Operation Secret Sombrero - Ironman Cozumel 2012

Ironman Cozumel 2012

Operation secret sombrero

My two “A” races for 2012 were the Alpe D’Huez Long Course and then Ironman Wales, both of which I missed: my journey to the Alpe D’Huez was sabotaged by the SNCF, and then I was sick for IM Wales and spent the weekend of the race in bed. A couple of days after IM Wales I was in a bit of a state because of the way things had worked out and I decided to see if was possible to get an entry to another IM distance race before the end of the year. After a little work online I worked out that the only races that I might be able to get into were Challenge Barcelona, which was still accepting entries, and IM Cozumel, which I could get a slot for if I booked a trip with Endurance Sports Travel. I didn’t really fancy going to Barcelona again and the date would have been very difficult to organise because of work. I knew nothing about IM Cozumel but with a bit of research it started to sound attractive: held on the island of Cozumel off the coast of Mexico, nice swim, nice flat fast bike, enthusiastic locals and easy to get to with lots of direct flights to Cancun available at reasonable prices. I checked my diary and I could manage a week off work then without much difficulty, and when I raised the issue with Pam she was surprisingly happy for me to go. I justified it to myself on the grounds that I’d had such a difficult summer at work that I was entitled to have a ridiculously self indulgent week by myself in the Caribbean, dammit, and I got on the phone to EST in the States clutching a credit card which actually started smouldering during the call when they cleared the payment. Thus was born Operation Secret Sombrero.

I had 10 weeks between IM Wales and IM Cozumel. The first week was mostly spent recovering from whatever it was had kept me from the sheep and hills of Pembrokeshire, leaving 7 weeks training with a two week taper. IM Training in October and November is tricky when you work in a university because it’s a busy time of the year with all the students and everything, but with a bit of creativity you can fit in early morning turbo sessions that finish before 7, late evening runs with a headtorch and do other things like getting your swims in while your kids are having their swimming lessons. The weather’s not favourable to cycling either, especially when you want to spend at least some time with your children and so I put in some very cold early morning rides on Sundays, including one where, despite wearing two pairs of gloves, my hands were so cold that I couldn’t get any food out of my pockets or even a bottle from its cage and I ended up totally hypoclycaemic, slumped in a car park warming my hands up in my armpits until I could manage to get the wrapping off a powerbar. I also put in a couple of (for me) epic turbo trainer sessions when it was too wet to ride, including a 3 hour steady effort which I almost needed therapy after. My average training time per week for the seven weeks before the taper was 10 hours and 40 minutes, a consistency I have never managed before.

When you’re living in a cold climate and you’re headed for a tropical race you need to get some heat acclimatisation done, because there are some important changes to things like sweat rate and salinity that come after a couple of weeks with some exercise in the heat. Not having a suitable shed or small room I couldn’t put the turbo trainer in with a heater, so I did mine by wearing thermals while turbo training with no fan. This is a really disgusting way to spend 45 minutes and you have to do a lot of laundry, but it gets the job done. Having found out that the bike is very straightforward and flat but can be windy I put in some time trying to make sure that I’d be as aero as possible: I had a proper bike fit done which made a big difference to my ability to stay in the bars for long periods, I agonised about bottle cage placements and I twitched nervously when I thought about clothing. Eventually I decided to go with a white Orca tri-top I have rather than my TTTC top because the  club one is a bit loose in places and also a bit short and I was worried about sunburn. I also picked up an Aquasphere swimskin for next to nothing from eBay, it being a non-wetsuit swim, meaning that I felt forced to do more swim training so that I didn’t look like a dick who thinks he can buy speed rather than putting the effort in. I tried to do all of this as quietly as possible because if for some reason I didn’t make it I didn’t think I could stand the humiliation of DNS-ing yet another race, but it did slip out occasionally - when the detective team of Barr and Todd noted that I had turned up for a run in Richmond Park after putting in 80km on the bike, for example, they knew that something was up and interrogated me until I spilled the beans.

So stupid that if you gave me a penny for my thoughts you’d get change

Eventually the time came to head for the subtropics and away from wet, cold England. I booked a cab to take me to Heathrow T5, loaded it with bike box and rucksack and off I went. The cabbie, I’m pleased to say, entertained me with his views on corporal punishment for children until we reached the airport and, having cravenly agreed with him I  went into the airport. I looked at the departure board - no flight. I looked again. Still no mention of my flight. I started to feel really, really bad - check the documents. The flight’s from Gatwick. It’s the return flight that goes to Heathrow. Oh dear.

