No Regrets, No Surrender

“That’s your man!” Coach Rich shouted as he trotted backward along the Mill St Bridge, aiming his left forefinger at the tall grey haired runner bobbing along about 25 yards in front of me.

“Which one?”

“Blue shirt!” he hollered, still pointing.

“It says ‘Rock Tri’?” I asked, laboring a bit to run and talk at the same time.

“Yep.” I’d made it up beside Rich by now, and he almost whispered in my ear, “Be crafty; think about your move.” With that, he dropped back, worried a bit about giving “outside assistance”, seeming to run alongside me for pacing.

We were 20 miles into the marathon around Tempe Town Lake at Ironman Arizona. I knew at this point that he was leading our race within a race. 2590 triathletes in all, 41 in our 60-64 age group.

I eased up behind him, marking his steps. He’d been running slower than I, and I eased up a bit to give myself some time to think about my next move. As I pondered, a younger guy whom I’d been passing back and forth through several aid station passed us, turned back to Mr. Rock Tri, and said, with some enthusiasm, “Don’t let him pass you.”

RT perked up as bit, as if from a reverie, saying “Wha … who?” I quickly waggled my right index finger back and forth, ala Dikembe Mutumbo after blocking a shot. The other racer saw my eyes and said nothing more, turning back to the task of maneuvering through the various speeds of runners clogging the 3-loop course.

………………

Race day starts at sunrise for IM Arizona, thousands of us treading water in Tempe Town Lake, a dammed up short stretch of the usually dry Salt River wash sluicing through the Valley of the Sun. The water was just at the low end of tolerable without shivers, 62F. I had decided to not start my stop watch for this race, and rely only on the time of day, and the racer clocks in the transition area.

I was still scared of the swim. For years, my swimming had been a stable, solid start for me in my Ironman races. I was aging gracefully, slowing from 66-7 minutes for the 2.4 mile distance ten years ago to 70-71 for my last two age group wins, in 2009 and ’10.

But 14 months ago, I’d nearly killed, or at least paralyzed, myself driving my bike sight unseen headlong into the back of a Silverado pick-up. I ended up with a myriad of neck based injuries, the worst being “central cord syndrome”, a spinal cord trauma caused, in my case, by swelling or bleeding in the interior of the cord at about cervical (neck) level 5, 6, and 7.

The main after-effect has been weakened forearm muscles, and slightly weaker upper arms and back. Not bad enough so I had to stop doing surgery or swimming, but bad enough that I am now about 10% slower in the water. And worse, I seem to start to fade after about 45-50 minutes of steady swimming, no matter how I pace myself.

Five months ago, in a colder (57F) Lake Coeur d’Alene, I’d swim the IM there in 85 minutes. I nearly quit the race at that point, and I never did psychologically recover from the shock of how slow I was. I went on the finish that race 2 hours slower than I’d done the previous 7. I put in more hours in the pool and weight room over the summer, and could see myself gradually getting faster and stronger, but still knew I was not the fading fish I used to be. Now, I’m just one of the flailers struggling to get our arms out of the water every stroke in the last 1/2 mile of the IM swim.

And the cruelest part of the IM AZ swim is the exit. Because the lake is basically a flood control canal, concrete lined on the side, the shore is about 10 feet above the water. A specially designed wide step ladder has been built for the race, allowing 10-20 swimmers to exit at a time, but it still requires getting one foot up to chest level, and hauling the rest of yourself up onto the steps. Almost impossible at any time, but after hauling butt for over an hour, in a restrictive wet suit, with the sudden change from horizontal to vertical, and dead arms, it requires mandatory help.

I reach up for the railing, grab a volunteer’s hand, put my left foot on the bottom step, and with his help stand up. After a short walk while removing goggles, hat and wet suit I stop, then trot to the last available wet suit stripper, and flop down like a beached flounder, luxuriating the the Ironman tradition of the wet-suit stripper.

