(Pictures included on the blog - link in the sig below).
"What do you need?"
"Sucks, man."
"At least you look good!"
"Are you OK?"
"Sorry - don't have an extra wheel on me."
These are some of the things that athletes were saying as they rode by as I sat stranded on the side of the road at mile 90 of Ironman Arizona this past weekend with an exploded tube, shredded tire and chunked-up carbon wheel laying next to me.
------
With all due respect to every athlete that competes in an Ironman, my go-round at Arizona was - in my mind - going to be an "easy" day en route to qualifying for Kona 2013. I had recently placed top 5 in my age group at the world championship in Hawaii five weeks earlier and was having a great year of race results. In the back of my mind, at the bottom of my list of goals for this race, was that I could potentially go 8:50 if the day unfolded the way I thought it could. I was confident as ever in my swim, knew that I didn't have to crush the bike to ride near the front of the field and had a plan on how to execute a 3:00 run. My dad was there for my second straight Ironman and I think we were both excited with what the day could bring.
SWIM (58:23 - IM swim PR by nearly 4-1/2 minutes):
I lined up left in the very front row next to the big yellow Tyr inflatable buoy. After repeated attempts to de-fog my goggles, I just had to resign myself to the fact that they weren't going to stay clear. That's what you get for wearing rainbow colored goggles.
When the cannon blew, I just swam toward the brightest part of the sky since the sun wasn't up yet. A kick to the face resulted in the section cup affect with my goggles to my left eye. A couple of minutes later however, I got punched in the same eye which resulted in my goggles resuming to normal suction. I was on the buoy line pretty much the whole way up to the turnaround, even staying slightly to the left of some of them along the way up. When I got to the turnaround, I got to experience something I never have at an Ironman before: absolutely empty water at the turn buoy. It was almost scary - like when the lady at the beginning of Jaws is swimming all by herself near the ringing harbor marker...but this is fresh water, so I had nothing to worry about, especially since I'm not a hot blonde swimming naked in the ocean.
I hugged the big red buoy on my turn and headed across the lake to start the return trip back to land. With a couple hundred meters to go before the Mill Avenue bridge, I came up on another dude doing his best Matt Grevers imitation since he was casually doing backstroke as I'm splashing around like a labrador chasing a tennis ball in the water. This incident made me think twice about how fast I thought I was going.
After nearly crashing head first into the cement base of the first Mill Ave bridge, I was able to safely navigate my way to the exit stairs where the volunteer to whom I swam (an honest "thank you" for being out there) decided that it would be best that if I got out of the water on my own.
I did my best Simian running approach up the stairs to see that I had set a 4-1/2 minute IM PR in the swim with a 58:23 and 6th in the M35-39 AG. A HUGE thanks to Nineteen Wetsuits for supporting me this year. The Rogue is one fast, sleek and comfortable suit.
Utilized the wetsuit strippers, which took all of about 2-1/2 seconds and meandered my way around and through T1 where I was quickly able to snatch up my gear bag, which I had totally blacked out with duct tape so it would be easily recognizable. I didn't even have to break stride while picking up my bag.
T1 was simple enough - had an empty tent & my choice of chairs. Got everything situated and bolted out toward my bike. I was pretty quick through transition and I wasn't anywhere near as cold as I thought I would be upon exiting the water.
BIKE (4:59.40 - 224NP @ 167lbs (4:46.05 actual moving time))
So with Kona only a few weeks ago and knowing that running two marathons in the span of five weeks (let alone two Ironman marathons) is not particularly easy, my plan was to pretty much ride by feel - and thinking that somewhere in the neighborhood of 225-230w would be what felt right for the day. For comparison, my goal at Kona was to ride 245-250 and ended up riding 247w.
The benefit to coming out of the water that quickly was that I could pretty much ride with my head down staring at the white line. Plus, I was nose to the wind, which is how I love to ride...open road to myself with no worries about packs and the drafting that can ensue. I passed whom I'll simply call Mr. Kitty b/c I think he had what looked to be "MEOW" on the assback of his kit. I wanted to meow at him but a) that probably would have been a little strange (if it was a chick, different story) and b) my voice wasn't really functioning due to a cough that had hit me in the days leading into the race. I hit the turnaround at the top of the Beeline in 55 minutes at 235w. Perfect, I thought. Maybe a little slow, but there was a touch of a side headwind on the way out. On the way back down to town, it was a bit quick, so I dialed back on the power and what was 55 minutes on the way out was 39 minutes on the way back on 15 less watts. One third of the way through the ride, I'm sitting at 230w and was feeling groovy.
