IMCDA Race Report: One Long Rough Day
The road to this race has definitely been a rough one for me. For the past twelve weeks I’ve been struggling with getting myself motivated to do the workouts and ended up missing quite a few. Then shortly after RR #1 I got slammed at work and ended up doing an extended taper by accident due to all the workouts I was missing (including RR #2). And to top it all off, the weather here in Seattle hasn’t been cooperating and has made for some pretty miserable training conditions. Mentally, it has been a huge challenge for me to get ready for this race.
Race day started off pretty well. I knew the water was going to be cold, based on my practice swim two days prior, but felt prepared for it. I was predicting a swim time between 1:40 and 1:45, which has been about the pace I have been doing in my open water swims lately. The first lap of the swim went pretty smoothly (well, about as smoothly as a swim with 2400 people can be). I got out of the water, checked my watch, I was right at 50 minutes which is what I expected.
From the moment I entered the water on the second loop I started feeling cold. I tried different things to keep warm, such as doing a shorter faster stroke and kicking, but nothing was working. My face and hands were becoming so numb by this point that I wasn’t grabbing the water as efficiently and I started swallowing a lot of water. By the time I got past the second turn buoy, I was shivering, my stomach was feeling very bloated from all the water and I was feeling a little sick as a result. This caused me to stop a few times to refocus and get back in my box and one of the times that I stopped I vomited from all the water I had in my stomach. I eventually finished the swim in a time of 1:53:15.
I eventually made it out of the water and into T1. By this point I was shivering uncontrollably and my hands were pretty much useless. Everything I did took 10 times longer then usual. Putting on socks, shoes, helmet. Luckily I already had my arm warmers on under my wetsuit, because there’s no way I could have pulled those on. My hands just couldn’t grasp anything. I finally got ready and ran to my bike to try to warm up a little and made it out of T1 in 14:05.
I started the bike and was still shivering. In fact the first 10 miles I couldn’t stop shivering and was struggling to maintain my gear 1 watts. Besides being really cold initially, the first lap went really smoothly. Per Coach R’s advice at the four keys talk, I considered the first 40 miles to be a warm up before settling into my goal watts. I was feeling really smooth, staying in my aerobars, and keeping up on my nutrition plan (225 calories per hour of Carbo Pro). I finished the first lap in 3:15:XX.
By the time lap 2 came around my back was starting to bother me. It quickly got to the point were it was very painful to be in my aerobars. I stopped at special needs (mile 61ish) to switch out my bottle of Carbo Pro for a new one. Unfortunately it ended up being pretty hot at special needs and even though I had an insulated bottle that I had filled with lots of ice that morning my Carbo Pro was still quite warm when I picked it up. As I continued, the back pain was quickly getting worse which forced me to stop every 8 to 10 miles to stretch my back. A combination of that and the disgusting warm Carbo Pro caused me to loose focus of my calorie intake and I only took in about half of my second bottle. I also wasn’t paying attention to my water intake and probably didn’t get nearly enough as a result. I rolled into T2 with a total bike split of 7:05:41 (which was obviously way off my pace from lap 1 and way off my goal watts).
The smoothest part of my day was in T2. I was in, quickly got changed, and then ran out feeling pretty good. My T2 time of 3:54 was faster then I expected.
The first five miles of the run my legs felt pretty good. The only thing that seemed questionable was my stomach, which felt like it was moments from shutting down. As a result I decided to only drink water at the first 3 aid stations to see if my stomach would start feeling better. It didn’t, but I felt that I needed some calories so I starting drinking a little Perform. By the time I hit the big hill at about mile 5-1/2, the back pain that was starting to return from the bike and the uneasy stomach got me to convince myself to start walking. I know that I could have kept running at that point, but the constant mental battle that I had faced that day was really starting to get to me. Then around mile 8 I started feeling a little dizzy. I couldn’t put a reason behind it. Maybe I had gotten myself more dehydrated then I realized? Maybe I wasn’t getting enough calories? Maybe the heat was really starting to get to me?
I continued walking and quickly went from feeling hot (dowsing myself with water and ice to stay cool) to feeling a little cold, despite it still being quite warm outside. The farther I walked the dizzier I got and the more I just wanted to give up. I finally made it back into town and stopped where my parent’s were waiting to cheer me on (mile 12ish). I told them my day was done and walked across the street to special needs to tell one of the volunteers that I needed medical help. She was the nicest lady and told me that I shouldn’t give up. After a few minutes of trying to convince her that I didn’t want to continue, she finally convinced me to keep walking and try to finish. My dad also volunteered to walk with me.
So I kept walking with my dad, not really knowing if my body would allow me to make it to the finish or not. The stomach problems continued and I started drinking chicken broth to try to sooth my stomach. This didn’t seem to help, and by mile 17 I started vomiting and kept doing so until my stomach felt completely empty. Again, I questioned whether or not I would be able to finish but kept walking anyways. After several hours of walking I finally made it to Sherman Avenue and by this point was feeling good enough to jog the final 400 meters to the finish. I don’t know what my run time or overall time ended up being, since they aren’t showing up on WTC’s athlete tracker and I didn’t thick to look at the clock that was right above my head as I was finishing, but I think my overall time was around 16:30 to 16:35.
I would really like to thank all my fellow EN athletes for yelling words of support at me as they passed by. I would also like to thank my dad for walking the final 14 miles with me to keep me going. The last 18 miles of the race was definitely a very dark time for me and they obviously saw that I wasn’t feeling well and kept telling me not to give up. I couldn’t have done it without all the support I received.
Due to the lack of motivation that I have been feeling the past twelve weeks and the constant mentral struggles I faced on race day, I have decided to take at least one year off of doing full IM's. Next year I am targeting 2 or 3 HIM's to see if I can be more motivated at that distance. Maybe after that I'll be ready to attempt another full IM.