Bike boxes on the ferry

I had an hour and forty minutes to get to Gatwick. That’s do-able. Maybe. Straight to the cab rank, into the nearest black cab and off we go. The cabbie commiserates with me and tells me that he gets at least one similarly stupid person per month (not his words). we have to do 40-odd miles around the M25, one of the most crowded roads in Europe, at 9AM on a Thursday. There’s a long holdup by the M3 junction and it’s starting to look grim as I sit in the back checking flight prices to Cancun for the next morning (more than the cost of the whole trip...) and trying not to look at the meter. Finally we’re through the jam and off we go. The road’s clear but the information boards are saying there’s delays between J7 and J8, just before the turn for Gatwick. I am beyond miserable. If I miss the race because of being a complete f***wit I will have to retire from triathlon and take up a hobby more commensurate with my feeble intellectual abilities, something like trying to put one block on top of another, trying to count beyond 5, finger painting, or watching football and eating pies.

Thankfully the promised delays never materialised and we sailed onto the M23 and then into Gatwick. I handed the cabbie my long-suffering credit card: when he gave it back I held it close to my ear and could hear it sobbing, but I was there with 45 minutes to spare before take off, and 5 minutes before the bag drop closed. Done. Onto the plane and off to Cancun, then a long period of hurry up and wait: the guy from EST who was picking me up was meant to collect three other people, none of whom seemed to have made it onto the flight. Perhaps they all went to Heathrow as well and hadn’t given themselves as much cock-up recovery time as I had.

Now don’t you boys go a-drinkin’ nor smokin’ weed

Finally in Cozumel I just relaxed, registered, went for a spin on the bike and did some swimming. The swim course at Chankanaab Marine Park was open for practice on the Friday and Saturday and I went both days. The wind was up and there was quite a lot of swell both days but the water was the perfect temperature and astonishingly clear, with lots of fish and other marine life to admire. Saturday afternoon I racked my bike and handed over my transition bags. T1 for Cozumel is the car park for the Marine Park and my rack was in the overflow car park with lots of sand and gravel on the floor and, although it wasn’t too far from the changing tent it was a good long way from the bike start.  

The swim course the day before the race. Changing tent for T1 and bag racks on the right.

I was still jetlagged which was a minor blessing - I was asleep by 9.30 the night before the race and wide awake at 3.45 (alarm set for 4) which made for a great start to the day. The hotel were serving an early breakfast and I had a small bowl of cereal and snagged a banana to eat later. Then a lift over to the start with one of the EST guys who bid us farewell and admonished us “Now don’t you boys go a-drinkin’ nor smokin’ weed today, you hear me?”. We promised not to.

Transition was the usual bustle. I borrowed a pump and blew my tyres up, ate my banana, taped some gels to my bars, smeared some parts of myself with vaseline and then smeared some of the non-vaselined parts with waterproof factor 40 sunblock, then wandered over to the swim start. The pros went 20 minutes before the mortals and then it was our turn. The swim start is in front of a large concrete pen that’s used for dolphin displays and contains about 10 captive dolphins that are presumably completely insane from being kept in the aquatic equivalent of a small featureless cage. To get in the water you walk out on the pier that’s built around the dolphin pen and jump in. There’s plenty of room even with a couple of thousand people and I started fairly near the front on the right hand side.

Elbows and currents

The swim is a straightforward rectangular course - you swim Northeast, parallel to the shore, for about 800m, then round and back Southwest further out for a long 1900m leg, then back in towards the shore and Northeast again to the swim finish. Normally there is a mild southwesterly current which doesn’t have much effect on the two NE legs when you’re closer to shore but gives swimmers a bit of a boost on the long SW leg when they’re a bit further out to sea, leading to a relatively fast swim. I was hoping for something around 1:10 to 1:12, but as we trod water waiting for the start there was a strong wind blowing chop into our faces and if we just trod water we would move back towards the pier with the current. Looking again I saw that there were hundreds of people hanging onto the wire mesh under the pier that keeps the dolphins in. Suddenly and without any warning the horn went off and the usual anarchy ensued. The lovely clear water turned blue-white with bubbles and a couple of thousand normally civilised people became wild animals kicking and punching to get themselves space and position. It wasn’t too bad after the first few minutes but it stayed mostly full-contact until the first turnaround, and there were a lot of people who seemed to have seeded themselves rather optimistically, including one massive group that I couldn’t get through at all and eventually had to swim around which meant a substantial detour. Nevermind.