Second lap, same as the first. Bam!
The third lap started off just smashing. Felt good, calories were going down smoothly. Peed a couple of times. Was taking in a good amount of water considering the air was dry as my humor. Considering I was primarily riding by feel, the watts were reading a little lower, but I wasn't too concerned since I went through the first 2/3 of the ride at 4:45 pace on 230w. I figured I would be able to cruise the third lap at 215-220w and still come in between 4:45 and 4:50 depending on what the wind was doing.
Came up to about mile 90 3:45 into the ride and kablammo! Front tube exploded, came completely out of the tire and started wrapping itself around the right skewer and wheel spokes. This blew out the sidewall of my tire and all of a sudden I'm riding 20+MPH on two very thin rails of carbon. I had just passed someone, so I did my best to veer off to the side of the road without a) crashing and b) taking anyone else out. I then encountered what most people call rumble strips. But on the Beeline, they're more accurately described as 12" long x 3" wide x 2" deep potholes. It was a miracle that I didn't do an endo while coming to a teeth chattering stop. But in the process, several small chunks were taken out of my front wheel.
There I was, pretty much helpless since I needed a new tire and wheel to keep going. It was at this point where I tried to simply remain calm since there was really nothing I had control over other than drinking the water I still had on the bike and taking in some calories. I sat down and started thinking about next season...what was this going to mean? What races would I now sign up for? Would I go pro if Kona was taken off the table? (That's a discussion for another whole blog post...so spare me the "why don't you go pro" question for the time being). Should I start walking? Can I walk 20 miles in bike shoes before the time cutoff? ...then run 26.2? The thought makes my spine tingle.
So rather than having a pity party for myself, I started clapping and encouraging other riders at this point. I needed to stay positive and really, this was making me feel better. If I couldn't race, I was going to at least show some support for the people who were competing. I saw some of my competition roll by and well...they looked good.
I'd say after roughly 11-12 minutes of no forward progress, a headlight appeared coming around the corner of the highway. Low and behold, it was bike tech support and she happened to have a spare front wheel ready for use. Hooray - I'm not going to be stranded out here! I gave her my busted wheel and carnage of rubber and got the new wheel tightened up and was on my way. I got very lucky to say the least.
For the remainder of the ride, I didn't panic, didn't force any numbers from the legs, passed Mr. Kitty again since he passed me when I was sitting idle, kept hydrating and fueling and continued to ride by feel. My rough calculations still had me coming in at under 5:00 for the ride and I felt that regardless of what anyone else rode, that I would be running them down. The last hour of the ride, was at 213NP - so not forcing the issue.
I came into T2, grabbed my other blacked out bag without breaking stride and headed into the tent. Visor, Fuel Belt, Garmin and shoes on (double top secret special 2014 Newtons), Out the gate and got lathered up with some sunscreen and bolted out of there.
RUN (3:00.40 - IM run PR by 1:40)
The first couple of miles of an IM marathon are always kind of confusing. First of all, I felt like I was running through molasses, but the watch told me that I ran the first mile in 6:40.
"OK, buddy - time to ease up on the gas and be smart about this thing. Keep the cadence quick and the strides short and slow down a bit...be confident and smart."
I think too many people run scared those first few miles of the marathon and it *always* comes back to bite them in the end. I just wanted to run steady for 20 miles and see what I could dig out from inside of me for those last several miles to the finish.
I was running to plan and really had to work hard to keep my pace in check, especially starting at about mile 6, which is where I started to feel like I might have something special coming out of my legs today.
I was liberally using sponges and ice and dumping water over my head. I was putting the sponges down my jersey and every now and then, I'd squeeze a little water out of them - the action probably looked like I was feeling myself up. I even had a lady call me spongeboob.
Thinking is not something that I really do when I run - I'm good at zoning out and just running. But with all the planes flying overhead, I started playing a game: "where is this plane coming from?" OK - that one's coming from Denver...that's a bigger one - maybe it's coming from Hawaii...Kona even. That's an American plane? Chicago or Dallas. This was working until about mile 14 or 15 when I just started to feel like a rockstar. Coming up to an aid station at this point, I thought I heard Thunderstruck by AC/DC coming out of the speakers. This got me really jacked up and I started grunting the word thunder. I must have freaked some people out as I was doing this. But low and behold, I came up to the aid station it something horrific like Journey was playing instead. How the heck could I mistake Journey for AC/DC?! It was at this point where I think my ears started to bleed.
