The gloomy silence at 4.30am in the breakfast lobby of
Kalmar’s Stadt Hotel was deafening. Pierced from time to time by the pouring of
coffee and scrape of plates, lonely lean muscled men sat, one at each table, in
silence, morosely contemplating what they’d got themselves into. Had they
trained enough? Would they die today? Would they beat their personal bests?
What were they doing it for? There was no laughter as each, one by one got up
and made the walk to the starting gates for the city's 2014 Ironman Triathlon
event.
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| Nutrition based training should be avoided at all costs if you want to make it a real challenge |
Like its sister in insanity, the Marathon de Sables, Ironman
has managed to collect together large numbers of divergent people at specific
locations (this year 2300 athletes raced Kalmar) in order to make the ‘crazy
guy’ of each town feel in some way he’s in fact normal and the rest of the
world is mad. Those loners you’d see running at 5am when you roll home from the
pub, those freaks who’d pass you, cycling up lonely mountain roads in the
pouring rain, or swimming across freezing lochs in March. These are the guys
you find, descending here, to engage in what is often the final culmination of
their bizarre life cycle – The mighty Ironman Triathlon –A 3.9km open water
swim, then a 180km cycle, followed by a 42.2km run (marathon) all in order to
find the energy to sprint down that last 500metres, cheered by the crowd and
the final blue carpet, and flashing photos, to cross the line and finally, say
‘I am Ironman!’
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| It should be like this but 2 hours earlier and in daylight |
Totally ludicrous isn’t it?
I’m not really sure how others trained for this race, but
looking at my own average guy physique, I know I didn't do nearly enough. As
6.45am rolled by and we walked, one by one to the starting line, Euro-pop
blared out of the speakers and a super-energised German/Swede/Italian kind of
guy pumped out energetic verbal diarrhea, to distract us all from the fact we
were about to go over the trenches and not all of us would make it. I looked
around at the other wetsuit clad madmen. Still no one spoke. A remembered a
Japanese word I’d learned. ‘Boketto’ - It means to stare into nothing and empty
the mind. I did that, trying to resist the temptation to pee in my wetsuit, and
before I knew it id been herded to the start, and into the sea, beginning a 14 odd
hour odessey of pain and regret - primarily regret for not learning previous
lessons and trying to half-blag, lets face it, one of the hardest races in the
world.
I’d learned to swim front crawl 2 months ago, thanks to the
Buffalo and Glasgow Tri clubs help, but the effort of that, my incessant
travelling and awful diet pushed the bike and run to the back burner, so
training in those came between fear of not finishing and cramming a month
before the race (with of course the usual ‘if I finish the swim, ill surely
finish the race on pure willpower’ lie)
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| You should probably go quicker than this too |
The race itself feels mostly like it was just a long and not
very pleasant dream, apart from the swim, which was surprisingly enjoyable. I
think I was just happy that I could actually do it without too much effort. I
managed to swallow some sea water after getting kicked in the face by someone
going round the buoy, but quickly blanked it out of my mind, and got onto the
bike not believing my luck of being alive.
My cadence computer didn't work of course (why do things only
break when you need them?) but I still held back on the first (102km) loop,
thinking that the small issue of the marathon would need a little reserve
strength, but as I went over the lovely 6km long Kalmar bridge the rain came
pouring down and slowed things a little for the 2nd loop, and my honey/water/electrolyte
tablet combo was neither working very well or stopping me tiring. The old
lesson of trying out your nutrition before the race is probably correct on
reflection, as while my stomach was cramping, my heavy farting luckily wasn't
following through (unlike one lovely young lady who my friend passed, who had
crapped herself instead of going to the bathroom, thus saving 3 minutes and
also leaving a brown lump under her lycra cycle shorts with brown skid-marks
running down her legs. Probably German, they’re into that kind of stuff, I hear
you think, but my lips are sealed on the nationality this time…)
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| Sauntering Through the Bike Stage |
I must commend the running layout in Kalmar though -
basically 3 loops of about 14.5 km, so in your mind you can break it down to 3
shorter runs. The downside of course was that by then my back was aching badly
from not getting a proper bike fit before the race (so I was down on my
tri-bars for hours in an uncomfortable position) and after 180km, my legs were ready to
commit suicide. With my back out, I seemed
to have basically used up my core muscles completely, and so the old
chi-running backup was mostly out of the running, so I managed to get into a
kind of ‘Ansemo robot’ posture, that didn't take up much energy, and crawled
along at what was probably my slowest ever marathon pace. At the beginning of
the third lap, I realized there was a guy in front of me walking and my running
was so slow that I actually wasn't catching up with him, so I walked with him
for ten minutes, until my legs began to seize up. Egged on by the now drunk
supporters, it dawned on me that actually I had a lot of energy left after all,
and picked up the speed for the last 8km, running through the pain at a decent
pace for the rest of the race and realizing as I passed the enormously
energizing crowd that I could have really done this for the whole marathon....
Ah well, never mind, despite all the lessons learned about
Ironman from actually finishing the race, they were right after all. The last
500 metres where you run through the town lined with crowds who seem to know
your name (probably because of the name tag thing) and then the long straight
that you sprint up, which seems to last forever towards the grandstand and
finally the blue carpet and the finish line, and then to see you beat the time
you were aiming for by 5minutes, makes it all worth it, at least once in your
short life…
