Post 47 - Ironman Wales bike

The bike leaves Tenby, and is fairly flat as it heads out to the west coast of Pembrokeshire, then it heads back inland and gets very hilly. Two hills laps follow, each of which loop inland and then back down through Tenby. It’s a tough bike course and difficult to keep any kind of rhythm.

I usually put on my bike shoes in the transition tent so I can just jump on the bike and get going. A lot of people leave their bike shoes clipped into their pedals and jump on the bike first, then once they are up to speed they’ll reach down and get their feet into their shoes. I don’t like doing this as you end up not looking where you are going, weaving all over the road, and risking a crash. Immediately after I left transition I came across two riders doing exactly this: reaching down, trying to get their feet into their shoes, weaving over the road. I shouted a few times to warn them I was coming through, and got away out of town.

It’s important to take it easy in the early stages of the bike, as it gets really tough and hilly later. I got into the routine of eating and drinking, and keeping as aero as possible. I tried to breathe slowly and keep the heart rate down, and maintain a cadence of 90rpm. There is always a lot to think about on the bike.

 

Not far from transition

It was a good ride out to Angle, the most westerly part of the bike course. The roads narrow out by the coast towards Angle, and you have an opportunity to see who is in front of you, as part of the course returns via the same road it heads out on. There didn’t seem to be as many people in front of me as last year, which was a good sign. I was already making places up and feeling good. The knee was holding, and I was managing my heart rate well.

I had put on really low gears specifically for Wales. Last year I ran a compact with a 26 at the rear. This year I had a compact with a 28, and it really paid dividends. I was able to go up the hills, spinning fairly easily at reasonably high cadence, while people around me were grinding and toughing it out, pumping away at low cadence and often having to get out of the saddle. I was no slower than everyone else up the hills, but I was going up them and exerting myself less than others. It was a good choice of gearing.

Drafting is illegal in Ironman bike racing. You must keep a 10m gap to the rider in front. There are race referees who police this, and penalties range from time penalties to disqualification. I think that the professionals are quite strictly policed, but the age-groupers are less strictly policed. Drafting at the sharp end of the race, where Kona slots are at stake, needs to be more strictly policed. There was a lot of drafting going on. I’ll concede that in Bolton and Wales, some sections of road are too narrow to allow safe overtaking and there may be cases where you end up too close to the rider in front. However, there are some sections of road where it is inexcusable. On one particular section I came up behind a train of about 5 riders, all clearly drafting. I went past them all, away out to the right hand side of the road. As I was passing them, a race referee on a motorbike came past and looked at the drafting train. You could see the drafters immediately drop back, as the referee said, “Mind the gaps, boys…” There should have been penalties issued there.

The bike continued. The first half of the bike should always feel fairly easy, ensuring you leave enough for the second half and the run. It was a warm day. My support crew had cycled out to Carew. It’s such a lift to see people you know, even if only fleetingly. I kept eating and drinking. It’s a bike course that requires total concentration. You can’t just put your head down and pedal. There are some parts of the course that are verging on dangerous. There was one left-hander in particular that almost caught me out.

I was zooming downhill, and approaching a left-hander. The really tight and dangerous corners on the descents have warning signs and marshals beforehand, to give you a chance to realise you need to scrub off some speed. There was nothing before this left-hander. It was a blind left-hander than tightened up as you got into it. There was a steep grassy bank on the other side. I was leaving a good gap to the guy in front of me, and had already checked there was no-one close behind – the last thing you want is for someone else to mess up and hit you.

The guy in front had a guy in front of him, and this first guy went in too hot to the corner. He ran out of road, hit the grassy bank and went flying. He had deep-rim wheels, and his front wheel literally just folded right over on itself. Game over. The wheel was probably worth at least a thousand pounds, and the guy was probably racing to qualify for Kona. He was OK. The guy in front of me panicked and skidded and just made it round. I got on the brakes and also made it round, but it was a dodgy corner and a dodgy moment. The course demands total respect and attention.

On the last section of the lap, passing through Saundersfoot and on the road into Tenby, there are some particularly savage hills, which reach over 20% gradient. One of these hills has been dubbed “Heartbreak Hill”. They are tough enough on the first pass, but on the second lap you hit them after over 100 miles of riding, so you need to make sure you judge the bike pace well.

