Edit (not sure why the picture links are not working as they show in the editor...will try to upload from another source...still working on it)
IM Whistler 2014: Not Quite a Miracle Mile
Almost 49 years ago I started the journey of life in Vancouver (right near that bridge above). I grew up with the coastal mountains literally jutting straight up from the back of our home in Burnaby and ever since I am just generally attracted to doing activity in the mountains. 25 Ironmans ago in Penticton at the old Ironman Canada, I started a journey over many courses. That was in 1991. I never thought I would be coming back this many years later to British Columbia to still race this distance, but it felt extra special ‘coming home’ to the coastal mountains for this 26th try and the distance.
To me, this race is Ironman Whistler. I can’t call it Ironman Canada because it really isn’t. Whistler has its own character and deserves its own name, not the one that was the label for the event in Penticton. Whistler is a world resort and the Ironman there probably benefits more from brand association to the resort rather than a generic “Canada” name that could be anywhere in our fine country.
Whistler summit below:
Top 5 things about Ironman in Whistler
35K into an ironman, I get to the point where I have a 10 K race worth of effort. Because I am going so much slower, the last 7.2K in an ironman takes me as long or longer than a 10K race. In fact, I view every race ending with a 10K effort, which then ends with a 5000m effort. Soon, it converges down to a 1 mile race and then one lap of the track to the finish line. There might not be a track there, but in my mind, I view the last 60 seconds like I am running with Roger Bannister on Iffly Road in Oxford, 1953. Every mile that we humans run, fall in the footsteps of that event. It was the Everest Summit of endurance running.
So here I was 35K into Whistler ready to suffer it out for a 10K “race effort”. An Ironman race is so long that if you look at how much you have left, you will never start. The entire day is literally broken down into the next 10 minutes, then the next, and the next. Now I was down to 4x10 minutes, but was frankly feeling beaten. I came off the bike in 5:30 and in around 8th place in my age group. I had taken the bike the easiest I had ever done an Ironman and had the strongest closing hour ever. Did it take me this long to actually figure it out? Perhaps. 5:30 off 182Watts and 2200m of climbing preceded by what I felt was a slow 68 minute swim and a lightening fast 2.5 minute transition T1 with a decent 1:40 T2 and I was out of T2 at 1:43 PM. That means the race clock said 6:43 since the cannon went off in the morning with the steam rising above the water.
The day had turned hot. Apparently it was 96F on the climb back to Whistler from Pemberton. Guys were dropping like flies. I like hot racing and was going very well. But earlier in the day, I got mentally distracted and although I was fit enough to not pay the price on the bike it would catch up with me between 17 and 30K on the run. When I arrived at transition on race morning, my rear wheel was soft and further inspection revealed a flat. A quick tube change and I was ready to go, but in the entire wild panic, I forgot to put my bottle with 800 calories and 2000 mg of sodium on my bike. As I exited T1 ready to have a strong day I went to grab my bottle and realized that I was departing the bike with zero calories and zero sodium. Now I had to replace that intake with on course nutrition from aid station. Possible, but that is like putting low octane fuel in a racing machine . However, I train for this possibility, and I tell my athletes to, and as much math as I did trying to replace with Perform drink and gels and chews, I think I never quite closed the gap on sodium intake and was low on calories.
Nutrition is the 4th sport in triathlon. Like a formula 1 pilot, you can have the best power plant and chassis, but if the pilot overdoes it, and does not manage his gas mileage and top it up, the machine may run out of steam.
Somewhere between 17-30K I let my calories get too concentrated with too much gel, to make up for some low calories on the bike. With the heat, I was low on sodium intake too, even though I was taking some salt tabs. Early in loop 2, I had to make a decision….my stomach felt like I had eaten turkey dinner and trying to run while digesting turkey dinner was not working that well. I needed my heart rate to come down for a chance for these calories absorb, enter my blood stream and kick in. I am not sure how long it took, but I had around 6 people in my age group pass me during this time. This was the least of my concerns. My brain had flipped from racing to survival.
