It’s now nine days since Ironman Coeur d’Alene and I’ve forgotten much of the race. Only certain moments remain as snapshots, engrained more through post-race storytelling than original memory. It’s a strange sensation. Something so important to me – the first half of 2011 was essentially dedicated to it – and such an immersive experience on race day, and yet the 11 hours and nine minutes that passed between the starting gun and me crossing the finish line are reduced to a small number of basic, emotionless stills. For example, about 15 miles into the run, somewhere between nine and nine and a half hours into my race, I remember thinking “this is hell, I’m in my own personal hell”. At the time it didn’t feel like I was exaggerating, even in a small way, but now as I write I can’t actually recall the suffering. I can remember not being able to lift my knees very high, and my running stride being half of what it normally is, and greedily gulping down double cola’s with ice at each aid station, but I can’t recreate the distress in my mind or return my consciousness to the state of deep depression I felt between miles 14-20 of the marathon. It’s a delayed anaesthesia – I definitely felt the pain at the time, I’m just somehow numb to it afterwards. This forgetfulness is probably one of the reasons I have now completed five Ironman triathlons and will probably do five more. And five after that.
I live in Vancouver and in North American terms, at only 448 miles from home, IM Coeur d’Alene is a local race. Coeur d’Alene is a city of 50,000 people on a lake in north Idaho. It was founded by French-Canadian fur traders who christened the city after the Francophone name they’d given to the local Indian tribe. These days, Coeur d’Alene is 95% white, very sleepy, and pretty far from anywhere else that most people will have heard of. The three most famous things about it are that 1) since 2003 it has hosted an annual Ironman triathlon in which athletes swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles and run 26.2 miles; 2) it hosts the world headquarters of The Pita Pit; and 3) it is home to Ellen Travolta, the eldest sibling of John Travolta. It’s also stunningly beautiful, especially on a sunny day, and we were lucky to be there during good weather. In fact, it’s my favourite Ironman race town so far. The locals matched the residents of St. George for their hospitality and excitement for the event, and yet unlike St. George it’s a town built for pedestrians, not cars, and so with a discernible town centre packed full of independent shops, cafes, bars and restaurants (each offering a deal or simply a ‘good luck’ message to Ironman competitors and supporters). Being on the lake, it’s a holiday town and so in late June is just coming into season, not like Jurere in Brazil, which was picturesque but closing down for autumn by the time of the race. And it’s not too big to suffer from Zurich syndrome, where the organisers boast of an urban race when actually they mean multiple run loops around some paths several kilometres from the heart of the city. I’ve left out a comparison to Sherborne, former host of Ironman UK, but the less said about that town as a race venue the better. Yep, no doubt helped by clear blue skies and temperatures in the low 70s, Coeur d’Alene had it all – good coffee, plenty of hotels (that were ok with bikes being left in bedrooms and constantly wheeled through corridors), friendly locals, cheering crowds, and a town centre venue for start and finish.
Dave, my buddy and triathlon nemesis, flew from London to Vancouver a week before the race and spent a few days in BC before Andrea, him and I drove for nine hours to the venue on Thursday, three days before race day. We took turns during the journey watching the wind catch and play with our expensive bikes hanging on a rack from the boot of the car. But it was nice, for a change, to be driving to an Ironman and not having to dismantle my bike and pack it with all my other gear into a case for a flight. We survived on the S-diet – Starbuck’s, Subway and Skittles – and got to the Best Western bang on schedule and with enough time to unload and relax before bed.
On Friday morning Dave and I did loops of the hotel car park to check our bikes. Mine had had a pre-race service only a few days before and as I hadn’t taken it apart for travel and then reassembled it, I didn’t expect any issues, but it’s calming to check. You train for six months for an Ironman and five miles into the bike you don’t want to hear a creak or feel your gears slipping. After four laps I was satisfied with my machine but was enjoying the pedal following several days of rest and so we did about another ten “ok, last one” laps before grabbing our wetsuits and heading down to race HQ for registration and a practice swim. The water was cold and choppy. It was worrying. After a couple of minutes I couldn’t feel my hands, feet or face. And it was difficult to see above the swell to sight. Scores of other athletes were down swimming but no-one looked happy. The cold I could deal with – it’s a fact of life in all British triathlons, regardless of time of season – but the wind would make matters unpleasant. We heard there was a similar issue last year and the medics struggled to cope with competitors’ seasickness. I tried not to dwell on it, had a short massage, registered and we went back to the hotel to lie down.
