Norn Ironman

God save the national anthem at Northern Ireland games

2011-11-29T16:30:00.000-08:00

I've sent the following to the editor for publication in tomorrow's Belfast Telegraph, but it's a little lengthy for the letters page and am not holding my breath.

Nationalist players who opt to play for the Republic of Ireland are quick to cite the Belfast Agreement with regard to their right to an Irish passport; but appear less keen to recognise the Agreement’s more fundamental tenet – the principle of consent. This principle, subscribed to en masse by all relevant peoples and governments, as well as the international community, recognises Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom for as long as its people wish it. In short, GSTQ is played before international games at Windsor Park because it’s NI’s national anthem. We shouldn’t expect nationalist players to favour this; but in a spirit of tolerance we should expect them to respect it. By using it as an excuse not to play for Northern Ireland, they’re rejecting the principle of consent.

It’s important to note that Scotland and Wales don’t play their own national anthem. Instead they opt to not play their national anthem in favour of more local folk songs. This is a significant variation from the norms of international football. By doing so they have fulfilled their own prophesy by abandoning GSTQ and leaving it to become the “English anthem”. It would be a shame if Northern Ireland provided the coup de grace.

Those who play for Northern Ireland or attend the games either recreationally or professionally can be in no doubt that the experience is overwhelmingly distinctive to our wee country. A stranger wandering into Windsor Park on an international night could not possibly mistake the occasion for an England, Scotland, Wales or Republic of Ireland game. For nationalist players – and the media – to focus on the 45-second pre-game rendition of our national anthem and ignore the hours of other Northern Irish-specific content is surely political obsession.

Regardless of the legalities, the FAI is clearly acting in an unsporting manner by actively recruiting players from outside the 26 counties; indeed, taking these players from their nearest neighbour and supposed friend. The primary focus should therefore be on the actions of the FAI and not the IFA. In the absence of an all-Ireland team, we should also be more challenging about what motivates young nationalists to represent the 26 counties (that they’re not from) as opposed to the six counties (that they are). Rather than what’s played by the brass band before kick-off, more likely factors are the greater on-field success of the RoI and its absence of cultural pluralism. Put simply, there may be more pull than push factors at work.

Ironman Coeur d'Alene 2011

2011-07-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mile 70. The pass. Andrea thought she was photographing Dave and didn't spot me ten yards away over his right shoulder.

I got to the dismount line with a bike split of 5:38. I’d averaged 19.9mph over a rolling course and in my overall targets had more than compensated for a slow swim and T1. Despite having to be dragged back from entering the women’s changing tent at T2, I got through transition quickly thanks to a kind volunteer who I left to repack the scattered contents of my T2 bag, and entered the run course on an accumulative 7:02. A 3:58 marathon and the sub-11 was there for the taking. I smiled when I saw Andrea at the start of the run course to let her know I was happy and in confident mood. While Dave’s running is much improved, I somehow knew at this stage that in our private battle he was beaten, and so all I needed to concentrate on now was running my own race. I was pleased to settle naturally into 8:15-8:30 minute/mile splits, with a brief interruption at the end of mile two to stop for a very painful pee (I’ll save you a description of the sensation or colour). The twists and turns through the residential streets in town were a little annoying. I hadn’t driven the run course and so hadn’t realised it would take so long to get out onto the path at the side of the highway along the lake. When I finally got there I was starting to hurt but my spirits lifted when I brushed shoulders with Craig Alexander as he ran back into town on the final few miles of his race. This is a two-times World Champion, one of the greatest ever Ironman triathletes, and here I was on the same course as him. Only two and a half hours behind. As it happened, he went on to finish in 8:16 and break the course record. Not bad, especially when you consider he was only clocking his mandatory Ironman to qualify for the World Championships in Hawaii later this year, and that they’d modified the run course this year to add two extra hills on each of the two laps.

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.

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.

The Motor City: in search of the Detroit Cougars

2011-04-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

The Homeland Security officer’s day suddenly improved.

“So, let me get this straight. You’re a UK citizen, live in Vancouver, Canada, and you’ve decided to come to Detroit for four days...just to look around?”

I’m standing at a counter in a scruffy immigration office on the US side of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. The driver of the Tunnel Bus and its four other passengers are waiting for me to clear so that the bus can continue its journey to various drop-offs in downtown Detroit. The suspicious reaction of the tiny red-headed DSH officer isn’t unexpected; I’d been getting similar winces and raised eyebrows from friends since booking the trip several weeks before. You’re going where? At this point I have a choice: I can continue to mumble monosyllabic answers and hope she loses interest, or I can come clean – admit I’m not just here as a tourist, but as a football fan....no, that’s soccer...and in search of the Detroit Cougars, a little known team that played in the city for seven weeks nearly 44 years ago. This second option would probably ease my border crossing, yet I know I’ll sound peculiar. As ardent as I am in my sporting interests, I’m aware that they may appear somewhat niche to the average North American.