As I approached the last hill in Papago Park, I held back just a touch so that I wouldn't push myself over the edge going too hard at mile 23.
When I got to the bottom of the hill and started heading back east along the lake, I tried to pick up the pace a bit and passed the 3rd place women's pro while crossing the bridge before heading into the last stretch into the finish. As I came into the chute, I spotted my dad and gave him a big hug before walking it in with a 9:03 finish. 3rd place in M35-39AG, 4th amateur and my sixth straight Kona qualification. Here are the mile splits:
6:40, 6:57, 6:59, 7:02, 6:59, 7:06, 7:00, 6:59, 7:04, 6:47, 6:49, 6:53, 6:53, 6:53, 6:50, 6:41, 6:53, 6:50, 6:46, 7:00, 6:58, 6:56, 7:08, 6:53, 6:46, 6:31, 6:27 for last .2
NUTRITION BREAKDOWN:
*Pre race dinner: Chili's Full Rack of Ribs, Fries and a 22oz Sam Adams. (ritual)
*Breakfast: Pancakes, coffee, banana, 240 cals of UCAN
*Water and banana pre-race.
*Bike: 3 bottles each containing 360 cals of UCAN (1080 total for the ride). I think I took in 4 or 5 of the water bottles they were handing out on the course.
*Run: 2-1/2 flasks of water GU Roctane mix. Each flask contained 3 gels (100 cals each)
*Rough total for the race: 1800 cals total.
EQUIPMENT:
*Swim: Nineteen Rogue wetsuit
*Bike: Scott Plasma 3 Premium, ISM Adamo TT saddle, Zipp 404/808 FC clinchers with Wheelbuilder aero jacket, Power Tap, Continental GP 4000s, Vittoria Latex tubes, 54/42 FSA TT chainrings, 12/27 cassette
*Run: Yet-to-be-released unnamed Newton model. They're light and fast.
_________________________________
Steve Johnson
DARK HORSE TRIATHLON |
"What do you need?"
"Sucks, man."
"At least you look good!"
"Are you OK?"
"Sorry - don't have an extra wheel on me."
These are some of the things that athletes were saying as they rode by as I sat stranded on the side of the road at mile 90 of Ironman Arizona this past weekend with an exploded tube, shredded tire and chunked-up carbon wheel laying next to me.
------
With all due respect to every athlete that competes in an Ironman, my go-round at Arizona was - in my mind - going to be an "easy" day en route to qualifying for Kona 2013. I had recently placed top 5 in my age group at the world championship in Hawaii five weeks earlier and was having a great year of race results. In the back of my mind, at the bottom of my list of goals for this race, was that I could potentially go 8:50 if the day unfolded the way I thought it could. I was confident as ever in my swim, knew that I didn't have to crush the bike to ride near the front of the field and had a plan on how to execute a 3:00 run. My dad was there for my second straight Ironman and I think we were both excited with what the day could bring.
SWIM (58:23 - IM swim PR by nearly 4-1/2 minutes):
I lined up left in the very front row next to the big yellow Tyr inflatable buoy. After repeated attempts to de-fog my goggles, I just had to resign myself to the fact that they weren't going to stay clear. That's what you get for wearing rainbow colored goggles.
When the cannon blew, I just swam toward the brightest part of the sky since the sun wasn't up yet. A kick to the face resulted in the section cup affect with my goggles to my left eye. A couple of minutes later however, I got punched in the same eye which resulted in my goggles resuming to normal suction. I was on the buoy line pretty much the whole way up to the turnaround, even staying slightly to the left of some of them along the way up. When I got to the turnaround, I got to experience something I never have at an Ironman before: absolutely empty water at the turn buoy. It was almost scary - like when the lady at the beginning of Jaws is swimming all by herself near the ringing harbor marker...but this is fresh water, so I had nothing to worry about, especially since I'm not a hot blonde swimming naked in the ocean.
I hugged the big red buoy on my turn and headed across the lake to start the return trip back to land. With a couple hundred meters to go before the Mill Avenue bridge, I came up on another dude doing his best Matt Grevers imitation since he was casually doing backstroke as I'm splashing around like a labrador chasing a tennis ball in the water. This incident made me think twice about how fast I thought I was going.