My mind went from racing for position to simply guiding the machine safely without breaking down. It was no longer in formula 1 mode. It was more like a broken chevy well past its warranty expiration. At this point and I was just concerned about righting it through the 2000 feet on that crazy tough run course and get back from a shuffle to a jog. Finally after going to the “pit” which is a never ending downhill to the turnaround near 32K I met up with a fellow athlete who raced IM Switzerland in 2011. At that race I came home in an ambulance not through the finish line. I was on loop 2 being hard on myself, he was on loop 1. He said, “Is it Dev”, to which I replied, “Yes”. “Its CJ, we were going to meet up at IM Switzerland, but this time, I did not want to reach out before race day in fear of jinxing you. Glad to see you are back racing”.
…and in an instant, my mental state changed. Ironman is a race of ups and downs and many emotions. 3 years of daily physio and rehab later, my neck is still sore , and I rarely escape headaches. Running was a strength. Now everyone passes me on the run. I can’t hold my head in an aero position so I make do with what I can. Some days, I can’t swivel my neck to breath while swimming in a wetsuit (no wetsuit swimming is fine). I really wish I could run like in the past, but no point lamenting the gap between what I used to do and what I can do. The better gap to look at is the one between not running at all and running ‘slow’ today. CJ was right, it was great to have a version of myself back, racing in the mountains of British Columbia.
…and now I was 40 or so minutes of 10K effort away from the finish line. It did not matter who had passed and where I was in my age group. The mountains gave me energy. 10:30 had slipped away as has 10:40 and soon the clock ticked over 10:50 and I was back through the amazing village of Whistler and a high five to my son Brandon and wife Roxanne and that final 60 seconds with the ghost of Roger Bannister keeping me company. In 1954, at the Empire Games in Vancouver, Bannister and the Australian Landy ran the “Miracle Mile”. It was the first time that two men ran sub 4. Bannister out leaned Landy with a better finishing kick. I have watched this video a 100 times (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP_NzZP_LK0). You don’t need to be that fast, and our events may be different, but we’re still racers at heart.
So there I was with 60 seconds left. Certainly not 400m away. More like 200m away at my pace. It’s not Iffly Road in Oxford, and it’s not the Vancouver Empire games either, but every race ends with a 60 second loop of a virtual track. And that brought me to the finish line of Ironman number 26 in Whistler on July 27th. In the end I was 15th in my age and 128th overall at 10:54
Like any thing that is hard, you cross the line, and the body turns off.
Earlier in the week I was asking a local in Whistler what routes you can take to run to the top of the mountain. She said, “why would you do that, if there is a lift?”. To which I replied, ‘Why would you use a lift to get up a mountain?”. Some of us are just wired differently than normal humans and maybe that is why I like Ironman week. Suddenly there are 2000 people who are abnormal in day to day life, but on this week, we’re the “normal”.
The body only does, what the brain tells it to do. At that moment I crossed the line, my brain said that Ironman Whistler was the hardest thing I ever did physically. By the next day, I was already thinking, “We do them because it is hard. This might be a special thing to do when I race 50-54 next year. Come back home to the coastal mountains and cover this course again. If I want easy I can sit on the couch, but that option was available when I came back in the ambulance in 2011. I can have easy whenever I want, but I can’t have hard unless I challenge myself”….and the feeling after doing something truly hard is so much more satisfying.
Whistler took my legs, squeezed out every ounce of energy I had, tested every bit of my will and almost defeated me. Almost. I just hung on for a draw of sorts. While I didn’t let the course defeat me, it wasn’t a win either. Maybe it was like Argentina and Holland going to extra time and then penalty kicks. Whistler defeated me on penalty kicks. I played a full game that ended in a draw. So on second thought, Whistler won like Argentina. It did defeat me on penalty kicks, but I ended finishing the thing with some semblance of pride. I’d like to come back and beat it in regulation time. I don’t want a moral victory, I want real victory where I beat the course. At the ironman distance, course beat us more often than we beat the course. I’ve beaten the course in Placid, in Nice, in Kona. Tremblant and Whistler are still up on me.
IM Whistler 2014: Not Quite a Miracle Mile
Almost 49 years ago I started the journey of life in Vancouver (right near that bridge above). I grew up with the coastal mountains literally jutting straight up from the back of our home in Burnaby and ever since I am just generally attracted to doing activity in the mountains. 25 Ironmans ago in Penticton at the old Ironman Canada, I started a journey over many courses. That was in 1991. I never thought I would be coming back this many years later to British Columbia to still race this distance, but it felt extra special ‘coming home’ to the coastal mountains for this 26th try and the distance.