I stick to the minimal answers. She shouts to the bus driver “On you go...”, while nodding towards me “...he can walk”. After a baggage search and further questioning (Her: “What’s the back pack for?” Me: “To carry things”) I’m sent out through the forecourt of open-boot vehicles, up the slope and onto Jefferson Avenue, downtown Detroit’s main waterfront thoroughfare. Walking into the Motor City.

Let’s get a few scene setting and downright dumbfounding facts about Detroit out of the way.

Latest census data shows that since 2000, the population of Detroit has dropped 25%. That’s 238,270 people; an average of one resident every 22 minutes. The population of the United States as a whole has grown 9.7% in the same period
That means that today’s population is the lowest since 1910, four years before Henry Ford started mass producing cars
The city’s population peaked at almost 1.9 million in 1950, then making it the fourth largest city in the United States; today it is 713,777 and ranks as 18th largest
Michigan, in which Detroit is the largest city, is the only US state to have experienced population shrinkage over the last ten years
There are 80,000 vacant homes in Detroit, 22.8% of the total housing stock

I’m in Detroit on the trail of the Cougars, but I’m also here as a traveller, lover of cities, and voyeur – curious to witness a once great city slowly die.

It’s Thursday. The first thing I do, as a proper tourist, is go to the Visitor Center. Now this is a Visitor Center that plainly isn’t used to seeing many visitors. To begin with, it’s on the 10th floor of an aging high rise. I’m greeted by a kindly looking white woman in her late 50s. I mention her race because frankly, in Detroit, it still matters. The city itself is 87% black or Hispanic, the more affluent white population moving out in droves to the suburbs and surrounding municipalities following the notorious 1967 race riot, which changed the city forever and occurred only one month after the Cougars squad returned to Belfast. While helping me with maps I notice the woman’s accent and she confirms she’s originally from Dublin and has been in Detroit 23 years. So I try my luck and tell her the real purpose of my visit. She shows no recognition of either Glentoran or the Detroit Cougars, although expresses her curiosity that I’d return to the city after having being here several decades ago to play on a football tour. I don’t correct her, politely change the subject and soon leave when I notice her check her watch (4:50pm) and begin to shut down her computer.

It’s now 10pm and I’m standing in The Old Shillelagh waiting to meet Paul Altesleben. Paul is Corresponding Secretary of the Metro Detroit Soccer League. His wife serves as Recording Secretary. I’d set-up the meeting prior to my trip and despite Paul not being familiar with the story of the Cougars I still wanted to meet someone involved in football in the city today. The Old Shillelagh is in Greektown, less than a 10 minute walk from my hotel and yet Paul had recommended that I catch public transit, which I hadn’t. When he arrives he explains that he knows people can be nervous walking around Detroit. But in fact, the streets were just too quiet to be scary. They were quiet in the business district earlier that afternoon, even when I was leaving the Visitor Center at rush hour, and they’re quiet now in the heart of the entertainment district at 10pm on a Thursday night. We’re meeting this late because Paul has been playing his weekly mixed indoor five-a-side. He’s wearing a US Soccer track top, a Lamontville Golden Arrows FC shirt (Durban, South Africa) and an Altesleben FC cap. The guy on the guitar is playing I’ll Tell Me Ma and most patrons are watching the Detroit Tigers baseball team lose in Baltimore on TV screens above the bar. He explains later that the football club logo on the cap is copied from the emblem of Stroh, a former Detroit brewery, and I like his senses of priority and localism. Paul tells me that following our email exchange he’d researched Glentoran online. He compliments me, sort of, on The Oval. He doesn’t know about the Cougars but seems pleased to find out that Detroit is a founding city of North American professional soccer and appears proud when I tell him about the Glentoran Community Trust wall mural in an east Belfast street that depicts the Cougars name and logo. I ask if there has ever been a movement to bring a Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise to Detroit. Apparently the owner of a third tier side somewhere north of the city has aspirations for moving his team through the divisions and finally entering the MLS, but Paul doesn’t sound hopeful. The nearest MLS teams are Chicago Fire and Toronto FC, both about four hours away by car.

GCT wall mural in Belfast depicting Detroit Cougars name and logo

We move to a more upscale bar where the drinks are served in glasses rather than plastic cups, past the workmen erecting beer tents in vacant car lots in readiness for tomorrow’s Opening Day festivities (first home game of the season for the Detroit Tigers). Paul has been to Belfast on his travels (“I wish I’d known about the Cougars and I’d have looked up your club”) and so, with some understanding of the intricacies of Northern Ireland, says he didn’t know what I’d make of The Old Shillelagh. When we loosen up around each other he talks about race in Detroit and I about religion in Belfast. He says he figured Glentoran is a Protestant club as he’d noticed we’ve been previous winners of the Ulster Cup. That’s why he’d decided not to wear his Celtic shirt this evening, although he claims also to own a Rangers shirt, bought when visiting Glasgow, and I notice later him wearing the light blue in photos on Facebook. We spend the next hour or so swapping stories from football trips, me especially curious to hear about his time in South Africa to watch all four of the USA’s games in the 2010 World Cup. He also talks about amateur soccer in Detroit and it sounds a familiar story of small time sport in any city – teams forming and folding, petty politics, last minute drops out and scrambles for players, the whole system kept afloat by the commitment of a very small nucleus of enthusiasts.