After nearly crashing head first into the cement base of the first Mill Ave bridge, I was able to safely navigate my way to the exit stairs where the volunteer to whom I swam (an honest "thank you" for being out there) decided that it would be best that if I got out of the water on my own.
I did my best Simian running approach up the stairs to see that I had set a 4-1/2 minute IM PR in the swim with a 58:23 and 6th in the M35-39 AG. A HUGE thanks to Nineteen Wetsuits for supporting me this year. The Rogue is one fast, sleek and comfortable suit.
Utilized the wetsuit strippers, which took all of about 2-1/2 seconds and meandered my way around and through T1 where I was quickly able to snatch up my gear bag, which I had totally blacked out with duct tape so it would be easily recognizable. I didn't even have to break stride while picking up my bag.
T1 was simple enough - had an empty tent & my choice of chairs. Got everything situated and bolted out toward my bike. I was pretty quick through transition and I wasn't anywhere near as cold as I thought I would be upon exiting the water.
BIKE (4:59.40 - 224NP @ 167lbs (4:46.05 actual moving time))
So with Kona only a few weeks ago and knowing that running two marathons in the span of five weeks (let alone two Ironman marathons) is not particularly easy, my plan was to pretty much ride by feel - and thinking that somewhere in the neighborhood of 225-230w would be what felt right for the day. For comparison, my goal at Kona was to ride 245-250 and ended up riding 247w.
The benefit to coming out of the water that quickly was that I could pretty much ride with my head down staring at the white line. Plus, I was nose to the wind, which is how I love to ride...open road to myself with no worries about packs and the drafting that can ensue. I passed whom I'll simply call Mr. Kitty b/c I think he had what looked to be "MEOW" on the assback of his kit. I wanted to meow at him but a) that probably would have been a little strange (if it was a chick, different story) and b) my voice wasn't really functioning due to a cough that had hit me in the days leading into the race. I hit the turnaround at the top of the Beeline in 55 minutes at 235w. Perfect, I thought. Maybe a little slow, but there was a touch of a side headwind on the way out. On the way back down to town, it was a bit quick, so I dialed back on the power and what was 55 minutes on the way out was 39 minutes on the way back on 15 less watts. One third of the way through the ride, I'm sitting at 230w and was feeling groovy.
Second lap, same as the first. Bam!
The third lap started off just smashing. Felt good, calories were going down smoothly. Peed a couple of times. Was taking in a good amount of water considering the air was dry as my humor. Considering I was primarily riding by feel, the watts were reading a little lower, but I wasn't too concerned since I went through the first 2/3 of the ride at 4:45 pace on 230w. I figured I would be able to cruise the third lap at 215-220w and still come in between 4:45 and 4:50 depending on what the wind was doing.
Came up to about mile 90 3:45 into the ride and kablammo! Front tube exploded, came completely out of the tire and started wrapping itself around the right skewer and wheel spokes. This blew out the sidewall of my tire and all of a sudden I'm riding 20+MPH on two very thin rails of carbon. I had just passed someone, so I did my best to veer off to the side of the road without a) crashing and b) taking anyone else out. I then encountered what most people call rumble strips. But on the Beeline, they're more accurately described as 12" long x 3" wide x 2" deep potholes. It was a miracle that I didn't do an endo while coming to a teeth chattering stop. But in the process, several small chunks were taken out of my front wheel.
There I was, pretty much helpless since I needed a new tire and wheel to keep going. It was at this point where I tried to simply remain calm since there was really nothing I had control over other than drinking the water I still had on the bike and taking in some calories. I sat down and started thinking about next season...what was this going to mean? What races would I now sign up for? Would I go pro if Kona was taken off the table? (That's a discussion for another whole blog post...so spare me the "why don't you go pro" question for the time being). Should I start walking? Can I walk 20 miles in bike shoes before the time cutoff? ...then run 26.2? The thought makes my spine tingle.
So rather than having a pity party for myself, I started clapping and encouraging other riders at this point. I needed to stay positive and really, this was making me feel better. If I couldn't race, I was going to at least show some support for the people who were competing. I saw some of my competition roll by and well...they looked good.
