Race Report – Ironman Germany 6th July

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This took way longer than i though it would to get around to … some of this no doubt is due to the fact that i started with a new company this week, so there’s been lots of fussing around last week to clear my desk before leaving as well as a natural reluctance to do too much of anything – be it athletic or otherwise after an ironman. Thanks to all readers who stuck with me over the course of the last 7-8 months, and particular thanks to the ones who left comments and encouraged me over recent weeks. Much appreciated!

So grab a cup of coffee – turn off your phone – get a comfy chair – let the kids go play in traffic … it was a long day, so you know this is going to be a long long report. I leave it to you as to the merits and quality of the report of course. For this post i’ll just focus on the race day itself – there’s other stories to relate about the journey over, the race village, the couple of days in Frankfurt and all that.

Pre-race

Didn’t sleep too well of course, no more than a couple of hours tops. The Saturday evening spent flying around down-town Frankfurt looking for a Garmin watch/battery as my watch decided to show ‘Low Battery’ that day, and somehow when i replaced the battery it decided that it wouldn’t pick up the HR strap or the foot pod. Now i know the hard way that Garmin have little or no commercial presence in Germany! <Grr> Eventually got sorted by getting a loan of a Polar watch for the run (bought a Polar strap) and used my Garmin Edge on the bike. Great fun!

Morning

Up early of course. Had breakfast in the hotel – complete rip-off of course @ 27 euros, but i doubt I’d find anywhere open at that time, and didn’t really consider making my own up in the room –probably would have been fine to do it. Next time!!! Met up with all the others from Pulse (including all the wives & girlfriends)at 5:15am or so and took the shuttle bus out to the lake & T1. No problems – it was hinting at a bit of rain which was welcomed and ironic given the worry about whether it would be too hot and therefore wetsuits wouldn’t be allowed. We’re there in plenty of time to get organised and ready.

Quick chat with the chap racking up beside me – my namesake from Milton Keynes in England, and another ex-soccer player wondering what the hell he’s doing in a German forest at 6am on a Sunday morning. Turns out we know one player at least in common … Ricky McEvoy where are you now ?

Met up with Big Mark and Derek from 3DTRI (no sign of the others) and we walk down to the start together. The wonderful WAGs are duly heard before seen, and its great to see them for one last hug and encouragement. Onwards the gallant 2000 walked, handshakes and some hugs (I know a bit gay, but it was apt for the moment! You had to be there) … Great to be with Big Mark at this last minute. He started out in triathlon at the same time as me, and together we’ve progressed through the distances – trained and raced in two Half Ironmen together (UK and Kerry) and now we’re here ready for our biggest challenge. Then the two lads feck off and leave me with the Back of the Swimming Packers … they are ready for the real washer-dryer experience.

SWIM

The professionals and the really quick swimmers were allowed off first, which left some 2000 odd swimmers to go off at the same time.

Also with the pros as it turned out were a couple of guys with physical disabilities – i was lucky enough to be at the finish line to see a visually impaired guy (with his “race partner” I suppose you’d call him) cross the line. Wow what a cheer they got ! I thought I had problems to deal with, but to do an ironman with limited sight, particularly the swim – unbelievable. At the time strangely enough i got some dust in both eyes as he crossed the line as the crowd went bananas! At that time I could really appreciate that for him no doubt all the hard work he (and his buddy) had put in over the last X months had been worthwhile.

At the start of the swim, all the swimmers were spread out as standard, and i positioned myself well to the right; however at the start they made all swimmers go to the left between a Pontoon and the left-most buoy so there was certainly lots of time and plenty of collisions incurred as all the weaker swimmers (including me) had to funnel through this section and then spread out once again to the right. Thanks-a-bunch lads!

On the day before the race they had decided it would be a wetsuit swim – cue lots of sighs of relief. I was ready to do the swim if needed in the raw – both mentally and physically I hoped, but as it turned out anyway the weather was kind. It certainly wasn’t too hot.

No real problems encountered around the swim, couple of bumps and a couple of times i went to breast stroke as we went round buoys when there were loads of bodies. Received one good kick in the head about 2/3 way through the first lap which woke me up a little and reminded me to concentrate … it was going pretty well at that stage and my mind was wandering perhaps.

Anyhow – the second lap of the swim went really well and to me almost effortless, counting off the buoys as we got closer to the shore, and got out of the water with no distress or obvious fatigue. Looked up at the clock and really delighted to see 1.16 up there. A big shout from the WAGs, I suppose a shout of relief as much as anything else as they know knew that all the Paddy Pulsers were out of the water.

Ended up with a time of 1hour 16 for the complete swim, which was broken into two sections – 2.3 km (for me 43.43 mins) and 1.5 km ( 32.56 mins) with a brief part where you got out of the water and back in again. Going by the details provided on the website i was 391st for my age group for the 1^st section and 347^th for the second section => 373^rd overall for the swim section. Certainly the second lap felt really good and i feel i could have gone on for way longer if i had too.

Out on my own steam!

Transition 1 = 8 mins 01, 405^th in my age group ;-(

Certainly not the quickest of transitions – not the worst, but room for improvement. Couple of minor hitches probably caused this … the (unexpected) need to find & put on sun-cream – as it turned out the volunteers didn’t do this for the athletes (in Lanzarote they did this for the athlete) and so had to get out my own and do myself. Other friends had done it themselves before the swim!! Minor delay caused by putting on the bike shorts back to front (ooops) but my plan had been to make sure that i didn’t do anything silly in T1 such as forget sun glasses, gloves, food or whatever.

