Semi-Blagging my First Ironman

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.

 

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!’ 

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)

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 2^nd 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…)

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…