running, with my longest run being 16 miles during which holding a 9:30 pace was pretty tough. 

At the very beginning of the run, I had another gel with another 32mg of caffeine.  WOOHOO, YIPPEE, OH BOY!  That 10 min/mile pace seemed absurdly slow.  I started running a 9:30 pace for the first half mile, and even that seemed slow.  I decided, against better judgment, to just run according to perceived exertion.  Instead of staring at my watch all day, I was just going to run at a pace that felt good to me.  Imagine how happy I was after the first 2 miles to see I was just a hair over a 9 min/mile pace.  Was this stupid?  Would I crash?  Should I make myself slow down?

All good questions.  I ignored all of them.

The foremost reason I ignored them was the nutritional offering at the aid stations.  Where I usually do the marathon on coke (simple and immediate sugar with a touch of caffeine), this course was handing out cups of RedBull.  I used to race with RedBull and loved it, but let me remind you that I hadn’t had any caffeine for 2 months leading up to this race. 

After that first swig of sugar, caffeine, and God knows what else, I did indeed have wings!  I was holding a sub-9 pace without any problem at all!

I got through the first half marathon in just under 2 hours, and as is evident from the above picture, was terrifically pleased with myself.  Could I pull a sub-4 hour marathon during an Ironman?  Why not try?

I slammed back some more RedBull, thought a happy thought, and kept running.

The best part of the experience was that I was having fun.  This might have been due to a caffeine and sugar induced delirium, but what did I care?  I was counting down the miles to the finish line and smiling the whole way.  This is what racing should be like!

My official time for the marathon was 4:05* (the * is there because unbeknownst to me, the official timer started right after the transition tent where I had to make a porto-potty pit stop.   My actual pace for the marathon was 9:06 minutes/mile, which comes in just under a 4-hour marathon.  Unreal.

The Results and Recovery

My official finishing time was 12:29, a full 30 minutes faster than I had originally hoped, and a full 1:30 faster than on the same course a year earlier.  I couldn’t have been happier with my result.

As for the absurd caffeine and sugar intake during the race?  So what if I peed blood for a couple of days afterwards.  Who cares that at least one toenail will be making its final appearance in the next week? (photos not available)

The take home feeling for me was that I was reminded why I love this sport so much.  I set a goal for myself.  I pushed to reach that goal.  I learned, yet again, that I am capable of so much more than I really believe I am capable of doing.  My soul came alive that day and is still riding the high of the post-Ironman buzz.

I can’t articulate what it is about swimming, biking, and running across 140.6 miles that makes me happy.  I can’t say why I am looking forward to doing it again.  The only justification I can offer is that there are so few opportunities in this life to really prove to yourself how incredible you are.  There are a precious few moments or days when you face deep feelings of doubt and in the next moment overcome them.  So few experiences have ever given me the feeling of accomplishment and strength as I feel after doing a race of this caliber. 

I come alive during a race.  My mind clears and it’s like I can see clearly for the first time since last pushing myself that hard.  I find answers I have been looking for and am able to see my life’s struggles and challenges for what they really are: an inconsequential and trivial moment that bears little meaning or significance to my actual life experience.  I am reminded of the temporary nature of all things, that soon this race will be over much like this fleeting life we hold on to so desperately.  I am brought back into the present moment, which is all I ever have to experience.  A race is not about what you just did or what you have ahead of you, it’s about taking that next step and being present in your body and mind when doing so.  Life should be like that.  Perhaps life is like that and we just forget?

Or maybe I’m full of crap with what I just said.  We all know I do it for the shiny medal you get at the finish line!

IronMan NYC Race Report: A Review of the Misery

Of course it is reasonable to fork over close to $1000 for a race.  Of course you should swim in the Hudson River mere days after a sewage spill.  Running up the flights of stairs of the George Washington Bridge after 16 miles of hills would be ok.  Why wouldn’t you do an Ironman in August in New York City?

Let’s talk about that, shall we?

I signed up for what was my second full Ironman with cheerful anticipation and dreams of grandeur.  It really did seem convenient to do a race right in my own city, and yes, I suppose I did save some dough on avoiding spendy hotel stays.  Unfortunately it ended up being a pretty disastrous day despite my imbecilic optimism. 

The Swim:  I had been in the Hudson once before to do the NYC Tri the year before.  It was gross then, it’ll be gross until the end of time.  What is consistently surprising about the Hudson is that it is brackish.  One doesn’t expect a mouthful of salt water in a river; it just seems weird.  One also doesn’t expect a strange aftertaste with hints of oak and diesel fuel, yet a bright finish with locker-room musk undertones.  And yet the Hudson delivers.

