As of last Wednesday we were NOT going to the race. We'd just put down one of our beloved dogs, the girls were stressed about the family counseling situation with their father, and neither M nor I felt emotionally capable of handling the trip and race. I cancelled our hotel reservations and the girls made plans with friends for Saturday, and I sank into that black place that is life with my exh in it.
Thursday morning I went to swim, and the faintest glimmer of "I need to do this race" sparked. By the time I exited the pool I had hatched a plan: I'd go alone, M could hang with the girls and do some fun stuff to take everyone's mind off of things, and I could just sink into silence and not think or talk for a few days. M, of course, wouldn't hear of me going alone, and the girls clearly wanted us gone (lol). So, I found a cheaper, almost as close hotel and we planned to leave Friday morning. After some scrambling to secure rides for the girls to and from practices and their social plans, we were packed and ready.
The drive up Friday was... long and boring. I was a little irritated to not be alone (that faded eventually, lol, but as always I owe the ever patient and tolerant M a lot...) and my cranky hamstring was.... cranky... the entire ride. We eventually rolled in around dinner time, checked in, found a restaurant, and settled down for the night.
Saturday morning we rolled out of bed, ate at Brueggers (THE BEST SALT BAGELS... God I hate panera, which is like the mcdonalds of bagels), showered, and headed north to Wake Forest to see M's nephew's baseball game. What started out as the Bad News Bears vs the Mets ended with the BNBs putting together a 6 run rally in the bottom of the last inning to implausibly win by one run. Off to M's sister's we went for his youngest nephew's 6th birthday party, where 347 kids under 10 ran amuck in his sister's gorgeous backyard.
We ultimately excused ourselves and arrived at athlete check in at almost 2p. No naps or kicking back the day before a race for me, lol. We checked in, walked through the expo briefly, stopped at the hotel to pick up the Bee, and commenced on the lengthy drive out to the swim/T1 location to check in the bike.
On the drive, I duly noted the, ahem, rolling terrain. The lake itself was large and gorgeous. The road into the swim area was narrow (hence why they were closing it completely to traffic race morning) and downhill into transition, which is the exact opposite of what you want on race day :-)
The race officials universally insisted that the water temperature was too high for there to be any chance of the race being wetsuit legal. I've learned not to trust the word of the race officials. Other people, apparently, had not learned that and regretted it the next morning.
I racked the Bee on the 3 mile long, narrowly spaced rack (seriously, there were...4? 5? racks for 2400 people... we're talking LONG racks) and we walked to look at the water. The run into transition was reasonable, and only slightly uphill.
We stopped for food on the way back to the hotel, and I finally got to sit down, stretch out, and relax at 7p. I was out cold by 8, and only woke up 4 times during the night to pee, thus establishing I'd successfully hydrated during the day ;-)
The alarm went off at 3:22a and we got ready and out the door in time to drop me at the eerily empty T2 shortly after 4. I "set up" my T2 (really. sneakers, race belt, watch...oh yeah, hat!) and wandered out to the row of 436 touring buses waiting to take us and any spectators out to T1. I hopped on the 3rd bus and shortly after that we were on the road. Most of the time the driver kept all four wheels on the ground as we barreled along the winding roads into the lake area. I saw some bewildered looking deer, and not much else. M, after dropping me off, had headed to one of the parking areas 5 or 6 miles from T1 and was planning to ride his mountain bike to T1 so he could escape as soon as I finished the swim and hustle back to T2 to see me in off the bike.
We offloaded at T2 and waited for the water temp announcement. I had brought mine, but had exactly no intention of wearing it regardless. I hate the things. Sure enough, they magically found a spot in the lake exactly .1 below the cut off, and half the athletes groaned at the news since they'd left their wetsuits behind. I had my speed suit, so really didn't care either way.
M arrived safely and we milled around and found someplace to sit and relax for the almost THREE hours I had until my wave started. We watched the pros off, I choked down my day old salt bagel and ensure, and we waited.
