|
~ Mamma Gina's Kitchen ~ |
|
Cascade Lakes Ironman Report: 9/7/2002
I rolled into Bend on Thursday (Sept. 3), the day after Labor Day and began to settle into our new home. A few clouds in the sky with fairly cool temps because a cold front just blew through the area in the last 24 hours. Very very dry because Bend is on the edge of the high desert. Sitting in a virtually empty house, waiting for GG and attempting to settle into a new town ain't much fun for race week of my first IM ;^| . I think I'll try to combine my pre-NB 1/2IM pre-race nutrition w/ El G's IMC 2002 pre-IM nutrition guidepoints. It's all recorded below. Let's see how I did. Diet: Fairly strict paleo for the first part of the week (Sunday through Wendesday) per El G's advice. Ok ok, I had one HUGE bowl of GG's granola on Tuesday morning before I left for Bend. Began slipping in more salt on Wednesday.
Thursday: Off day. G arrives in pm.
Friday: swim/bike/run at race site
Saturday: RACE DAY
Thursday (48hrs 'til race time): Solid sleep. I've only had one bad night in the last few weeks. That was because I didn't have the air matress filled enough on Tuesday night. Feeling much better than I did the last few weeks. My last few days have been alternating hours of moving/unpacking and job search stuff w/ reading, writing and staying off my feet. Short ride yesterday felt great - 27th to Butler Market, down 8th to Franklin, up to Greenwood and out to the Airport. U-ie at airport, 27th back home. Inserted 3 x 90sec hard intervals…..sssssssssmokin'. Nice to have really really wide bike lanes. Clear skies and cool air. HR slightly elevated on Tuesdays short brick but nothing astronomical - maybe a few beats. I'm trying the "when in doubt, less is more" philosophy for the week, especially since I had a hard time shaking fatigue last week. Feelin' ready to rock. Maybe a short swim w/ GG when she arrives this pm. Packet pick-up starts at noon. Wondering if there will be anyone besides me, GG, Scott B and the couple from Washington. Hmmm. Bobo's site and posts on cascadelakestri.com crack me up. I hope we get to meet him. Friday: Nothing major today. We just tried to stay off of our feet as much as possible and got all gear sorted and bikes checked before tomorrow. Race meeting was hysterical. Bobo Anderson is a freaking character. Some of the classic quotes: "IM NA can afford to kill off a few athletes per year and still have thousands left. We can't and WON'T do that. Your safety is first our concern. I will be all over the race course checking on you. We will be here until everyone comes in."; Response to the question about a cut-off time "Uh, how does sometime Tuesday sound? Or, well, awards for the full IM are 9:30am Sunday so if you could make it in by then that'd be great. We'll stay out with you until everyone finishes." And they did…..the last person came in between 3 and 4am. They packed up at 5:30am and Bobo was there to do the awards at 9am. Bobo ROCKS! Oh the other nugget of wisdom that carried me through the day: "It will be cold out there. The water is cold and the air will be cold for the first part of the ride. Take an extra few minutes in transition to get dry COMPLETELY DRY before you start the bike. Your body will be in over-drive trying to warm your body. Eat like there is no tomorrow. [The golden nugget of wisdom]: You race Ironman on your stomach and NOT your legs." This was a very unique race. We were the first ever Ironman-distance participants at this race. Bobo is a professional Ironman triathlete and designed the race against his pet peeves with the races he has done. NO orange swim caps, no time cut offs, extra care for IM athletes, EVERYBODY gets something at the awards ceremony, etc. His view is you pay the money to do the race but you should come away with something tangible besides a dang t-shirt and a medal. Oh, the other quote, "They design Ironman races so that they are easy to pull out of. YOU have to decide to keep moving forward. Finish when you want. It's up to you. That's why it's "IRON"man….not Butterman." Saturday Race Day: Some interesting things happened today. I found myself in many unusual situations - some very very good, some incredibly scary and near health-threatening. The weather in Bend had been very hot for the last few weeks. We had trained for a very very hot race day. We did most long runs and final race-sim bricks in 95 degree afternoon heat in Portland to prepare for a hot race day. On the drive out to Elk Lake (5000ft altitude) at 5am, frost covered the road and trees, which looked like snow in the car headlights. NOT GOOD!!!! I scraped frost off of my bike seat four times between initially racking my bike and the swim start. Bobo had said at the race meeting that there had been quite a bit of fog in the mornings at dawn, and noted that the IM swim could be delayed if the fog was too thick….it was. Once the sun came up and the fog had started to lift, they made the decision to post-pone the IM start to start with the 1/2IM swim - 8:30. I think we finall