Nemo's IMNC 2016 Race Report
Preamble
Hmmmm, it seems all my race reports lately have needed to include a preamble. But in order to understand the race and its outcome itself, it is sometimes necessary to understand what brought me to the start line in the first place. As a quick (ha ha ha) recap, in the summer of 2015 I trained hard to race Ironman Maryland only to have it cancelled due to a hurricane. They were ultimately able to hold the race 2 weeks later, but for many various reasons I wasn’t able to make it happen. So I took a short break from training and then focused my attention on 2016, the year I turned 50. I planned to celebrate all year long including racing one final time at the iron distance at Challenge Roth in Germany in July. Roth is one of those bucket list races on every triathlete’s list and it seemed like the perfect swan song event.
I had a good season of training and felt very prepared going into the race. Unfortunately all that training meant very little because I had a panic attack on the swim which ended my race. I have no explanation for why, but I was overcome by an intense wave of fear and simply couldn't calm myself down enough to continue. I hadn’t experienced that feeling since my very first triathlon over 15 years ago. So instead of racing my final ironman, I spent my day (mostly barefoot and in borrowed clothes) enjoying the course as a spectator cheering for my friends Chuck and Michele. It was a fun beautiful and fantastic day with no regrets.
But of course there was a little voice whispering in the back of my head from the moment I got out of the water. The very next day after the race the voice started receiving further support from friends who encouraged me to sign up for another race. Several friends were going to be doing Ironman North Carolina including Glenn & Laura who have a home in Wilmington making the lodging both comfy and free. But I didn’t want to rush the decision and took a few weeks to noodle on the idea. Frankly, the IMNC course has never really appealed much to me. But between the convenience and the number of friends that would be there racing, it was hard to pass up. So back into training mode I went again, but thankfully this time I had some company!
And then there was Matthew. Just 2 weeks before the race, Hurricane Matthew hit pretty much the entire east coast. One of the hardest hit areas was eastern North Carolina which experienced an unusual amount of flooding from the rainfall. As a result, much of the Ironman bike course had been washed out and the area was stretched thin when it came to emergency response personnel. There were lots of rumors going around leading up to the race about what Ironman might do as a result, however no official word at all came down until just 4 days before the race when we learned the bike course was to be shortened to just 50 miles. Ugh. This meant my “swan song” wouldn’t be a full distance Ironman and of course I was disappointed. There was a lot of talk amongst folks about switching to another race (IMFL or the Great Floridian) a few weeks later, but I decided I was done. What I needed most out of this race was to finish the 2.4 mile swim and redeem myself from what happened earlier in the year in Germany. So I made a few small adjustments to my race plan and carried on, looking forward to whatever the day would bring.
Pre-Race
If you ever opt to do this race, you need to know that the logistics are a bit crazy. The swim start is on a small beach with no parking, so you are bussed there on race morning and there are no spectators. You then swim 2.4 miles point-to-point in the Banks Channel to T1 (where, again, there is no parking on race day). From there you ride 112 miles (or, in our case 56- they added 6 more miles after the original announcement) away from the beach arriving back at T2 which is about 13 miles away from T1. The 26.2 mile run course winds out & back twice through town and around a pretty lake with the finish line about 1 mile away from T2. Registration is located right next to the finish line. Got that? This all means that the registration, bike drop, and bag drop part of your pre-race day is packed full of driving around to various places in a lot of traffic. It’s not impossible of course, it’s just a little more complicated than your average race where the start, T1, T2, and the finish are reasonably close to each other. Pack your patience and plan for all of that stuff to take a little extra time!
Thursday
Joe and I drove to Wilmington on Thursday morning. The drive should take a little over 4 hours but we made the mistake of following the GPS through Kingston which was smack dab in the middle of the hurricane disaster area. The roads were closed and we ended up detouring around the town adding about another hour or so to our drive. Honestly, we should have known better. We got to registration around 2:30 and found the lines very short and efficient. But by the time we had made our way through registration and scouted out the expo a little the line was starting to grow! Next stop was Glenn and Laura’s place to unpack and relax before dinner. We did a little grocery shopping and then found an Indian restaurant nearby and opted to treat ourselves to a night out instead of cooking at home with everyone else. We’d be staying home for dinner the following night.
Friday
I opted to just sleep in and have a restful morning instead of going to the practice swim with Glenn and Chuck. When they returned Joe made everyone banana pancakes for breakfast- yummmmmm! After breakfast I started the task of packing my race bags and putting stickers on my bike/helmet. This was actually a fairly easy process because I had already pre-packed bags back home so all I really needed to do was transfer stuff from my pre-packed bag into the race provided bag. So simple!
