Ironman Switzerland Race Report
Bottom line up front with this race is that my run and bike are my strengths with triathlon. I am generally a runner first and then a cyclist and I go to the pool every once in a while to get a tan. That being said I didn't run much of the marathon and my swim needs to be fixed because it is broken. I make it all sound very dreary from the beginning but the end result is that I finished my first Ironman having never run a marathon or raced a 70.3 before. I'll call that a success for now.
Days prior: Work has been crazy lately and I lost most of June to a 25 day training event (I'm in the US Army and posted in Italy). My unit went to Germany for 3+ weeks and even though I brought my bike and indoor trainer, I got in 4 runs (2 long) and 4 bikes the whole time there. The week before the race was nuts as well because we are planning for another one of these training months in Germany in August. I chose this race a year out before I was even in this unit or had moved to Europe. I took a chance, given my job, that I wouldn't even be able to go to the race at all. I had to work until Friday before the race and missed the athlete's briefing while driving the 5 hours to Zurich. This all sounds like a terrible way to lead into a big race like this, but I'm actually super excited to have had my schedule work at all so that I could make it there. I was super happy to finally get there on Friday evening.
Saturday: I woke up at like 9am and jogged the mile or so down to the race site to register and pick up all the stuff that you get at registration. I noticed that there would be no transition bags or tents, and no bike or run special needs. I thought that was kind of weird. The transition area was set up like a local short course race. It was about 3-4 times bigger than the standard 500 person transition area, except that there were well over 2000 people racing. After my registration I walked back to the hotel, dropped my stuff off and grabbed lunch. I packed for the following day and then took a nap. After the glorious nap, I rode my bike down to the race site and checked it in.
There was a 5150 oly, a sprint, a super sprint, and an aquabike all going on the day prior to the Ironman. It was a madhouse. The races here in Europe start way later in the day than in the US. Is is normal for an oly to start at 1pm on a saturday. The races that day were staggered starts throughout the day so from about 9am to 6pm there was always someone out there racing. This made checking my bike in a complete shitshow. All of the volunteers were supporting the short course races so there were like 4 people doing bike check in and there wasn't any enforcement of the race number check in time windows (not that big of a deal but I was number 300 so my time was first and everyone else wanted to get in early as well). I showed up in the last part of my check in window and the line was 100 people long. There weren't enough volunteers to control that many people so it was a little ridiculous. They did have pretty legit security at the transition area though. The Swiss don't mess around with security and there were ex-military types with ear pieces packing heat around the transition area. I got through all the crazyness and got my bike checked in and watched Chris Mccormack fly by on the bike in the 5150 race on my way back to the hotel, so that was cool.
After I got back, I grabbed a light dinner of some pretty plain pasta and then check my gear again for the following day. I still had everything because there were no bags. I went to bed at about 9pm. I didn't actually fall asleep until about midnight though.
Race day: I woke up at 2am and had about 500 calories of fruit smoothie and went back to bed. I woke up again at 4:30am and had about 250 calories of fruit smoothie, a cup of coffee, and a small croissant (mistake). I caught the hotel shuttle to the transition area and got there at about 5:45am. I set up the transition area short course style and checked that I had everything in its correct place about 1000 times. I put on my wetsuit 30ish minutes before the swim start and ate a gel with some water. All of the volunteers and race support was much better that morning because there was nothing going on. All of those volunteers that were caught up with the short course stuff the day before were out in force on race morning. I walked to the swim start and hung out. There was a firefighter from California that recognized the EN kit and knew who Rich was so that was cool (I can't remember the dude's name).
Swim: The pros started 5 mins before the rest of us and then the gun went bang and we were off. It was a beach start and I started about 20 seconds late to avoid swimming in a washing machine. That was a wonderful idea and the start was uneventful. I didn't really get molested and I found a comfortable pace. The swim took me 1:33 which is terrible. It is a technique problem first and a time in the pool problem second. It will get fixed. I felt fine coming out of the water and my transition was like 3-4 minutes.
