Ironman Canada 2010 Race Report
Swim-My plan was to start in the middle, about 4 or 5 rows back, and find some good feet to follow and conserve as much energy as possible. To gain a few minutes here would be a bonus. I just wanted to conserve as much energy as possible.
Mission accomplished on finding the feet. This guy was taking really good lines on the inside of the course and I hardly had to spot at all. The swim went fast and easy but a little too easy. I can’t help but think if I started more towards the front and caught a faster guys feet I would have had to work a little but might have gain more time. All in all I did what I wanted and hardly worked at all in the swim. I think I have some 1hr IM swim splits in my future but I need to get in the pool with EE this off season. Plus I need to get it down to a 1hr so I don't have to pass 700 people on the bike course :) Bike-I knew that the course would start fast if the wind blew in its normal direction so I wanted to conserve for the first 40 and kick it up a notch when I got to Richter, punch it up and over all those rollers and have about 15-20 miles of flats to conserve energy until I got to the hill out and back section and Yellow Lake climb. Mission accomplished here. Everything was going as planned until I started up Yellow Lake. The strong head winds and horizontal rain/hail came and zapped a little extra energy. It was very cold and this was as GW would say a "Mental Giant" moment. I had about 10min of a pity party until I came to the realization that this is an IRONMAN and it should be tough. At this point I more or less embraced the cold and wet misery and started to crank those big gears up the false flat. The major time lost during the bike ride was the decent down Yellow Lake. I saw 5 medical personal vehicles and 4 bodies on the side of the road. So I decided to play it safe and ride the breaks down the 14 mile down-hill at 25 mph instead of 40+. The key was I made it back to T2 alive and borderline hypothermic. Run-My main goal for the run was to do exactly that: RUN the marathon. I planned on going out slow and trying to keep my HR at or under 150 bpm for the first 15 miles which would get me through the hardest and hilliest part of the run and then kick it up 5 bpm until I got to mile 23 where I was going to give it all I had left. My hope was I would be about 2hrs on the out and be able to do a 1:55ish effort on the way back into town. Well my #1 goal was accomplished. I NEVER stopped running...not 1 add station...not 1 bathroom break...I just kept running. For the first 10 miles I got passed by easily 30 or 40 people. Most of which I knew I could go with but I stuck to my plan and kept my HR right at 150 which turns out to have been about 9:30 miles. I saw Frigg and NJ coming back from the turn around and gave them a friendly teammate low 5...good lord those dudes are fast! So I get to the turn around at 2:03. At this point I knew I had a lot of work to do to break the 4hr marathon mark...turns out I got onto the run almost right at 2pm so a sub 4hr marathon is what it was going to take to break 11hrs. The DAD was right again!!! This is the point where the carnage begins. About 20 of those people that passed me at the start of the run were walking up the first hill after the turnaround. I ended up passing 90% of them by the time I reach mile 15. I got to mile 15. It’s time to kick it up a notch....ummmm....not so much. Ok, I will hang on to this pace and try it again at mile 18...ummmmmm...not so much...Ok mile 20?...nope...Ok the last 5k?...nope. The legs were stuck at a 9:30 turned into a 9:45 with a head wind.
Finished alive and well with an 11hr 9min effort with a lot of room to improve. Sub 11hrs is right around the corner.
Looking forward to an off season with a lot of short fast swim and run efforts and of course the weekly Geyser ride. IRONMAN-jQa