We headed over to Registration/T2 to drop off our Run bags just before noon and found the registration line going all the way down the hall and outside the building! Normally there isn’t registration on Friday before an Ironman, but I guess because there was a 70.3 happening on the same day they kept it open. I was really glad we had gotten that done on Thursday! We dropped off the Run bags and then walked downtown a bit to find a spot for lunch. Fat Tony’s turned out to be the perfect place. The food was great and they had a lot of variety so everyone could find something they wanted.
The one issue nagging everyone was whether or not we would be able to drop our “Morning Dry Cloths” bag at the swim start or not. This was the first year Ironman was putting on the race (it had previously been held for many years as a locally owned race called “Beach 2 Battleship&rdquo
and there were mixed messages coming out from the athlete briefings on this point. Under Beach 2 Battleship, there was a bag drop in T1 on race morning where you gave them the cloths you wanted to have at the finish line. You then took a bus to the swim start and whatever clothes you had with you at the start were simply collected and donated to charity. But under Ironman the “Morning Clothes bag” is traditionally dropped at the swim start (and that’s what the athlete guide indicated as well). This may seem like a small point, but you need to understand that we’d be waiting on the beach for at least an hour before the race and the morning temps were going to be low 50’s with winds 10-15mph. So you want to know if you are going to get the cloths you are wearing at the start back again at the finish line or if they should be “throw-away” clothes and you need to pack extra warm clothes for the finish. I finally decided that it just wasn’t worth the stress of worrying about it and so Joe and I found a Salvation Army store where I could pick up some cheap but warm “throw away” clothes to wear on race morning. Either the clothes would end up back at the Salvation Army store a few days later or I’d get them back at the finish line along with my normal warm post race gear, either way I would be prepared for whatever happens race morning.
Next stop was dropping off my bike and the bike bag. Traffic getting down to this little spot was pretty crazy, but we managed to get in and out of there without too much trouble (although we did help prevent two cars from backing into each other in the small lot). I had one small moment of concern when I realized I had forgotten to put my bib number on the running belt (which was now dropped in T2). But rather than add another trip back to T2, I decided to just pin the number onto my singlet (I’d be wearing it under a cycling jersey). I figured it would help block some wind and keep me warm anyway- so no biggie.
With all the logistics finally done we headed back to the house to get dinner prepare dinner (grilled salmon, sweet potato, and a small side salad for me as usual). We all just relaxed, watched some football, put on our race tattoos, and then went to bed nice and early.
Saturday/ Race Day
4:00am wakeup call and breakfast (oatmeal/PB/Banana) for all the racers and Joe who drove us to T1 where he dropped us off and we said goodbye for the day. That little goodbye kiss and “I love you” exchange before an Ironman always feels somehow extra special. We pumped up tires, placed nutrition on our bikes, and then gathered back together again on the bus which took us to the swim start. Along the way we learned that yes indeed, we would be able to drop our Morning Clothes bags at the swim start. The bus dropped us off approximately 1 mile from the start around 5:45am. But unlike everyone else who then walked to the beach where they would huddle together in the cold and wind for the next hour and a half, we walked a few blocks in the other direction to a condo that Michele’s friends had rented for the weekend! EXCELLENT! We relaxed, used the bathroom, stayed warm, and eventually put our wetsuits on before heading out into the 52 degree temps with the 10-15 mph west wind.
The Swim: 1:04:31, 12th in AG
We reached the swim start just in time to hear the national anthem and then the gun went off for the 7:20am start! We really couldn’t have timed it any better. IMNC is a beach start, so all the racers line up along the beach in a bunch, but unlike a traditional mass start, they use a “smart start” system which is more similar to marathon starts. You simply keep moving forward slowly with the crowd and your race time doesn’t start until you cross the timing mat. I have to say it was by far the most civil triathlon swim start I’ve ever done. Michele and I hugged each other just before entering the warm and comfy 73 degrees water. The moment I started swimming I felt totally relaxed and all my pre-race jitters faded away. It was a wonderful swim with very little stress- the complete opposite of my experience at Roth earlier in the year.