I'd say after roughly 11-12 minutes of no forward progress, a headlight appeared coming around the corner of the highway. Low and behold, it was bike tech support and she happened to have a spare front wheel ready for use. Hooray - I'm not going to be stranded out here! I gave her my busted wheel and carnage of rubber and got the new wheel tightened up and was on my way. I got very lucky to say the least.
For the remainder of the ride, I didn't panic, didn't force any numbers from the legs, passed Mr. Kitty again since he passed me when I was sitting idle, kept hydrating and fueling and continued to ride by feel. My rough calculations still had me coming in at under 5:00 for the ride and I felt that regardless of what anyone else rode, that I would be running them down. The last hour of the ride, was at 213NP - so not forcing the issue.
I came into T2, grabbed my other blacked out bag without breaking stride and headed into the tent. Visor, Fuel Belt, Garmin and shoes on (double top secret special 2014 Newtons), Out the gate and got lathered up with some sunscreen and bolted out of there.
RUN (3:00.40 - IM run PR by 1:40)
The first couple of miles of an IM marathon are always kind of confusing. First of all, I felt like I was running through molasses, but the watch told me that I ran the first mile in 6:40.
"OK, buddy - time to ease up on the gas and be smart about this thing. Keep the cadence quick and the strides short and slow down a bit...be confident and smart."
I think too many people run scared those first few miles of the marathon and it *always* comes back to bite them in the end. I just wanted to run steady for 20 miles and see what I could dig out from inside of me for those last several miles to the finish.
I was running to plan and really had to work hard to keep my pace in check, especially starting at about mile 6, which is where I started to feel like I might have something special coming out of my legs today.
I was liberally using sponges and ice and dumping water over my head. I was putting the sponges down my jersey and every now and then, I'd squeeze a little water out of them - the action probably looked like I was feeling myself up. I even had a lady call me spongeboob.
Thinking is not something that I really do when I run - I'm good at zoning out and just running. But with all the planes flying overhead, I started playing a game: "where is this plane coming from?" OK - that one's coming from Denver...that's a bigger one - maybe it's coming from Hawaii...Kona even. That's an American plane? Chicago or Dallas. This was working until about mile 14 or 15 when I just started to feel like a rockstar. Coming up to an aid station at this point, I thought I heard Thunderstruck by AC/DC coming out of the speakers. This got me really jacked up and I started grunting the word thunder. I must have freaked some people out as I was doing this. But low and behold, I came up to the aid station it something horrific like Journey was playing instead. How the heck could I mistake Journey for AC/DC?! It was at this point where I think my ears started to bleed.
As I approached the last hill in Papago Park, I held back just a touch so that I wouldn't push myself over the edge going too hard at mile 23.
When I got to the bottom of the hill and started heading back east along the lake, I tried to pick up the pace a bit and passed the 3rd place women's pro while crossing the bridge before heading into the last stretch into the finish. As I came into the chute, I spotted my dad and gave him a big hug before walking it in with a 9:03 finish. 3rd place in M35-39AG, 4th amateur and my sixth straight Kona qualification. Here are the mile splits:
6:40, 6:57, 6:59, 7:02, 6:59, 7:06, 7:00, 6:59, 7:04, 6:47, 6:49, 6:53, 6:53, 6:53, 6:50, 6:41, 6:53, 6:50, 6:46, 7:00, 6:58, 6:56, 7:08, 6:53, 6:46, 6:31, 6:27 for last .2
NUTRITION BREAKDOWN:
*Pre race dinner: Chili's Full Rack of Ribs, Fries and a 22oz Sam Adams. (ritual)
*Breakfast: Pancakes, coffee, banana, 240 cals of UCAN
*Water and banana pre-race.
*Bike: 3 bottles each containing 360 cals of UCAN (1080 total for the ride). I think I took in 4 or 5 of the water bottles they were handing out on the course.
*Run: 2-1/2 flasks of water GU Roctane mix. Each flask contained 3 gels (100 cals each)
*Rough total for the race: 1800 cals total.
EQUIPMENT:
*Swim: Nineteen Rogue wetsuit
*Bike: Scott Plasma 3 Premium, ISM Adamo TT saddle, Zipp 404/808 FC clinchers with Wheelbuilder aero jacket, Power Tap, Continental GP 4000s, Vittoria Latex tubes, 54/42 FSA TT chainrings, 12/27 cassette
*Run: Yet-to-be-released unnamed Newton model. They're light and fast.
_________________________________
Steve Johnson
DARK HORSE TRIATHLON |