I forget where I saw the analogy about taking a loan out of the fitness bank that you can either pay back in small portions in daily, consistent training or you could make one big painful balloon payment on race day, but it’s true. I had a year to train for Ironman. I had done it before, I knew what to expect and I knew what was expected. I talked to my wife. She was proud of me for wanting to test my limits. I talked to my boss. He was in awe of what I wanted to do, and promised that the workload would be shared among all of our team and not on just a few of us. I made commitments to myself, my family, and my coach. The plan was laid out and it worked to a T all the way through the end of March. The problem was, the race, my goal, wasn’t until the end of July. From that point on, work, life, stress, time, everything was forced to higher priority levels than training and the size of my balloon payment on race day was growing. I was exhausted and disheartened by everything happening around me and very little of that exhaustion had anything to do with training. I carried that burden with me all the way to Lake Placid. Even when I got there, I just couldn’t get up for the race. I knew it was going to be a long day, but all I could be thankful for was the fact that I wasn’t at work and that my laptop and blackberry didn’t work at the hotel. Before I knew it, and well before I was ready for it, race day was upon us.
Race day:
I’ve never before been a part of such a melee. I started in the same spot that I used in 2003. I was behind the main pack by 20 meters or so and towards the inside. When the canon shot, I paused, gathered myself and took off easy. Within 50 meters I was in the the biggest scrum I’ve ever been in. Shots were taken, shots were given and no open water was to be found. I was forced to widen myself a bit and swing wide with the elbows and hands as necessary, but I was still being pushed further and further to the inside. Finally, I just stopped and looked up. The group I was stuck in had been pushed well inside of the swimming lane and it was time to make a break. I wheeled myself around into the sun and started swimming the tangent to intersect the main swim lane. After forcing myself around, over, and across anyone that got in my path I finally crossed over the lane line and started making my way towards the turn around. That’s when I first saw him. O’Neil wetsuit dude with an attitude. There were still a ton of people trying to swim on top of the lane line, there just wasn’t that much space. I was trying to get away from it, but I just kept getting pushed and shoved back over it. Apparently I got pushed into OWD a few too many times as he took off with a flourish of kicks thinking he could get away from all this. It didn’t work. He quickly found himself swimming over slower swimmers just in front of us. With all the people touching him, he just kept kicking like he was trying to breech. That’s when I got up close and personal with OWD’s foot. I caught one of his kicks square on the top of the head. The flat of his foot wrapped from my forehead to the top of my bald head and whipped it back. Two kicks later I got one on the chin. I couldn’t believe the pain and the shock of it all, and since it appeared I was still in the middle of at least 1500 of my closest friends, my only choice was to keep swimming. I stroked along trying to shake the cobwebs and finally made the turnaround. I purposely went wide here looking for some freedom and found it for several minutes. Somewhere along here, finally swimming with the stroke I trained with, I find myself going abruptly backwards. Hey! That ain’t cool. We’re all trying to get to the same place. After the quick jerk to the leg, next grab takes in the hip and then the shoulder. We had plenty of room, WTF?!?!?!?!!! Of course, imagine my surprise when a lithe little figure goes swimming away in her Ironman wetsuit. She and I were actually swimming about the same speed, so I just latched onto her feet and made it to the end of the first loop. Determined not to have the same issues on the second loop and still more than a little woozy from my RexKwonDo round house kick to the head, I paused for a few seconds to gather myself before re-entering the water. I swam wide again around the dock and headed out for the second loop. I think all the people in the water must form some kind of screwy vortex. Within 200 meters I found myself on top of the lane line and feeling like I was swimming sideways to get away from it. I exchanged a few more blows with the group around me and finally we found some clear water and everyone seemingly got in line. After the final turnaround, we finally had a decent group of folks swimming to the finish rather than the buoy line and we made good progress to the finish. When I finally emerged from the water, the clock read 1:10 and change. Not bad, but certainly not great. I know I can swim faster, but to do that, I have got to swim more.