The swim for IMNC is in a tidal channel. At the start of the race we were at “slack tide” and I felt very little influence from the tide on our pace. I started my normal practice of “counting” buoys by walking through the alphabet and praying for people with that first letter in their name until I reached the next buoy. This was a little hard at first because I found myself fairly far away from the buoys. The channel is pretty wide and they let the athletes take up just about the whole thing. This made siting a little unusual and I found it a bit tricky for most of the swim, but figured as long as I had people swimming on either side of me I must be ok! I reached the halfway point where I could hear the half ironman athletes cheering from shore (they would start at 8:30am, well after we had passed by). Shortly afterwards the course hung a left turn and it was at this point I could feel the current giving us an advantage as the letters of the alphabet were going by fairly quickly. The closer and closer I got to the finish the more narrow the swim course became and I started running into lots of folks who were much slower swimmers. That’s the down side of the “smart start” if you don’t seed yourself quite right. The final 10 minutes of the swim felt a lot more like the first 10 usually feels! I reached the dock and attempted to climb up the swim ladder only to have my right calf cramp up. Thankfully there were volunteers there helping us out of the water!
T1: 13:17
Up on the doc and out of the water I felt GREAT. Honestly, if they ended the race right then and there I still would have been happy to have overcome what happened in Roth. I jogged the quarter mile to transition, grabbed my bag, and found a chair in the women's change tent. The temps now were only up to about 55 degrees, but the forecast had them rising to low 60’s by the end of the ride with winds increasing to 15-20. I used a towel to dry off as best I could and then put on my warm dry cycling cloths (tri singlet, LS cycling jersey, Full finger gloves, socks, toe covers) . This was the first ironman race where I didn’t have a volunteer helping me the entire time, a little unusual but no big deal. I stopped for a pee break before walking over to my bike and heading out onto the course. I thought I was really smooth and efficient, but 13:17 seems like a long time! Oh well.
The Bike: 3:42:30, 29th in AG
As I mentioned before, they had to revise the bike course down to 56 miles which included one fairly long out & back section and resulted in us riding nearly all but about 15 miles into the wind (which started gusting up to 25). I realize the route wasn’t “normal” but with so much of it being on highways with just a single lane closed and so much traffic amongst the athletes themselves, I never felt safe on the course. In fact, I saw the first (but certainly not the last) crash of the day at the very first turn- and it looked pretty bad. I opted to play it conservative, didn’t push my pace at all, and just tried to settle in to make my way into the wind without losing too much energy. I saw a lot of folks really pushing way too hard (they would pay for that later), several bike crashes, and a lot of out right intentional drafting (grrrrrr).
But I also had a few fellow comrades who were riding around my same speed, keeping a legal distance between themselves and the next person, and leap frogging each other with nice words exchanged along the way. At one point I was passed by a guy who said “you make 50 look great”! OK, was that sexist? I don’t care, it gave me a smile! A little later I stopped at an aid station to use the port-o-pottie and chatted with one of the women I’d been leapfrogging with. As I headed out again she came up behind me to pass and said “No way are you 50! I thought you were in your 30’s!”. Yup, I’m taking every one of those compliments and storing them up for one of those rainy “I feel old” kinda days!
The final turns into T2 were a little tricky and once you dismounted you ran with your bike for quite a long way before you got to a volunteer to hand it off. I was happy to be out of that wind, off the scary course, and onto the run!
T2: 7:22
Grabbed my bag and ran into the changing tent where I simply stripped off the cycling jersey (tri singlet & bib number already in place), changed into running socks & shoes, and then ran out again with a bag filled with arm warmers, buff, and medical baggie that I’d put on/stuff into pockets as I ran. I was going to stop at the port-o-pottie again before leaving T2 but there was a line and I figured I could make it to the first aid station, so I just carried on.
The Run: 5:20:54 (21st in AG)
The temps were now in the mid 60’s and the winds were backing down to 10-15 again. I started out with arm warmers (old socks with the feet cut off) but pulled them off and ditched them by the time I reached the first aid station. My plan on the run was simple. Keep my heart rate at an aerobic rate, run an “I could do this all day” kind of pace, walk the aid stations, and when things start to get tough focus on a run/walk regimen to keep moving forward without losing too much time. I used the fuel on the course alternating gatorade and coke at the aid stations, Cliff Gel every hour, and Base salt every 30 minutes.
