My 1st attempt at Ironman was last weekend in Montreal. Cool race venue, not exactly scenic but great logistically. Weather was great, sunny, pretty calm and around 24 degrees or so.
Last year I completed two halfs and wanted to challenge myself with the IM distance without breaking the bank or having to travel too far. My training went pretty much according to plan with the exception of my running where I had to cap my long runs as my body was threatening to break down.
Swim – Venue was awesome, giant pool 2k long and about 3 metres deep. Had to do two laps and I have no idea why we had to get out of the water after lap 1 when it could have easily been two loops all in the water, but whatever. Swim time was 1:15 on 12 hours swim training in the past 52 weeks. Never been a big fan of swim training and was happy to see basically the same swim pace in an IM as in a 2k swim without spending 50+ hours in the pool as in other years.
Bike – A lot of loops (41) but an interesting course, at least its not a big oval. Lots of other riders on the course and they are constantly changing as there were athletes from the half, then OLY, then Duathlon and Sprint tri. The small group of IM athletes were only really alone on the track for the last 5 or so laps. A timing chip is attached to the skewer of your front wheel and counts laps for you. I got worried a couple times because I didn’t hear a ‘beep’ crossing the mat but as I neared the finish the announcers began to call out the laps I had remaining it jived with my bike computer so it was all good. Another good thing about the course was it made it easy to plan your ride. The 1st few laps were spent hydrating & eating, figuring out where to save energy, where the port-a-potties were, the aid stations etc… I was hitting the lap button each lap and monitoring my effort and speed. The flat course made it very easy to settle into a rhythm and I felt this was by far the easiest ride I had done this year. I never felt I was working, never breathing hard and my max speed during the race according to my bike computer was 41kph. (There were two tiny downhills, one small uphill and a false flat that comprised all the elevation gain on the course which was probably around 10m per lap or so.) Nutrition was good, I just ate energy bars whenever I felt I could stuff one down and took either water or eload every 2-3 laps. Not really planned, just winged it.
Avg speed for each 10 lap segment (1st lap not included as there was a couple minutes of riding from T1 to enter the course)
Laps 2-11 32.3kph
Laps 12 -21 32.1kph
Laps 22 – 31 32.3kph
Laps 32 – 41 32.6kph
Bike time was 5:36 on an exceptionally fast course.
Run – I rolled out of T2 feeling awesome, well satiated (pretty sure that’s a word) but not full. Had 4 piss stops on the bike but felt I was well hydrated and my legs were ready to smash the run. The course is basically 9 laps of the rowing basin (actually you run around a bit before hitting the basin and then doing 8 and a half laps). The start of the run I kept feeling like wow this is easy, and that I should be speeding up. I kept at my prearranged pace and fought the urge to speed up. My niggling left hammy was niggling from almost the get go and I started to worry about it early. At around 24k I was still holding my 5:30km pace and instead of my hammy, it was my quads that began to fail me. The next lap was 5:51/km and by the end of it I was really feeling shit. My quads were shredded and I was full on into the dreaded IM shuffle I had heard so much about. At this point I hadn’t walked yet, I was running all the aid stations while getting down a drink or two or banana or whatever I could manage. Nutrition wise I think I was great but just the general lack of run mileage was going to prevent me from continuing at the pace I was running. At least I was now at the start of lap 7, only a third to go! These last 3 laps were a really painful combo of shuffle and walking the aid stations. A few brief times I was able to pick it up a bit but if I tried to speed up to what felt like around 6:15kms my calves would start to cramp so I would drop it back down and try to shuffle with my toes pointed up. I had to brace myself each time I transitioned from run to walk and walk to run as my quads couldn’t take it. I took 2-3 drinks each aid station and as soon as I drank them would “run” again.
The highlight came as I approached the start/finish to hit the start of lap 8, my 2nd last. I saw my family and they were decked out in their homemade support jerseys - awesome! My daughters ran with me a few hundred metres to the next aid station, circled back to the start and repeated for the last lap again. It was really nice to chat & run with them for a bit knowing I was almost done. As I struggled home (last 3 laps all around 7:15kms – who knew it was possible to go so slow!) they joined me and even had the audacity to outsprint me to the tape!!
Run was 4:21 and a little disappointing at the time but in retrospect I am fine with it as I now think plain & simple I needed more run training to do much better. Inexperience led me to underestimate the difficulty of the progression from half IM run to IM run. Never during the run was I tired, my HR was always under control, my respiration was easy and core temperature well under control. But damn, my legs hurt bad.
Final time 11:21 I achieved my time goal and have a new appreciation of how difficult the back of the marathon can be. One thing to hear about it and read about it but its not really something you can simulate in training. Happy that I was able to execute a decent result relative to my training and do it while enjoying my training sessions and not stressing or being anal about nutrition and not face any bad luck like mechanicals, GI issues etc…
As far as my run goes, I definitely blew up – I worked out my splits and its something like 1:55 / 2:26
Possible reasons
- Bike too hard
- Run too fast in 1st half
- Undertrained
I will have to go for #3. My absolute best-case, living in a dream run scenario would probably been 4 flat or higher. Based on my run training, there is zero chance of a neg. split – best case would be a moderate fade (long run of 28k with 8 runs of 20+k in the leadup). If I went 15 mins slower on the bike, how much faster could I realistically run? I don’t know but if I biked 15mins slower I would almost certainly be slower overall.
) . What a great race that was. I am 100% going back to do that race again.