Ironman athlete’s report

Race Report 2016 Ironman Canada—

The day was the result of almost 7 months of training in Vernon and surrounding areas and included a few running races as well as the Salty dog (A 6 hour Enduro MTB Race in Salmon Arm BC) in May. I was unfortunate enough to contract a bronchial infection, which my doctor said "presented like classical pneumonia”, and as a result was unable to train for close to 7 weeks! I found out that i had the infection one day after my birthday celebration weekend--I turned 50 in February. I have a great coach, Mel Spooner, that I listen to, even when I thought that I wanted to be doing other things, I entrusted her with my training and I was not going to waver from that commitment.
The weeks of training started to blend all together, and I must say that I have not experienced such bad training weather since living in Banff, and Calgary the previous 2 decades. It was funny that when I tried to get in a few long rides up and around Silverstar mountain, only to have to call to be rescued due to extremely cold/wet weather. I had one other setback about 8 weeks before the race. I went for a mountain bike cross training ride, and fell off my bike, landing on some sharp rocks. My right elbow was banged up fairly well, and I needed to get 6 stitches to close the wound. The X-rays showed some bone spurs so I was referred to a specialist. I was not able to ride or swim for about a week at that time. Fortunately it healed quickly, and the specialist told me “full speed ahead”! So I got back to the training plan.
The week leading up to the race was fairly relaxed, as I knew that I was ready, and that the taper had me wanting to go longer than what I was given for workouts that week. My family and I arrived in Whistler on Thursday prior to the Race, and were able to take in the (Marketing Machine that is) Ironman frenzy, they do a fantastic job of tying people into the brand with the incredibly emotional videos that they put together. We all enjoyed ourselves leading up to the race day.
On the night before the race, my wonderful wife, Angie, prepared a great meal of sweet potatoes, quinoa, and salad with a great store bought version of the glory bowl dressing! It was awesome. We then went to bed early in anticipation of getting up at 4:30 AM to get me to the T2 to drop off nutrition into my bike to run bag, and drop off my two special needs bags. The problem was that at 3:20 I woke, and was unable to get back to sleep so I got out of bed at 4:00AM and prepared very well and left for T2 at 5AM. The day was looking spectacular at that point, and after getting my body marked and then dropping off my bags, I hopped on the Bus going down to T1 and Alta lake. I sat next to a guy named Neils from Belgium originally, who now lives in San Diego. He and his wife were doing the Ironman and 70.3 respectively. The only problem was that Neils had been in an accident n June 11 2016, and broke his leg. I asked him why he did not ask for a deferral, and he let me know that the date for that was on June 9 2016 for this Ironman. He sent off a number of emails, and was disillusioned by the lack of flexibility that IMC had. As a result he had to come, and said that he would simply swim, and not ride or run. He has plans to go to Kona in October, as he qualified last year at Lake Tahoe. Pretty amazing story.
We got down to where I could put my nutrition onto my bike, and get organized for the day to come. I was ready a full half hour before I needed to be, so I calmed myself by walking around and taking in the surroundings, and breathing fully. Finally I went back into the the men's change tent, and put on my wetsuit. I went into the water to warm up and was amazed by the sun just eclipsing the mountain to the east, right at the pinnacle when I was just finishing the my warm up swim, it was incredibly beautiful as the mist was rising off the water, and the sun was shining brightly on all 1500 of my new friends!
This year they started the rolling start so I seeded myself into the 70-80 minute group, and tried to settle in. Then fellow Kal Rat Racer, Warren Jablonski, came up to me and wished me good luck, I too wished him luck, and knowing that he was faster than me, I wished him the best and told him that I would see him when I got to the finish. The cannon went off and we slowly made our way into the water. It was weird to go so slowly into the water, but it calmed me down too. Once in the water, I was able to find a good rhythm, and some fast swimmers and felt the draft pulling me forward. Once a draft creator would get tired, I would search for another swimmer, and I kept moving through the water effectively and I felt steady, and not killing myself in the process, On the last 800, I felt a person drafting me almost trip over my legs, and I strained too hard for an instant and felt a cramp in my left calf, so I stopped kicking for a minute, and allowed myself to relax in the swim, and that got rid of that cramp. I then tried to swim as I was, and a cramp went into my other calf. I breathed deeply (as deeply as you can while trying to swim smoothly) and was able to get rid of that cramp as well. By this time I was turning the last buoy towards the last 150m of the swim. The one thing that struck me during the swim was the fact that there was never a time during it that I was anywhere near alone. There was always someone to my left, to my right, in front and behind me for the whole time. I came out of the water in 1:06 which was a great swim for me (my fastest). I then had some difficulty getting my left arm out of the wetsuit, so some strippers helped me with that, and then I tried to sit down before getting the suit below my bum, so they yelled at me to get up and pull it down, and then to try it again, finally with their help, I was able to get my wetsuit off, and grab my number bag and go into the men's change tent. I placed my shoes on, and arm warmers and a jacket. Then I head out for the begin of the ride.