To me, this race is Ironman Whistler. I can’t call it Ironman Canada because it really isn’t. Whistler has its own character and deserves its own name, not the one that was the label for the event in Penticton. Whistler is a world resort and the Ironman there probably benefits more from brand association to the resort rather than a generic “Canada” name that could be anywhere in our fine country.
Whistler summit below:
Top 5 things about Ironman in Whistler
1. The swim venue is one of the nicest in this sport. The lake Alta is beautiful and the dramatic mountains around the lake in my book makes the swim venue better than Kona
2. If you are going to take family and friends to a venue where there are a lot of options of things to do, Whistler is it. Of the places I have done ironmans, only Nice France and Kona measure up to Whistler. Whistler is like Tremblant or steroids, HGH and EPO all combined. Taking the gondola up to Whistler and the Peak to Peak cable car
3. If you like bike courses with no drafting, this one is as good as it gets. Everyone arrives in T2 having earned their bike split and get one that is proportional to their own fitness, not proportional to the fitness of the person whose wheel they latched onto. The climb up to Callaghan Valley was amazing. In the back of my mind I could not erase the pack of Olympic skiers in the Men’s 50K at the 2010 Olympics and Devon Kershaw’s ‘near miss’ 4th place. The course was taking me special. That’s the best result by a Canadian in a distance XC ski event. We were on the ‘bus’ at the hardest long distance triathlon in Canada.
4. The views are constantly stunning. You have 6000 – 8000 ft peaks all around. Especially the flats around Pemberton offer stunning views
5. The run loop weaves in and out of the village constantly offering options to view your supporters and also if you are lucky or unlucky you might get paced by a real black bear. They are numerous on the course.
35K into an ironman, I get to the point where I have a 10 K race worth of effort. Because I am going so much slower, the last 7.2K in an ironman takes me as long or longer than a 10K race. In fact, I view every race ending with a 10K effort, which then ends with a 5000m effort. Soon, it converges down to a 1 mile race and then one lap of the track to the finish line. There might not be a track there, but in my mind, I view the last 60 seconds like I am running with Roger Bannister on Iffly Road in Oxford, 1953. Every mile that we humans run, fall in the footsteps of that event. It was the Everest Summit of endurance running.
So here I was 35K into Whistler ready to suffer it out for a 10K “race effort”. An Ironman race is so long that if you look at how much you have left, you will never start. The entire day is literally broken down into the next 10 minutes, then the next, and the next. Now I was down to 4x10 minutes, but was frankly feeling beaten. I came off the bike in 5:30 and in around 8th place in my age group. I had taken the bike the easiest I had ever done an Ironman and had the strongest closing hour ever. Did it take me this long to actually figure it out? Perhaps. 5:30 off 182Watts and 2200m of climbing preceded by what I felt was a slow 68 minute swim and a lightening fast 2.5 minute transition T1 with a decent 1:40 T2 and I was out of T2 at 1:43 PM. That means the race clock said 6:43 since the cannon went off in the morning with the steam rising above the water.
The day had turned hot. Apparently it was 96F on the climb back to Whistler from Pemberton. Guys were dropping like flies. I like hot racing and was going very well. But earlier in the day, I got mentally distracted and although I was fit enough to not pay the price on the bike it would catch up with me between 17 and 30K on the run. When I arrived at transition on race morning, my rear wheel was soft and further inspection revealed a flat. A quick tube change and I was ready to go, but in the entire wild panic, I forgot to put my bottle with 800 calories and 2000 mg of sodium on my bike. As I exited T1 ready to have a strong day I went to grab my bottle and realized that I was departing the bike with zero calories and zero sodium. Now I had to replace that intake with on course nutrition from aid station. Possible, but that is like putting low octane fuel in a racing machine . However, I train for this possibility, and I tell my athletes to, and as much math as I did trying to replace with Perform drink and gels and chews, I think I never quite closed the gap on sodium intake and was low on calories.
Nutrition is the 4th sport in triathlon. Like a formula 1 pilot, you can have the best power plant and chassis, but if the pilot overdoes it, and does not manage his gas mileage and top it up, the machine may run out of steam.
Somewhere between 17-30K I let my calories get too concentrated with too much gel, to make up for some low calories on the bike. With the heat, I was low on sodium intake too, even though I was taking some salt tabs. Early in loop 2, I had to make a decision….my stomach felt like I had eaten turkey dinner and trying to run while digesting turkey dinner was not working that well. I needed my heart rate to come down for a chance for these calories absorb, enter my blood stream and kick in. I am not sure how long it took, but I had around 6 people in my age group pass me during this time. This was the least of my concerns. My brain had flipped from racing to survival.