First part of the bike is a 12km or so journey to the T2/Downtown area, so the plan was to take it easy on this section – like everyone else i suppose. So as planned I drank some water and got ready to cycle. At 30 mins i began the process of eating … initial intention being to rotate it through the hour as … half a roll -> half a powerbar -> half a banana … and so on – effectively eating something every 20 minutes or so.

1st mistake was that the rolls were awful! I had left it until Saturday evening to get some rolls from the deli, and unfortunately i didn’t pay too much attention and the lady put in some creams/whatever which i had never had before, and certainly didn’t enjoy. In the course of the bike, i ended up eating half of the 3 rolls that i had in my back-pockets. Instead i made it up by eating more bananas. Probably didn’t eat all that i had meant to according to the plan, as i didn’t exhaust my supply of Powerbar either. I did take in what i thought was lots of liquids, but perhaps not as much as i could/should have done – as I had one stop for a toilet at about 120km.

HR vs Speed vs Altitude

Possibly not so easy to read from the graphic, but from going through the statistics made available through the Garmin ( full details available here ) it would be quite obvious that I didn’t stick to the plan for the bike leg in that i took it too easy. (Try viewing it using Internet Explorer and check out the Analyser and Map Player – cool!) Instead of being in the high 130s (beats per minute) and even into the low 140s, I stayed in the low 130s all the time. This wasn’t a conscious decision (not that i recall anyway), but instead i think it was that i saw i was hitting over the 30 kph and so was well on track for a 6-hour split, and so i felt that was sufficient. I was happy to hit the time target instead of perhaps readjusting my target and pushing on. However i don’t believe i done the wrong thing – I’ve seen a quote from someone somewhere which said that good overall results are usually characterized by the athlete thinking they could have gone faster on the bike. I was naturally cautious i think as i was moving into unknown territory and i’ve talked to too many guys who had great bike splits but had horrendous run splits and lots & lots of suffering.

Thinking back, the only time where I consciously pushed on was towards the end of the 2nd lap when there was 3-4 of us relatively close (slight incline) and myself and another guy was passing two slower (but not much slower) cyclists. One Marshall spoke to the other guy, and in time another Marshall spoke to me … god only knows what he was saying – I certainly didn’t – but i decided then to get the hell out of Dodge, and leave this crew behind.

The bike leg was meant to be fast, it certainly was faster than i’d be use to in terms of road surface, but it wasn’t as flat and as straight as i might have expected. There were plenty of turns, plenty of ups-and-downs, the Beast and the Hell weren’t particularly a problem either; we even had a section over Cobblestones which was a brand new experience for me (of course do it twice). Neither me nor Black Peggy knew what hit us as we traveled over this … holding on for dear life. Poor old Cap’n Woods was lucky to get through the race without needing his tools ‘n’ spares as all his fell out on the cobblestones. If he had had a mechanical issue of any sort in the race, he was probably looking at a DNF and one unhappy dude. Thankfully he (and all the Pulsers) stayed clear of any significant problems and all proceeded to get round the course.

None of the climbs gain more than 100m, so they are nothing to give cause for concen – even our non climbers, certainly nothing for the likes of me to get excited about. Supposedly what makes the course fast is the descents – gentle rather than steep means the speed lost climbing is regained. The course, especially the climbs, was really well supported. Particularly on the first loop, the crowds were great – the cobblestone section had loads of people on both sides, and Heartbreak Hill was a place where you just had to go faster somehow with the cheering, noise and general encouragement. I really enjoyed those brief moments of feeling like a real professional on Alpe D’Huez (don’t get me started on that one) or other scenes of triumph from my sporting past. Masses of cheering people. Most of the villages we went through had music of some sort, I remember one young fellow on his own beating his drum – brilliant! On the second loop understandably some had gone home – lots of wine & beer had been consumed by that stage, and they would have been on the side of the road for 3+ hours at that stage. Fair play to those that stayed to cheer us on!

The wind got going on the second lap in particular, even the Professionals had slower splits the second time around. Again like the swim section, I felt fine and really thought i could have gone on for way way longer.The legs weren’t cramping up on me – which had been a concern ; the shoulders and neck weren’t particularly giving me grief … i was within myself. Perhaps more than i should have, but hindsight is a wondrous thing, and i still had the matter of a marathon to contend with.

Bike section : time :position within age group

Lake to down town : 23.19 : 359th

Loop 1 : 2.39.04 352nd

Loop 2 : 2.49.29 : 328th

TOTAL : 5.51.52 : 331st

Transition 2 = 3mins 36 – 353^rd for age group.

Again no sun-cream service being provided here, but the day was not so hot as it turned out so i didn’t bother putting anyone – just a handful of vaseline on the nips and in the “privates” so as to avoid any chaffing that might occur. I’d be fine with my new white running hat and sunglasses. You could get used to the service provided in these transition zones. Someone to help you lay out your gear, pack away your gear and generally help you get sorted. The lucky Frau volunteer didn’t speak any English, and my charades experiences/skills aren’t so hot; and anyhow its allowed in these tents … so it all came off so to speak and on with the fresh singlet and shorts. She probably saw more of my body than she perhaps would have liked, but I’m sure she saw plenty of all shapes and sizes that day.

More to this post to come tomorrow/soon – its late, this is taking longer than the swim leg, and perhaps will take as long as the run !