Comments
Scott -- sounds like you too had a rough day. It takes a lot of guts to continue on when faced with that kind of shut down. Good job soldiering on.
The nutritional issues and vomiting? Yowza. Was it dehydration, too much food or hyponatremia? Good golly that is brutal.
I have a speedy little girlfriend who had a race like yours with the vomiting on the run and after the race she called me and said: Ironman SUCKS A$$!!! That is our FAVORITE IM quote and we laugh all the time about it. I hope you can get to the point of laughing about it soon and then get back at it when you are good and ready!
Carrie
Right there with you buddy on this one. To be honest with you, the only reason I kept running was because I couldn't mentally tolerate the idea of having to walk for so long. Amazing toughness you have showed to keep on trucking like that. And your Dad rocks. Keep in touch with the POD and best of luck with Lake Stevens!
PS: You were supposed to tell me that back pain will decrease with riding a P2 versus my P2-Sl. Now what am I going to tell my wife!
greg: tell her you need a p4 or p3!!! or the best one yet, is use your back pain as an excuse to get a custom bike!!!!!!!
Scott: your dad is awesome. way to get it done. when i saw you, you were not chatting and walking, you were suffering and walking. ironman is about testing your limits, regardless of the time. you have a lot to be proud of, buddy. take the time you need to recover and then get back on the horse when you feel the time is right. remember, you were not that far behind me at the RR1 sunday run!
gh
I used to suffer from the same back problems.. Long time in the water with a lot of lifting the head for sighting puts strain on the lower back...getting faster in the water and training the lower back have cured that... and if problems in a race..there is always Iboprofen :-)
Understandable that you need a break from IM...but maybe give it a few weeks before you make the final decision...things might look different then..?
So despite all the struggles I faced on race day, I still think I ended up with a PR over my time at IMFL last year (not positive due to not knowing my finish time). Here's a quick comparison:
Swim ~15 minutes faster
T1 ~ 5 minutes slower
Bike ~ 9 minutes faster
T2 ~ 16 minutes faster
Run ~ 30-35 minutes slower
I still ended up getting PR's in both the swim, despite the cold water temp, and the bike, despite a much harder and hillier course.
In thinking more about my future in this sport, I definitely want to do another full IM. After two finishes in 8 months in 16:3X:XX, I want to prove to myself that I can do better then that. Next time I'll be looking for a race at the end of summer, to allow me to train through the sunny summer months here in Seattle, and with a warm swim, to take the cold water temp factor out of the race. Until then, I need to do a lot of work to figure out the nutritional issues that have caused my stomach to shut down at both races.
Scott- PERSEVERENCE!
Why don't you come up to IMC in August and volunteer with me and we will sign up for IMC 2012?
Scott - Great job of finishing the race. You fought the dragon for alomost the entire race and came out on top at the end. I am very proud to be a part of EN and get to wear the same colors as folks like you, Al, Shannon, Stephanie and others who had tough days and still fought their way to the finish. Thanks for the demonstration of toughnesses. I'm also glad to see that upon reflection you found some very positive things about your race. Good luck in your next race.
Scott - you may nothave felt it, but you WERE smiling Monday morning at Java. You celarly felt proud at some level to have goten through as you did, as you deserve to feel that way. The swim was not doing us slower (greater than 1:15) folks any favors. If you do stick with the HIMs for a while, just concentrate on strategies for ensuring even nutrition intake while traiing and racing.
Great to meet you, Scott.
Scott! First congratulations! As they say "Scott Stewart, you are an Ironman"!
"Wicked Smart" Al mentioned focusing on HIMs. I think there is value to what he has to say. There are some individuals in this world that are blessed to enter Ironman distances early in their triathlon career and be very successful at it. There are others that are not so lucky. For me, the nutrition piece is extremely important. As a diabetic, if I had the problems you were experiencing, my day would be over in a heartbeat. Thus, I am not one of the lucky ones that could jump into an ironman distance.
I started with sprints and olympic distances. Tested the nutrition during HIMs (like Al suggested) and worked with a Sports Nutritionist to help me tackle the nutritional needs of an ironman distance. The value to testing is that you learn what works, what doesn't work, and identify solutions that can correct things when they go awry on race day. Sort out the nutrition issues doing HIMs and then go back and nail the ironman distance.
Best of Luck
@ Carrie, I'm sure that shivering so long certainly didn't help my back, but it didn't cause it. I've been dealing with back issues the past two months and knew going into the race that it would likely show up late in the bike. It did, and I had to just deal with it. I even changed my position after RR #1 to a slightly less aggressive position to see if it would help, but not sure it did.
@ Greg, it looks like Dr GH is prescribing you a P3 or P4, and you have it in writing!
@ Bo, it never occurred to me that lifting my head to sight could be making the back problems worse. I will definitely be focusing on getting faster at swimming and on my core/back strength this winter. For some reason I've always looked at the swim as the least significant part of the race, so when I start getting crunched on time, my swimming is always the first thing to go. I need to make swimming more of a priority.
@ Steve, I'm not sure I'm quite ready to commit to another full IM, but I'll certainly think about it.
@ Al, it was definitely a bitter sweet thing for me after finishing. Bitter because I had high hopes of running the whole marathon and possibly making it in sub 13 hours; but sweet because it's an Ironman and I was fortunate enough to finish.
@ Rich, I will definitely be focusing on getting my nutrition plan figured out. After similar stomach issues at IMFL last year, I completely changed my run nutrition and ended up having a good race at Oceanside 70.3, but using that same plan caused issues for this race. Given that my stomach was on the edge at the start of the run tells me that it's actually my bike nutrition that needs to be fixed. You can bet that I'll be working on that.