Once round the turn buoy things were a lot cleaner and I just aimed myself straight down the buoy line and went for it. This meant that it stayed a bit physical and I did use my elbows a little (I’m not the greatest in the World at swimming straight but some people really shouldn’t be allowed in the water unless there are black lines on the bottom to follow) but I knew I was on course. Sighting was a little tricky because of the chop and it often took two or three looks before I’d get a good line once I was past each buoy but they seemed to fly past and the current was pushing us along good and fast. Once round the second turn buoy I was following a group of swimmers who didn’t go directly back up the buoy line but went a lot closer to shore. I wanted to swim nearer the buoys so I left them and tried to angle across but even though I was swimming strongly and felt good I didn’t seem to get anywhere, and being in no man’s land between the shore and the buoys I didn’t have anyone to draft off. I was finding it difficult to sight again because of the chop from the headwind but I just kept on swimming hard and slowly made my way to the steps of the swim exit, where I was dismayed to see 1:26 on the clock. I didn’t realise it at the time but the current was far stronger this year than usual and was active much closer in to the shore, so while we were getting a boost going SW, the NE legs, especially the second one were very slow going indeed. Most people were 10-15 minutes slower than usual: in total only 75 people swam faster than an hour and most of those were pros, and a considerable number of people (somewhere between 35 and 460 depending on which rumour you listen to) failed to make the 2:20 swim cutoff. I only found out about this after the race and spent the whole triathlon thinking that I’d just been rubbish.

Sun and wind

I was through T1 in 6:41, not fast but I had a long way to go after unracking the bike, plus I had to do things like clean the sand off my feet before I put my bike shoes on. Onto the bike and off down the long straight road towards the southern tip of the island. No problems until I rounded the bend at the Southern tip of the Island and started the 20km stretch back up the East coast. The prevailing wind in Cozumel in November is an Easterly to a South-Easterly, but today we had a brisk North-Easterly which meant that we were going full into a headwind for this section. Nothing to do but stay aero, shift up and try to keep to a reasonable cadence. Aside from the wind, this section of the bike course is lovely: the road is very close to the sea and there are white sand beaches, lagoons with lily flowers, palm trees and packs of drafters to look at. Towards the end of the windy part I was overtaken by a peloton of about 40 riders in a double paceline. I really hate this sort of thing - I’d have to burn too many matches if I wanted to get away in front of them so my only option was to sit up and let them go past. I took advantage of the break to tell them exactly what I thought of their cheating ways, and they all ignored me and stared at the wheel in front. I’m pleased to say that there were quite a few people in the next penalty tent that I passed.

Me heading into the wind. This must have been taken on the first or second lap because I don't have anyone from Argentina glued to my back wheel.

I found it hot on the bike, even though some of the people from Texas and Florida laughed at me when I said it was near the upper limit of what I could tolerate. I’d like to see them do some of the races in the UK in April or October (or June and July for that matter). The temperature in the shade was in the upper 20s but we were out in the full sun most of the time with the heat radiating back up to us from the blacktop. I was glad I’d put in the disgusting trainer with thermals sessions, and also that I’d really made a big effort to get my weight down before the race so I wasn’t carrying any excess lard for insulation. There were a lot of aid stations, roughly every 10 kms on the bike and I was snagging bottles of water and Gatorade at all of them. The Gatorade mostly went down my throat and the water went over me. They were doing a super job of keeping the drinks cold and some of the bottles of water I got even had ice in them. Because it was hot and I was thirsty almost all the time I didn’t feel like eating anything: I had a couple of gels but that was it. I estimate that I drank somewhere between 5 and 8 litres of fluid on the bike and I didn’t need to pee at all until a couple of hours after the race so I must have been pumping out a lot of sweat in addition to all the bottles of water I dumped over myself.

