My Ironman Race: When It Just Doesn't Go As You Planned

During race week my mind wasn’t in a good place. I expected to arrive in Ottawa feeling strong and positive about things but I was anything but.

My last long ride a couple of weeks earlier had been a disaster. I felt myself getting weaker and weaker the longer I rode and ended up getting “hot foot” around 120k. Additionally I was having trouble focusing on my long open water swims which were starting to bore me.

Sure there were positive signs on some shorter rides and swims but they were out weighed by my struggles with the longer ones.

I kept thinking that maybe transitioning from obese couch potato to Ironman over a 5 month period was a bridge too far. Doubt started to set in about being strong enough both physically and mentally to handle the Ironman distance.

And things continued to go from bad to worse once I arrived in Ottawa.

I lost my credit cards Friday morning and later that day I scraped my car’s right fender while trying to park in one of those tight underground parking spaces at the hotel.

I also managed to catch a chest cold and to top things off my asthma started acting up due to all the smoke in the air from the forest fires out West.

Normally when an air quality advisory is issued I will train inside. A couple of years ago during the Ride To Conquer Cancer I was forced to ride the entire 220k distance in my basement on the bike trainer because of the poor air quality. It was mind numbing.

But in Ottawa this wasn’t an option and I had to make a big decision. I thought since this was going to be my last Ironman I should go ahead and give it my best shot. Stupid me had left my puffer back home.

The Night Before

My friend Karen knew I was struggling mentally and she sent me a motivational video about not quitting on Saturday and I watched it a number of times that night before going to bed.

I went to bed early and set the alarm for 1 AM so I could carbo load by drinking 3 bottles of Boost. After that back to bed for a short period.

Race Morning

I woke up at 3 and was in bad shape coughing and wheezing. I’m still hacking as I write this.

The Contessa knew I was in trouble and asked me what I wanted to do. I said I still wanted to give it a shot and she said ok but just to treat it like a long training day and see what happens. Hearing her say that and accepting it immediately took the pressure off.

I married above myself what can I say? I’m a lucky guy.

At 4 I left my room carrying 3 bags of equipment along with my 8 bottles of Gruppo nutrition. I had to walk about 1k to the buses that would take us to T1.

Once I got to T1 and dropped my bags off, I had to go to the washroom so bad but of course there were about 30 people lined up to use the 5 porta potties that were available. I was embarrassed to let people to know I was dying to go. I thought about paying the people ahead of me to get ahead but I had no money on me. I even thought about jumping into the next free porta potty but thought that might cause a riot. In the end I managed to hold on but it was a true test of endurance and the racing hadn’t even started yet.

The sun that morning looked like a red glowing ball because of the smokey haze. On the plus side the smoke did manage to keep the heat down in the morning which was a big plus.

I seeded myself in the swim line based on my estimated swim time towards the back.

While waiting for my swim start I enjoyed talking to a bunch of nice people. Many were first timers and they smiled when I told them I was retiring from Ironman and that this race was going to be my last one.

I loved seeing the excitement along with the fear in their eyes. Fear of the unknown would they be good enough when tested - only time would tell.

Their excitement reminded of my own first Ironman at lake Placid. Similar to your first kiss, this is a life changing experience and one that you never forget.

The Swim

My swim got off to a bad start. There was a strong breeze coming in from the west which made the water choppy and when I breathed on my left side I kept swallowing water.

I’m only trained to breathe on one side so switching over wasn’t an option. After about 10 minutes of swallowing water and coughing underwater I started thinking about quitting.

I stopped swimming and a lady on a paddleboard asked me how I was doing and if I wanted to be pulled. When I heard those words memories of the motivational video that I had watched the night before kicked in and I said to myself that I wasn’t going to quit.

I told her I was ok and continued to swim which was a good thing because when we made a left turn at the next buoy the waves started hitting me on my right side and I now could breathe on my left comfortably.

Shockingly the swim started to feel easy to me and I started to enjoy it. Maybe my taper really did work.

I had swimmers on my left side which I could see every time I took a breath and they reminded of dolphins swimming through the waves.