My mind went from racing for position to simply guiding the machine safely without breaking down. It was no longer in formula 1 mode. It was more like a broken chevy well past its warranty expiration. At this point and I was just concerned about righting it through the 2000 feet on that crazy tough run course and get back from a shuffle to a jog. Finally after going to the “pit” which is a never ending downhill to the turnaround near 32K I met up with a fellow athlete who raced IM Switzerland in 2011. At that race I came home in an ambulance not through the finish line. I was on loop 2 being hard on myself, he was on loop 1. He said, “Is it Dev”, to which I replied, “Yes”. “Its CJ, we were going to meet up at IM Switzerland, but this time, I did not want to reach out before race day in fear of jinxing you. Glad to see you are back racing”.
…and in an instant, my mental state changed. Ironman is a race of ups and downs and many emotions. 3 years of daily physio and rehab later, my neck is still sore , and I rarely escape headaches. Running was a strength. Now everyone passes me on the run. I can’t hold my head in an aero position so I make do with what I can. Some days, I can’t swivel my neck to breath while swimming in a wetsuit (no wetsuit swimming is fine). I really wish I could run like in the past, but no point lamenting the gap between what I used to do and what I can do. The better gap to look at is the one between not running at all and running ‘slow’ today. CJ was right, it was great to have a version of myself back, racing in the mountains of British Columbia.
…and now I was 40 or so minutes of 10K effort away from the finish line. It did not matter who had passed and where I was in my age group. The mountains gave me energy. 10:30 had slipped away as has 10:40 and soon the clock ticked over 10:50 and I was back through the amazing village of Whistler and a high five to my son Brandon and wife Roxanne and that final 60 seconds with the ghost of Roger Bannister keeping me company. In 1954, at the Empire Games in Vancouver, Bannister and the Australian Landy ran the “Miracle Mile”. It was the first time that two men ran sub 4. Bannister out leaned Landy with a better finishing kick. I have watched this video a 100 times (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP_NzZP_LK0). You don’t need to be that fast, and our events may be different, but we’re still racers at heart.
So there I was with 60 seconds left. Certainly not 400m away. More like 200m away at my pace. It’s not Iffly Road in Oxford, and it’s not the Vancouver Empire games either, but every race ends with a 60 second loop of a virtual track. And that brought me to the finish line of Ironman number 26 in Whistler on July 27th. In the end I was 15th in my age and 128th overall at 10:54
Like any thing that is hard, you cross the line, and the body turns off.
Earlier in the week I was asking a local in Whistler what routes you can take to run to the top of the mountain. She said, “why would you do that, if there is a lift?”. To which I replied, ‘Why would you use a lift to get up a mountain?”. Some of us are just wired differently than normal humans and maybe that is why I like Ironman week. Suddenly there are 2000 people who are abnormal in day to day life, but on this week, we’re the “normal”.
The body only does, what the brain tells it to do. At that moment I crossed the line, my brain said that Ironman Whistler was the hardest thing I ever did physically. By the next day, I was already thinking, “We do them because it is hard. This might be a special thing to do when I race 50-54 next year. Come back home to the coastal mountains and cover this course again. If I want easy I can sit on the couch, but that option was available when I came back in the ambulance in 2011. I can have easy whenever I want, but I can’t have hard unless I challenge myself”….and the feeling after doing something truly hard is so much more satisfying.
Whistler took my legs, squeezed out every ounce of energy I had, tested every bit of my will and almost defeated me. Almost. I just hung on for a draw of sorts. While I didn’t let the course defeat me, it wasn’t a win either. Maybe it was like Argentina and Holland going to extra time and then penalty kicks. Whistler defeated me on penalty kicks. I played a full game that ended in a draw. So on second thought, Whistler won like Argentina. It did defeat me on penalty kicks, but I ended finishing the thing with some semblance of pride. I’d like to come back and beat it in regulation time. I don’t want a moral victory, I want real victory where I beat the course. At the ironman distance, course beat us more often than we beat the course. I’ve beaten the course in Placid, in Nice, in Kona. Tremblant and Whistler are still up on me.
Last edited by:
devashish_paul: Aug 5, 14 8:30
