It’s 8 days after Ironman UK. What a nightmare it turned out
to be. I thought it would be a good day. A great day. I had worked hard enough
for it. I was in shape to qualify. Training had gone as well as it could have
been expected to go, given my circumstances. I was really pleased, until I had
that massage and ended up in hospital. The three weeks from having the massage,
going to hospital, being in a very bad way, trying to recover, agonising over whether or not to start
the race, travelling up to Bolton for the race weekend, racing and ultimately pulling
out were a total nightmare, and I’m so glad and relieved it’s over, and
disappointed with how it turned out.
I knew when I was in hospital that my Kona chances were
severely diminished, but I having talked with quite a few experts, I finally
arrived at the decision that it was worth starting to see if I had the
performance in me. That way, there would be no “what-ifs”. Before I got sick, I’d
have said that I had a really good chance of qualifying. I would never be
complacent, but I knew I was in great shape. After getting sick, I knew that
there wasn’t much chance. That’s nothing to do with doubting my physical or mental
capacities, but if medically I am unable to perform, no amount of prior
physical fitness or mental toughness can return those lost percentages. It
needs time and patience. To qualify for Kona, everything needs to be perfect,
or as near as dammit, and I knew things were a long way off perfect.
The Saturday at Ironman UK is a logistical nightmare. There is
so much driving and setting up to do. The key areas (start/T1, T2, finish area)
are all miles apart and it takes ages to set up. Plus, the new bike course had
to be driven and viewed. So Saturday wasn’t a fun, feet-up type of day.
Bags in T1
Race morning stuff, for the swim and bike
Herded in...
Anyway, race morning came, and it all felt so surreal, like
it wasn’t really happening. To be honest, I was crapping myself. Scared of it. I got in the water and swam my first lap. I kept
away off to one side and out of the scrum. I felt OK on the first lap, and when
I exited the water for the first time I had a glance at my watch. It said
28-something. Last year at halfway through the swim it said 27-something, so my
initial reaction after half the swim was “not too bad”. I continued to swim at
the same effort level, thinking I’d finish the swim in 57 or 58 minutes. Last
year I did 55. It started to drag a bit, my goggles leaked a bit, sighting
became difficult, and when I got out of the water and completed the swim, my
watch said 61. Bummer. Not what I wanted. Again, I didn’t feel terrible, I felt
I had put in a decent effort, but I just didn’t get back the speed that I
normally would if I was 100%. 61 minutes was a poor swim. I was 6 minutes down
on last year after only an hour.
If my physical sharpness was down, so was my mental
sharpness. I did things in the wrong order in transition. I took my goggles off
before trying to get my wetsuit off. Normally you would leave them on your
head, but I was struggling to get out of my wetsuit with my goggles in my hand.
Silly. I finally got out of my wetsuit and struggled into my tight bike jersey
and got out onto the bike.
Swim start scrum
Come off!
At this point, I got a first look at my heart rate. Normally
a few minutes in transition would bring it down, and I was hoping it would be
130 or so. It was 165. Really high. It took about 30 minutes of very easy
cycling to bring it down to 150. And that was the story of the bike – I had to
cycle easier than I wanted to maintain a suitable heart rate. If I tried to go
at the speed I wanted to, the heart rate would climb. So again, I wasn’t
getting back the speed that my effort would normally get me. I soldiered on,
kept eating and drinking, and it was a tough cycle.
Last year it was a 3-lap route with one major climb on each
lap. Three climbs in total. This year it was a 2-lap route on tighter,
twistier, bumpier roads. With loads more climbing. And wind too. No chance of
getting into any kind of a rhythm. The absolute antithesis of the Icknield 100
mile time trial. I had some words with a Belgian guy who was sitting in my
slipstream on a really exposed part of the course. My heart rate was over 170
going into a strong headwind. It was tough. I could sense someone sitting on my
wheel, getting a free ride. Drafting/slipstreaming is illegal in Ironman races,
and should result in disqualification. Ironman UK was not particularly well
marshalled.
He was on my wheel for long enough to get me annoyed. At the
same time as I dropped back to give him an earful, an English competitor
started telling him to ride his own race. I told him to get off my wheel and
stop cheating. He seemed to plead ignorance, but dropped off. A few miles
later, he came past me. “Hey crazy Irish guy, you are f*cking crazy….” The
English guy was still in the vicinity and between the two of us we told him to
respect the rules. He kept arguing, claiming the roads were too tight and there
were too many cyclists around to keep the required 10 metre distance. This was
total rubbish, as we had been on the widest and most open part of the course
when he was doing his wheelsucking. My heart rate was spiking with all the
chit-chat, so I decided not to waste any more energy on him. I just gave him a
growl and rode off.