I came through and saw my family at the corner yelling and cheering for me, it was a great boost! I got onto the bike, and tried to steady into a pace that I could hold down to the Callaghan turnoff, while keeping people ahead of me 6 bike lengths away from me. Then also trying to pass people all within 25 seconds of breaching that 6 bike length area. I felt good on the climb, but noticed that I may have hydrated too well, and I had to use the bathroom. I waited till the top of the Callaghan and used the facility's clean bathroom to relieve myself. At that point I was too hot for the jacket, so I asked if a volunteer could dispose of it, and a Marshall, who was on his motorcycle right beside the volunteer, said to me " Are you sure that you want to throw it away?" And I said, "I don't want it anymore, and I know if I leave it somewhere it is abandonment, so yes I want to throw it away" he said "good". I started the descent and continued back towards Whistler. My pace for the first two hours was almost exactly 30km/hour which would put me at 6 hours, and I wanted to do the bike course in 5 1/2 hours. So I knew that something would have to change if I wanted that to happen. I kept steady and strong, and funny thing was that I had to use the port o potties on 3 more occasions on the ride! This ate up some time, and was a great learning experience.
Once on the run, I saw my cheering section, and the mobs of people that were there to cheer on their athletes and there was so many cowbells and electricity in the air. I felt good, and was sticking to my plan, I was still 4:15 hours from my goal of a 11:30 finish time. I ran through the exuberant crowd and kept a good pace and form, and slowed at the aid stations to grab nutrition and water. This worked for almost 10km, and then I started to notice that my stomach did not feel well, and I was not certain that I could keep any food down at all, and I knew that I did not have enough calories to get across the finish line. My plan had been to eat more than 300 cals per hour up to this point, and to take in 400-600mg of salt per hour. So on the bike I had been taking in e-load and two salt tabs per hour so that I would be at the upper end of that scale of salt. When I got onto the run, my plan was to eat at every third aid station and to hydrate and electrolyte drink at every station. There were two major problems with my plan that I have since discovered. One was that I thought my tabs on the run were the e-Load Zone tabs with 250mg of sodium per tablet, when in fact there were some other tabs in there that were not the e-load tabs, but imposter tabs that only had 123mg of sodium per tab! So I was not taking in what I thought I was taking in! Also during the ride, I tried some of the electrolyte drink that the IMC supplies for their athletes, and it was gatorade. I could not believe how sugary that drink tasted to me even after riding for 170km on the bike. The only electrolyte drink that they had at all of the aid stations was gatorade as well, so I had to have some of that (which I would de-sugarify by adding water to it) as well as finding adequate nutrition. The nutrition that I was using was some clip bars, and cliff blox. This was not sitting well in my stomach, so I knew I needed to change my strategy. I began to simply try the water and pretzel tactic, which seemed to help a little, but I was already too far behind in my sodium intake so my quads and Ham strings started to cramp up at about 27km into the run. I saw my wife, and she knew that I had 90 minutes to make my goal time. I said to her (thinking not so clearly) “its just 3 Five Km’s, I can do that in 90 minutes!”. Well my mind was not listening to my legs, and vice versa. I kept running, or shuffling my feet faster than a walk at all times between aid stations, and I would walk through those to try to figure out how to feel well enough to run again. During the whole of the Marathon, I had a list that I had written out on the back of my bib, of the people that I am grateful for, and I thought of the reasons that they were inspirations to me, and what I loved about all of them. The idea was to give each of them equal time of thought on the marathon. During the times when my leg muscles would say “you can’t keep going” I would listen to what my heart would say about the people on my list. Those thoughts lifted me to be able to keep going. Like a friend of mine, John Kane, once said “ I didn’t do an Ironman, about 500 people helped me to finish it”. John Kane was the reason that I put together this list, and had the wherewithal to draw upon that list when I needed it most during my run. He and his family were on my list of people to be grateful for. When I finally was able to figure out what a big part of my problems were I went back to water and pretzels and a shot of pepsi to get it into the system quicker. That helped but did not stop the cramping. I had to run through that until the very end. With 2 km to go, I tried to pick up the pace, but my body only seemed to respond to walking or shuffle-running. So I kept the same slow pace that I could to get me to the chute. This course has a really cruel finish in that you have to get onto the same street as the finishing chute, but then go a block downhill off that street and under a bridge, and then circle back onto the same street as the finish line. This was very difficult, but the one thing that made it great was that there were people lining the whole section there, cheering us on to the finish. Once back onto Blackcomb way, the finish was only 300 m downhill, and at that point I got some legs from the electricity in the crowd. I saw my family, and gave them a high five, and then high fives to other onlookers, and then ran down to hear Mike say “and Warren you. are. an Ironman!”. I had completed my first Ironman triathlon! I was elated, and I tried to drink in the celebration, but my stomach and legs were not being courteous hosts. I went to have a quick post race massage, and then walked back to our condo, before collapsing for some much needed rest.
What a great day it was! The weather was incredible, the scenery was spectacular, and the fact that my wife, Angie and our two kids were there was amazing for me. I am very grateful that I am able to train and live a life that can afford me to train for something like this. I also know that since the run on this Ironman was so bad, and even though I did get a PR, I can do much better than I did this time! Time to train for life now, and get back on my mountain bike. See you on the trails!