Post 202 - Kona day 9 - Race day: swim

Saturday 12th October 2019 - Day 9 - The swim

The start of the Ironman World Championships. The beginning of the end of a journey that has been nearly 10 years in the making. I started to swim... what else was I going to do?! 3800m of swimming were ahead. Over an hour. And probably over 3800m as well, as most people say the course is long (I’ve even heard as much as 4300m). I wanted a nice, easy swim, not using up too much energy, and not having any contact or biff with anyone else. I’d happily give up 5 minutes in the swim for it to be stress-free and easy and to come out of the water feeling fresh, with a relatively low heart rate. I’ve been in swim scrums before and it’s no fun.

This year's start was...

...slightly less spectacular than in previous years

My neck wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t really restricting things either. I could deal with a bit of discomfort as long as it didn’t start restricting me. I tried to keep things nice and smooth and controlled. There were maybe 200-300 in this starting wave and I was off to the left. Out of the scrum.

The sea was fairly flat, not much swell or chop. It looked worse in the videos I saw after the race. Even the commentators and other competitors were saying there was a lot of swell. I didn't think it was too bad at all. Maybe they had never raced Ironman Wales...! Usually the sun rises over the volcano to the left of the swimmers, but it was overcast, so breathing to both sides was no problem as there was no glare or dazzle. It all seemed fine. Goggles not leaking. Earplugs not leaking. Swim skin (I assume) making me a couple of seconds faster per hundred metres. My foot (that I’d bumped on a rock while entering the water) felt OK. My neck was OK. I kept sighting, keeping going in as straight a line as possible. It was all going swimmingly… or as swimmingly as could be hoped.

Apparently a real photo!

I made big efforts not to swallow salt water. The water was very, very salty, and taking on too much salt water would leave me puking up. I didn’t need that. But, in spite of best efforts, you always swallow a bit. I kept going. It was all fairly reasonable and I hoped it would continue. The bottom was just about visible, but it was quite murky due to the lack of light and the grey sky.

Then after maybe 15 minutes, the faster swimmers from the next wave started coming through. It felt like bulls in a china shop. They ploughed straight through. Right over the top of anyone in their way. Merciless. At least that’s how it felt. I hadn’t reckoned with this. I was taken totally unawares, it hadn’t even crossed my mind that this might happen. I should have been aware and prepared for it. It was obvious really. It threw me a bit, knocked my momentum. I fought and scrambled to find some clear water, but the more you try to deviate from a line, the more you swim into others.

This continued until the turn. The course is basically an out-and-back, turning around two boats at the far end. The turning boat felt like a long time coming. But, as you do in an Ironman, you keep going and eventually you get there. I made a wide right turn. Beyond the turn was open ocean, uncharted. No safety boats. No canoeists. No paddle-boarders. No boats. I’m always glad to reach the furtherest point and start to head for home.

As I started the homebound leg, I tried to sight the pier. There was a huge inflatable yellow Gatorade bottle on the pier, and a huge green banyan tree just beside the pier. I could see neither. It was a long way to shore. There was nothing for it but to keep going. My mouth felt very salty. As did my nose, and my throat, and my nasal passages. It was only going to get worse…

I managed to get onto a pair of feet and draft off them. I managed to do this for a good 10-15 minutes, and it helped to occupy my mind. With maybe 15 minutes left to swim, I started feeling more and more uncomfortable. Not disastrously so, but I was very keen to be done by now. My mouth and throat and nose were burning. I was starting to feel pukey. I lost the feet I’d been drafting off. The pier didn’t seem to be getting any closer. It felt like ages. I wasn’t getting cold, but I was starting to feel like it might not be long before I started feeling cold.