Bike: My bike set up is very clean with just 2 water bottle cages and the Speed Concept thingy behind the seat tube. All my nutrition comes with me in my jersey pocket. I use water, powerbar gels, and electrolyte pills. I've tried Infinit and it does not agree with my stomach or my taste buds at all. I don't like the powerbar drink and that was the course provided stuff. I've never had an issue with gels and flavor fatigue isn't an issue. I just really like vanilla and strawberry banana gels. My nutrition plan for the bike was 270ish calories per hour which meant a gel every 25 minutes. I stuck to it perfectly for the entirety of the bike and got in plenty of water. With the salt caps and the gels, I was taking in about 600-700 mgs of sodium per hour. I stared at my bike computer and stuck to my 70% watts goal the whole time erring on the side of caution (way too much actually). I did the first loop in 3 hours and was planning on a negative split. The general goal was to go under 6 hours on the bike and start the run fresh. The second loop started out fine until it started raining. With about 25ish miles left on the bike the temperature dropped into the 50s and it started pouring rain and the wind picked up alot. I froze my ass off and started to really feel sorry for myself. Those last miles were painfully slow because I was keeping to the watts up the long hills and descending painstakingly slow for fear of a crash. I am a pretty good bike handler, but with carbon clinchers and cork brake pads, I had no confidence in my braking power.
All in all, the bike went fine until the weather started to suck. I started to feel sorry for myself and got way to cautious on the descents which made that second loop take forever. My final bike time was just over 7 hours. I am usually a 1 hour flat biker in an oly. I was actually embarassed of how slow my bike was at the time. Bike to run transition was 2-3 mins with one major issue. I left the salt pills in transition.
Run: The weather went right back to 75 and sunn 10 minutes into the run, which had me in good spirits. My plan was to just jog the first 5 miles. I ran at about a 9:15 pace and walked just long enough in aid stations to comfortably get water in. At about mile 4 I realized that I left the salt pills in transition. I overreacted and decided that I would use gels and soup broth from aid stations to get in all the electolytes that I planned. I didn't need that much salt anyway, but the calories that came with the salt during this solution were my undoing. The first 5 miles at a 9:15 pace were the fastest 5 miles of my whole marathon. My stomach filled up very quickly as I was getting way too many calories. At about mile 12 I was starting to get the GI distress pretty bad. I was well hydrated going into the run, so that was good because I could barely drink water at this point without feeling sick. By mile 15 I was walking at least as much as I was running, and with about 8 miles left I couldn't even take a sip of water without feeling like I was going to puke everywhere. I managed to walk/jog to about 2.5 miles left and then I picked up the morale and the pace to about a 10 min mile in to the finish.
My final time was 14:41 and I was definitely glad to be done. I went to the aid tent and got 1000ml of IV fluid considering that I hadn't had any water in almost 10 miles.
My parting thoughts from the race were "I need to fix my swim", "I was too cautious on the bike and astonished at how long it took", and "I sure did learn the hard way about run nutrition and it cost me". I consider myself a pretty fast guy and I will probably run an oly a few minutes uner 2:10 in the next couple of months. Going this slow for the Ironman was definitely a humbling experience.
Thanks for reading all of this if you actually made it this far. Please let me know what you think. I'll post some pics when I get them. I definitely learned some valuable lessons with this race. I am going to focus on olympic distance for a little while and plan for 1 half ironman next year before I deploy again in August 2012.
PS I didn't want to re-read all of this after I typed it so if somethings don't make sense or seem like they jump around and off topic, sorry.
Comments
Congrats on sticking with it and finishing. It definitely sounds like one of those experiences you will learn from. You obviously have some raw speed if you're completing oly's under 2:10. This humbling experience will no doubt help motivate you the next time around! Trust me, I've been there. From time-to-time I pull out my Boston Marathon finisher's certificate with its 5:01 time printed on it just to remember that humbling feeling.
Some thoughts on your swim: Don't be too hard on yourself about the time. I think that is a tough swim to get a great time on unless you're on the bleeding edge of the pack. Things always slow down when you have to make it across that little island. Not to mention the general slow down leading up to it. It took me about 5 minutes to get across that puppy... and it was difficult to get my rhythm after hitting the water again.
Ditto on the bike. Slowing down on the descents on that course in bad weather is nothing to berate yourself about. Those are some mighty steep drop-offs. They totally freaked me out too.
BTW: did I mention congrats on being an IRONMAN?! That is what really counts for your first one, you did it!