Hey, this is my first post here, so hi.
Athletic background (by way of introduction)
Swam at university, missed the varsity cut. Played water polo as well, missed the varsity cut in that too. Heard of triathlon and entered an IM for the sake of challenge. Ended up doing one each year for the challenge and to get round. Training = random. 2012 season: decide to drop the L from “complete”. Don’t enter any LD races. Observe weakness: running. Enter marathons and follow marathon plan rigorously. 2013 season: hire coach. Enter IM. Target = experience “racing,” decide whether to try to KQ in 2014 or 2015. Come 14th in cat. 6 slots rolled down to 8th. 8mins out, and coach reckoned I made a mistake that cost me 10-15mins. Not even mad. Enter IM Kalmar.
2014:
Mixed training. Some decent blocks, but some severe dead spots. There was a 2week period where I did 7h training total, that was 8 weeks out. Fret and panic. Hadn’t booked flights yet, consider pulling out. Motivational phone call with coach. Decide to make a decision after a MD prep race. Only do the race if we think that I am capable to do a performance I will be happy with. Chose race to be similar profile to Kalmar, but they changed it last minute to include 600m of climbing. Not my strength, but come 7th o/a anyway. Felt awful. Coach says I should go. I am a bit reluctant, but experience so far is that he is always right. GF has a long work trip, I get down to business and recover my season with consistent 12.5h/week for 6 weeks. No time for a real taper, I rode 5h in erg mode on the Sunday before the Saturday race. Study metrics. Each one makes me either optimistic or pessimistic, no clear picture. Probably 50-50 chance.
Swim (54)
Unconventional start, one of WTC’s experiments into how to pack more people into kona. Start is like a marathon, everyone queues up and they take the chip time as you run in. You run in down two streams onto a ramp that is about 5m wide. There were starting corrals for self-seeding according to swim time, but they only went as fast as sub-1:05. (IM Nice has a 55min corral.) I started about 20 chests back due to timidity, should have gone further forward. I believe that it is best to self-seed accurately in this circumstance, the draft benefit of starting further back is not as good as the bike slingshot that is talked about on here, and if you start too far forward you won’t be able to stay on their feet anyway. Of course there were still some dudes who started at the front and swam 1:08, so there was a bit of navigation to get through all that. It turns out nobody knows how to dive, so I practically landed on someone’s feet and got a kick to the eye in the first stroke of the race. I have a bloody goggle mark, as I realised about 12 hours later. After about 300m I saw I was roughly in the 3rd pack, not good! Work hard to bridge while the gap is still small, there were a group of maybe 4 of us that went for it.
Start to swim through the stragglers of the pro field (who 5min head start) around the half way point. Feels like I’m doing all the work here. Consider sitting on their feet, but it quickly becomes obvious that it will slow me down. Think about bridging to the front AG pack. One AG on my feet is having a great ride, but it’s pissing me off, if he would take a turn then we could make this bridge. I get so annoyed that I stop and pretend to clear my goggles just to get behind him, but he’s not interested in swimming hard so I’m soon in front again, sigh. Swim through all remaining FPro (except Leanda who is a rock star) in front of huge crowds, great fun. Annoying AG still manages to follow me, can’t shake him with attacks. 400m to go, Ego said: “no way is this guy beating me out of the water” even though brain was saying to be sensible. Luckily there was no pointless sprint. 54mins in the tent, hoped for a bit better but within acceptable range. The guys in the finish area were saying that the swim was long, obviously I didn’t know that at the time (or care). I wear garmin in my swimcap DC rainmaker style for good signal, and I clocked 4.2km, for what it’s worth.
Bike (4:54)
Believe it or not, this is the first time I have ever used rubber bands on my shoes in T1. It worked pretty well, I think I will keep doing it! Bike course was very pleasurable, high quality roads, lots of crowd support, minimal hills, lots of visibility, minimal turns none of which are technical. I joke that I am the derek zoolander of cycling, except that I can’t turn left OR right. The “hill” which is on the Öland bridge is not bad at all. I stayed in the big ring for the whole route. Coming down it with the tailwind though was really fun, I didn’t spin out my 53x11 but I could have done. As a swimmer, I normally expect to be overtaken lots during the bike, but I managed to hold them off. In fact one of the high points was overtaking two pros (one dropped out, one got me back on the run). I carried enough nutrition that I could afford to miss two aid stations out of ten. I missed the first one. Last year’s mistake was missing an aid station and riding about 40-60km with nothing, so I was keen to avoid this.