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| Andrea and I in the days before the race |
That evening we drove to Spokane, the city across the state line in Washington, to collect Stephanie who had just flown in from London via Seattle, and Andrea and I managed to make it back into town in time for the race briefing. I was excited about the race, but it was comforting going to bed knowing that tomorrow morning was still the day before the race and not the day of the race.
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| Race briefing |
Saturday. Probably the most chilled out day preceding any of my Ironmans. I had some breakfast, did some final tinkering to the bike, cleaned the chain, checked the bolts, and then went for a 15 minute run with some pick-ups. Then I loaded my bike onto the car and took it into town for racking and my T1 and T2 bags for drop off, and undertook a quick orientation of the transition areas. Following this, Andrea and I had lunch in our quickly-becoming home-from-home coffee shop, Java, on Sherman Avenue. We strolled around town and finally ended up back at the hotel for a few hours of lying down to read and watch TV, before dinner at 7pm with Dave and Stephanie in a lovely Italian, in which Dave and I drank water and ordered the blandest food available from a rich and very tempting menu. We were in our rooms for 8:45pm and after final gear checks and leaving everything I’d need for the following morning neatly ordered by the door, I was into bed. I was fairly calm and I was tired, so I expected to sleep. But I couldn’t. Every time I started to sink into drowsiness a panicked thought about the race would rocket through my head. I drifted around in semi-consciousness, trying not to look at the clock and worry about how I wasn’t sleeping only a few hours before having to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles and run a marathon. Eventually I gave in and looked. It was 12:15am. My alarm was set to go off at 4:01am. Don’t panic, 3:46 sleep will be enough, just relax. But it just didn’t happen. I don’t remember checking the time after 2am, so I must have dropped off around then. The alarm sounded at 4am and it was game on.
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| Bike ready to race |
The hotel laid on an early breakfast (small bowl of Cheerios, plain bagel with peanut butter, banana) and shuttle bus to the race HQ and we arrived a comfortable 1:45 before the start. Plenty of time to stand around and try to sense any inclination for my bowels to move, as well as visit the body marking station, pump my tyres, attach my nutrition to my bike, pull my wetsuit on and shuffle down to the beach. At 6:50am with a clear sky and the sun low on the horizon I stood on the beach next to Dave and scanned over the heads of 2,600 others to see a backdrop of thousands of spectators. There were scores of safety boats, kayaks and boards waiting for us in the water. Someone sang the Star Spangled Banner and most around us put their hand on their heart and sang too. I was crapping myself. It never gets easier. Then we were off. It was a running start into the water but felt neither as manic as what I’d expected nor as what it looked when I subsequently reviewed the video taken by Andrea on the sidelines. There were no high winds and the water was still, apart from the turbulence caused by 5,200 rotating arms and 5,200 kicking feet. A two loop swim with a short out, run along the beach and then back in at the end of the first loop. I like those swims – getting out at half way, even if only for 5-10 seconds, gives you something to look forward to. At the half way mark I checked my watch to see 00:35, which was ok. I was hoping for my regular 1:10 swim so I was on target and feeling good. By the second loop the field had strung out and I had plenty of open water. I was concentrating on my technique, thinking about an early catch and a strong pull. I exited in 1:13, a few minutes slower than planned but I’d slowed to pee a couple of times, which I knew was time well invested as I could then survive the full bike course without having to stop. Peeing on bike and run courses used to be easy but race directors are now getting strict and impose time penalties if you’re caught doing it anywhere but the portable toilets set up around the course. But you can always bet they don’t have enough of those and so you often see a queue of two or three guys losing valuable minutes waiting outside a reeking plastic port-a-loo by the side of a huge empty field in the middle of nowhere. That’s what I wanted to avoid. My slow swim time was compounded by a sloppy T1 as I struggled to pull my tri top onto my cold, wet torso and then wipe the sand and wet grass off my feet before putting my socks and bike shoes on. I didn’t plan on changing my socks all day and so it was important to know there was nothing in there to cause friction over the next ten hours.
