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| The aftermath |
This was my 6th ironman distance race and like all the others was a roller-coaster ride of emotion and as always a fight with myself to speed up, slow down or just keep going at all. Do other people fight with themselves as well as with the water, wind and pain? For me the voices started the day before the race, doctor. There was a strong wind in T1 and looking at the dull skies and grey water and the bikes being blown over I was thinking “You don’t have to do this. You could pretend to have a cold, or fake a sprained ankle. No-one would know, and you wouldn’t have to do a stupid triathlon in the cold tomorrow”. This happens every time I’ve got something big to do the next day and I shrugged and went back to the building site formerly known as the Park Inn. Dinner was the special meal the hotel had laid on for us and it was good practice for open water swimming with 40-odd hungry race-ready triathletes all trying to get to the pasta at once. By then my mood had changed: I was shockingly relaxed about the upcoming race and really didn’t have any trouble with pre-race nerves at all.
4.45 the next morning and I crawled out of my pit. The hotel’s breakfast was available from 5, and I went down at about 5.10 to find it buzzing. I joined in with the final carbo-load, then it was off to the race. I walked over to T1 by myself, but as I walked down the racks it seemed that every second bike had someone in a red-white-and-blue top who would stop pumping their tyres or arranging their helmet and shout out a greeting. Thames Turbo had 36 people doing the full distance and another four or so relay teams and we really were all over the race like an embarrassing rash. It was lovely and all of a sudden I was grinning all over my face. I sorted my gear out, lubed all the bits that needed lubing, then it was wetsuit on and here we go. Lining up with everyone I was straying into the land of the really stupidly happy: race on! The pros went off at 7 AM and we were all in the next wave at 7.05. Lots of manly handshakes as we lined up wearing our manly pink hats: this was officially the ladies’ wave to which they’d added team turbo, and they’d allocated hat colour by wave on the basis of some crude sexual stereotyping. The start was on the shore and I got a telling off when I disobeyed a marshal who was determined that everyone should start the race dry by stepping forward and rinsing out my goggles.
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| Yours truly smiling (in the background with the pink swim hat: Mal James is the cameraman and Kim Rowe is the happy looking fellow without the latex headgear. |
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My crackingly good mood lasted until about 1 minute into the swim. The water was cold and because I hadn’t had a chance to get used to it before the start I was having trouble getting my face down and my breathing was way too hard. I also got a fair old ice-cream headache to make me more cross but I just kept going. Round the first turn buoy and then… where? My state of extreme pre-race relaxation meant that I had been very casual over things like working out where the swim went. I had a rough idea of the course layout but when viewing it the previous day I’d assumed they’d put a few more buoys in to mark it but no, I think there were a total of three on the course as a whole. I did the mental equivalent of a shrug and just followed everyone else, but I wasn’t happy without much to sight on. Still, I got on some feet for a while until the first turnaround, which was marked by a big white pointy buoy with people on it, I think they call those ones “boats”. For the long straight back under the three bridges I was in a loose pack of swimmers that churned around a fair bit, plus the occasional faster swimmer from the next wave moving through us. Round the turnaround buoy in the canal and then back to the swim finish. Why do those last legs of open water swims always seem to take as long as the whole rest of the swim?
I wasn’t wearing a watch and as I got to the swim exit I looked for a clock to get a split from, but there was nothing, or at least nothing that I could see, and I had no idea how long I’d been swimming for. Judging by the number of blue swim hats from the next wave I thought I’d been quite slow and I was a bit dispirited. In fact my split was 1:14, slow for some but for me towards the faster end of my target times, but I only found that out after the race. T1 was fine but delayed by a minute or two by a stop in a portaloo then out on the bike. That felt a lot better and I whizzed through the twisty bits heading out of Copenhagen and then onto the coast road heading North. This road is a time-triallist’s dream: silky smooth surface, mostly flat but with the occasional bump to break things up and just to make it even nicer a bit of a tailwind. I settled down in the aerobars and kept my heart rate on or below 140 and tried to enjoy it. Something was wrong though. My shoulders were hurting just keeping me on the bars and I kept doing the “Contador shuffle”, sliding forward on the saddle and having to push myself back up it. To start with this wasn’t really a bother but after about an hour my triceps and shoulders were really painful and I was forced to get out of the aero position regularly because of the discomfort. I finally worked out what it was: at the Antwerp race a few weeks before my saddle had shifted a bit going over a speed bump and perhaps I hadn’t got it level enough when I put it back afterwards. I’d ridden the bike since but I hadn’t spent an extended time in the aero position. What to do? By the time I got to the aid station at 50km I knew that I absolutely had to stop and adjust it. That and a second quick visit to the portaloo took about 6 minutes in total. There’s nothing more demoralising than standing by the road trying to sort out your tools while listening to the whooooosh of bikes flying past. Bah.