started around 8:45. The water was very very cold, especially for sleeveless wetsuits. This was a very small race. Bobo said over hundred signed up for the 1/2 and 28 or so signed up for the full. By race start, several people pulled out of the full IM and several switched from the full to the half. Evidently about 90 or 100 started the half and 15 or so started the full, but we all started the swim together. That made for a very strange second loop. Read on… Swim: 1:16:00 (6th IM-er out of the water) After a bit of jostling, I settled into a nice long easy stroke with no feet to follow. DANG IT! As I breathed to my right side, out of curiosity, I looked behind me and found that I was the draftee….for a pack of about 20. DANG IT! I made my way over to a pair of feet and settled in. After awhile, he slowed way down so I looked for another pair and found some. I forced myself to bilateral the entire first lap so I would stay deeply aerobic and not blow my run in the water! At the turn-around, I noticed someone dart past me. I thought, "who's the other idiot in the sleeveless out here in this fridgid water? …..Hey, I recognize those feet. THAT'S GG!!" She hauled me along for the first lap in 36 minutes. When I exited the water to be counted and head off for my second lap I said to Gina, " NICE SWIM! Wanna drag me through the second lap?!?!?" No dice. The second lap got very very scary. I felt reasonably comfortable temperature-wise for the first lap and there were folks around me for that lap. Starting the second lap, I saw no swim caps and no kayaks or boats. After the first turn, the water deepened and I got cold….VERY cold and very much alone. I made it two-thirds of the way to the turn for home and started shivering as I swam. That scared the crap out of me. I realized at that point, I might be reaching the point of survival because I also became slightly dizzy and disoriented. "Is this early hypothermia?" went through my mind. Boats were evidently close by, but who cares when you are going through something like that. I figured that I needed to raise my heart rate and blood flow by working harder. I dumped the bilateral breathing and swam hard - not a sprint, but a steady oly tri pace. That might have made things worse. Who knows. I swam up the boat ramp as far as I could and felt major dizziness coming on. I pulled my legs up under me but stayed crouched. EVERYTHING was spinning. I slowly stumbled up the boat ramp SOO thankful that I was out of the water. 1:16:00 Not knowing what cold water temps could do to a swim pace, my loose goal was 1:30 to 1:00. I split the difference. I'm happy with that. T2: I shook uncontrollably while I put on my tri-singlet, bike shirt, arm-warmers and shoes. In hindsight, I should have changed shorts because I was so wet and so cold. Warmth was key and that was the one place I compromised. I stood at my bike trying to gain my composure and STOP shaking. The med guy came over and immediately asked if I had something warm to drink. I must have looked a total mess. I guarantee I felt like it! He filled my empty bottle (10min pre-race chaser for my gel) with a warm mixture that tasted like diluted Theraflu - kinda salty, kinda lemony. That helped but didn't stop me from shaking. At this point, a passing thought questioned if I would be able to finish the bike if I started in this condition. I headed off on the bike. Bike: ~5:55:00 The plan: mile 1-30 easy; mile 31-60 steady and eat/drink; 61-90 steady, NOTHING hard and eat/drink like there's no tomorrow; 91-112 steady, drink to the end and get ready to run. Here's how it went. The first 56 miles of the bike were fairly drastic "rollers." In Texas we would call these mountains, but these mountain folks feel otherwise. For the first 25, I shook uncontrollably. I slowed on the descents and stayed under 20mph for fear of going down on the bike because I was shivering so severly. With cloudy skies, I would spin into sunshine and begin to warm but as soon as the shade overtook me, I started shaking again. I could feel my neck and traps begin to cramp along with my chest and forearms. Oh my, this is not good. What do I do? I tried to keep my cadence really really high at all cost so that the large muscle groups would increase heart rate blood flow and hopefully warm me up. Things began to warm about 3 miles before the first turnaround. Bobo was at the turn around. He told me I was in sixth place and was looking pretty good. I think this was his honest assesment considering the no-BS tone of his voice. Somewhere in there I moved from 6th to 5th place. I Headed back towards Elk Lake for the special needs bags before the first monster climb of the day. Grabbed my PBnJ bagel out of my special needs bag (at 5000ft altitude) and head for the Mt Bachelor climb (up to a little over 6100ft). For us lowlanders, this is lung crushing. I don't know how I ever climbed to the top of Vail Mountain on my mountain bike! This is about 9 miles of climbing with long stretches of 8-9% grade. I finally made it to the