We’re getting on well and so I branch off from football and ask Paul what he does for a living. He’s an 8th grade maths teacher. He goes on to explain how his former school, which served mostly black kids, has been merged with another local school with a mainly white student roll. Schools and other public services are consolidating and closing all over the city.

As we say our goodbyes Paul promises to find me “an old timer” who would’ve been in the city in the late 60s, but this doesn’t sound like a straightforward task. I try to do some demographic calculations in my head. Factor one: the Detroit population was ~1.5 million in 1967 and is 713,777 today; therefore over half the population count during the time of the Cougars has since left or died and not been replaced. Factor two: average attendances at Cougars home games were only 5,708 i.e. one-third of one percent of the population of the city at the time. Factor three: I’m looking for someone born no later than 1950 to ensure they have more than early childhood memories of the Cougars, and yet no earlier than 1935 or 1940 to ensure they’re still in good health. Combine all three factors and I’m sad to realise there are probably no more than a handful of people left in Detroit who remember attending Cougars games.

Friday morning and I’m embarking on a full self-guided Cougars city tour. I stand for ages on Woodward Avenue – the spine of Detroit and epicentre of downtown – to catch a bus northwest but none arrive. I resort to walking back to my hotel and taking a taxi. The driver is friendly and so we chat. I explain my interest in Detroit. As we pass Cobo Hall I tell him that the team went there to see Frank Sinatra in summer ’67. While still on the freeway I spot the Fisher Building rising up in the distance, recognising its art deco design from photos on the internet. This was the office accommodation of The Detroit Soccer Co., Inc. 2400 Fisher Building, Detroit, Michigan 48202. Where W. Emmett Simms, Vice President and General Manager, ran the company and the great and the good of the Detroit auto and sports industries convened for Board meetings. I remark to the driver what a beautiful building it is and he doesn’t reply. As we draw alongside I notice the exterior is dirty and dilapidated. Before going inside I cross West Grand Boulevard to stand beside Cadillac Place, former world headquarters of General Motors, to get a photo, only taking out my camera when several shady characters have shuffled past.

Fisher Building, Detroit - former office of The Detroit Soccer Co., Inc.

As soon as I step inside I’m instantly impressed. Built in 1928, the Fisher Building is all marble, tiles, plaster moulds and gold leaf. The ceiling paintings in the atrium, which runs along the side of the Fisher Theatre, are Michelangelo-esque and 10 foot glass chandeliers hang from 20 foot extensions. I check out the wall mounted directory and scan for offices on the 24th floor. Two companies: 2401 – VMX International LLP and 2410 – Health Management Systems. No organisation listed for Suite 2400. I move past the security guards and catch the elevator to 24 and walk out into a dark rectangular hallway with several office doors around its perimeter. A woman emerges as I approach the only one with signs of life behind it. She asks if she can help and I tell her I’m looking for 2400. She’s unsure of the numbers but asks the name of the company. I mumble something about 2400, she again asks the name of the company, and I come clean with a “This is going to sound a little strange, but...”. Surprisingly, she doesn’t seem fazed by my quest and explains that the whole floor has been remodelled since the 60s and so there probably isn’t a Suite 2400 anymore. She presses the elevator call button and leaves. There’s nothing else I can do but circle a few laps of the quiet hallway and know that from within a few paces – forward, behind, left or right – the Detroit Cougars were administered and match tickets were sold. I regret not bringing a plaque to screw onto the wall.

Floor 24, Fisher Building

I go back down to the atrium, buy a coffee and today’s Detroit Free Press and sit down to read. There’s a front page story about a software tycoon buying downtown office space and moving large numbers of staff there: the city and its people attempting to diversify from the auto industry that has both made and destroyed it. The inside pages talk unconvincingly of the City’s plans for a light rail scheme on Woodward Avenue, another attempt to regenerate through a multimillion dollar mass transit project. The Homestyle supplement bizarrely contains no ads for homes for sale. House prices in Detroit have dropped by 25% since 2008. This is similar to Belfast, but Detroit didn’t enjoy any of the boom experienced by Northern Ireland, and most of the western world, in the earlier part of the decade.

I walk out of the main exit and take a right, travelling only one block west from 2nd Avenue to 3rd Street. I’m looking for the Howard Johnson New Center Motor Lodge. This was the team hotel, home to Glentoran players and staff for the duration of the tour, except when they were ‘on the road’ in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Toronto. All I see is a car park and a McDonalds, but this is definitely the spot as I see the Henry Ford Hospital rise in the background and recognise other landmarks from an old photo printed in the 25th Annual Reunion Dinner brochure. The hotel building is gone, there’s not much to see, so I discreetly snap a few pictures and walk back to the Fisher Building where I call a taxi to take me to the University of Detroit Mercy, McNichols Campus.

