I easily found Cheryl at the swim start, camped out along the Dike Road ledge, just above the spot where I usually enter the water.
She was pointing skyward. “There’s your helicopter!” she shouted.
I like helicopter races – a race big enough and important enough to afford and use a whirlybird to film the start. Boston Marathon. Xterra World Championships. Hawaiian Ironman. Sometimes, these second tier Ironman qualifiers. I get a deeper sense of purpose when I see one circling overhead.
I smiled, “Yep. Helicopter Race!”
Though the sun was shining through white cumulus puffs now, darker, thicker clouds were gathering steam, heading in from the desert to our east, and clearly meaning to hide the light once they’d crested the panhandle mountains.
After 15 of these races, the routine has become predictable, so any little change was welcome. Amidst Mike Reilly’s admonition to “Control your attitude”, his claim that the swim start was one of the “greatest spectacles in sports today” (vaguely reminiscent of the hype at a WWE pro wrestling show), his periodic reprimands to get in ankle deep water only, and pleas for cheers to our volunteers, friends, family, and first time Ironmen, he came out with a new one this time.
“We have over 2100 of you hitting the water this morning” he hollered. “300 are 50 or over!”
I raised both hands in the air as the crowd applauded the audacity of anyone that age even considering to do this Ironman. I attempted to jump high to show that I was in this group, and still SPRY, but the sand affords little traction for a leap.
“And 50 of you are over 60!!!” This of course got an even louder cheer, and I tried an even higher jump – two inches, this time. The lady next to me looked a little impressed when I told her, yes, I am sixty. I think she wanted to say something, but was thinking better of it. Being in the oldest 2.5% of this already select group (and being the fastest one among them, a fact I preferred to keep to myself) did give me some additional motivation, but towards what I wasn’t sure. Was Mike suggesting we really shouldn’t be out here?
I so rarely think of my age in relation to my ironman career. Like height, or the weather, there is nothing I can do about it, so why dwell? But I do like to get some recognition; that’s what today is all about after all, so why not get some right at the start?
Despite Mike’s announcement of 5 minutes and 1 minutes to go, the gun goes off without warning, so in we go.
The wind is coming from the south, right in our faces, roiling the lake which stretches for miles in that direction, creating a little swell, chop, and wave action. But without the rhythm of ocean breakers, it’s like navigating an endless series of white-capped fluid pyramids, uphill, while fighting in slow motion with all the other swimmers aiming for the same spot – the first turn buoy, 900 meters ahead.
Once there, the forward charge slows dramatically, and we start bobbing, treading, kicking, and swimming almost senselessly to the left, straight into the sun. Bodies crash, and sometimes clash in the maelstrom.
For the first time in my 100 races, someone attacks me in the swim. Grabbing my right elbow and pulling, an unseen male shouts, “You asshole, you hit me one more time with that elbow and I swear I’ll sink you!”
No point in wasting time or energy in engaging with a frightened anxious swimmer. I make the turn, resume the horizontal, and aim straight for the sun, recreating quite quickly the personal space bubble of calm I try to exude through long, slow strokes, rolling hips, and implacable forward motion. All in all, much less frightening or traumatic then getting yelled at or blindsided from the left by an aggressive driver out on the road.
I own my longitudinal space while I’m swimming, extending from the tips of my fingers, through my rotating core, and out the heels and soles of my feet. It’s all I own, all I can control, and I continue on to the first loop exit, leaving the water hearing “34” something over the loudspeaker. My watch says “20”, meaning it must have been stopped at about the second turn buoy, probably by my own flexed wrist. I quickly restart it, estimating I will need to add about 14-15 minutes of time when I try to calculate where I am in the race. This compounds a problem with the early start – my watch was about 30 seconds behind Reilly’s five minute-to-go pronouncement, reading 6:54.XX at that point. Then he shoots the gun early, so I have no idea exactly when, by my watch, the race started. I may have to add another minute to whatever time I see on the time-of-day part of the watch to get a cross check on my time. Whatever; the less I know about my time, usually, the better I do.
So I don’t even bother to check my time as I exit. Transition goes smoothly, with a stop at the porta potty and the long run through the park to and then with my bike, clacking in my bike shoes for what seems like a quarter mile. I hit the mount line, and take off into the meat of the day.
The first loop is purely nominal, 2:54 and change, with only one stop to pee. I’d found a fair group of young men and women (they are ALWAYS younger than me, for some reason!) to bike with, getting the draft and giving back in the accepted Ironman 7 meter paceline. Cheryl and Annie seem cheerful when I go by, and I begin to think that the day will turn out just fine, when, hitting the second loop hills, a bit after mile 76, I notice a distinct lack of motivation to put the hammer down.
Something (or someone) is holding me back. There’s another cliche for Ironman I left off the list:
“At the end of the bike, you should feel like you could have gone 15-20 minutes faster.”
I used to obey that admonition, but last year, I got tired of being a wuss on the bike, and amped up the second loop, trying to tire myself out more than the cautious coaches advise. It didn’t stop me from running faster than ever before, so it seemed like a good strategy. But it requires you to follow ANOTHER cliche:
“Trust your training”
The only way to really trust my training is to see it proven out in a race; I had only done the California Half Ironman in early April, and had biked that 56 miles in the same time I just did the first loop of a full Ironman. I did not do any May and June races which usually give me confidence in my training. So something inside must have snapped, and held me back on the climbs. I should have paid attention to my heart rate, which was dropping alarmingly from the 124 or so I’d been averaging. My effort level up the climbs and into the drops and flats the second time around, those last 30 miles, was clearly LESS than the first time around, Coupled with three more stops to pee (only once on the first loop) for a total of seven minutes, I ended up going 16 minutes slower the second loop than the first, and my heart rate averaged around 110.
But I would not go faster. I fundamentally let my body race for me, so my sluggish pace from mile 78-112 remains a mystery. I suspect that the race commander inside was thinking longer term, knowing I have these THREE big races this year, all with very tough goals to meet, and he was just anticipating the inevitable recovery after today, not wanting it to be too prolonged, to inhibit our ability to prepare properly for the Hawaii/Arizona double I have coming up in October and November.
But I’ve got to tell you, he sure cut it close. I was convinced by the time I got off the bike that I would not be able to meet my 11:44.22 goal, and that my secondary hope of winning was also fading. By the time Rob Ladewig passed me at the start of the run, I assumed my goose had been cooked by “not trusting my training.”