Other than finishing the swim, this was probably my favorite part of the race (even when it got really hard towards the end). Because the course is mostly out & back, you have lots of opportunity to see friends who are also racing. It was great to cheer for my OBX, Maryland, and EN buddies as I moved through the course and it also helped to give me something to look forward to (oh, there’s Chuck! Hi Chuck!! OK, I should probably see Butch and Jenny soon…...Hi Jenny!, etc etc etc). The only down side to the course is that there were a lot of uneven surfaces to navigate (cobbles, potholes, railroad tracks, curbs, etc) and I was really thankful I wouldn’t have to do so in the dark!
At mile 18 I started to run/walk on a 5 min run/1min walk routine and continued feeling pretty good until somewhere near mile 20 when I started to feel that old familiar stomach upset that has gotten me at all my Iron distance races. This time I recognized it right away and simply decided to back down to a power walk until I started feeling better. Just a little over a mile later I reached an aid station where I heard the volunteer shout “Chicken Soup?” Ahhhhhh YES!!!! Don’t ask me why, but chicken soup (broth really) is a magic bullet for me when the tummy goes south. I grabbed a cup and kept walking, but was able to start my run/walk routine back up again, this time 3 minutes of running 1 minute of walking. I was able to keep that going all the way up to the point that my Garmin watch gave me a “Low Battery” message! WHAT? Are you (insert expletive) kidding me?! I didn’t want to lose the file so I hit the “save” button to cut the activity shor and it seemed to take forever to save! I then started a new run activity and returned to the run/walk routine. Thankfully it kept going from there to the finish!
About 1 mile from the finish line a runner I had been playing leapfrog with caught up to me and said “I’ve been wanting to catch you all day- where did you get the OBX Jersey? Is it from a race?” We started chatting and it turns out she used to live on OBX but now lives in Wilmington. She had a LOT of energy! As we got closer to the finish she said “I’m gonna let you go through the finish shoot first if that’s OK with you” to which I replied “Lady, you have WAY more energy than I do right now, let’s just see what happens!” But as we approached the finish line she intentionally dropped back and let me have the final few meters to myself. I decided this really could be my swan song and I wanted to enjoy that finish line as much as possible. So I high fived everyone along the way (including many friends who had already finished but were there to cheer me in) and I heard Mike Riley say “Nemo Brauch, YOU ARE AN IRONMAN, Five Timer!”
Final Time: 10:28:34, 21st in AG (out of 47)
So, you may be wondering, was this really the Iron Distance Swan Song? Well, to be honest, I don’t know. I know that those 56 miles on the bike felt quite a bit more like at least 75 in that wind, and I feel very fulfilled with my performance on the day. I’ve given it a week to settle in and I have to admit that I’m leaving myself open to the idea of doing just one more before I turn 55, but only if the right set of events and circumstances comes along to make it “just right”. BUT, that won’t be next year. Between IMMD, Roth, and IMNC it feels like I’ve been on an Ironman treadmill nonstop for 2 years and it is time to get off. On one of my last big training rides before IMNC I promised myself that 2017 would be a year filled with fun adventures and no races longer than an Olympic or Half Marathon. I plan on keeping that promise. After that, who knows!
Comments
What a gratitude filled experience for you! You're less than 1/2 done with your adult life, so putting restrictions on what you may or may not be doing 2/5/10 years from now is probably not the best approach. But for sure stick with commitments on keeping your racing distances on the saner side for the next year or two. There's so much more to do than week after week of 6-10 hours of biking on the weekend, no?
Exactly Al! Especially when the only safe place you have to ride (in the summer months) is exactly one very boring route. I could tell you where ever single crack, pothole, and piece of trash that hasn't been picked up is on that road. The only thing that changes is the weather and the # of dead seagulls on the bridge. If I ever opt to do another iron distance race, it will be because I've moved to (or have the ability to be temporarily located in) an area where the riding is much more varied. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful here and riding here for a week or so when you are on vacation is great. But it gets old fast.
You have had an up-and-down few years, and certainly an up-and-down year in 2016! I'm so happy to hear you on the other side of the finish line, Regardless of the event. To focus only on what changes were made to the bike takes away from what you achieved. Who knows what you'll come up with next, but I look forward to hearing all about it!!!!
~ Coach P
That would make me VERY happy!!!! FWIW, I hear they changed the run course for next year. It no longer goes along the canal for quite so long (I hear it was fairly boring back there) and instead winds more through the towns for better spectator viewing.
Nemo,
Great to see you complete this race in grand fashion and taking it all in. Maybe the stars or the pink speedo's will align for you to do another IM in the future. Congrats on the 5th IM finish.
thanks for sharing.
good day for you.
maybe we will intersect at Roth some year.