Former site of the Howard Johnson New Center Motor Lodge - Detroit Cougars team hotel

It’s 5pm. The University of Detroit Mercy is a private university that is affiliated with the Jesuits and the Sisters of Mercy. The McNichols Campus in northwest Detroit was home to the U of D Stadium, which hosted the Detroit Cougars. The stadium – venue of a W2 D3 L1 home record for the Cougars – was demolished in 1971 but I want to see its location and get a sense of campus atmosphere.

Large, low rise academic buildings intermingled with prison-like residential halls dominate the grounds. Only a few students walk around, either with tennis bags on their backs or beer crates in their hands. I assume that most have gone home for the weekend: like Queen’s University and the University of Ulster, few of the students of the U of DM are from far away. There are more attractive places than Detroit for non-locals to spend their college years. Outside the perimeter fence on the southeast corner of the campus I notice some residential ruins, by now a typical sight. Nearly a quarter of all houses in Detroit are unoccupied and most of these lie derelict, often the victims of arson and always of glass, plumbing and scrap metal looting. From what I can tell, these ruins aren’t limited to one or two isolated areas of town, but are sprinkled throughout. As I looked down residential streets at rows of detached timber and brick houses in most parts of the city I could see every fourth or fifth house in ruins. For the remaining residents, this of course renders their homes all but worthless. If no-one wants or is able to buy and fix-up the derelict house next door for a pittance, then an occupied home is also without any value. For a while I stroll glumly around this southeast corner snapping photos of a car park, mistakenly thinking that this was the site of the old stadium and looking at the cracks in the asphalt where once Trevor Thompson fired in goals.

A Detroit ruin...in Glentoran colours

Then I realise my sense of direction is 90 degrees out and head to the far side of the large modern sports hall, where I’m delighted to discover a running track around an artificial grass football pitch. A women’s game is underway and there are about 50 people watching from bleachers on the half way line across the pitch from the team dugouts. This must be the Detroit Titans. Titans is the generic name for all sports teams at the University of Detroit Mercy. It refers most famously to its basketball team, which is housed in Calihan Hall – an 8,295-seater indoor stadium i.e. the ‘sports hall’, but also includes the men’s and women’s soccer teams. The pitch is within the U of DM’s perimeter fence on the very northeast corner of campus with a residential street to the side and a main road behind the north goal. I check the street signs and compare them to my notes: this is definitely the site of the old stadium and I get excited, wanting to explain everything to one of the players, coaching staff or fans, which of course I don’t for fear of sounding ridiculous.

Detroit Titians sports field at the University of Detroit Mercy - former site of the U of D Stadium, which was home to the Detroit Cougars in 1967

I stay for a while and watch the game, appreciating how technically good women’s college soccer actually is, and then wander around the adjacent car park. The old U of D Stadium actually straddled what are now the sports pitch and the car park. I walk down to where I guess the centre circle was, and then to both goal mouths, all the while trying to picture those six home games and think about the mark they have made on the history and heritage of Glentoran FC. Then I go into Calihan Hall. I poke my head into the basketball arena but a bunch of students are staging some kind of show, so I leave and walk around the Detroit Titans Hall of Fame, an impressive visual history of great players and games down through the generations of basketball, track and field, tennis, soccer and American football teams. Towards the end of the exhibition I see a beautiful backlit photo of the old stadium, full to capacity for what looks like an American football game in the first half of the last century. I recognise the distinctive floodlight pylons that I’d read about, positioned between the stands and the pitch. I note a few surrounding landmarks and go back outside to check my coordinates of where exactly in today’s car park and sports field the old stadium was located. Eventually I realise I’m exhausted and go back downtown to my hotel.

Photo of the old U of D Stadium in the Detroit Titans Hall of Fame

Now it’s Saturday morning and I’m running late for a group tour of Southwest Detroit organised by Inside Detroit, a private non-profit that seeks to promote and provide education about the city. It established in 2007 because no-one else was doing it, not even City authorities. Today’s two hour tour would take us around Corktown and Mexicantown, both areas named after the origins of their first inhabitants. Both areas depressed, full of vacant space where homes and other buildings once stood (locally know as ‘urban prairies’), and devoid of people on the streets. To be fair, Mexicantown is a little more alive, although one of the guides, who Monday-Friday works for the local business association, gets disproportionately excited about a supermarket that has undertaken two extensions in the last ten years. Everywhere I look, including downtown, I can see few options for discretionary spending: hardly any cafes, bars, newsagents or other shops, not even the classic indicator of UK inner city poverty – ubiquitous fast food outlets. Aside from in a downtown convention center which caters for the fly-in, fly-out business classes, I saw only a single Starbuck’s my whole stay. Many will consider this a good thing, but it’s not a sign of a thriving city in today’s America.