Finally through the wind and onto the road called the “Transvasal” which goes Northwest across the island back to San Miguel, the town. In past years this is where the Easterly or Southeasterly wind has provided a helpful push but this year it was blowing across the road, although not strongly because we were sheltered by trees. Back into town, round a few bends and I was off onto the second lap. The wind was picking up and the leg back up no the coast was no fun at all this time because the headwind was full-on and an effort to ride into. My backside was also starting to complain but not too badly. The flat, straight roads you ride on mean that there’s very little opportunity to get out of the aerobars and if you’re aiming for a decent bike split you just have to stay as aero as possible for the whole time. The only respite I found was on a couple of small rises on the coast road where I got out of the saddle for a few turns of the pedals just to shake everything up and let things move around a bit. Onto the third lap and I was feeling good - no sign of my heart rate creeping up, which meant that the rate of fluid intake must be about right, pedals still turning nicely and getting some good speed up on the parts of the course where there wasn’t a headwind. Back around the bottom of the island and into the wind which was now really whistling around my helmet. Stay aero and spin and I was staying left most of the way because of the slower riders, some of whom I was lapping and some of whom I guess were just having a hard time on their last lap.

Of course, if you don’t want to stay aero and put in the effort into the wind you can always just draft. After the first lap I didn’t see any more big pelotons but there were some people taking advantage of the low numbers of draft marshals to catch a ride on that last leg into the wind. I picked up my own personal leech, one Jorge from Argentina (according to his number) who would sit on my wheel until I realised he was there and slowed down until he was forced to pass. He would then ride a little way up the road and sit up, waiting for someone else to come past that he could stick himself to. This happened several times and the last time I gave him a bit of a mouthful, after which he rode up to a group of three that were all riding very close and, as far as I could make out, sat on the back and asked them if he could join in. There were also some of the faster AG women sitting on any wheel they could find, the most shameless being one Isabella from Nicaragua who I don’t think had her nose in the wind for more than a couple of seconds for the entire 20km stretch. There were quite a few bikes in the road, sure, but it was perfectly possible to ride clean and I made sure that I was doing it the whole time. Fortunately after we’d made the final turn onto the Transvasal most of the drafting stopped, except for Isabella from Nicaragua who I saw several more times, each time about 30cm from someone’s back wheel. 

I went through 100 miles in 5:01, fractionally off 20 miles an hour, and my average speed went down a little more because of the wind, but overall I was very pleased with my pacing throughout the bike which was nice and even for a final bike split of 5:43.49 (NB according to Mr Garmin the bike leg was about 1.5 km long). I kept the speed up all the way into T2, took my feet out of my shoes a few hundred metres before the dismount line, zoomed up and leapt off my bike and almost fell over. For some reason my toes on both feet were incredibly sore and cramped up and I could only hobble into the changing tent. I ditched my watch into my transition bag so that I could put on the Garmin that had been mounted on my bike, checked the time and went out on the run which is three laps of 14km each, up and down the road that heads North from the centre of San Miguel de Cozumel. I knew that I wasn’t going to make my target time of 10:30 by quite a long way: the currents in the sea (although at the time I thought it was just my bad swimming) and the wind had put paid to that, but I was still in with a chance of making 11 hours and I knew from my last check of my watch that I needed to run a 3:40 marathon to do that. I’ve gone 3:27 for an IM marathon  in the past so I was hopeful that I’d manage it. I started at what felt like a comfortable pace and after a hilariously fast first km (4:11) I settled down to a steady pace of around 4:45 to 4:55 per km  and started to build a buffer against the inevitable slowdown that would come towards the end of the run.

Peanuts from heaven

The first lap went by relatively easily. It was still hot but there were a lot of aid stations mostly manned by local kids who were shouting “Pepsi! Agua! Hielo!” at us as we went past. I wasn’t sure what “hielo” was and was wondering why they were shouting “yellow” (it means “ice”). I kept on throwing water over myself and, despite not having the word in my Spanish vocabulary also went for the ice down the tri-top and under the hat option a few times. Back into town where there were a lot of people and a load of drummers who seemed to be powered by Duracell because they must have kept on drumming for about 6 hours solid, and out again onto the second lap. I started feeling a bit rough towards the halfway mark and my pace slowed to about 5 minutes per km. I was through halfway in 1:42 but was feeling bad and had to walk slowly through an aid station almost immediately afterwards. I felt as though I needed to eat something having been going on nothing but liquids all day so I scarfed down my emergency double-caffeinated gel and had a bit of a graze. They had some salted peanuts at the aid station and I ate a handful which tasted amazingly, astonishingly good: if Heston Blumenthal could work out how to recreate that sensation he’d retire weeping because he’d achieved culinary perfection and it was never going to get better than that. I got back up to speed but then had to walk for a couple of minutes again just before making it back into town, during which time I treated myself to more peanuts, which tasted nearly as good as the last lot. I got myself going again but then as I came round the turnaround for my last lap I went past the big screen for the finish and noticed that the time it was showing was 9:59. At the same time the announcer was congratulating someone on a sub-10 finish so I concluded that I’d got my time calculations wrong - I needed about 1:10 for the last lap if I kept up a good pace and there was no way I could run it in less than an hour to make the sub-11 target. Wham. That was demoralising and I was now finding it really difficult to push myself along. I couldn’t manage more than 5:30 a km for about 10 minutes and I was feeling really bad until at about the 30km mark, as the sun set behind me I stopped running and started walking. I walked for about 5 minutes and then felt able to start running again, albeit slowly.

