In Retrospect

Walking along Kuikini, dangling an untouched cup of cola from one hand, I crossed the timing mat at 10.3 miles into the marathon, and turned left up the hill on Palani. The day before, I had run up this hill in 3:45, and then turned around and walked back up it in 5:05, just to see how much time I might lose if I chose to walk instead of run at this point.

The route along Ali’i, for the first ten miles of the marathon, is basically flat, and along the ocean’s edge. Clouds and sea breezes are common, as are supporting crowds, and numerous athletes going each direction. Palani takes us up out of town, into the higher level lava fields, barren of trees, and supporters.

But Palani is the main artery out of town, two lanes in each direction, separated by a grass median. And unlike Ali’i, which is more like an overgrown alley flanked by condos, Palani has all the trappings of a civilized street, like stop lights and curbs.

Ten steps up the hill, I started to feel … different. I looked down at the curb. “That looks nice. I could sit down on that.” I did.

“Oh. That feels good.” The grass median was to my back. I fell back, on the soft, cool grass. That felt even better. Some spectators were hanging out here. I heard them asking, “Are you all right?” I thought I was answering, trying to say I was just resting.

Next thing I know, someone is gently taking my pulse, and drawing her hand close over the top of my forearm. She had on a purple medical team shirt.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m OK. I just want to stop for 15 or thirty minutes, see if I can keep going.”

“Your energy feels very weak to me. I really think you ought to stop.”

“Well, maybe I’ll just lie here for five minutes, and then decide.”

But I wasn’t going anywhere. My calves started to twitch, and if I tried to lift my knees up (my thighs were on the grass, my knees at the curb, and my feet on the road) I got immediate feed back from my inner legs and hamstrings telling me that wasn’t going to happen: strong cramps would lock up those muscles, preventing my knees from flexing.

More help arrived. By the time a van arrived to take me to the med tent, I was surrounded by a Nurse Anesthetist, an operating nurse RN, an MD, and a paramedic. Not that I needed all that help; they were just all gathered around waiting for the van. It was about 400 meters as the bird flies to the med tent down at the pier, but I wasn’t walking and they weren’t carrying me.

The CRNA took by blood pressure: 90/50; normally I’m 110-120/70-80. My pulse was 70, which may be a bit fast (resting is 40), but who knows when its 10+ hours into this race, even after 15-20 minutes of rest.

I did manage to stand up with help; once up I could shuffle with help, and as long as I didn’t try to bend my knees too much or too quickly, I made it into the van and down to the tent. First order of business there: get on the scale. It read 138. I had weighed 147 with shoes off several days before. That finally convinced me I should not have been trying to go ANY farther up that hill or onto the Queen K.

I was clearly dehydrated, losing about 12% of my body water to the winds of West Hawaii that day. And who knows what had happened to the salt and potassium and calcium and other electrolytes that I needed to think, and help my muscles work, and allow my gut to absorb fluids and fuel.

My official story is I collapsed from dehydration at 10.3 miles into the marathon at the base of the Palani hill, a perfect place to do it. Grass, shade, elevation for my knees, lots of people around, near an aid station, close to the main nerve center of the race at the corner of Palani and Ali’i. The small remaining functioning part of my brain probably knew this, and so brought me there, and sat me down. Collapsing out on the Queen K, and even more dehydrated, would not have been good.

So, two hours and 2 liters of IV saline solution with dextrose later, I started to sweat again (that’s how bad my dehydration was; I had stopped sweating while exercising in 90F heat; heat index 97), could drink restorative chicken broth, and was able to stand up and walk out to pee, and then get Cheryl.

Now, 36 hours later, I am feeling normally tired, like I would after an Ironman, and have less tenderness in my legs except for the muscles which seized up on me starting at mile 85 of the bike. In other words, I am doing just fine, and looking towards the future, trying to learn from the past.

I checked the results for this race. About 200 people did not finish, for a drop out rate of over 10%, very unusual for the World Championships. I looked over the list of pros who did not finish. The list is a who’s who: Normann Stadler, Tim DeBoom, Thomas Hellriegel, Michelie Jones, Natascha Badman, (all previous winners here, a total of twelve Kona victories), Yvonne Van Vlerken, Bella Bayliss, Belinda Granger, Bryan Rhodes, Marino Vanhoenacker, Courtney Ogden, Jasper Blake, Rutger Beke, Patrick Vernay, Jozsef Major, Gina Kehr, Heather Wuertle, Hilary Biscay, (all winners of Ironman races around the world.)

