Having competed in some long distance races, IM Florida was to be my first Ironman distance race. Even though the last week before travelling to the US was very stressful because I had to redo all the travel arrangements, preparation for the race had been almost perfect in the last few months. I completed a very solid block of training and I felt confident and at the same time afraid of the Ironman.
RACE WEEK: On the monday before the race I travelled to the US, first from Lisbon to Paris, then Paris-Atlanta and finally Atlanta-Tallahassee. At the airport Geoff Layne e Michele White, my hosts for the week, picked me up. I have to say that Geoff e Michele were simply spectacular. They made me feel right at home and I was able to relax and focus on the upcoming race. Race week went by very well, I tried to rest and do the training I had scheduled. This was my first time in the US and everything looked very new and different to me, but I tried just to go through the motions in order to stay focused on the race. I was able to get online and it was good to stay in touch with the people back home. I received some emails from teammates encoraging me for the race and was able to chat with my coach.
RACE MORNING: Because I travelled west for the race, getting used to the early start time was easy. I was able to get some sleep and woke up at 3AM for my usual race day breakfast.
THE SWIM: Floating in the water waiting for the start I didn’t know whether I should feel lucky the pros had a head start or not. Swimming being not my strong point, and with very choppy conditions, I knew that 1000m into the race the first AG would be swimming over me. The gun went off and after 3-4 mins I knew I was right. AG swimmers swam over me left and right and from then on the swim was in survival mode. After the first lap I realized that I wasn’t going as bad as I feared because I entered the water again along with Steve Larsen, which me and my coach figured would swim around the 56min mark. The second lap was more of the same and on exiting the water again I felt I had lost time. I was very happy when I saw the clock though: 56min and change.
THE BIKE: Once on the bike I tried to get into my rythm fast. Getting the HR down and waiting for the usual time to start drinking and eating. I didn’t feel so good in the first one and a half hours. But afterwards the nutrition started to kick in and I felt just great. I rode within myself, just doing things according to plan. Because of the stagger rule I rode on the left most of the time, since along with me rode some age-groupers. In the pack rode Alejandro Santamaria who had beat me 2 months ago in a LD race in Spain. Alejandro didn’t seem to understand the stagger rule and was later DQ’ed. The marshalls did an excellent job and everybody was riding clean. Around the 120km mark we caught Jonas Colting who stayed with us. I felt just great and with 20km to go I got away from the pack and rode away. I looked at my HRM and saw I had done around 4:50. I just thought to myself “Good bike leg and I feel good for the run…”
THE RUN: Since I got into triathlons three years ago my dream has always been of doing an Ironman. And almost since then my coach has said over and over again “Anyone that can run under 3 hours will end up on the top-10 of ANY Ironman race”. With that thought I hit the run course. I had the notion I was just outside the top-20 and was determined to make up some ground. As soon as I started to run I felt good and got into my stride pretty quickly. Even feeling great I focused on keeping my nutrition on track. The running felt so easy I couldn’t believe it! The run course is two laps and I really shocked myself when I saw the time for the first half: 1:20! With the course being marked in miles and not kms like I’m used to, I guess I didn’t realize just how fast I was going! After realizing this, which really was my only rookie mistake of the day, I slowed down a bit thinking that I would go through a bad patch sooner or later. Still I was passing runners and I passed Steve Larsen right at the begining of the second lap. All these guys that I know only from the Net and magazines, now I was among them, I felt very excited. At the final turnaround I saw that I was less than a minute from Dave Harju! But by then I started to pay the price for that fast first half and started to fade.Around the 20mile mark I started to feel tired and the last 6 miles were a struggle. I could only mantain 7:30mile pace and the only thought on my mind was to get to the finish. When I passed the clock in the last mile it read 8:37 and I just thought “Only 7:30min to go, I’m going to do a great time!!!”. Going through the finish line chute I just felt so happy! Tired but SO HAPPY!!! The race annoucer called out my name and I crossed the line. Right after I crossed it, Michele caught me as I felt a bit dizzy. I just asked her my placing and couldn’t believe it when she said “Seventh, you got 7th place!!!”.
The day after I attended the awards ceremony and the only bad part of this wonderful dream. I had to pass down my Hawaii Ironman spot since it would be too expensive for me to travel to the race next year, racing in Florida was already very difficult. Ironman is not very popular in Portugal so it’s hard to get sponsorship and the Federation only supports Olympic athletes. I guess I’ll have to postpone that dream, which might be good, in 2005 I’ll be in Kona to compete! 
Right now it’s been almost 48 hours since I finished the race and I only got 4 hours of sleep, I feel SO great!
I have a bunch of people I want to thank: My family, my (smartass)coach, all the guys from the team, Helder for all the help in preparing the trip and for giving me a kickboard for the first time less than 3 years ago
Also my sponsors: Profile Design, Fuel Belt, X-Terra wetsuits that believed in me even without a big race resume. I especially want to thank Frank Rehnelt for providing me a Renn disc for me to race in since the rear wheel I had borrowed from a friend was a Corima 4-spoke. And also thank John Cobb for helping out when me and Frank were wondering how to make a Shimano 9-speed work with Campagnolo 10-speed. “DO NOTHING” he said and guess what… it worked! :-).
I guess its all for now
Sergio Marques