A good way to get up the hills is to hit the bottom of them as fast as possible, and let your speed take you up. So I was hammering through Saundersfoot, a couple of hundred metres before Heartbreak Hill, and the crowd were going mad for everyone who passed. It really is an amazingly well-supported race. A Tour de France atmosphere. Then all of a sudden a little kid was running onto the road in front of me. I don’t know how he managed this, because there were safety railings keeping the crowd off the road. I barely had time to react when his dad ran into the road and snatched him away. I dread to think if I’d hit him…

Then I rounded the corner and hit Heartbreak Hill. It’s only maybe a couple of minutes to ride up, but there must have been thousands and thousands of people on the hill. Screaming, yelling, cheering. Brilliant. I was comfortable at this point and had low gears, so I was able to spin up the hill and enjoy it. It was literally like Alpe d’Huez during the Tour de France. Crowds and crowds of people. Unreal. Heartbreak Hill was the first time in 70 miles of riding that my heart rate went above 170bpm, which was good, I'd been pacing well and the hills hadn’t been destroying me.

You couldn't help but smile going up Heartbreak Hill - a gauntlet of noise

A couple more hills later and I was zooming through Tenby, again through awesome crowds of people, and then out onto the second lap. After the previous 20 minutes where there were so many spectators, it became quiet and almost lonely again. It was at this point last year that I began to struggle on the bike.  To try to avoid this, I took on a bit more food than usual in the next 30 minutes. Maybe this was an error. At this point, the bottle of energy drink that I was drinking from was also far too concentrated, and it left me doing burps that I felt could turn pukey. I was feeling a little bloated and I was craving some water, but the next aid station was some way away, so I was forced to keep drinking the concentrated stuff. It wasn’t ideal, but it didn’t feel disastrous.

 

 

Passing through Tenby, lap 1

 

I still felt OK, and I knew from my average speed that I was on for a reasonably good bike split, and definitely faster than my 5:53 from last year. Finally I reached the next aid station, ditched the horrible drink and got a nice bottle of water. Such a difference. The energy drink was so acidic. Like drinking sulphuric acid. The water was benign and neutral. Nice. I kept pedalling, tried to keep my concentration, and it was good to see the support crew again in Carew. I started feeling better. You hit bad patches, and you just have to manage them and get through them. I tried to keep as aero as possible. On this course you constantly are getting up from the aero position on the aero bars: to go up the hills, or to tackle a fast and twisty descent, or to get on the brakes, or to eat, or refill the bottles. It’s important to force yourself back down into the aero position as soon as possible.

Hitting the final section of the lap, I knew the final hills would be tough and the descents would require care, especially now that I was lapping people. I got over the hills, and cruised down the final gradual downhill into Tenby. I loosened my shoes, took a final drink, had a final gel, and then reached Tenby. I climbed up the last climb into town and then into T2.

I had biked 5:43. This was 10 minutes faster than last year. However, again I was slightly disappointed by this. Earlier in the year, before I went to hospital, I had done a 100 mile time trial 15 minutes faster than the same time trial the year before. So I thought than in a 112 mile Ironman bike, I would be over 15 minutes faster than last year. It reconfirmed that despite my best efforts after hospital, I hadn’t quite reached the peak that I was at in June this year.

I racked my bike, went into the transition tent, took off my helmet, shoes and top, put on a new top and new socks, and grabbed a small plastic bag containing the things I’d need on the run. Then I started the run. The knee had done OK up to now. My times so far were solid if not quite spectacular.

Regarding Kona qualification, my times at this point didn’t leave me thinking “Yes I am in a really good position to do this”, but neither was I thinking, “No chance”. It would all come down to the marathon, and how well my knee would hold up, and how well I would run. I had done a 3:34 marathon at Wales last year, and deemed this to be a poor marathon. I wasn’t fresh getting off the bike last year. I hadn’t paced the bike well and as a result, my marathon had been poor. This time round, I felt much better getting off the bike. My overall race time when I started the marathon was 7 hours. I thought that if my knee held, my worst-case marathon would be 3:30. This would give me 10:30 overall. I thought I needed 10:15 to be in the top 5 and to qualify. So I felt that anything better than 3:30 would give me half a chance. The question was, how much better than 3:30 would I be?

There was no way of knowing at this point that a conservative 3:30 marathon would have been enough to qualify. But a look at the results after the race told me that 3:30 was all I needed. I would have bitten your hand off (and I’d have bitten off plenty else too) to be told that a 3:30 marathon would be good enough to qualify. But I didn’t and couldn’t know this on leaving T2. I figured I had to run 3:20 or better to have any chance.

And so I started the run…