Apparently while my wave, with me standing in 6" of water at the front, waited to enter the water for the in water start, a nicely sized water snake of undetermined breeding swam almost right over my feet. No one in my wave saw him, so we all entered the water when it was our turn ;-)
The in water, too deep to stand, start was unremarkable. I took off with two girls keeping pace to my far left and one girl directly to my right. We caught the first straggler by the time we hit the 100 yard mark (no kidding) and the rest of the race was spent dodging slower moving differently colored swim caps. The girl on the right fell back, and I latched onto the feet of the other two as they moved over towards my line. I swam caboose until the first turn buoy, moved into the middle for the next leg, and went back to caboose after the final turn. I've never drafted during the swim before. This was pretty fun, although I ditched them a couple of times when the leader meandered way left. I picked them back up when they meandered back towards where they should have been, and rode the wake until about the last 100 yards or so when we got separated in the mass of bobbing humanity headed for the exit.
I came out of the water 3rd, :10 back, but exited T1 first. We'd caught and passed the first wave of older women (50+), so I was the first female age grouper to come through the course for 52 miles of the bike.
The first 4 or 5 miles were, of course, uphill. I'd actually argue that it was almost the worst part of the ride, as the roads were a bit rough, my legs were not warmed up, and it was UPHILL. I tried to just relax and spin it out, but was a little worried I'd be off the course by mile 30 and hitching a ride to T2 to call it a day.
The tenor of the ride changed rapidly when we turned off that first road. Smoothly paved and sweetly rolling, I was hitting 32 on the false flats and feeling significantly better. The entire time I was blowing by boy after boy, most of whom had something encouraging and/or hilarious to say about it. I was passed by a few boys at various times, but for the most part I was doing the passing. In the back of my mind I wondered if all the people I passed would be gloating over my wasted body on the side of the road at some point, but on I went. I don't use a power meter, or freak over my speed, and I couldn't get my cadence working, so I really ride on instinct anyway.
The bike was fun. Challenging. Hot. Windy. HILLY. The neighborhoods we passed turned out en masse, and the volunteers were phenomenal. For hydration I had double cages off my seat, a front loader, and a smaller aero bottle on the tube. My plan was to drink my front loader, refill from one of my back bottles, and then take water at each aid station and mix it with a squirt or two from my super charged aero bottle mix. That way I'd have the other back bottle in reserve if, as at IMLou, I ran out of aid stations and water , which forced me to ride the last 20+ miles dry in 97+ heat.
I also had fig newtons, a broken up pbj bonk breaker, some salt/electrolyte tabs, and mint lifesavers to get the awful sugary gloppy taste out of my mouth occasionally. The bonk breaker and accelerade mix created a lovely gooey mess to puke periodically until I switched to the fig newtons, which sat better. I ate the salt tabs like tic tacs, washed everything down with yummy luke warm accelerade, and munched a mint periodically.
From mile 30 or so on I had to pee. Despite repeated attempts, I STILL cannot pee on the bike, and I knew I had a good bike split going so I stubbornly decided to hold on until T2. I finally got passed by a girl from my AG at mile 52, and I stayed in touch with her for the last 4 miles until we actually dismounted side by side (at, of course, the top of a HILL) and ran together into T2.
I definitely enjoyed the bike. Training on the powerbeam trainer, which is my ONLY bike training, has certainly paid off, as my 2:42 split was a PR and this course was WAY more challenging than the other halfs I've done. I appreciated the support from the people along the course, as when they realized a female was coming through cheered louder and shouted gender-based encouragement. That was a very cool experience, and I doubt there will be many races of that calibre where I will have the honor of being the lead age grouper (thanks in part to my wave, but only 4 age groupers beat me, so even if it had been a mass start I still should have been up there anyway). The guys didn't seem to mind getting chicked quite as much as some locals do, either.
I racked the Bee, who didn't want to hang straight, switched into my running shoes, tossed on my hat, and sprinted for the neartest porta-let. Probably two minutes later, and feeling much better, off I ran.