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| Not sure when this was taken on the bike |
By this time we were off the coast road and heading through windy narrow back roads through rural Zealand. I got back to business and rode on, eventually coming to the stretch on the highway heading South that makes up the last section of the loop. This would normally be a great road to ride on but with the tailwind from earlier now being a fairly strong headwind it was just a case of grinding it out into the wind. Eventually I came to the big hill with the food station on it, crowded with supporters and spectators including a vocal group of Turbos who lifted my spirits. Thanks for staying at the bottom of the hill guys, that meant that I could zip past at speed looking as though I knew what I was doing. If you’d been near the top of the hill, well let’s just say we’d have had more time for a chat. Over the section of pave after the highway and back onto the coast road for the second loop. Up to now I’d been riding well and my average speed was something like 33 kph, but now I started to feel really bad. I had no energy and was finding it hard to stay aero. My cadence was dropping to below 80 and I was not a happy camper. I think the problems with my saddle earlier and my attempts to stay down on the bars despite the pain had made my shoulders quite sore and now they’d stiffened up, but I’m not sure why I was feeling so flat aside from that. I ground my way back up the coast and once I turned West again I had a bit of an assessment of my position. OK, I’m feeling really bad and I can’t get aero. I’ll sit up for this section until I get to the highway, ride comfortably and eat as much as I can. Forget about times, this is just a training ride.
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| The highway and the big (for Denmark) hill. This photo was taken in 2010 but it was the same in 2011, but with many more supporters there. |
For the next 30km or so, therefore, I was that guy. The one you pass on the bike at 120km or so into an ironman, riding a flash carbon fibre bike, wearing an aero helmet, sitting up and looking miserable. I always feel a smidgen of schadenfreude when I pass them, so perhaps this was payback time. That little voice was there again “What do you think you’re doing here? You haven’t done anywhere near enough training, you don’t have the discipline to do this properly, why do you waste your time pretending to be some sort of triathlete? Your swim was rubbish, you’ve got a long way to go on the bike and then you’ve got to run, you’re going to have a really bad day because you’re already knackered”. Muttering words I won’t repeat I ground along, making a point of getting as much nutrition in as I could stomach. I was tucking my used gel wrappers into my shorts leg so as not to litter and I wasn’t doing too good a job of slurping the contents out of some of them so I now had sticky pink yuk running down my right leg to add to my grumpiness. Bah.
Of course, and just as I had been telling people the previous day when I was doing my “experienced ironman veteran” act, bad patches come and eventually bad patches go. By the time I got on the highway again I was feeling a bit better, and the wind had changed a bit so it wasn't so much of a horrible grind as before. Once over the teeth-chattering pave and onto the road heading back to the city I was fine again. My speed was back to something acceptable and the closer I got to town the better I felt. Into T2 for a final bike split of 5.42 which was far better than I was expecting an hour before and I was feeling perky again. Hat off, shoes on, bit of banter with the other guys in transition and then out the tent. I handed my bag to the volunteer and she helpfully pointed out that I was deficient in the small matter of my race number. I just dumped out the contents of the bag on the floor, number on and off I trotted while the very pleasant and helpful volunteer re-packed the bag. I felt as good as you can having just biked 180km and had to make a big effort to slow down. The run course was quite twisty and there were lots of buildings so the Garmin was not much help in pacing, plus the distance markers were placed at apparently completely random distances and at least some of them were in the wrong place. Still, after a couple of kms I knew that I was doing around 4.45 to 4.50 a km and feeling nicely relaxed. Just keep tapping it out, don’t overdo it and don’t stop. As always the psychological games about the marathon have to be played. The thought of running 42.2 kms is too frightening, so you have to just focus on the smaller things. I told myself to just get the first lap done and concentrate on that as a goal.
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| Coming into transition right in the middle of Copenhagen. |
I caught David Spencer and we had a bit of a chat, then Mr Crews who told me the tale of the idiot who’d run into his back wheel and broken three spokes. After about 6km I came across the Little Mermaid. I’m going to be here 3 more times, I thought… I wonder how I’ll feel.
Keep it going, keep the pace steady. The run course was clogged up with people doing the ironman shuffle and I spent a fair amount of time weaving in and out of them. My clubmates were everywhere and most of them seemed to be in front of me and going fast. Don’t chase them, just keep to the same pace and they’ll come back to you. At the turnaround at the far end of the run was one of the pros on the deck next to an ambulance and with an IV in his arm. Keep the fluids coming in, you don’t want to end up like that. Tap, tap tap. The 1st 10k went by in about 47 minutes: I’ll take that. Now I was starting to think about finish times, but I wasn’t sure how I was doing because I didn’t know my swim split or how long I’d spent in T1. The run course went by the finish at the end of each lap, I can look at the clock there and see how I’m doing. Got to the bit nearest the finish and no clock in sight. Oh well.