My neck was a bit uncomfortable. My rehabilitated shoulder was aching, as it does on longer swims. I’d be glad to be done. I didn’t feel like it was a very quick swim. And if it was indeed a long course, longer than 3800m, I might be closer to 70 minutes than to my planned 65. In some of my previous Ironman swims, I’d have happily carried on for another half-hour. Not this time. Finally the pier was getting closer. The big inflatable Gatorade bottle looming ever larger. Time to get into the transition mindset. Mentally run through what I’d need to do. But keep swimming. No sharks, jellyfish, or any other aquatic beasties had bothered me. Apart from other swimmers! But overall it wasn't bad. It was all very grey. The sun was obscured, the water was grey in colour rather than the spectacular blue I'd been accustomed to, and my grey tinted goggles made everything a greyer still.

300m from the pier isn’t very far, but it’s still maybe 5 minutes of swimming. Finally I drew level with the far end of the pier. And then bizarrely, the water turned very cold in patches. Just keep going. It’ll be finished soon. Finally the sandy bottom was shallow enough to stand up on. The swim was done. 62:45. 62 minutes?! That was quicker than I’d planned, and way quicker than it felt. It had been a fairly tough swim, but I didn’t feel I had exerted myself beyond what I’d wanted. I’d take it. Most of all I was looking forward to a drink of flat Coke and swilling all the salt out of my mouth and throat.

62:45 was good enough for 72nd out of 199 in my age group, and 546th out of 2270 overall. Not bad for someone who manages one swim a week and has never been coached. I'm lucky that I seem to have a reasonably good knack for the Ironman swims. But that's not to say my one swim a week isn't tough, and there's a lot of other strength and conditioning work that goes into it... For comparison, I swam 59:39 at Ironman UK earlier in the year, wearing a wetsuit.

The clock reads 1:32. I started 30 minutes after the male pros. 

1:32 minus 30 minutes = a 62 minute swim for me.

I climbed the steps onto the pier, whipped the top half of my top down, and paused under the makeshift hosepipe showers to rinse myself off. Worth spending 30 seconds to get the salt water off, particularly down the shorts… Then through to the bag racks. It was bedlam. I’m used to finishing at the front of the swim and having only a few others around in transition. Here there were loads and loads of athletes in a tight space, some maybe a bit disoriented after the swim, lots of testosterone and adrenaline and aggro flying everywhere. My bag was at the far end. I fought my way down the narrow aisle. Volunteer spotters were trying to unite athletes with their bags. My bag was nowhere to be seen. But it was at the far end. It had to be there. It wasn’t.

I was a bit of a headless chicken for a short while. I had to go back against the flow. My bag was at the far end. But the far end from the ocean side, not the land side. When I’d walked through it the day before, I racked it at the far end from the ocean side. In the race, I’d approached it from the land side. Which meant my bag was at the near end. What an idiot! I finally got it, but I’d wasted well over a minute. And with another 30 seconds spent “showering”, I wasn’t going to break any transition records.

Transition

I legged it into the transition tent to get ready for the bike. Absolute chaos. A writhing, sweaty, hot, humid mess of athletes trying to find some space, trying to get ready, trying to run through the crowds to get in or out, trying to find a volunteer to slather them with suncream. An alien environment. There was no space. But there was no option but to literally go with the flow. I couldn’t do anything until I had suncream. So I stood shouting “suncream, suncream” and finally a volunteer came up with suncream. Another 30 seconds wasted. I whipped off my swim skin and had loads of suncream put on.

The volunteers would have done anything to help. I handed them my arm coolers and got my volunteer assistant to hold them open while I pushed my arms straight through each. Efficient. Same for my tri top. It’s tough to put the arm sleeves and top on when you’re soaking wet but the volunteers really helped with this. I dried my feet as well as I could and got socks and bike shoes on. Some people would be barefoot until they mounted their bike (with their bike shoes already clipped into the pedals), but I like to guarantee I won’t have grit on my feet for 112 miles. I gulped down some Coke. Sloshed it around my mouth. It was great. I gulped down some more.

Then I shoved everything into my bag, left it with a volunteer, and clumped my way to my bike. It was quite slow going, as there were a lot of people making their way with bikes through the narrow aisles of transition. My transition was terrible. Over 6 minutes. But I made it off the pier, over the mount line, swim behind me and 112 miles of lava fields and crosswinds and heat and rolling Queen K highway ahead of me…