There is a little lollipop loop around Morbylanga about 30km, and as I was going back I saw a long train of cyclists, if they were the regulation 10m apart then it was only just. Thank god I can swim, I couldn’t deal with the stress of that, knowing me I would just constantly drop back and probably apologise. Anyway I never saw them until the next out and back at 150km. There was one guy in front of me who was a strong rider, I worked hard to eventually catch him, and hung back until he took a drink to overtake. Put some distance in just in case he was a drafter. He wasn’t. Then I almost missed the second aid station! Emergency! I actually stopped the bike and picked up the food, but it cost me my place in front of that guy. Maybe 30s was spent on this, oh well. I don’t have a power meter, and I was aiming for a HR target and range. Generally it was a bit high in the first half, but it felt so great. The course was so fast that I was in the bars for 99% of the time. The toughest bit of the course was at the end of the island, where it was very open, very slightly uphill for 10km, no supporters, and a really solid west wind. I didn’t dare to leave the bars even to reach my water bottle although I was desperate to relax my shoulders. My friend afterwards told me that he overtook about 50 people on this stretch purely because they couldn’t hold it and sat up. I think it’s also because he is a monster who rode 4:48. That bridge is a bit tougher when going into the wind, and due to the angle you view it at from the start of the bridge it seems like it is a 45 degree climb which is a bit intimidating.
Lots of fun touching base in Kalmar centre before the second loop, there were loads of spectators already out. Paul Kaye was in the thick of it jumping around excitedly, I was really motivated. Gave some thought to high fiving him but it wasn’t worth it, someone was right behind me. I passed the last cyclists when I was just finishing the island, so I guess that the spectators saw a constant stream of cyclists all day. The mainland part of the course was a bit tougher than the Öland loop but it was still very comfortable. There was another out&back, 5km each way. I saw Leanda out on her own, working it. Tried to encourage a pro who was suffering, but he ended up DNF. The train was still more or less there. HR was generally low within the range, I was a little concerned. I had been eating a bit over my target of 80g/hr. I was (emotionally) a bit afraid of blowing up, but I saw that I was on for sub 5 and (intellectually) knew that there was not really any reason why I shouldn’t stay at my target HR, so I kept pushing. Crowds helped on the drag strip down into town.
Run (3:20)
Starting the run is always terrifying, you know that the line between a good time and blowing up is very thin and very hard to see. After I settled and threw out all my trash from the bike, I found myself next to the same guy who I lost at that aid station. We chatted. I was looking for someone with whom to work together. Turns out we were in the same category. I figured that we can stay together for 30km and then the chips will fall wherever they do. His GF is on the course getting updates, she says we are 1&2. I was looking for 3:10, he said that as realistic for him too. Great I thought, but that’s 4:30 pace and we were running faster than 4:20. Remember that due to the start procedure we might not really be 1&2, there are people who have up to a 15min handicap if they started at the back of the swim. I soon decided that this was a suicide strategy and dropped back, this was going to cost me a lot of time and even more pain. I was suffering and pace was falling. Three laps. The town was really motivating, everyone was out. Loud thunder. Rain falling. Choice: be happy or be upset. It’s not really a choice because you have minimal control of your emotions at this time. THOR IS BEATING HIS ANVIL! Luckily I could salvage some positive emotions out of it.