Both tour guides are white locals and advocates for Detroit. They are determined not to lead an urban decay tour and while we do visit a few derelict buildings the emphasis is all on the grandeur of the original architecture and prospects for refurbishment. I want to be convinced but am not. In their evangelistic zeal they only seem to be pointing out the exceptions that prove the rule: a community action group that occasionally organises litter pick-ups; a small business that has recently renovated its facade; a local artist that is splashing paint all over a burned-out house in some form of playschool attempt at social commentary.

Michigan Central Station - abandoned and derelict

We stop for refreshments and I get talking to the lead tour guide. He looks mid-twenties and is studying political science and economics at Wayne State University. He asks what I’m doing in Detroit and I tell him about the Cougars, their link with my home town of Belfast and my quest to visit sites of relevance in the city. He makes a small grunt of recognition when I mention the Detroit Cougars, but as he turns and walks off to make conversation with another group of customers I can tell he was just being polite.

As the tour ends I ask the same guide for directions to the Detroit Historical Museum. I’ve got a few hours to spare before the Detroit Tigers v Kansas City Royals baseball game late that afternoon. He says he lives close by and will give me a ride. As I wait for him in the Inside Detroit office I flip through the 624 pages of The Detroit Almanac: 300 Years of Life in the Motor City. I search the index under ‘Cougars’, ‘Detroit Cougars’, ‘soccer’ and ‘John Colrain’ and find no references. The tour guide asks if I’m ready and we depart.

Before my trip I’d shared several pleasant and informative emails with Joel Stone, Curator of the Detroit Historical Museum. Joel doesn’t recall the Cougars but seemed happy to help me on my mission and recommended some reading about Detroit so I could understand what was going on in the city’s politics and society in the 60s, especially in connection with the riot. He had spent some time studying at University College Cork in the late 70s and so was happy to draw comparisons between Detroit and what he knew of Belfast, despite his southern educators “suggesting that going to The North was not a good idea”. And so I wanted to visit his Museum.

I walk around the displays that tell the story of the city’s industrialisation and growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and panel after panel outlining its intimate relationship with the auto industry. I pass by a large display of ‘New Artefacts’ that have recently been donated to the Museum and notice some old Detroit Tigers memorabilia. The Museum will remain custodians of these artefacts and down through the decades they will be used both for private research and to publically tell their own tales of Detroit life. I start to weigh up how much I treasure my own small Cougars collection and how important it is that Detroit be reminded of this short chapter in its history, which has otherwise been forgotten.

I leave the Museum and walk back down Woodward Avenue towards the huge green floodlights of Comerica Park. The city or its suburbs host four major league teams and each of North America’s favourite sports are represented – Detroit Tigers (baseball), Detroit Lions (American football), Detroit Red Wings (ice hockey) and Detroit Pistons (basketball). During my stay I ask two people which sport rules Detroit: one replies baseball, the other American football. Despite or perhaps because of its modern day problems, Detroit remains a true blue collar sports town. I have a ticket for the baseball, only the second home game of the season, and munch peanuts with 33,809 others as the Tigers lose 3-1 to the Royals. Just about everyone is wearing a Detroit Tigers jacket, sweatshirt, t-shirt or baseball cap in dark blue and orange, but I notice several people with green versions emblazoned with shamrocks. Detroit is still Irish.

Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers, with Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, in the background

After the game I get a call from Nick Deren confirming a time and place for us to meet. Nick is Head Coach of the Detroit Titans men’s team, undoubtedly the best soccer XI in Detroit today. The Titans are an NCAA Division 1 side, and therefore among the top 204 college teams in the country. Due to America’s vastness, the league system is regionalised until the play-off stages; however the Titans still regularly travel the length and breadth of the nation to play in tournaments. Players aren’t paid, but Nick receives a significant annual budget both for travel and for either subsidising or paying in full his players’ tuition fees as an incentive to attract the best possible talent to the university. His college-team budget certainly exceeds the annual turnover of Glentoran FC. Academic entry standards can be quietly lowered for the better players. His whole 25-man squad of 18-23 year olds train 20 hours a week.

Nick has just finished coaching a 90 minute training session before a ‘spring scrimmage’ tomorrow against local rivals Oakland University. He doesn’t want to come downtown, preferring instead that we meet not far from the U of DM in a suburb called Ferndale. It’s only a 20 minute cab ride from my hotel but I arrive in a busy main street, full of restaurants and night life that feels a million miles away from Detroit. It’s the home town of rapper Eminem and, from what I can see, it’s almost exclusively white. When I arrive in Dino’s, Nick, 33, is already seated at the bar, finishing an iced tea, and we spend the next three hours talking football. He is a former Detroit Titans star player and after graduation and three or four years “in the real world” he returned to become Assistant Coach. 18 months ago he got the top job, a full time position. He’s a coach to the core. Before long he starts scribbling on napkins to show me the formations that he likes his team to play. He talks about the lengths he goes to scout and attract talented high school players not only from Michigan but surrounding states and into Canada. Recently the college has started offering places to footballers from east Africa and the current team’s top striker is Kenyan. Following three, four or five years of NCAA Division 1 football, many of his players go on to play in the lower division pro or semi-pro leagues. Some have made it in Hungary and Scandinavia, although none have yet been drafted to the MLS.

