Most times in life, we never have the perfect opportunity to do anything. There is never the right time for a critical exam, there is never the perfect time to land the big deal at work or launch a new product, never the perfect time to get married, or have babies. As I tell my dad, you can spend your entire life planning life, or you can just live life seizing the moments that are offered you. I don’t want to be one of the guys looking back at my life realizing it had passed me by while I was busy planning it. Rather, within a larger framework of life, I’m in the mindset of seizing opportunities that present themselves, even if what I can do is not with the perfect preparation.
Last year I signed up for three Ironmans this year: Texas, Whistler and Tremblant, giving myself 3 chances of finishing my 25th Ironman this year. This year my son also finishes high school, starts college and my wife and I will have our 20th anniversary in a few weeks. So it’s a big year.
The following picture gives away the rest of the report and the emotion so no need to keep reading further. Mike Young (logella) who hosted me captured it all.
In terms of triathlon, work life got in the way, with several overseas trips in the first quarter of this year. Looking back, I was on the road 9 out of 12 weeks. I mainly ran a lot on the road and when home on the weekend did big weekends of XC skiing (classic style). In my mind I had given up on even trying Woodlands. I wanted training to be fun and convenient and had no desire to do anything more than 70 min on the trainer.
I had also signed up for Galveston and St. Croix. I love half IM training. I can’t say I enjoy IM training. But I enjoy the day of an Ironman. I really do love the “problem solving/mental aspect of the day”. I got through Galveston on 3 outdoor bike commutes on my folding bike and my general winter fitness from XC skiing. Edit (I forgot to mention that I generally lifted weights 3x per week at home, 5x on the road, picking hotels with gyms where possible). Then I was “blessed” with a 3 week block between Galveston and St. Croix with no travel. I was 7-8 lbs over race weight and needed to clamp down for St. Croix and get from 146 down to 138 lbs. No way you show up to St. Croix heavy or the heat will kill ya. St. Croix had two purposes…one of course is to go do my favourite half IM on the planet. The second was to get some heat training and see where my prep was at and it was realistic to try to attempt IM Texas on half IM training.
St. Croix was my longest day in each of the 3 sports all year. But they went really well. I even paced the bike and run there and did the bike close to all time bests from a power perspective. It gave me confidence that if I dialed down the pace, I could survive an Ironman bike and then jog through an IM run. I was down to 138, and my bike FTP was solidly in the 255 range (~ 4W per kilo again)
The above picture gives away my decision…
Barry Siff who I respect, and is 10 years ahead of me, and likely “gets” what it is about to be in the sport for many decades told me in St. Croix, “I think you are fit, you have all the experience, just go do it”. Mike Young (Logella) had previously invited me to stay with him. I contact him post St. Croix and said, “Is the offer still open”…to which he replied, “You’re luck, Rappstar’s parents are coming down and getting a hotel so I’m not hosting him, so you got a room…you’re my guest” (So Mike and family get a major downgrade in terms of pedigree of athlete…hmmmm podium guy vs, mid pack age grouper journeyman…). I checked flights from a connection in San Juan Puerto Rico to go to some business meeting in San Antonio (doh…wrong week to be in Texas for work) and booked flight to go to Houston for IM Texas…So it was St. Croix -San Antonio for work - fly home for the weekend and a few days catch up with family and work - get a new P3 - fly down to Houston on Thu - race Saturday.
Mike was pretty awesome sherpa-ing me around Woodlands and his family took me in like one of their own!
Everything you heard about IM Texas that you will hate came true…but that is OK…I signed up for it and want to go back already in 2015:
If you want to race on bone jarring chip seal in a wind tunnel just as you are getting tired on the bike sign up for IM TexasIf you want to swim in a swamp sign up for IM TexasIf you want your quads shattered on 26 miles of bone jarring concrete with 24 miles without shade sign up for IM TexasIf you want to run inside a venturi tube and be blown backwards in every directly sign up for IM TexasIf you want to curse that you did not train enough all winter sign up for IM Texas
Everything you heard that was good about it truly is
Best run course I have been on in terms of spectator supportEase of travel from Houston airport from many places in the world…you’re 20 min (speeding taxi and all) from George Bush Airport$60 cab fare each way, after that you technically don’t need a car…everything is at race sitePristine pavement for most of the course (minus the bone jarring parts)Very easy navigation in the water (below I will tell you how I was stupid enough to go off course)Excellent venue for the awards lunch at the MarriottA very fair bike course. I saw just a few small groups, but other than that, most people earn their bike splits…no free tows to T2If you love wind…you’ll love this course
Obligatory picture of Ferrari guy with his Pinarello:
That’s really the bulk of my report.