We swam in unison until about the half way point where something unexpected happened. I could make out a number of blurry people ahead of me standing up. I thought it was people on paddled boars which seemed strange and then I realized it was swimmers who were walking in shallow water. I thought they were walking on sand but instead it was round rocks both big and small that were about a foot under the water. When I reached them I tried to stand up and walk but the rocks kept rolling under my feet causing me to fall and I ended up banging my right knee.

No one told us about these rocks and I was a little ticked off about that. The only way I could get over the shoal was to swim on my back doing back stroke and pulling on the rocks for propulsion. I eventually made it over the shoal and started swimming again and got back into a nice rhythm.

I maintained pace with some other swimmers until I unexpectedly swam into a person standing on a floating board in the middle of the swim lane. I asked what the heck he was doing there (not exactly those words) and he said he was anchored to a rope that they didn’t want swimmers to get tangled in (?). I still can’t figure that one out.

I started swimming again and about 500 meters from the finish my swim cap started coming off and if I lost it I would be disqualified. I asked a lady in a kayak if she could help me get it back on – it’s hard to do it when you are in the water and she struggled for a while until she got it on. During the process my googles came apart and after fixing them they leaked for the rest of the swim. But I was finally able to make it to shore after all that in a time of 1 hour and fifty one minutes.

Bike To Swim Transition

Once I entered the change tent I sat down and coughed for a long time. Once things settled down I drank some cold water and changed into my riding gear. Total transition time was a slow 16 minutes.

The Bike

In spite of everything I had experienced on my swim I felt good. The only problem I had to deal with was neck pain while riding aero. I kept massaging it and moving it around trying to loosen it up. I stopped at the first aid station and took some Advil and eventually it settled down and I could ride comfortably.

Surprisingly early in the bike I felt better than at any time in the previous three months. I felt rested, energized and strong. In one of the race pic’s taken of me riding I was actually smiling.

The bike course was perfect for me. No major hills to contend with just some rollers and it was pretty fast. I was able to maintain an average speed of 24k which was just over my target speed of 23kph. Although I could have ridden faster I knew not to knowing there was a marathon ahead.

There was a 20k section with a strong headwind. While pushing through this section the knee I hit on the rock in the swim started hurting and my adductor on the same side started talking to me but once I made it through this section I was able to take some pressure off the pedals the pain went away.

I was still coughing a lot so I stopped at every aid station to clear my throat, and take in some cold water along with a gel. The interesting thing is when I started riding I felt strong again something that never happened in training and that made me smile.

I saw a number of people crash ahead of me because of the poor road conditions and you could see water bottles, bike computers, and other equipment strewn over the ground in some of the real bad spots.

I heard a familiar voice yell out at me around the 60k mark. It was the Contessa and she said I was looking real strong which made me smile. The truth is, I did feel strong which told me all the hard training was paying off.

I felt good at the half way point where I took in my additional nutrition at bike special needs and felt I would make the bike cut off which had been a big worry of mine.

I was executing my race strategy to plan and as I continued to ride I actually started passing some riders. These are people who often went out too fast, or messed up their nutrition.

I was feeling pretty good about things until while trying to push up a roller I heard a loud crack. I feel sideways on my bike and ended up in a ditch which luckily was filled mostly with sand.

I was lying there on my back with both feet still clipped in holding my bike up in the air. A volunteer came over and helped get my bike off me.

My aero bar had snapped where it was attached to the right arm pad. Thankfully the rest of my bike was ok and I ended up riding back to T2. My race was done but strangely enough, I was ok with that.

All in all I was very happy with the race. All the months spent training had paid off and I felt strong even after swimming 3.8K and riding 100K.

I was also very proud that I didn’t cave when my commitment was tested early on in the swim.

I believe everything happens for a reason and maybe the man upstairs thought I had done enough and going any further dealing with a chest cold along with asthma wouldn’t be such a great idea.

I’m over the moon happy to have my health back but I still have a lot of work to do in preparation for next year’s half ironman.

One thing I know for sure is that it’s important to have something to look forward to something that gets you excited.

The icing on the cake is that the Contesa told me I can buy a new bike!