Next, one of favorite parts of the day: I yank the silicon plugs from my ears, and toss them disdainfully aside into the screaming crowd. Then, it’s off to the races. For about 100 yards, we follow a carpeted route up and around the tents to our transition bags. I sprint while others jog, passing maybe 50 people in the process. Drop down on the grass, whip on my helmet, roll up my socks, stuff my wetsuit into the bag, grab my shoes, and run around the tent. I see giant garbage containers with numbers on them, and drop my bag near the one labelled 2900-3010. I’m 2956.

All the way to the end of the bike racks – this is great, I can run in my socks while others are shuffling, struggling to manage loggy legs while pushing a floppy time trial bike and clomping along in bike shoes with cleats under foot. I whip over to my bike – oddly, two people are either side of me didn’t show up, so I had loads of space there – slap on my shoes, push my power meter start button, and whip out to the exit. As I go down my row, I notice that all the bikes still seem to be racked, meaning I am at the pointy end of my little race within a race, in the top 3 for sure.

Race clock says “1:34.XX”, meaning it’s been that long since the pros started; we left at least 10 minutes after them. So I figure a 1:19 for my swim (my watch had said 8:18 as I exited the water), over three minutes slower than I wanted to go. Slight groan for a micro second, but then I was back into the race. [It turns out that we started at about 7:03, so my swim time was actually 1:16, 6 minutes or 8.5% slower than before my accident. A win for the home team!]

Under the “Bike Start” arch, I see Coach Rich eyeing me though his Flip Mini Cam, saying with a smile, “And there goes Al Truscott.” Good to know he’s all over us, the 33 racers from Endurance Nation here in Tempe.

Now, some people, when deciding where to race, consider the quality of the scenery for their marathon of Ironman. Running through the Five Boroughs, biking past the red rock of Utah, or the lava of the Big Island – I don’t get it, because I’m not there on race day for a tourist visit. I could be on the far side of the moon, and not notice my surroundings when I’m racing. It’s just head down, keep pedaling for 5-6 hours, then run from aid station to aid station 26 times. I get no thrill, or memories, from the vistas along the way.

The IM Arizona course, wedged up against the scrub and farm lands of the Salt River Indian Community, is FLAT. There is a slight rise, which some people call a hill, at the turn around which we hit three times in the 112 miles. There are episodes when we ride under freeways, and other times when we flash by screaming crowds of people at the other turn around, by the ASU Sun Devil’s football stadium. Occasionally, hordes of folks in green “Volunteer” shirts show up on my right side, demanding that I take their “Water”, “Prfggmm”, or “Prrerbrrr”.

Every now and then, when the pressure gets too great, I aim for an orange tin can, throw my bike towards one of the oddly helpful people standing close by, who grabs it with blue latex-gloved hands, while I go inside, rest my helmet against the wall, which seems to shake with every heart beat, and try to be as fast as I can with this as I am with everything else I do today.

At the base of the “hill”, Coach Rich is standing by, a mostly silent reminder that I should just stay in my aerobars – “To sit up is to give up”. After the tailwind home on the first lap – the downhill segment – the wind shifts direction, and, as usual, the second lap has us riding into a 10 mph cross to head wind on the way back, dropping my speed from about 23-24 mph to 19-20. The third loop, into this zephyr, is the make or break time for many of us. I remind myself, “the race starts at mile 90”. That’s when the third hill starts to rise, and then we turn around for the last 18.5 miles into the wind.

This is when many sit up, give up, and just want to curl up. Back home in Snowmass, I have a ride I love to do, in preparation for this very moment. Up the gorgeous Fryingpan River, a gentle 1-2% grade, it’s easy to push along, until you have to turn around, and go back downhill. Then, you find out why it was so easy – this river valley not only faces the prevailing wind current on the western slope, but the narrowing hillsides funnel and compress the wind, which never stops. It’s work the whole way, and it plays with your mind. Like hitting your head against the wall, it would just feel so good to sit up and take it easy.

But sitting up just makes it worse. Wind resistance increases dramatically, and speeds drop precipitously. I play cat-and-mouse with a guy named “Larry” (we all have race bibs with our first names dangling art our backsides) wearing a black (in this sun?!?) LA Tri outfit. he passes me in his aerobars, a guy gliding close behind like a pilot fish. A mile later, I see him sitting up.