In terms of the race, I started on the far left, and managed to swim off course? How? Well around 200 of us ended up on the far left turn buoy (visibility was bad and I could barely see around all the thrashing arms and low light). So now had to swim all the way over to the right buoy and then back to the left one. My 34 min no wetsuit swim on the slow St. Croix course suggests I should be 62 min with wetsuit, but ended up in 68…that’s life and racing. It meant that T1 was more congested and T1 was slow…almost 4 min…and I stumbled around trying to open my bag in the dark and got it all messed up…eventually tore it open to get my shoes and helmet out
The comedy of errors continued around 80K into the bike when my right derailleur shifter started coming lose…my fault…eventually on the bone jarring tarmac, it eventually popped out. Now I am riding 100K holding a shifter with my right hand dangling on a cable. Each time I shifted, I held it with my left hand and shifted with my right hand. It meant I basically had very few opportunties to get out of the aero position. My watts dropped from 185 at the turnaround to around 182 finishing off. I was just losing some time playing around keeping my “mechanicals” together.
Below is around the last time I got to get out of the saddle…right after this the shifter pops out. By the way, I loved the new P3 up till then…
Perhaps the bike mishap was a blessing because I undercooked the bike for a 5:21. I was hoping for a 5:15 or so. This included a few stops on the side of the road to mess with the mechanical, but you can’t really fix that without partially removing the cable and re adjusting all shifting…I felt it was better to just roll with impaired shifting. Total work was 3446 Kilojoules…to put it in perspective, Kona was 3500, and Placid and Tremblant were both close to 3600. Texas was tough with the wind. Thus you don’t hear stories about trains to T2 because I don’t think they exist.
Onto the run, I just said, “your longest run is 21K this year, 12 days ago in St. Croix”…just jog to halfway and then once past that it’s going to be an Ironman fight with Godzilla. Does Godzilla win or the Ironman. My 8ish minute mile pace went to 9ish. I had no watch because I lost it in the scrum in the swim turnaround, so I was just asking people for time of day…if I could get to the finish by 5:30, then I beat my time from my first Ironman (10:30)
Well as you can see from the above stride length, the 9ish minute miles in the low 9’s crept up to over 10 as some points. I also under did my run nutrition. I planned to have 4 gels per loop and as my perform and coke as I could take in and 3 salt tabs per loop. I ended up taking in only 7 gels through the run…I just did not feel like more. Bike nutrition was 1700 calories. Run was more like 1000. This partially explains slowing down in the last 4 miles. The massive crowds got me through and my 4:01 run was just 2 minutes short of my target…the concrete, the wind, and my tail end nutrition execution on the run did me in. You could blame my lack of IM prep, but I don’t really think that played in…I have a lifetime of base to draw from, and I just under executed the tail of the run. In any case, I ran the entire thing (jogged, shuffled, but never walked). In 25 IM’s I have run every step in 24. 23 of those races were sub 11…I have an 11:15 and 12:30 (I walked in this one).
As it turned out the 4:01 run moved me UP from 27th off the bike to 17th M45-49.
Final 68 swim, 5:21 bike, 4:01 run, just over 7 minutes in transition (ouch)! : 10:38
IMC 1991, my first : 63 min swim, 5:37 bike (includes both transitions), 3:43 run: 10:30 (I want my run legs back)!
…and yes, I really wanted to beat the 1991 time…oh well!!!
All this to say, it really was an awesome day. I was totally pumped. Met a lot of friends from around the world and got to socialize in a triathlon context.
In 1986 I did my first half IM at the Green Mountain Steel man in Brattleboro Vermont. I actually got a Kona slot rolldown at that race (I think I was 6th in 20-24). I had my head hung between my legs and my father said something about them announcing my name if I wanted to do Hawaii. I said, “Those guys are crazy if they want to do double the distance”…now I am one of those crazy guys 25x over.
25x140.6 is the distance from my home in Ottawa to the Champs Elyeses in Paris. As an athlete of modest ability, I can’t be a pro in sport I am a professsional in other aspects of life and balancing being a parent, dad, and youth XC ski coach. This to me is like winning the Tour de France. It’s a couple of decades of smelling the roses and enjoying the journey and being part of sport meeting excellent people from around the world and sharing with them a privileged lifestyle that not many people on earth have access to.
Thanks to everyone of you guys who has helped me from number 1 to 25. You don’t get here on your own.