22km. My only stated target for the run is just to do a negative split. I looked at my average pace so far and took note - 4:45/km is my target for the rest of the race. Damn this is hurting. I am really paying the price for the bravado of the first 8km. Some spectators have set up for the day with massive speakers playing music. I’m not really a music guy, but I recognise pop songs. I wish now that I remember what was playing, because it lifted me out of a dark place. I was running and crying and laughing and the pace was 4:35 and digging in so hard and this is what LD racing is really about, deep down this inexpressible pain of absolute effort is really why we do it. Every time the road rose up I thought about running hills with my coach and driving through behind me, and with every pushoff I could feel my whole hamstring and glute wobble like jelly and still go on. I can’t remember a lot from the last bit but I know from the graph that I had a good surge in the last 15 mins. On the chute I put two fists in the air but couldn’t shout anything as no breath. I had to keep the pressure right through to the end as who knows who is going to beat me with up to 15mins handicap. Total time 9:13.
M30-34: 3rd
Overall: 19th
Age group Overall: 10th
Immediate aftermath
Someone appeared next to me right on the line, turns out he was in my category. He had enough of a handicap that he beat me by 20s or so on chip time by running a 3:05. Damn you aid station! I even carried a spare half powerbar around the whole bike course without eating it, I needn’t have stopped. Not that I knew at the time. Another racer came through even further back, with enough of a handicap that he was 2nd. But some time in the night the dude right behind me got DQ, I don’t know the reason. 1st place ran 3:09, and I know that he is capable of better because I ran with him as we both set out too hard.
They had a cold bath at the finish with ice blocks the size of loafs of bread, and I practically did a bomb. LOL at the ice bucket challenge that is going around social media right now. There were hot showers which were better than the shower in my house, and it was a great feeling. I admit that I cried. They had some warm soup and it was the best thing I ever tasted.
Came back for the final hour, it was packed. I’ve been to some races where you can walk up and down the stands at the final hour, but not so with Kalmar. You could not get a space anywhere on the stands and it was 4 chests deep for at least 100m (which was as far as I could see). It was kind of confusing though, someone would come over with a time of 15:50, then a few mins later someone would show up with 15:45. You never knew who was really the last one. Not entirely sure about this but I think someone did 15:59:59 and was not the last over the line.
Kalmar is a fantastic race, start to end. If it’s like last year, then it will sell out within hours of Copenhagen selling out. Next year I heard that there will be direct flights. Don’t wait.
Athletic background (by way of introduction)
Swam at university, missed the varsity cut. Played water polo as well, missed the varsity cut in that too. Heard of triathlon and entered an IM for the sake of challenge. Ended up doing one each year for the challenge and to get round. Training = random. 2012 season: decide to drop the L from “complete”. Don’t enter any LD races. Observe weakness: running. Enter marathons and follow marathon plan rigorously. 2013 season: hire coach. Enter IM. Target = experience “racing,” decide whether to try to KQ in 2014 or 2015. Come 14th in cat. 6 slots rolled down to 8th. 8mins out, and coach reckoned I made a mistake that cost me 10-15mins. Not even mad. Enter IM Kalmar.
2014:
Mixed training. Some decent blocks, but some severe dead spots. There was a 2week period where I did 7h training total, that was 8 weeks out. Fret and panic. Hadn’t booked flights yet, consider pulling out. Motivational phone call with coach. Decide to make a decision after a MD prep race. Only do the race if we think that I am capable to do a performance I will be happy with. Chose race to be similar profile to Kalmar, but they changed it last minute to include 600m of climbing. Not my strength, but come 7th o/a anyway. Felt awful. Coach says I should go. I am a bit reluctant, but experience so far is that he is always right. GF has a long work trip, I get down to business and recover my season with consistent 12.5h/week for 6 weeks. No time for a real taper, I rode 5h in erg mode on the Sunday before the Saturday race. Study metrics. Each one makes me either optimistic or pessimistic, no clear picture. Probably 50-50 chance.