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| Swim start |
A two lap bike. Each lap was 15 miles of out and back along the side of the lake from the town centre before going onto a 41 mile loop through Hayden and around Hayden Lake. The road surfaces were sublime, probably the smoothest I’ve ever raced on at any distance. This was my first race on my new bike and using my new race wheels. My cycling has always been a puzzle. My physique, commitment to training and overall levels of fitness suggest I should always be quicker, and yet I normally lose places on the bike and have to fight to regain them on the run. I’ve tried all sorts of things to improve and dropping several thousand dollars on a new Cervelo P3 earlier this year was really the last throw of the dice. Yes, I was a bad workman blaming my tools. Actually, the best thing wasn’t the new bike, however lighter and more aerodynamic than my old (Blue) one it is, but the free bike fit that came with it. I spent valuable time with Murray at Speed Theory getting the positioning of seat, headset and aerobars just right to allow me to spend as much of the 112 miles as possible in as efficient an aero position as possible. I know from experience that in still conditions on a flat road the difference between being on my aerobars and being on my bullhorns was ~0.5mph. Which doesn’t sound much, but it delivers a 10-12 minutes faster bike split in an Ironman. I knew from my training that my set-up on the Cervelo is significantly more comfortable than the Blue, and I’d finished each of my long training rides strongly without experiencing any of the back, shoulder, neck and arm pains that I was now coming to associate with the bad set-up on the Blue.
I’d no idea where Dave was. I’m normally ahead of him on the swim but with losing a few minutes and faffing around in T1 I expected him to be in front. Shortly before the first turnaround at 7.5 miles I saw him and calculated he was four minutes up on me. Game over, as far as I was concerned. Despite me being considerably quicker at IM UK and IM Brazil, Dave had a breakthrough in 2010 and beat me to the finish by 45 minutes in Switzerland last July. He’d ramped up both his bike and run training for this race and entered our dual as clear favourite. I expected that to beat him I’d need to steal several minutes on the swim, hold off for as long as possible on the bike and try and enter the run course within 15 minutes of him to eventually run him down somewhere around mile 20 of the marathon. But whatever, I was feeling good and tried not to let it bother me. As Andrea had advised, race my own race and if that ends up good enough to beat Dave then consider it a bonus. But most importantly, race my own race. I was feeling good, hardly trying and yet coasting along the flats at 23-24mph. The hills between miles 25-45 were a shock but I knew they’d be tougher the second time. I saw Dave in his Union Jack bike jersey again at the next turnaround and figured out that he hadn’t extended his lead and was still four minutes up. Oh, that’s interesting. The return into town was fast and it was fun time-trialling through the intersections and streets closed off to traffic.
I was making a determined effort to consume more calories than normal on the bike. In all I took one gel at T1, three Clif bars (which were very dry and hard to swallow as I got more dehydrated later into the bike), most of a packet of Gu Chomps, two gels, one bottle of Gatorade and two bottles of Ironman Perform sports drink. Probably around 2,000 calories in total. By the end of the bike I’d probably already burned 6,000 calories and so I was in major deficit, but not nearly as much as previous long course races. I knew from experience that I wouldn’t want to take any solids onboard during the run and so had to maximise my intake on the bike.
It was nice seeing Andrea and Steph as I came through town at the end of lap one and I gave them a thumbs up. I’d nailed the first 56 miles in 2:46 (and so 4:07 in total was on the clock). On a good day I was hoping for a 5:45 bike but as a backstop I just wanted to break six hours and so I was on a high to know already that barring mechanical or injury I was on target to smash my bike hoodoo. I was watching for Dave in the minutes leading up to the next turnaround. I was just coming to terms with missing him and thinking he must have surged when I saw him coming down the other side of the road only 200 metres in front. I’d gained four minutes in the last 25 miles. Now this is what I call a race. He didn’t smile or wave as before and I knew my performance was getting to him. One established ‘truth’ of our friendly rivalry is that he’s stronger on the bike than me. For him not to have been pulling away would’ve been concerning enough, but to be getting caught was unthinkable for us both. I caught and passed him in the town centre at the mile 70 marker. As I moved alongside he asked “what did you have for breakfast?”. I tried to play it calm, chatted about the swim and only moved ahead when we got some open road a few hundred yards out of the town centre. I got into the aero position and pushed. I expected him to step up his game and stay with me. For the next 10-15 miles I didn’t allow myself to look back, frightened to discover him only a legal seven metres back and me showing my insecurities. And yet despite starting to hurt and having to stand to get up some of the hills, by the time I saw him at the next turnaround I’d put four minutes into him. This lifted me again and I rode strongly back into town, by this stage confident that he wouldn’t catch me today.