As I lumbered out on the run course after my pee break, M yelled that I was in 3rd, with the girls just :20 or so ahead. At that point I didn't care if I was in 1st or last, as I didn't feel particularly spunky and hadn't embraced the suck at that point. And, oddly, I had a weird tight, pulling pain in my lower right leg, on the outside at the bottom of the calf. The road was very slanted, so I ran on the crown to try and get the pain to subside, but it worsened quickly. I stopped to stretch it, which didn't help. Sometime in the first mile I actually passed the 2nd place girl, but the 1st place girl was gone.
I tried changing stride length and stuff to see if I could work out the leg issue. I remember thinking that my shoe was a little loose on that side, so I couldn't figure out what was causing the pain. Then the whole area went supernova, with a deep burning pain, and my foot gradually went numb. First a few toes, then the entire foot, and ultimately the numbness crept up above my ankle. I knew my stride was getting awkward because I could neither feel nor control my foot. It was weird, and then it was scary as it got worse and worse. I started trying to figure out how I could possible run 13 miles on that foot (more like 11 at that point). I walked the aid stations and moved it around and wiggled my toes trying to find some solution.
When I saw M on the course on his bike, I told him what was going on, and that I had no idea what to do. While I debated I kept running, albeit at a very slow pace for me. During that time the lead girl hung almost 4 minutes on me, although M didn't tell me that. I began to sympathize with how Miss Mia must have felt as she lost feeling and strength in her hind legs, and I could hear my sneaker scraping oddly periodically.
I wondered if I could be causing some sort of permanent damage to the foot. I thought about walking, or stopping and taking my shoe off, or just walking off the damn course and calling it a day. Meanwhile I was still lumbering along in second. M yelled encouragement as I entered the section he couldn't get into -- the middle 5 miles from hell, where many people's races went to die. The hills had hills. The sun was strong, and the hills were ruthless. The carnage was evident as a large percentage of the runners were walking. And we did heart of the loop....twice. It was on the first time through that my foot began to regain feeling... just as oddly and unpredictably as it had lost it. Slowly the numbness receded and I began running with more purpose.... And then I saw her.
The first place girl had broken (and she is a very good runner who posted a much faster IMLou than I did) and was walking. I ran by and yelled (probably more gurgled weakly, but...) encouragement and she cheered me on. When I came out of the dead zone in 1st, Matthew was as shocked as I was... and then it became about survival. With 4 miles left I had opened up a 3 minute lead over the 2nd place girl, and I determined to make her earn it if she was gonna catch me. I was walking through each aid station, taking water and ice and the occasional awful Ironman perform or broiling hot coke, and then running as strongly as I could muster to the next aid station.
At mile 11 the lead was up to about 3:45, and I knew it would take a total meltdown to lose it. Or 6 minute miles out of the 2nd place girl, lol. I was struggling, although the last four miles were my fastest of the race. The race had thinned out so much that I was not passing people nearly as often, and by the time we made the last turn in front of the capitol building, with the finish a distant, eternally uphill, speck, the race had finally thinned out.
I really wish I could have enjoyed the long run into the finish a bit more, but I just wanted to be finished. The atmosphere was really fun, with people lining the street all the way up to the finish chute.
As I entered the chute, all the kids had hands out asking for high fives, including Matthew, so I moved to the far right and, for the first time in an Ironman race, took the time to high five as many people as I could on the way through the chute. If you've ever done a half or a full, you will know what I mean when I say the LAST thing I wanted to do was lift my arm up and make even the slightest impact with ANYTHING that could slow or alter my forward momentum in the slightest, but I did... and it was a blast. I managed to high five M's family too as I worked my way down the chute.
Across the line with a small fist pump, and I was pretty much cooked and bent over with my hands on my knees. The volunteers were fantastic, and we cracked jokes as they guided me out of the finisher chute.
All in all, I am very very glad that we went to the race, that Matthew and his family were there with me, and that I didn't give in to the black monster. I didn't even know, or care, what my final time was (a PR, amazingly enough) or even what place I came in (although I have to say, that was really really cool....) because I a) made it to the start line and b) made it to the finish line...
...that's my why, what's yours?
No comments:
Post a Comment