“Larry, you paid for those aerobars! Use them!” I holler as I pass.

“Yeah, you’re right.” I hear behind me. Eventually, he will pass me on the first lap of the run; then I snatch the lead back on the third. Why oh why don’t people learn how to race, I can hear Coach Rich thinking.

At the bottom of my first time up the hill, I come up behind and pass the only guy I see on the whole bike leg with a “60” on his calf, meaning he’s in my AG. He’s tall, with a blue “Rock Tri” shirt on. I hear him say as I go by, “Boy, you’re sure sailing up the hill.” My thought at that time: well, he’s a better swimmer (but who isn’t these days?)”, but I seem to have him on the bike. Just keep at your pace, don’t worry about him.”

Then, about 20 miles later, at the bottom of the hill, I stop to pee (those orange cans). As I ease back into traffic, I see him float by me, saying, “You sure seemed to be going well up the hill. What happened?”

“Stopped to pee”, I say over my shoulder as I re-pass him heading (with the wind) along the FLAT 8 miles back into town. This will be the last time I see Mr. Rock Tri until mile 20, running on the Mill St bridge. But it’s clear he both recognizes me, and knows we’re in the same AG.

“Finally” I get back to Tempe Town Park and go right instead of left, down into the winding carpeted chute to the bike catchers. I pop out of my shoes, leaving them on the pedals, gingerly dismount, and throw my bike towards the nearest catcher. It hits the dirt, he goes left, I go right.

“Al, go left. Al, go left!” Who is that and why are they so upset with me, I wonder. Then it hits me – my left right dyslexia has kicked in here. With my high race number, my bags were both on the far left side of the piles, and I was aiming right. Ooops. I pick up the bag, and find a seat near the transition bag garbage containers. A volunteer hurries over, so eager to help. He just confuses me, as all I want is: my shoes, my watch, and my Ziploc. We get it sorted out; I take off my small wrist watch, having decided to run with a Garmin GPS for pacing. Then, as I’m putting my shoes on, Matt S sits down beside me. I’m sure we have a coherent conversation, but we are in a hurry, so who knows what we said?

I run to another orange can, get in and get out, and fly under the exit arch, turning left towards the Priest St Bridge. I plod along, stuffing a GU packet in one side pocket, my shot bloks in another, and my small sunscreen tube into the third side pocket. Ooops, again, there is no third pocket, and the sunscreen hits the dirt. I don’t notice, and move to whip my visor on, strap the Garmin to my left wrist, and check the Ziploc for any little remaining items. This Ziploc is a sneaky little secret, as most people try to sort through this stuff while idling in the transition zone. I’m out running, saving at least a minute I figure. My time for T2 was 3:24, including the bathroom break. This would be the fastest in my AG.

Before I toss the bag, I notice a pair of sunglasses inside. Ooops, a third time. My plan had been to change sunglasses from the bike to the run. But it was such a stupid, worthless plan, that I forgot about it, so now I have two pairs of sunglasses. I put the new ones up on my visor, and Voila! I see Cheryl cheering for me on the side. I smile, take the old sunglasses off, hand them to her, and slip the new ones on.

OK, they are lighter in shading, and better for the fading light of day, that’s why!

Anyway, I’m supposed to be going slow now, so I start chatting with some guy from outside Sacramento who seems happy with my pace. We talk about skiing, Challenged Athletes Foundation, San Diego, how to run in the heat – just the usual IM marathon first few miles chit-chat, I guess.

I notice Matt’s read EN shirt up ahead about 10 yards. We are bobbing along at the same pace, but I figure it would be neighborly to run with him a bit, so I bid adieu to Mr. CAF, and pick it up for 20 seconds to catch Matt. Mr CAF shows up intermittently to trot with us for the next 6 miles.

I’ve raced with Matt before at IM CDA, and know that his running pace should be about the same as mine. Since a major component of the EN race strategy is going SLOOOOOW for the first 6 miles of the run, I figure it may be easier to keep the motors cooled working together.