Ok, it isn’t THAT bad I guess.  Can you see your hand underwater as it’s pulling through?  Not on your life.  This water is not clear.  More accurately, this water is an impressive cloudy brown that is surely impenetrable to human senses.  That said, it wasn’t terrible.  This is an Ironman.  Man up and swim, Woodard.

All was going well until I temporarily went blind.  I was approaching the swim exit feeling good about myself when the world went black.  Not dark, black.  “Well,” I thought to myself, “that’s interesting.”  Wait, wait, when I lifted my face out of the water to breathe, I was back to crystal clear vision again.  Stroke-stroke-stroke of blind; head turn to breath and the bright sun in my eyes. 

What was happening was that as we were getting close to the swim exit, the 2000+ thrashing and struggling bodies were stirring up God knows what on the Hudson floor.  I can’t be positive, but I think I saw Jimmy Hoffa in there, but I won’t go on record saying so.

More surprising than the lack of color and life in this muck was the exceptionally noxious taste.  While you try not to get the water in your mouth, it just happens.  It’s like smoking without inhaling, and unless you’re Bill Clinton, that’s impossible.  After one good swig of the black-death goop, I opted for a reasonable doggie paddle for the last 100 yards or so.

Best part of the swim: I did it in 58 minutes.  What the what?  I am many things, but a sub-1 hour IM swimmer, I am not.  This should have taken me about 1.5 hours.  As I was scrapping what was left of Jimmy off of my wetsuit, I quickly thanked the Hudson for it’s very generous current.  Perhaps it was disgusting, but the day was off to a good start!

The Bike: Nothing like starting a 112 mile bike ride with a quad crushing hill, but that’s what we had coming out of transition.  I climbed with all I had and crested the top triumphantly, making a note about how much that was going to smart when I had to run it at the beginning of the marathon. 

But never mind that, I had a mind-numbing bike ride to get through. 

And for the most part, mind-numbing it was.  The bike route was along the Pallisades Parkway, which with a few glorious exceptions was a lonely road.  And with that, there isn’t much to report about the bike portion.  It was a lot of low grade, yet lengthy hills.  The few pockets of spectators were welcomed, but seemed bizarre considering a city of 8 million people was enticingly close by. 

As for my performance, my coach told me to be pretty aggressive on the bike and rely on my run.  It ended up being a pretty solid strategy overall.  I finished with an average speed of about 18mph, closing off this portion of the race in 6 hours.  Not too shabby; not too shabby at all.

But hell was waiting in the wings…

The Run: never have I experienced a marathon this tough, much less at the end of a freakin’ Ironman.  As eluded to earlier, that hill coming out of transition not only burned up the legs, but it took a big, juicy bite out of my spirit.  I, along with everyone around me, was walking.  Not even a mile into this race, and we were walking.  A somber start.

But that’s what an Ironman is all about right: managing the moment you’re in and doing your best.  True to form, I kept my head high and walked to the top.  Had this been the only punishing hill to negotiate, things might have gone differently.  But punishment abounded for the next 16 miles.

The one positive was that it was shady, and in mid-80 something degree heat and some nasty humidity, shade is a welcomed bonus.  That was the only positive though.  The hills just wouldn’t stop.  If you weren’t killing yourself on a climb, you were hammering at your quads with a descent. 

Half way through this mess stood two young, lovely, eager volunteers.  Their job was to ask if you were on your first or second loop and would then radio ahead.  Hearing them ask me if I was on loop 1 or 2, having to answer I was indeed on 1 and had to go for another round of this crap, and dreading what was ahead of me made me furious.  What the hell was I doing to myself?  Why was I punishing myself like this?  How can I get some of this anger out?  I savagely bit the shoulder of the nearest volunteer.  She was just standing there asking for it.  And as it turns out, it’s not that hard to bite someone hard enough to draw blood.  I congratulated myself on what surely was my ability to survive in the wild.

Lap 2 was expectedly worse.  Towards the end of it I came up on one of my teammates who was, for lack of a better word, running.  A better description would be weird looking slow walking with funny hops in between steps.  I was walking and caught him.  The absurdity of the situation was rich, but on questioning him, I learned that his goal was to finish this race without having walked at all.  Impressive, albeit foolish.  On hearing this goal, I was reminded of mine.  I wanted to finish this race in under 12 hours.  Doing some math in my head, I realized I had to keep my pace at about a 9 min/mile to do so. 