T1 was my version of lost in translation. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, the order I wanted to do it in, but it just wasn’t happening. I had a massive headache and I couldn’t quite get it together. I finally got totally geared up and ran out to my bike. That only took about 10 minutes
The bike seems like a blur. A seven and a half hour blur. As I headed out, I felt pretty good. My head hurt, badly, but I was ready to ride. I had my plan. I had my nutrition. Now I just needed to find the will and the intelligence to execute. We started on the climb out of Lake Placid and my buddy rode up to me and patted my on the back. We exchanged our howdies and exclaimed to each other that that was the roughest swim ever. He motored on ahead and I managed to keep an eye on my heart rate, power, and effort level. I had mixed up two bottles of InfinIT with ~750 calories each. One I had with me and one in my special needs bag. My plan was to drink a third of that each hour with plenty of water and at the 75 minute mark take a gel. The first hour went smoothly. The descent into Keene was a blast. There was a little traffic as I expected coming out of the water when I did. But we all managed to get down safely. I was staying right on top of the nutrition, but I noticed that I couldn’t really feel myself sweating. It was plenty hot out, the wind was up a little, but I should have noticed more prevalent sweating. It wasn’t there. I tried not to think about that too much, just owning it to the different weather conditions than I’m used to. However, by the end of the second hour, I still had no desire or need to pee. My head still hurt too, badly. This is an easier section of the course, and at the time all I could think of was that I did not want to be there anymore. I wanted to go home. We had made the run to Jay and were on our way up to Upper Jay. This is a moderate climb of some distance, but I had my gearing setup to just cruise along here and it worked. But I still wanted to go home and I still felt like crap. We made the out and back and I made the decision to up my water intake as it felt like my nutrition was going anywhere and I was starting to feel nauseous. As I continued to pour water into my gullet, nothing continued to come out. Somewhere in here I felt my pedal slip a bit, but I didn’t come unclipped. I figured it was just my foot moving about in the pedal. We started the climbs back into Lake Placid and I really did not want to be there any longer. I thanked the volunteers, I kept trying to fix my nutrition, and I kept pedaling. I had decided that when I got to special needs, my wife would be there and it would be easier for me to hand her my bike there so I could go home. I’ve never wanted to quit more in my life than at that time. I found it hard to look at the crowd that had gathered on the last climb into town. I didn’t want to see them again and I didn’t want to be remembered. I rolled into special needs and my wife wasn’t there. I was disappointed. I ate my fig newtons, I got my new bottle of InfinIT and decided to keep pedaling. My parents were there, just up the road. They yelled “Go Markie!” I grimaced a smile and kept rolling. At least I could enjoy the ride to Keene again. I held off taking in anything for a little while except water when I felt I could swallow it. As we were climbing back out of Lake Placid, I could tell that my left pedal/cleat had changed. I was feeling a twinge in my knee and it was not comfortable. Finally we were on the descent again and I just let it fly. No brakes, just rolling down the mountain taking advantage of every pound I had gained over the last couple of months. Although my headache wouldn’t subside for the duration of the day (and a couple more) my nausea did. My stomach finally settled and I continued to cut back on the intake until it was just the InfinIT and water. The Carb-Boom gels I had been adding just overloaded my system and I couldn’t get everything to process. The fig newtons were a godsend and having just that little bit of solid food at special needs and again a little later were perfect. I was still moving forward but I just wasn’t carrying any speed. I felt effort wise and wattage wise that I was still working at about the same level, but after looking at the wattage file, I can see that I averaged 10 watts less on the second half. When you’re as weak as me, you can’t afford to give up that many watts for half an IM bike course. It really showed on the entry to the climbs. I just did not have the speed going into the climbs to roll over them with any kind of momentum. I found myself looking for my low gears early on and just maintaining for the duration of the climb. I am proud of the way I rode the climbs, I just shifted down to the bottom of the cogset and pressed forward. I managed to keep the watts down, but again, there wasn’t any momentum to carry. I know I was short on energy because at this point I still hadn’t peed and I really didn’t even feel like I needed to. After the descent to Keene I was looking for a spot to get off the bike, but for some reason I just kept rolling along. My knee was starting to hurt quite a bit, every time the effort went up, I would get a sharp poke to the inside of my knee cap. This was starting to get ugly and I wanted to go home. I rolled past the 71 miles sign and that’s when I changed my mind. I wanted to finish the bike at the very least. I knew I could ride 41 miles, it was just a matter of will and keeping it rolling. I made my way up to Upper Jay. I rode the out and back, managing my nutrition as best I could and finally had to use a blue bin. My head hurt, my knee hurt and I was going to have to tell my parents, my wife, and my friends that that was all I had. I’ll finish the bike and hand the volunteer my chip. The wind picked up on the way back into Lake Placid making that difficult stretch even harder, cementing my plan to call it a day. I climbed through the last stretch into Lake Placid amidst an even bigger cheering section than earlier and was proud to have made it this far. I made the funky little turns through town, saw my wife on the top of a hill, she knew I wasn’t feeling well. I saw my parents, they were beaming, hooting, and hollering. I slinked into transition not even thinking about leaving. Officially, 7 hours and 21 minutes. It felt much longer.