I’ve brought the 25th Annual Reunion brochure and flip through it with Nick, concentrating on photos that show the old U of D Stadium in the background. He quietly listens to me talk about the Glens, and the Detroit Cougars, but I know he knows it’s a long way from the English Premier League, which he watches on ESPN. He finishes his third iced tea and leaves, promising to get in touch when he comes to Vancouver on a planned scouting trip. Half an hour later I collapse into bed.

It’s Sunday and time to leave Detroit. Although it will continue to disintegrate, the city has charmed me and I know I’ll be back. I come from Belfast and have learned to see beneath the veneer of a place. Yet as I wait to travel through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel I can’t help but draw sad comparisons between the decline of the Motor City and that of Glentoran since the happier days of our union in summer 1967.

The story of the Detroit Cougars has faded and gone in Detroit, a city with other things on its mind, but it will continue to live on in Belfast. Like the 1914 Vienna Cup, 1941 Belfast Blitz, 1949 return to The Oval, and European nights of the 60s, 70s and early 80s, the Cougars will remain a cornerstone of our great club’s past. But these four days in this city has reminded me that standing still and expecting things to stay the same forever is not an option. It’s important for us all to continue to make history, not be doomed to merely playing it on loop in our memories.

Why am I bothered?

2010-11-06T19:51:00.000-07:00

I never cry when awake but sometimes do in my sleep. Someone could probably explain the reason for this but I’d rather not hear it. Last night’s dreamworld sobbing was for Glentoran, a football club on the verge of extinction.

Just before sleeping I read that the attendance at the Oval last Saturday for our league game versus Lisburn Distillery was only 1,153. This would be a small crowd on any day, in any season of our history, but is especially remarkable because it was our first home game following the news that HM Revenue & Customs is readying to launch court proceedings to recover years of unpaid tax; court proceedings that will force the club into administration, cause panic grabbing from our other creditors (who to date have shown remarkable patience) and ensure the liquidation of our only real asset - the Oval Grounds. Following this news, broken with flourish by the BBC, a sense of urgency gripped Glentoran supporters and fan sites and forums were filled with rescue ideas. The club moved quickly to form Spirit of 41 – an umbrella brand for fundraising activities making an intelligent but high-stakes reference to the bombing of the Oval in the Belfast Blitz and marathon community effort to rebuild the ground and see the club return to Mersey Street in 1949. Supporters’ meetings took place, rallies organized, Facebook groups established, war cries screamed across the world wide web. I took some heart; from a distance it appeared like people cared. No substantial money raising ideas had emerged – the headline initiative being a small time raffle for a hairdresser’s car – but we weren’t short on passion from the keyboard army.

But the true test would be the size of attendance at the next home game. The best way fans can donate is not charitably, or in pity, but in return for Saturday afternoon entertainment. This is the proper relationship between fan and club. Collection buckets may be a short term necessity but do nothing for the club’s long term image. Going to the match, not ‘liking’ a Facebook group, is also the best way for fans to show their support, give heart to the team and demonstrate our collective power to media and creditors. And it didn’t happen. If anything the news, rather than boosting the crowd, detracted from it. Nobody other than our hardcore fan base wants to be associated with a club in its ugly death throes.

We’re doomed because the people of east Belfast and wider catchment area have given up on us. This is one tragic cock-up too many. A final example of our inability to function healthily in a modern world. Across the globe, and this is true also for the UK no matter how we try to pretend otherwise, only a very small minority of football fans are the most loyal of all sports fans. Most people fall in and out of love with both the game and their club many times in their life. They spend long periods with switched or more focused allegiances for other teams, always with valid excuses of geography or family. Their passion ebbs and flows with different life adventures. They go to the games because the team is winning and they’re with their mates; but fortunes change, friends move on, other hobbies take hold, people relocate. Despite the fireside tales of loyalty that are passed from football generation to generation, most people only want to be associated with success, they want to love a club that makes them proud; in fact, will only love a club if it makes them proud. If it doesn’t, or ceases to, they rarely make a public renunciation; they just stop going, stop caring, and start transferring their time and emotions to other things. We only have one life to live and being a martyr isn’t a fun way to do it. Except for the very few, Glentoran just doesn’t offer enough to people any longer to gain their attention, let alone loyalty or fanaticism. And certainly not their life savings. This is nothing new – it’s the end of a process, not the beginning, because our decline began 40 years ago. HMRC’s latest move hasn’t galvanised a community, merely embarrassed it.