We run side-by-side for the first seven miles, chatting about the day, our expectations, how we’re feeling, how fast (or slow) we’re going. Matt hasn’t run the course before, so I play tour guide a bit as well. That’s always a lot of fun, telling somebody when the next hill is going to come.

At about mile 3, after the first hill to the parking lot under the Red Mountain Freeway, we emerge out onto the Mill St Bridge. And there’s Coach Rich, smiling benignly, happy to see us, and seeming just stopping by to say, “Hi.”

Off the bridge, we take a sharp right onto some carpeted plywood covering the curb, and fly down a 270 degree turn into a downhill past the transition area, circling back down under the bridge where the main body of the crowd is. Immediately after the bridge is a congested area with an aid station, followed by the special needs bags. Cheryl is waiting there with her aunt Glenn.

They’re excited to tell me I’m in first place, though they don’t really know by how much [when the other guy left transition to start the run, he was behind by about 6 minutes.] I go through a set of emotions, which I usually don’t allow myself until the end of the day, raising my fingers skyward, feeling good, and finally telling Matt, “Now, don’t let me bugger this race. And if you see anyone with “60” on his calf, let me know.” I take about 15 seconds to inwardly tell myself, “I’m back!”, and then get back to the task at hand: Don’t Slow Down.

After the two trips over the Rural/Scottsdale bridge, interspersed with another hill in Papago Park by Turtle Rock, Matt, who’s been laboring just the slightest bit, decides to stop off at an orange can. In a way, that’s good, because I’m now starting to turn inward. As the race goes along, I get more and more inner directed, not wanting to interact with anyone, aid station workers, little kids seeking high fives, college kids wanting to goof with us, whatever. I draw my energy and focus from the inside, not from others.

The next time over the bridge, I see Rich, who claims I’m in the lead. I want to know by how much, and what’s his race number, and is he gaining or falling back, but no one knows, meaning Rich, and Cheryl, and Cody, who’s communicating with her from his computer in Colorado. Rich does say he’ll try and find out, “But it doesn’t matter. Just do your thing.”

Well, *my* thing is racing hard at the end of the run, getting mad at the difficulty and whatever poor schlump has the audacity and misfortune to be in front of me. Or worse, the guy who’s in front of me, and knows how to race and isn’t slowing down. But it’s only mile 13, and I don’t have permission (from Coach Rich) to race until mile 18. I know well enough what happens if I try to get into anger mode too early. Not yet, not yet.

Five more miles to my penultimate Mill Bridge undercrossing, and another encounter with Cheryl. This time, bless her heart, she has been actually doing the spotter thing. She knows the race number of the guy I’m trying to catch. She saw him go by, 2 minutes ago. “and he’s looking good.”

I nod, and go through despair, upset, frustration, anger, the whole gamut. At this point in my athletic career, after 4 IM age group wins and 3 course records, anything less than first place is not acceptable to me. I know I will be morose if I’m second, and especially morose if I miss out on getting back to Kona. But I also know just how goldang hard it is to win one of these things, how much pushing in the last 8 miles is required. Hunter, or hunted, it’s really all the same. It’s hard to catch someone, and it’s really hard to stay ahead when you know they’ve seen you go by and have caught the fire.

I don’t have any of those thoughts, though. What I do think first of all is a few curse words – the same ones I said when I rammed into that truck. I say those knowing that the fire within me isn’t going to let me lose, and is going to force me to go faster than I want to. I *hate” that guy, whoever it is inside of me, that comes at at this time in a race. He doesn’t take excuses, and he doesn’t take prisoners. All in, he says, it’s better to burn out than it is to rust.

But we’ve got an uneasy detente, this guy and I. He likes to run FAST, HARD, and I know I can’t do that for 8 more miles. What I CAN do is pick up the pace just a little, and maybe try to catch Mr. RT in the next 4 miles, than use the rest of the race to stay ahead. So I crank it up just a notch, maybe half a gear. I won’t throw the numbers out, just suffice it to say that I know this is ragged edge territory, if I don’t see him by 4-5 miles, I’ll lose motivation and dribble on to the end.