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| Mile 70. The pass. Andrea thought she was photographing Dave and didn't spot me ten yards away over his right shoulder. |
I was trying to stay controlled through the aid stations, hoping to ‘race’ at least the first 13-16 miles before succumbing to aid station-to-aid station survival mode. The sun felt hot, the cold sponges felt good, but my legs were starting to hurt. The views along the side of the lake were pretty but I noticed I was withdrawing into myself, keeping my head down and staring only at the asphalt or gravel five yards ahead. I was speaking to no-one. I hate out-and-back courses. 26.2 miles is 26.2 miles no matter how it’s configured, but it’s depressing to be running away from where you know you ultimately need to return. The hills before and after the turnaround were killers. Many others were walking them, knowing they still had two or three hours until the finish and determined not to spike their heart rates at this stage, but I’m stubborn and shuffled up them. I hit town and the halfway mark at an accumulative 8:59 and knew deep down I hadn’t left myself enough time in reserve for the inevitable slowing in the second 13.1 miles. I saw Andrea and Steph and struggled to raise a smile or a wave. I wasn’t in a happy place. My target shifted from a sub-11 to a sub-11:06 to ensure I beat Dave’s Ironman PB from Switzerland.
The third quarter of the run, the notorious third quarter. You’re too far into the run for it to be fun anymore, a welcome change from cycling. And you’ve been racing hard for over nine hours – in a single session, without interruption, more than six times the total government recommendation for healthy physical exercise in a full week. Yet you’re still not close enough to the finish to let that high carry you. In fact, on this course, I was running away from the finish. My hips were tightening and my knees were dropping and while I was overtaking many slower swim-bikers who were just beginning their first lap of the run, I knew I wasn’t moving very fast. Within a couple of miles I took two 30 second walk breaks to try and shake things up. After the turnaround I saw Dave for the second time and calculated that my lead had extended to 24 minutes. At least that was something. Head down, only six miles to go. I picked up pace and crossed off each mile marker. By mile 24 I was back in the suburbs and with plenty of support around I decided to finish strongly. The sub-11:06 was lost but making sure I beat 11:10 became immensely important to me over those last two miles. Finally I turned into Sherman Avenue and the five or six block decline to the finish chute. I picked up another couple of places and allowed myself a few hand pumps to the crowds while still a couple of hundred yards out. As I approached the chute I could see the Northern Ireland flag waving behind the barrier. The clock was on 11:09:35 and so I didn’t stop to kiss Andrea as there was another guy to overtake and that sub-11:10 to secure. I crossed the line in 11:09:40 and was caught by two guys in their fifties who congratulated me and propped me up as my timing chip was removed, I received my finisher’s medal and t-shirt and had my photo taken. When they eventually realised I wasn’t going to collapse they let me go and I doubled back to the bleachers and found Andrea for a hug. Job done.
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| Five minutes after finishing in 11:09:40 |
Dave finished in 11:52 and we were both pleased with our day's work. Rivalry to be continued.
I came 315/2187 finishers overall and 55/228 finishers in my M30-34 age category. My splits were:
- Swim: 01:14:27 (disappointing)
- Bike: 05:38:18 (excellent)
- Run: 04:07:48 (must do better)
I’m happy with a PB on my fifth Ironman and with the big gains achieved on the bike, but I know I can go quicker overall. I can run a fresh marathon in just a shade over three hours and so it’s crazy that an Ironman run takes me a full hour longer. Definite low hanging fruit there. I’m capable of a 10:30 and should soon be doing 10:45s as my default time on a standard course. If I keep working, I know I’ll figure this thing out.
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