As I sit and write on an autumn Vancouver Saturday morning, looking out over Burrard Inlet to Grouse and Seymour Mountains, rested after a short business visit to Toronto and anticipating another trip east across this huge continent on Monday, I wonder just why I care so much about a musty, dying old football club in the east end of Belfast. I struggle to link my own values with that of the club. It has no ambition, is addicted to being second best, has no inclination towards self-improvement, no work ethic, and wants to play no part, however small, in a networked European football community. In my own athletic life, for no more than solid amateur performances in a fringe sport, balanced with a busy career, I even train harder and lead a healthier lifestyle than many, if not all, of the club’s playing staff.

Further to that, I never quite fitted in to Irish League football. Despite strong and enduring links to the area, I’m not from east Belfast. I played rugby and went to Grammar school. For most of the many years that I lived locally, and therefore went regularly to games, I was either too young or too consumed with religious piety to drink mammoth quantities of alcohol.

And yet I do care. I cry for the club in my sleep. I’m obsessed with it. I love its colours, badge, ground and history. I revere Jim Cleary, Billy Caskey, Glen Little and Paul Leeman. I feel stabbed in the chest when we lose, even in the Co. Antrim Shield. And despite the glumness of what I’ve written above, deep down, I believe Glentoran to be the finest, most romantic, majestic and beautiful football club ever to exist. The thought of it no longer being (Glentoran F.C. 1882-2010) breaks my heart.

I rarely get to the games now. Being 4,392 miles from home makes that difficult. As many push as pull factors have caused me to move overseas, yet Glentoran is one cornerstone of my heritage, and my family legacy, from which I haven’t ran. It has stuck and will do for life, even if I outlive the club. I suppose there was something magical, or moulding, about the age and circumstances at which I started following the team. Many other interests from that era came and went – ornithology, rally cars, photography – but Glentoran remained.

Both my father and grandfather supported the Glens, although both only as big game attendees. They were there for the Terry Conroy cup final and the Benfica and Rangers games. I have to go back to my great-grandfather to find the last week-in, week-out fan. As often happened in the industrial era, he moved to Belfast from the countryside and adopted a local football team as way of identifying with his new city.

I went to primary school in Omagh where I saw my first live football game – Omagh Town versus RUC, Irish Cup, Omagh Showgrounds. I’d never seen the Glens but obviously spoke of my support for them because I still have the leaving present that my classmates gave me when I left at 11 to move to Newtownabbey – a Glentoran versus Juventus programme from 1977, the year I was born. As we settled in our new life just north of Belfast my older brother made friends at school with a Crusaders fan. Every Saturday this friend of my brother went to games and this seemed both glamorous and grown-up to us, thereby inspiring us to start going to the Oval. For four or five years we went regularly together. These were epic journeys. For the first few years we’d set out just after lunch to catch the bus from Jordanstown to Belfast city centre and then we’d walk to the Oval. As the crow flies, this was less than 15 miles from home, but at that age it felt like we were venturing to another, more interesting civilisation. These were good times with my brother. By this stage he was becoming too cool, and me too embarrassing, for him to speak to or even acknowledge me at school, but on a Saturday afternoon we became brothers, friends and fellow Glenmen. I can still feel the bulk of my hidden scarf inside my coat, under my armpit, as we made the double scurry past the entrance to Short Strand. Laterly, he passed his driving test and we’d drive into town. I’ll never, ever forget the September night we drove in together, parked on Templemore Avenue for fear of mass traffic nearer the ground, and went to see our wee team play Marseille, the finest side in Europe. My brother’s interest waned shortly after that. He continued going to Boxing Day games until the late nineties before stopping altogether. But I was hooked and pressed on. Often there was a friend to drag along with me – one or two of them becoming firm Glentoran supporters – and other times I went alone, which was equally pleasurable. In my mid to late teens I started going to more and more away games, catching Ulsterbuses to Seaview and Taylor’s Avenue and trains to Inver and Clandeboye Parks. By the time I passed my own test I was going to every single match, home and away, sometimes over 60 games a season. When I lived on the Lisburn Road during my time at Queen’s I’d set out before 6pm on a Tuesday evening to walk down through the Holy Lands, across Ormeau Embankment, down Ravenhill Road and Templemore Avenue, along Newtownards Road, then Dee Street, Mersey Street and Parkgate Drive for Gold Cup, Co. Antrim Shield or league games. A handful of times I even did that on a Friday night to see the Seconds. And I remember skipping tutorials only a couple of months before my final year exams to do the same walk to interview Roy Coyle for a fanzine I was thinking of writing. Around this time I joined a supporters’ club and this gave me access to new friends. I helped out in the souvenir and tuck shops on matchdays, helped repaint the ground during the summers, travelled to Israel, Norway, Denmark and Finland for European games, bought some shares in the club and wrote the odd article for the Gazette and official website.