On the run and feeling the heat.

Not long after the 31km mark I was suddenly struck by the thought that the time on the big screen might have been the time since the start of the pro race, which would put it 20 minutes faster than the age-groupers. I checked the time of day on the Garmin which was on a different screen to the main run one, which I keep set to pace, distance, time elapsed and HR. The time was 5 pm - sure enough, assuming we started on time at 7 I still had an hour to finish and make it in under 11 hours. I had 10 and a half km to go. I pushed myself a bit and managed to take the pace up a little and started feeling a little better. Just stay at this pace until the turnaround. Then you’ll only have 7km to go and you can decide whether to go for it or not. The sun had gone now and the sunglasses came off as I ran through the dusk. I went around the turnaround with 38 minutes to run 7km - just under 5:30 per km pace. I can do this. I was feeling really good again - I don’t know if it was the salt on the peanuts or if I’d just found a bit of adrenaline that gave my system a kickstart but suddenly I could run properly again. I just focussed on each km, making sure I didn’t go too fast and kept the pace at a little over 5 minutes a km. The aid stations were like obstacle courses with plodding runners and walkers all over - I blew through them, grabbing the occasional cup of Gatorade and resisting the urge to shout “Out of my way slow people”. 7km became 6 and then 5 and I started pressing the pace. How can I suddenly feel so good after feeling so bad half an hour ago? Two kms to go and I put the hammer down as much as I could, taking the pace up into the 4.50s. Not fast for me but at the time it felt as though I was flying. I overtook two or three other people who were running hard, presumably all also racing the clock to get in before 11 hours. The turnaround in town is right by the left turn that takes you to the finish and the organisers had put a big spotlight at the turnaround shining down the road, so now I was running through the dark heading straight for the light. The last few hundred metres before the turnaround were clogged with people leaving only a metre wide strip to run down, which was occupied by slower moving runners. Because I’d been surprised by the start I was worried that the race might have started a couple of minutes before 7, so I wasn’t taking any chances by easing off. This meant that I had to dodge round 4 or 5 people but fortunately I didn’t knock any children or old people over or run full tilt into any nuns. Past the spotlight at the turnaround and I turned left into the brilliantly lit finishing chute and there was the clock reading 10:58:30. I slowed a little and finally crossed the line at 10:58:52. Job done.

Pizza and margaritas

Made splendid recovery nutrition - in particular the combination of salt (electrolytes), lime juice (carbs and vitamins) and tequila (ummm, tequila? Perhaps I should have asked for a shot of mescal with the worm for added protein) found in a margarita. I was planning to head back to the finish post-food but I fell asleep sitting up and decided it was more sensible to head for bed. Next day the talk was all of how tough a day it had been, and now if you look online the 2012 IM Cozumel seems to have entered the record books as One Of The Hardest IM Races Of All Time (one online race report tells the story of how the person in question HAD to draft in the wind because it was SO STRONG that NO-ONE could have made it through riding by themselves). I think this is an exaggeration - sure the swim was hard when everyone was expecting it to be easy, but although the winds on the bike were worse than expected it wasn’t like we were riding into a hurricane. I suspect that a lot of the hype is being generated by people who were expecting a much easier race and who hadn’t prepared properly. I trained expecting a hot, windy bike, that’s what I got and I coped. I went looking for a 10:30 but I ended up delighted with a 10:58 - overall this was one of the most satisfying races I’ve ever done.

Would I recommend IM Cozumel? Absolutely, especially if you like hot, windy, flat races (I do). The organisation is good, the swim is beautiful, the bike is lovely (in parts - the long straight that goes SW is a bit tedious) and more challenging than might be expected from the lack of hills and the run is good, with enough going on to keep you entertained. The locals seem to be all thoroughly lovely people and are absolutely behind the race and the island itself is, well, an island in the Caribbean with all that goes with that.