top. Somewhere in there I actually worked up a sweat. I've never been so happy to sweat in my life! I came screaming down the first descent to the Sunriver turnoff. This stretch was 10 miles down and 10 miles back. The descent is deceptively fast. It doesn't look steep going down but it is constant for about 8 miles. I reached over 40 mph for a very long stretch. I saw the leaders about 4 miles from the turn around. I thought, "Dang, they look like they are going fairly slow…..that's weird." Duh, this was the most grueling part of the bike. The Mt Bachelor climb was mile 56-70. The Sunriver climb was mile 80-90. There was a very long portion of the climb back out of Sunriver where I must have set a course record for lowest speed/lowest cadence/highest heart rate: 7.9mph/48rpms/153bpm. I did my best to stick with the plan but this climb sucked everything out of me. It was completely demoralizing. We rode the IMC course in May and the stretch to Keremeos is hard and Yellow/Twin lakes sucks but this was ridiculous. Time was ticking away. It is can be completely defeating to go 8 mph for almost an hour. I'm guessing this was about a continuous 5% grade. I kept reminding myself we were all in the same boat. Apparently, I actually made up some time (if that is possible at that crawling pace) on the folks in front of me but three of them bought it back on the run. [Note to Jeff: Why in the heck are you thinking race strategy on your first IM? Just finish the dang thing, idiot!]. The 22 mile descent into Bend went fast….REALLY fast, time and speed. The course loses 3000ft in altitude in these 22 miles. Screaming fast! T2: I overtook fifth place in transition and I think he dropped another few places due to knee problems on the last lap of the run. Run: 2 x 13.1 mile out-n-backs. The plan: 1st 10K (first "out) easy and hydrate; 2nd 10K (first "back") steady and drink calories; 3rd 10k (second "out") maintain focus; 4th 10k just get home in one piece. The goals: run the first half, run as much of the 3rd 10k as possible and survive to the end. Stretch goal was to run the entire thing. Reality: ran the first 18 miles. Then it got cold and dark. Walked the aid stations due to safety reasons. This was an absolutely punishing run course. It started in the Old Mill District of town, which is the lowest area of Bend down near the Deschutes River. The course climbed out of Bend and head back towards Bachelor on Cascade Lakes Highway, and climbed between 750-1000 ft. I felt unreasonably good for the first 10k but my stomach felt weird. Made it to the first turn in about 50 minutes, but had to make a rather long pit stop to rid my body of partially digested Clif bars. Started back at the 1:00 mark. Ran the second leg in about 54 minutes and hit the special needs back for Endurolytes and the Port-a-pot for another poop-stop….still running and no walking, though. I was pumped. I looked at the sun and knew I could make it to the last turn around by sun down. Bobo allowed "outside" assistance, so Gina grabbed my cold-weather running hat, long sleeve running shirt and toilet paper. I told her to meet me at the out-n-back in an hour…..hopefully. Somewhere during my last lap, Gina and Scott started checking on all of the athletes between aid stations. If an aid station wasn't manned, they would hop in and give the athletes whatever they needed or wanted. They would then drive back and forth between aid stations and check on everyone. We lost tons of daylight time with the 8:30 start. If we had gotten to start at 7pm more than half of the field would have finished in daylight. I continued to run through aid stations and drink on the run up to mile 18. From mile 17 to the turn around at mile 20 (or so) there is a continuous climb over several miles that completely destroyed me. It was one of the most demoralizing stretches of running I have ever experienced. And it occurred almost instantaneously as the climb began. I slowed into the turn around. A few miles back I once again, for the second time that day, began to get really really cold. Honestly, I began to look at my arms and they began to look kind of green. I was so out of it by then. For the last lap, I couldn't figure out what I need to take in at the aid stations. But I kept running…..hard. At the turn around, an Aussie lady who has finished 5 IM's, looked me over and said I just looked cold. I knew I had taken in very few calories on the entire run. I had eaten nothing but one gel at the beginning of the second lap, and I had alternated Poweraid/water with Cola/water, whenever cola was available. I stood for several minutes and ate fig newtons, pretzels (from GG), downed 2 endurolytes, drank several cups of cola and about 5 cups of water. After changing my shirt and hat, and dumping giving GG my sunglasses and hot weather running hat, I continued to run….hard. The dark, however, created a problem of actually seeing where I was going. I began to walk the aid stations at each mile to make sure I got calories in so I wouldn't have to visit the meds at the finish line. Slowly but surely I passed one more guy and moved into 4th. Gina and Scott continued to encourage me then entire last leg, and Gina would drive a little ways ahead and put on her hazard lights until I passed her. She would check to see if I needed anything and continue to encourage me. At some point Scott began encouraging me by saying, "I can't believe you are about to SHATTER 12 hours. This is unbelievable." At least that's how it came across. For all I know he said, "You stupid @$$ what did you get me up at 4am to go sit in that stupid IMC sign-up line for? Now I've got to do the stupid crap you are going through right now. YOU ARE A FREAKING MORON!" Who knows. I'm now thinking it was the latter. 