Swim (54)
Unconventional start, one of WTC’s experiments into how to pack more people into kona. Start is like a marathon, everyone queues up and they take the chip time as you run in. You run in down two streams onto a ramp that is about 5m wide. There were starting corrals for self-seeding according to swim time, but they only went as fast as sub-1:05. (IM Nice has a 55min corral.) I started about 20 chests back due to timidity, should have gone further forward. I believe that it is best to self-seed accurately in this circumstance, the draft benefit of starting further back is not as good as the bike slingshot that is talked about on here, and if you start too far forward you won’t be able to stay on their feet anyway. Of course there were still some dudes who started at the front and swam 1:08, so there was a bit of navigation to get through all that. It turns out nobody knows how to dive, so I practically landed on someone’s feet and got a kick to the eye in the first stroke of the race. I have a bloody goggle mark, as I realised about 12 hours later. After about 300m I saw I was roughly in the 3rd pack, not good! Work hard to bridge while the gap is still small, there were a group of maybe 4 of us that went for it.
Start to swim through the stragglers of the pro field (who 5min head start) around the half way point. Feels like I’m doing all the work here. Consider sitting on their feet, but it quickly becomes obvious that it will slow me down. Think about bridging to the front AG pack. One AG on my feet is having a great ride, but it’s pissing me off, if he would take a turn then we could make this bridge. I get so annoyed that I stop and pretend to clear my goggles just to get behind him, but he’s not interested in swimming hard so I’m soon in front again, sigh. Swim through all remaining FPro (except Leanda who is a rock star) in front of huge crowds, great fun. Annoying AG still manages to follow me, can’t shake him with attacks. 400m to go, Ego said: “no way is this guy beating me out of the water” even though brain was saying to be sensible. Luckily there was no pointless sprint. 54mins in the tent, hoped for a bit better but within acceptable range. The guys in the finish area were saying that the swim was long, obviously I didn’t know that at the time (or care). I wear garmin in my swimcap DC rainmaker style for good signal, and I clocked 4.2km, for what it’s worth.
Bike (4:54)
Believe it or not, this is the first time I have ever used rubber bands on my shoes in T1. It worked pretty well, I think I will keep doing it! Bike course was very pleasurable, high quality roads, lots of crowd support, minimal hills, lots of visibility, minimal turns none of which are technical. I joke that I am the derek zoolander of cycling, except that I can’t turn left OR right. The “hill” which is on the Öland bridge is not bad at all. I stayed in the big ring for the whole route. Coming down it with the tailwind though was really fun, I didn’t spin out my 53x11 but I could have done. As a swimmer, I normally expect to be overtaken lots during the bike, but I managed to hold them off. In fact one of the high points was overtaking two pros (one dropped out, one got me back on the run). I carried enough nutrition that I could afford to miss two aid stations out of ten. I missed the first one. Last year’s mistake was missing an aid station and riding about 40-60km with nothing, so I was keen to avoid this.
There is a little lollipop loop around Morbylanga about 30km, and as I was going back I saw a long train of cyclists, if they were the regulation 10m apart then it was only just. Thank god I can swim, I couldn’t deal with the stress of that, knowing me I would just constantly drop back and probably apologise. Anyway I never saw them until the next out and back at 150km. There was one guy in front of me who was a strong rider, I worked hard to eventually catch him, and hung back until he took a drink to overtake. Put some distance in just in case he was a drafter. He wasn’t. Then I almost missed the second aid station! Emergency! I actually stopped the bike and picked up the food, but it cost me my place in front of that guy. Maybe 30s was spent on this, oh well. I don’t have a power meter, and I was aiming for a HR target and range. Generally it was a bit high in the first half, but it felt so great. The course was so fast that I was in the bars for 99% of the time. The toughest bit of the course was at the end of the island, where it was very open, very slightly uphill for 10km, no supporters, and a really solid west wind. I didn’t dare to leave the bars even to reach my water bottle although I was desperate to relax my shoulders. My friend afterwards told me that he overtook about 50 people on this stretch purely because they couldn’t hold it and sat up. I think it’s also because he is a monster who rode 4:48. That bridge is a bit tougher when going into the wind, and due to the angle you view it at from the start of the bridge it seems like it is a 45 degree climb which is a bit intimidating.