T2 found me sitting in a chair with my bags at my feet and me not really wanting to move. I wish I had gotten the volunteers name. He came over to check on me, takes a look and asks if I’m okay. I told him that my head hurt and that with the nausea early in the day I probably didn’t get enough calories in. He says why don’t I hang out a couple of minutes and he’ll help me get my stuff together. I told him my toes were on fire. All that messing around with my knee and my toes had just locked into place, they weren’t moving. He just reaches down and does some ART work and magically my toes are working again. He walks off and comes back with some sunblock and mentions that the sun is still working pretty hard today and I’ll need it for the run. I don’t say anything and he gets my face and neck pretty well covered. I still haven’t put on my shoes. I just sit there. Finally, I reach down and put on my sneakers and out of my T2 bag falls the prize. I put my run number on an IMUSA race number belt, not one of my regular belts. I told myself and my wife that if I put that number belt on, I have to finish. I reached down, contemplated it for a while, and put it on. I thanked the volunteer and walked out of transition 2 fifteen minutes after I had gone in. I grabbed 2 cups of water and walked over to my parents who were standing at the transition exit and smiled. It was time to finish this ironman.
I walked out of T2 with a purpose. I resigned myself to walking the first 10-15 minutes just to get some nutrition in me and to see how my toes and knee were going to hold up. With each step I felt some strength returning to my body and I felt like whatever happened, I would finish. I got some great encouragement on my way out of town and really started to feel like I could get something done on the run. I ended up walking a full 15 minutes and then commenced on my scheduled (modified) run/walk. My knee was pretty painful, but my toes had come around with the motion of walking. I decided to run 5 minutes and walk 2 until I couldn’t do it any longer. From that point on, my life was my watch. I was running very well, under control, not just a shuffle and when my walk break came, I walked purposefully and with a long stride. I took in Gatorade and water at all the aid stations and pressed on. I felt like if I could keep it moving, I’d end up with a run (hehe) time of between 5 and 5 ½ hours. On the first loop, I saw all of my friends and cheered them on. Some were having a great day, and others were managing their day, it’s what we have to do. Somewhere around mile 11, my progress was interrupted. Either the long downhill or the long uphill completely fried my knee for the day. It was just too sharp a pain to forget or push through. I saw my wife and my parents and told them that I WOULD finish. I was 2:30 into the run at that point and knew it was just another push around the run loop. I did the short out and back, congratulated all the people that were finishing and relegated myself to making the awful turn away from the finishing oval. From there on, it was just a struggle to run when I could and walk as fast as I could the rest (most) of the time. I wasn’t completely out of gas, but I just could not land on my knee any more. I met some great people out on the run course in that second loop. Everyone was determined to finish, everyone had a purpose, everyone wanted to see that finish line. Apparently in this time I caught up on my hydration as I got to visit many more blue bins along the way. As a suggestion to any readers, if you can skip a blue box on an Ironman run course, I suggest you do so, wow, an experience that is just beyond words. Anyway, I put it in gear and wound my way around the rest of the run course at a modest 15 minute per mile pace. And there it was. The finishing oval. I only had to make the short out and back and I would be done. I turned the corner and saw my buddies coming down to the oval, just a mile and a half in front of me. I wished I could finish with them, but they had their own struggles that day. Before I knew it, it was my turn to enter the oval. I found a bit of a run and all the troubles of the day went away. I felt like I was sprinting, in reality I was probably all the way up to a 12 minute mile, but I slapped a bunch of hands, raised my arms and heard Mike Reilly call out my name. 5:58:54 for the run/walk. Not pretty, but it works to get you to the finish line.
That was it, 14 hours 56 minutes and 55 seconds. I finished and I couldn’t be more proud. I didn’t have anywhere near the day that ultimately I know I am capable of, but I had a great day.