Mile 18, mile 19, two more aid stations, then up the parking lot hill to the aid station and the U-turn onto the Mill St Bridge.

……………..

So I’m running behind Mr. RT, going through the scenarios quickly in my mind (“Be crafty, think about your move” – Rich, you truly are a coach. You didn’t tell me what to do, but you showed me how to get to the answer.) I’ve actually done this a number of times before. I usually run people down on the run, and recently, I’ve started doing it in stand alone half marathon running races as well. I’ve done it several different ways, and I thought about all those times, knowing that I had picked up 30 seconds a mile over the past 4 miles:

• I could stalk him, staying behind, and shooting by at the very end. Too risky: who knows how much speed he might have left, of if someone is coming up behind going faster than either of us. Also, I’m going faster than he is right now, why waste that speed?

• I could just cruise by at my own pace, maybe even say something to him, let the better man win. I didn’t trust this strategy, as I knew he was faster than I, at least for the first 16 miles or so of the race, when he gained those 8-9 minutes on me.

• At this point, I am running faster than he is, so maybe if I can get by him without being seen, he won’t speed up and I can put another two minutes on him until the end of the race. How to do that – well, in an aid station, it’s crowded, chaotic, people are looking for their fuel, not at the calves of other racers or their colors. If I stay behind until the aid station coming up in a couple of minutes then I go around on his oppostie side when he goes for a drink, and hope he doesn’t seem.

As these possibilities are going thru my mind, Mr. Blabbermouth comes along and threatens to take the element of surprise away. So the guy inside who loves to win comes up with another plan, and puts it in play before I even get a chance to talk about it with him.

All of a sudden, just as we’re about to enter the area with the carpeted plywood covering the curb and the sharp downhill turn into the winding area by transition, I take off like a rocket. Flying from street to sidewalk and back down again, almost spraining my ankle in the process, I elbow people out of the way like a 5K racer and don’t stop working. I’m burning every match in my book at this point, really all in.

The downhill over the grass is covered at the base by some carpet which has dangerous folds in it. People have fallen there, so most runners take it easy. I am a really good downhill runner, though. Not only my years of Xterra (off-road) racing, but also I live in a hollow, and every run I do is downhill to my house, steep and curvy, for 3/4 of a mile or more. So I try to play to my strength.

I keep running through the aid station, on through the special needs section, still more curves. There is no way he can see me now – too many curves, to many people between us. And it will be dark soon, just another 5-10 minutes, and he won’t be able to spot my red jersey.

I checked afterwards, and for that spurt, I went from running 9:36 minutes a mile to 6:27 – faster than my 5K pace. If it weren’t for the training and race strategy which I’ve learned over the years and refined with Endurance Nation, I never would have been able to do that. Most people (“90%”) at this point in the race are just struggling, mentally and physically, to hang on. I was both motivated and knew I had some reserve.

I also knew I had to slow back down, and then work at hanging on, but still at a pace faster than I would want to go, for the next 4 miles. It’s a place I don’t really like to go, but I think it’s what one has to do to make the difference between first and second. It’s not about doing what others can’t, but doing what others won’t.

So it was back up Papago park hill, then up and done the Scottsdale/Rural bridge. That little section offers two cloverleaf style turns, so I could look back easily and see if Mr. Rock Tri were in sight. Nope. Gotta keep going, no rest yet.

Over the last 3/4ths of a mile, out of the final aid station, I collected a companion. We were running together, stride for stride, almost like two cyclists half-wheeling each other. He started the grunting conversation, saying something like almost there. I said one or two words, and then said, “You’re not going to let me slow down, are you?”

“Nope”.

I still had enough energy to let him know I was racing for a win, maybe by 2 minutes. As we turned into the dark uphill parking lot along Ash before the glare of the finishing chute, I heard footsteps behind us.

As a yellow tuniced guy hoofed it up beside us, my new friend said, “Don’t worry about him, he’s a young guy.”

Then around the corner, and into the cheering crowd.

[Epilogue to follow]