RR IMAZ Anita Risberg
Race Report IMAZ 2014
First Timer
Arrived Wednesday before race. Rather dry in AZ compared to Oregon. Started hydrating and eating high water content foods.
Thursday: Race Expo-Packet pick up-Mandatory meeting. EN Team Dinner.
Friday: Welcome Ceremony. Oldest and youngest competitors. Mike Riley-IM is about redemption. Hit me like a ton of bricks. This event was proving to myself that I can persevere. The past 4-5 have been challenging with personal concerns, family and business. Kept tearing up, so much emotion. Felt so grateful to be at the race.
Saturday: Practice swim. Glad I did this. My brain and body needed to understand the water temp and condition. My friend Nancy arrived to help me at the race. She is a pre-school teacher. She will certainly understand my state of mind at the finish line. Picked her up at the hotel. We check in my bike and gear. Nice lunch and early dinner.
3:45 alarm goes off. Slept well the night before. Woke up ready to go. Eliminated as many distractions as possible. Everything was laid out the night before.
4:45 head to race. Line to parking structure is taking a while so we park in an open lot before US Airways parking lot. Saved us some time and nerves. Grabbed my backpack and Nancy grabbed my bike pump. I decided to carry everything I could possibly need. I didn’t want to risk not having access to anything I might require. Double check air pressure in my tires and refill to proper pressure. Attach speedfill and 2 fuel bottles to my bike. Load food in Bento box. Three ProBars, one ProBar blueberry electrolyte chew package (with yerbe mate), one ProBar electrolyte chew no caffine. Camel back is in my T1 back. It has two tubes, 2 CO2, pump and the bladder is filled with water. I am worried about the aid stations and congestion. No need to stop at them if I have all that I need. I feel ready to race.
Swim: Get into my wetsuit and head to the water. Two swim caps. One on my head and one to cover my goggles-hopefully no one tries to pull it off. Get into the water and swim to the start. Thought I was towards the center but got sucked towards the buoys. Too many bodies and getting too much contact with other swimmers. Heart rate starts to climb and breathing starts to get out of control. SLOW DOWN, SLOW DOWN. THINK! Look for open spots in the water and start to move to the center of the swim lane. Tried to find a “big guy” aka “barge” to swim behind. Not a good plan, “barges” are slow. Make the turn and the water is more open. Wind has picked up and small swells on the water on the way back in. Grateful for a good swim. Planned 1:30, swam 1:36.
T1: The strippers were a great help. Volunteers were wonderful. Into my bike gear, camel back on, running for the bike.
Ride: Stayed up for the first 5 miles or so. Nervous about other riders. Settled into aero. Feel pretty good and happy. Riding a nice pace. Starting to feel the wind. First lap felt pretty good. At mile 41.45 my Garmin died. S*&t!! Riding by how I feel, in spite of the wind. Put up with the ride out so you can enjoy the ride back. Seeing people with flats and several crashes. Staying very aware of my surroundings. Avoided the aid stations. No special needs bag on bike portion. I am carrying all that I need. Stopped twice to refill my speedfill from my bottles, and get a small stretch. Planned to ride 7 hours, rode 7:10.
T2: Great volunteer at the transition. She dumped my gear bag out and set out my shoes and race belt. She said I now had 8 hours to finish the marathon. I said if I take that long, someone should shoot me.
Run: Upset that my Garmin failed. I am often times too squirrely coming off the bike. Dangerous for me. I tried to find a runner who was running what I thought might be a 10 minute pace. Asked a couple runners what their pace was, explaining my Garmin had died. Can’t blame them for giving the look of “don’t bug me lady”. One gal was very sweet, she was running a 12 minute mile pace and let me hang with her for a bit. It was too slow and actually hurt to move that slow. Tried asking the time between aid stations to see how I was running. Hit a 9 minute mile at one point. Slowed down. Felt pretty good until mile 21. At that point the landscape in front of me started to roll and my head did a little spin. Time to slow way down for a while. I race walked 3.5 miles until I felt better then ran the last 1.5 miles to the finish. Planned to run 4.5 hours, ran 5 hours. Really thought I could have done better with knowledge of my pace. Self talk could have help the mind over ride the body. No feed back from Garmin-running blind. Grateful for a respectable finish on my first IM. Looking to do better on my NEXT one.
Thank you Rich and Patrick. The training worked on the half IM I did in September and on IMAZ. My hat is off to you. Sincerely thankful.
Anita
Comments
Anita, sorry I missed meeting you at IMAZ. You said it right in your report - You had a respectable IM finish and did a fantastic job on a tough day with howling winds and the distraction of losing your Garmin......that would have shaken me up to lose my Garmin on the run leg.
Which model Garmin do you have?
You will only get faster moving forward with that experience behind you!
Welcome to the IM family! Keep moving forward!!
SS
Congrats on your finish Anita!
It was a tough day out there. Inevitably something always goes "wrong" on race day. You adapted and did your best with no feedback from your garmin! Kudos to you!
Is there another one planned in your future?
Jen
Very good job, for first time IM, especially working through all the internal concerns you came in with e.g. water temp, aid station congestion, feeling like a kindergartner at the finish.
A good way to prepare yourself in advance for running "by feel" instead of by pace or HR metric: use the long runs and race rehearsal runs to try and lock in what it feels like to run at your goal pace/effort level, so you don't need external data. That's the way I tend to run in the IM - purely by feel, while simply noticing what my pace and HR are. Did the watch completely die? So you couldn't guesstimate the mile splits from just the time of day, I suppose.
Thanks for the good replies. The Garmin died on mile 41.25 of the bike. Not sure why or what happened. Tried asking the time between aid stations on the run to guestimate my pace. Clicked off a 9 minute mile at one point.....no bueno. Just slowed down and ran by how I was feeling. Learned a ton and will do better on my next race. Enjoy the holidays and your families.
I'm personally so worried about losing my garmin before the run I only put it on in T2