Going up Sheephouse Lane (the main climb) for the second
time, I had reeled in the female pros. I went up side by side with Joanna
Carritt, and we rode together over a massive cock-a-doodle-doo someone had
painted on the road, in obvious defiance of the pre-race warnings: “Do not mark
the road, you will be prosecuted.” Joanna and I looked at it, and laughed, and
she said, “Nothing like a massive knob to inspire you!” And with that, she took
her inspiration and off she went. For the remaining ten minutes of the climb,
she must have taken about two minutes out of me. Who needs names painted on the
road, when a big cock-a-doodle-doo makes you climb like she did…?!
And so the ride passed in a haze of mediocrity. The final
big climb at 95 miles or so was an absolute killer. It kicked up to a 17%
gradient, which I went up at about 5mph. Painful. It was a much tougher bike
course that last year, and comparable to the Ironman Wales bike course for
toughness. I finished in 5:39. I had been hoping for something like 5:20.
Bummer.
I really screwed up T2. I didn’t loosen my shoes coming into
transition. In the transition tent, I forgot where I had hung my T2 bike-to-run
bag. Then I forgot what number I was. Then the marshal could see I was totally
lost in a sea of red bags, and asked me what my number was. And I told her the
wrong number, and lifted the wrong bag. Then she saw my number on my back, and
I finally got the right bag. Then I proceeded to put my run top on inside out.
I don’t know how I managed this. Then I ran off leaving my sunglasses on the chair
in the tent, and thankfully the marshal yelled after me, and I picked them up.
There was a horrible hill on the first half-mile up to the main course, then
after that I actually felt that I was running reasonably well.
However, given that I was between the second and third
female pros, and given that I’d had such a mediocre race, I guessed I was some
way off where I needed to be to qualify for Kona. I’d have guessed I was in the
top twenty in my age group at that stage. Maybe top 50 or 60 overall. Still in
the top 3% overall, but a long way off what I needed for Kona. After a few
miles, I felt I had it in me to finish, and probably to finish pretty well, but
I knew I wasn’t going to run a sub-3 hour marathon to get me to Kona. When I
got onto the looped part of the course, I could see runners heading back into
town when I was still heading out to the turn. I could tell by their race
numbers what age group they were in, and this confirmed that there was no way I
was going to qualify. There were too many of them ahead of me.
I had pretty much realised on the bike and swim that today
wasn’t going to be my day. There’s no way my level of output was good enough to
qualify. So I made the decision to call it a day. I wouldn’t call it giving up.
I would call it keeping an eye on the bigger picture and thinking about my
future options. There was no point in destroying my legs for 26 miles of a
marathon. I had been thinking about Ironman Wales, 2 months away. If I was to
enter Wales, hopefully with the infection and illness well and truly behind me,
then running the full marathon in Bolton wouldn’t have been a good idea. Only
having run 10 miles of the marathon will mean I won’t need much recovery time,
and this will be better for my Wales preparation.
I wasn’t too disappointed in calling it a day. I’d already suffered
the emotions in hospital. I’d had quite a few people travel long distances to
this race to support me and I was disappointed for them – my parents, Elise,
Steve, Natalie and Kim. Particular thanks to Elise who endured the entire awful race weekend, all the driving, and all the annoying stressful details. It should have been such a good day, but things just
didn’t work out. For the third race in a row, I’ve had Kona within reach and it
has been derailed.
Ugh
I went to the medical tent and had a full check-up,
including an electrocardiogram. I was given the all-clear. By this stage, the
first finishers were starting to come through. I saw the first 3 finishers in
my age group come through within a minute of each other, in 9:45. I didn’t feel
that 9:45 would have been beyond me on a better day. But none of this matters.
All that matters is that I didn’t/couldn’t perform at Bolton. Which means that
I won’t be going to Hawaii in October 2014.
The elusive finish
Bikes in T2
It’s a tough gig, this Ironman business… You fight and fight
and try and try and put so much in, and you can just be dealt the most
ridiculous curveballs that can totally derail everything. But, you can also
dust yourself down and try again…
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