Van Hoenacker apparently stopped about the same place I did; I had picked him as a possible winner of the race. Bella Bayliss has at least 11 Ironman victories to her credit, in heat as bad or worse than this; I thought she might make a top five finish here. Bryan Rhodes is well known for winning multiple times in places like Malaysia, with worse conditions that Saturday’s. Really, ALL the people on that list up there should know better, having been here multiple times, and having been able to win races before.

I don’t know what all of their stories are, who had problems with fluid intake, or mental collapse after their pacing strategy didn’t work, or lost a fluid bottle with all their calories out n the road, or all of the other myriad “excuses” we use. In the end, I have to assume if one comes here to race, one intends to do well, and is not PLANNING on dropping out, or quitting if things get tough. But we all did. I can only analyze my race and determine what I should learn for next time.

Because there will be a next time.

So, here goes. First and most important, I broke the Prime Directive. I worked harder in the early part of the bike than my training told me I should. Without detailing the physics and physiology behind the plan, the following numbers are important. I have an FTP (don’t worry if you don’t know what that is – it’s expressed in watts, a measure of power, and based on a time trial) of 225, and I should be racing the Ironman bike leg at 70-75% of that level, or 157-168.

Looking back at my bike computer summary of my ride, I rode at 167 watts for the first 15 miles, then 177 for miles 15-34, or 79%. The, I went back down to 157 from miles 34-80. My average speed went up from 18.7 to 20.6, then back down to 17.7 (lots of hill in that section). Now, why did I do increase my effort level miles 5-34. It was a very conscious decision, made on the fly at that time of the race, after several minutes of deliberation. I received a penalty for drafting. The details of this are not important; I could have avoided it, but I didn’t, and so knew that I would lose 4 minutes in a penalty tent at mile 34.

Now, several people have won this race after serving a penalty on the course; sometimes resting for 4 minutes helps one go faster. I decided that if I sped up enough to gain 2 minutes in the next twenty miles, I could then rest for 4 minutes, and probably end up losing little time overall, as well as get an opportunity to get more fluids and fuel in the tent. So I started passing all those people who had been passing me in the last 10 miles. That was Mistake Number One.

Mistake Number Two, I think, was taking a 200 mg caffeine pill in the penalty tent. I have read numerous studies about the effects of caffeine on cycling performance, and had just attended a lecture 3 days earlier documenting all the potential improvement from its use, with dosages suggested and everything. I am not a coffee drinker, and average one Diet Coke a day (which is about 34 mg). I had tried caffeine once before in a race, California half-ironman earlier this year. I had a relatively poor performance there. but attributed it to only 4 weeks of training prior to the race, and ANOTHER poor decision at pacing, starting to run too hard too soon (about mile 8 instead of 10, and I started to die at mile 11 instead of 13, the end of the race). So, mistake two was trying an ergogenic aid which I had little experience with, and which had not helped when I had used it before, and which may contribute to dehydration by inhibiting the ADH hormone. While there is controversy over caffeine’s dehydration effect, I know what happens in ME.

Mistake Number Three was not upping my fluid intake from my hydration plan to make up for the increasing effects of the wind, heat, and humidity, which were higher than we had been experiencing in the previous few days. By the time I realised this mistake and tried to make amends, the bad effects had already started to happen, effectively ending my race.

At mile 85, after riding easily up the steepest hill on the course, out of Kawaihae, I began having rock solid cramps in my inner thighs. Not just the pain of cramps, but actual refusal of the muscles to relax. So I couldn’t move my legs up and down to pedal. Stretching and stomping on the pedals would eventually free them, but it kept happening periodically throughout the rest of the bike. So I was forced to slow down significantly, and lost maybe 20 minutes in this section of the race.

In the transition tent, there were some “ART” therapists around, so I had one try to press out my cramps, which helped a bit. I spent 11 + minutes (normally a 3-4 minute transition) there, and tried to run a bit on and off for the next 8 miles. But the cramps, and my brain were starting to really go south by this point. My mentation got so bad by mile 8 that I just lost the will to drink any thing. I was not having nausea, or feeling full or anything, I was just getting stupid from lack of fluid in my head.

I have done 15 Ironman races. I have been here to Kona before and raced well. I have raced in the higher temperatures and equal humidity. And I have successfully executed the race strategies needed to win in bad conditions. I have won in Coeur d’Alene in 92F heat and 48F rain and cold. So, in the end, I have only myself and my choices to blame for the results I had. My final lesson? Never underestimate the arrogance of the human ego, and try to avoid letting it have ANY control over race day execution.

[PS: Thanks to everyone who has been reading and especially to all those who have sent good wishes. I am doing fine and still have more to do, in racing and in life.]