Let me tell you where things stood at this point in the day.  My timing chip, conveniently strapped to my left ankle, was chaffing something terrible.  I pulled to the side of the road to move it and realized I was unable to bend my legs far enough to reach my feet.  Physically unable to do it.  Whoa, I was in bad shape and still had 10 miles to go.  Getting the help from a curious, yet gracious volunteer (not the one I bit, mind you), my timing strap was moved and I was back to shuffling along. 

And then at mile 17 or so, you hit the bridge.  Never has 4 flights of stairs looked more impossible.  If I could get one photo from this day, it would be of me climbing these stairs.  I imagine such a photo would be nothing short of award winning, conveying an idiots desperation to climb for his life to finish a race he knowingly subjected himself to for no other purpose than personal glory.  It would have been beautiful, people.

After the bridge however, the elevation map promised pancake flat roads.  That got me through.

That map lied.

While compared to what we just went through it was much better, but by that time you were so burnt that even a curb was akin to Mt Everest.  I’ll never forget rounding a corner, let’s say about 20 miles in, and seeing a short, yet steep, incline.  I cried.  No sarcastic rhetoric here.  No artistic license to make this a better read.  I actually cried tears.  This is what is called hitting a wall my friends.  Each race has low points that all athletes have to contend with, but this was my lowest.  I vowed, with God and General Grant as my witnesses, that I was not doing this race again next year.  I just loved myself too much.

The math calculations were still going on, and somehow I was maintaining the pace needed to hit my goal.  How I mustered this amount of sheer will, I may never know. 

I crossed the finish line in 11:59:08.  52 seconds to spare to hit my goal.  Unreal.

While there was a tremendous sense of accomplishment from this, there was also a crushing amount of unadulterated self loathing.  The ratio of punishment to elation was not at an ideal mix and my previous vow to never do this race again was repeated like a mantra at a Buddhist monastery. 

As we know, the powers that be at the Ironman Corporation saw the error of their ways and cancelled the damn thing after the first year.  Good move.  And while I can honestly say I am proud to have been one of the few to have put this race on my resume, I’m much more proud to know I will never be given opportunity to do it again.

Deep thought Tuesday: the impossible dream

To dream the impossible dream...  No, this is not a review of musical theatre, but where I am today as an aspiring triathlete rock star.

A few years ago, I firmly believed that to finish an Ironman was pretty much humanly impossible. Asking my body to do this was akin to gluing impressive amounts of feathers to my arms and flapping my arms fast enough to fly. And while I did repeatedly try, I can't tell you how much it hurt my body, not to mention my pride, when I came crashing back to earth from the heights of my childhood garage. It's just not meant to be done.

Same with Ironman. Running a marathon is freakin hard enough. How could I do that after this epic swim and bike?

And yet, I've done it thrice.

I artistically used the word thrice there. It made me feel fancy. Athletic and grammatically competent?  There are so few of us...

Point is: I am pretty addicted to attempting things that seem impossible. Within reason, of course. And while my attempted flying days are long finished, the feeling I get when I am finally able to achieve that previously decided impossible goal is just about the best feeling ever.

"Chad Woodward, you are an Ironman!"  Sure he said my name wrong, but I wasn't hatin'. That was the most incredible sentence I had ever heard, perhaps seconded only by "balding men with beards are totally sexy," but I didn't log on to tell you about that...

What I did log in to say was that it is time for another goal. Nothing ventured, no chance for public embarrassment, right?

This past weekend, as many of us know, was the World Championship Ironman in Kona, Hawaii. Our Super Bowl. Qualifying for this race is damn near impossible. Uh oh. There's that "impossible" word again!

Naturally, I'm obsessed.

And so that, dear reader, is my goal. It's crazy, bordering pathological thinking, but it's where I'm at. It sounds impossible for me to pull in a time fast enough to qualify in my age group. For those of us paying attention, it would be a sub-10 hour Ironman. My current record is 11:59. I've got some work to do!

And yet, that is what this deep thought is all about: set a goal for yourself that sounds absurd. Challenge yourself. Aim high. The only thing in your way is probably you. Nothing more true than that statement in my own goal setting.

If I get out of my own way, I can accomplish anything imagined.

And so, I am doing that. Getting out of my way.

I'm also trying to stop talking to myself. I never enjoy the conversation and it draws attention. I won't be that guy anymore.

So, loyal readers, what goal can you set for yourself?  What sounds impossible?  What can you surprise yourself with?

Write it down here. Leave a comment. Tell me what you are going to challenge yourself with. If to no one else, be accountable to me!