8-D I eventually made it back into town, but a 35-39'er passed me with about 1/2 mile to go. Turns out, he is a local who has finished multiple IM's. He had a very similar swim experience to me. Rounded the park to the cheers of the workers. Gina ran some of it with me until I told her to meet at the finish line. I ran the last several hundred yards by myself for no real reason at all. Not that I wanted to do it on my own or anything. At the time, I think I just thought, "ya know, you started this day off in a very scary position entirely on your own, scared to death with no one around and survived by dragging yourself out of the water. Take a few hundred yards and think about it on your own. 140.6 miles later, was that fear worth it?" Yeah, I think so. I crossed the finish line in the dark to cheers of a few friends (a few new IM pals that a spent a very long day with), shook hands with Bobo who said (very sincerely, I might add) "congratulations, very nice work" and hugged GG for a really long time. This was by no means an M-dot race - no strict drafting rules, no race marshalls, no elaborate transition set ups, no 4000 person volunteer team. The aid station workers at this race, however, were truly professionals. These guys new what they were doing and how to help. At the athletes meeting the day before the race, one of the IM guys asked about outside assistance and whether we could help each other out if some, for example, had a flat and needed a tube, CO2's or something. Bobo said, "well, I hope like hell you WOULD help them out." That pretty much set the tone and summed up our entire day. Conditions were not great for some of the day. Plus, many of the run aid station volunteers disappeared by the time I started the second lap. I guess they thought everyone was finished since we were spaced so far apart. In fact, one park ranger began to tear down one of the aid stations as I approached mile 15. A green car stopped on the side of the road opposite the station, the guy ran across the street, yanked the coolers and food from out of the rangers bronco and gave me what I needed. As I ran on, I thought I recognized the face. It turned out to be Matt Sealey, a very very fast athlete from Montana that had raced the half that morning. This was nearly sun down. I would have had time to get aid from the Rangers bronco and would have been totally fine, but Matt really stepped up and helped take care of us. Very classy. One more short story. Evidently, later in the day, there was a bit of a problem finding the actual turn around on the Sunriver out-n-back. One of the guys who finished in around 15 hours accidentally turn around early. There were several survey crews out working and he probably mistook one of those orange markers for the turn around. Anyhoooo, upon learning this after…..AFTER finishing the run and the entire Ironman, he went BACK out on the bike course, rode ANOTHER six miles and re-racked his bike. All I have to say for that is….HOLY FREAKING CRAP!!! I guess that would be honor over pain. Whew. So for the final results: I came in 5th overall and first in my age group. There were 4 or 5 guys in my age group. The winner finished in about 10:30. Bobo said he is a very solid IM athlete who has finished many IM's and is just holds a very steady pace for a very long time - perfect for this course. That made me feel very good about finishing within about 1 1/2 hr of the leader. True to his word, Bobo and the race crew stayed out until the last guy finished in about 17hrs 20 mins. He was out until around 2 or 3 am. That truly blows my mind. What perserverance this guy had. At the awards ceremony, everyone gave the guy a huge ovation. Bobo said they figured that about half of those that started the IM would actually finished. All but one finished. In normal Bobo fashion he said, "you guys endured some horrible conditions. In fact, all of you are moving really well this morning. Next year I want you out there hammering like there's no tomorrow. Next year I want more of you in the med tent and looking totally destroyed the next morning!!" Well, I guess this report was about as long as my day! If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I had an unbelievable season. I hope you did, too. Have fun, go fast, and stay safe.
I will now sign as,
|