Lots of fun touching base in Kalmar centre before the second loop, there were loads of spectators already out. Paul Kaye was in the thick of it jumping around excitedly, I was really motivated. Gave some thought to high fiving him but it wasn’t worth it, someone was right behind me. I passed the last cyclists when I was just finishing the island, so I guess that the spectators saw a constant stream of cyclists all day. The mainland part of the course was a bit tougher than the Öland loop but it was still very comfortable. There was another out&back, 5km each way. I saw Leanda out on her own, working it. Tried to encourage a pro who was suffering, but he ended up DNF. The train was still more or less there. HR was generally low within the range, I was a little concerned. I had been eating a bit over my target of 80g/hr. I was (emotionally) a bit afraid of blowing up, but I saw that I was on for sub 5 and (intellectually) knew that there was not really any reason why I shouldn’t stay at my target HR, so I kept pushing. Crowds helped on the drag strip down into town.
Run (3:20)
Starting the run is always terrifying, you know that the line between a good time and blowing up is very thin and very hard to see. After I settled and threw out all my trash from the bike, I found myself next to the same guy who I lost at that aid station. We chatted. I was looking for someone with whom to work together. Turns out we were in the same category. I figured that we can stay together for 30km and then the chips will fall wherever they do. His GF is on the course getting updates, she says we are 1&2. I was looking for 3:10, he said that as realistic for him too. Great I thought, but that’s 4:30 pace and we were running faster than 4:20. Remember that due to the start procedure we might not really be 1&2, there are people who have up to a 15min handicap if they started at the back of the swim. I soon decided that this was a suicide strategy and dropped back, this was going to cost me a lot of time and even more pain. I was suffering and pace was falling. Three laps. The town was really motivating, everyone was out. Loud thunder. Rain falling. Choice: be happy or be upset. It’s not really a choice because you have minimal control of your emotions at this time. THOR IS BEATING HIS ANVIL! Luckily I could salvage some positive emotions out of it.
22km. My only stated target for the run is just to do a negative split. I looked at my average pace so far and took note - 4:45/km is my target for the rest of the race. Damn this is hurting. I am really paying the price for the bravado of the first 8km. Some spectators have set up for the day with massive speakers playing music. I’m not really a music guy, but I recognise pop songs. I wish now that I remember what was playing, because it lifted me out of a dark place. I was running and crying and laughing and the pace was 4:35 and digging in so hard and this is what LD racing is really about, deep down this inexpressible pain of absolute effort is really why we do it. Every time the road rose up I thought about running hills with my coach and driving through behind me, and with every pushoff I could feel my whole hamstring and glute wobble like jelly and still go on. I can’t remember a lot from the last bit but I know from the graph that I had a good surge in the last 15 mins. On the chute I put two fists in the air but couldn’t shout anything as no breath. I had to keep the pressure right through to the end as who knows who is going to beat me with up to 15mins handicap. Total time 9:13.
M30-34: 3rd
Overall: 19th
Age group Overall: 10th
Immediate aftermath
Someone appeared next to me right on the line, turns out he was in my category. He had enough of a handicap that he beat me by 20s or so on chip time by running a 3:05. Damn you aid station! I even carried a spare half powerbar around the whole bike course without eating it, I needn’t have stopped. Not that I knew at the time. Another racer came through even further back, with enough of a handicap that he was 2nd. But some time in the night the dude right behind me got DQ, I don’t know the reason. 1st place ran 3:09, and I know that he is capable of better because I ran with him as we both set out too hard.
They had a cold bath at the finish with ice blocks the size of loafs of bread, and I practically did a bomb. LOL at the ice bucket challenge that is going around social media right now. There were hot showers which were better than the shower in my house, and it was a great feeling. I admit that I cried. They had some warm soup and it was the best thing I ever tasted.
Came back for the final hour, it was packed. I’ve been to some races where you can walk up and down the stands at the final hour, but not so with Kalmar. You could not get a space anywhere on the stands and it was 4 chests deep for at least 100m (which was as far as I could see). It was kind of confusing though, someone would come over with a time of 15:50, then a few mins later someone would show up with 15:45. You never knew who was really the last one. Not entirely sure about this but I think someone did 15:59:59 and was not the last over the line.
Kalmar is a fantastic race, start to end. If it’s like last year, then it will sell out within hours of Copenhagen selling out. Next year I heard that there will be direct flights. Don’t wait.