The number of people out supporting or just generally spectating was astonishing. The end of the run lap nearest the finish in particular was just rammed full of people, four or five deep by the course and then sitting on bridges and overpasses. The organisers say there were 125,000 people there and I can believe it. Of the 125,000 the noisiest and most welcome were the endlessly enthusiastic turbo supporters who always brought a smile to my face and gave my tired legs a boost. It was really great having you there everyone and thanks for everything.
Lap two and now it’s getting into the grimmer part of the run. The first 10km are great because you’re so pleased not to have to cycle anymore, and if you survive intact to the last 10km you know you’re heading home, but 10-30 kms is just a slog, especially on multi-lap courses where you’ve seen it all before. Head down and keep it going. Through 20kms and I was just about holding pace but the 4:45s were tending towards 5:00s and I’d started walking through some of the aid stations. I needed to answer a call of nature and ducked into a portaloo. It was so nice to just sit down, locked away from everything in my little blue box. I seriously considered just staying there for an hour or so. Maybe a little nap. No! Get back out there and finish it off.
I still don’t know what time I’m looking at. With a 5.42 bike I should be looking at being well under 11 hours so long as I keep up a reasonable pace, but it would be nice to have a better idea of what I’m looking at. I suddenly remember that I can get the time of day simply by pressing a button on my Garmin. Durr. The time is 4:11 PM. We started at 7:05 so 11 hours is 6:05 PM so I’m going to be well under it. But is that time Copenhagen time or UK time? I haven’t reset the Garmin to local time, and if it’s UK time then it’s really 5:11, is that possible? I have to force my exhausted brain to do the sums, which takes me a while, and I conclude that either I took over two hours for the swim, which is not likely, or it must have set itself to local time automatically. Back to business.
From 25 to about 35 kms is just nasty hard work. I overtake a lot of people even though my pace has dropped to between 5:00 and 5:15 per km. I can keep going but my legs are now really painful and I am feeling horrible. My main struggle is with that inner voice which has popped up again. I’m going to be nearer 10:40 than 11:00, and my target for this race was just to go under 11 hours. I could just stop and take a good long walk and still make it in under 11 hours. No-one would know that I was slacking off,and it wouldn’t hurt anymore. Or you could just walk for longer at the aid stations. Just walk for a minute at this one. Aaaaaargh shutup. I keep going, one thing that helps is the thought that the 10 or so clubmates I’ve passed in the last 15kms would overtake me again if I started walking.
I catch Mark B at about 35 kms. He’s been looking good every time I saw him on the run course but he’s just slowed down a bit more than I have. We run together for a while, then he tells me to just go because he’s really slowing down. He tells me that Straggler’s just ahead. I know that John (Straggler) is a bit ahead of us on the course but he’s surely a lap behind us? Having left Mark at about 38 kms I know it’s in the bag and I don’t have to hold back anymore. Time to run it in and leave it all on the course. I put the hammer down as far as it’ll go and I’m heading home. I can only manage about 4:30 a km but by comparison with most people on the course I’m flying. Finishing an ironman strong is a great feeling. I blow past Jennie and Brian at a drinks station then I’m about 2m behind Mr Taylor as we turn into the finish chute. Since the finish isn’t clearly marked and I still believe that John must be a lap behind me I become confused and stop to check with a marshal whether this is indeed the finish. Yes it is. OK, back to the running as fast as I can. I pass John about 15m from the line and finish in 10:37.
What a great result, for me at least. I’ve known for a while that with the stars in the right place I can go well under 11 hours for an ironman and this time I managed to combine a reasonable bike split with a good run and there it was. I’m particularly pleased given the ‘flu that I caught in December which meant that couldn’t do anything for the whole of January and February and when I managed to get back into training in March I really had to start from the very beginning. Overall training was sparse as always for me with an average of about 6 hours per week not including the time out at the start of the year: with my job and my family I do as much as I can and I try to make as much of it count as possible, so probably a lot more in the way of hard runs and short, nasty turbo sessions than some. This year I managed to avoid injury and for the first time for 3 years neither of my Achilles tendons was causing trouble, probably accounting for my good run.
A final word about my clubmates. You could easily put together a buzzword-riddled management consultancy seminar about the Thames Turbo group that went to Copenhagen. I think what gives the quality of the team away is the casual acceptance of the extraordinary by the end of the weekend, from the numbers of people finishing in eye-popping times, to stories like those of Jon Crews and Nigel who both had bad crashes on the bike and finished strong all the way to the people who had a hard time but who toughed it out on the run and still made it in. Probably the best triathlon club in the World.