The Oval Grounds, Belfast

Then, in 2002, I left Northern Ireland. First I moved to Glasgow, where when people asked which team I support I’d answer ‘Glentoran’. Only if they looked quizzical would I add ‘... a Belfast club’. Then I moved to Oxford, where I stayed for nearly seven years, and by necessity for the locals my answer became ‘a Belfast club, Glentoran’. Now I find myself transferred to Vancouver where I’ve learned that unless I answer Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Real Madrid or Barcelona, I’m going to be faced with extreme disinterest. Occasionally I try my luck and give a brief and mildly apologetic explanation of my support for Glentoran – that’s Glen-tor-an – a very small club from my hometown on the north-western fringe of Europe, but it means nothing to canuks. I don’t push the issue, in the same way that a Canadian ice hockey fan in Belfast banging on constantly about his favourite junior team in Manitoba may appear quirky at first but would soon become irritating.

My day to day and week to week personal contacts with the club are cut, but 22 years after my first game (1988 Irish Cup final, Glentoran 1-0 Glenavon, Cleary pen) I stay mesmerised. Glentoran became the footprint in the soft setting concrete of my life. As I get older and further and further removed from the Oval, the print remains forever because the impression was made at just the right time.

That’s why I’m bothered. That’s why I cry in my sleep. On many levels, and looking at the person I am now, it makes no sense; but on many others it’s entirely logical.

And so, I know I haven’t exactly sold it, but if you want to make a contribution to our survival, or at least assist with our palliative care, then grab your wallet and visit http://www.spiritof41.com/.

My annual rant about why the Glens are so crap in Europe (plus some comparisons with other Northern Irish, Welsh and Irish clubs)

2010-09-01T21:16:00.000-07:00

This article was originally written with the intention of a wider readership, probably through publication in the Glentoran Gazette (subject to the editor’s approval). But as the club has got off to a flying start in the new Irish Premiership season, with four wins and one draw at the time of writing, there’s a certain optimism in the air and it would seem a little bah humbug of me to voice this right now. I know this is cowardly. If anything, our good domestic form is only masking the wider problems raised in this article. But there’s a time and place for everything. I suppose it’s safe to post on my blog now, since no-one reads my blog.

As the qualifying rounds for both Champions League and Europa League are now complete, this seems a good time to review events. What happens in either competition from now on is of little consequence to Glentoran, or any other Irish League club; but the events of early July to late August are of huge meaning, and their outcomes deserve detailed review.

First of all, let’s establish why that is. Why Europe matters, or why Europe should matter, to a club like Glentoran. To the pragmatist the answer is money – the prize money available from even first round elimination dwarfs anything on offer domestically, while successful progression through just one round in either competition would increase our annual revenue substantially. To make absolutely clear, for the club’s creditors, in terms of prize money alone, winning a single European tie is equal to winning two Irish League championships or going on a 1980s-style Irish Cup winning run. Considering the fiscally perilous situation of the club at this time, we have no choice but to be pragmatists. And yet some of us also remain romantics, and for our dwindling number Europe tempts us with an idyll that the Irish League alone cannot give. Some Oval regulars personally remember the European conquests of the early 60s to early 80s – a two decade span upon which our heritage was built and songs were written. Many others, myself included, arrived soon enough afterwards to hear the stories first-hand and grow-up as Glentoran supporters believing that fighting our corner in Europe, and landing the occasional blow, was the norm to be expected.

Glentoran v Rangers programme, 1966. A famous night at the Oval when 35,000 saw a 1-1 draw.

And yet it’s clear to all that in the last decade, if not even earlier, the club has taken the decision to give up on Europe. To cease to try, to surrender, to happily conform to our bestowed role as Europe’s cannon fodder. This may never have been a conscious decision. It may never have been discussed in the boardroom or set out in a strategy that was issued to coaching staff, players and supporters. And yet it is unquestionably with this full understanding that we now proceed, year after year. Both the club and its supporters still seem to recognise the worth of European qualification, but our appetite or expectation does not extend to being competitive once we have secured our place in the draw. In short, we know the price of qualification but have lost the comprehension of its value.

Of course, this means something deeper than merely failure in one of the numerous annual competitions in which we take part. It means we’ve given up on ourselves. It means we’ve stopped trying to move forward as a club. It means we’ve stepped out of the rat race that is constantly driving up standards elsewhere in the continent. We’re no longer interested in measuring ourselves against any club from outside the six counties of Northern Ireland. We have decided that our only ambition, our only reason for existence, is to be one percent better than Linfield (and you could even argue that of late we’ve given up on that too) and five percent better than Portadown, Cliftonville and Crusaders. This malaise also explains our attitude to the Setanta Cup where, 2008 excepted, we have even displayed a lack of interest in competing against clubs from 100 miles down the road. Why bother with something difficult when we can return to the Irish League at the weekend, beat Newry City as usual, and go back to feeling good about ourselves? Being one of the ‘Big Two’ in, let’s face it, a pretty puny playground, is our comfort zone; being the underdog is not.

A few weeks ago I was channel surfing and came across the latest Shamrock Rovers v Bohemians game. Rovers were just back from their trip to Modena where they were narrowly beaten by Juventus courtesy of a wonderful Del Piero free-kick, and yet the match summariser was talking about how Europe was nothing but a distraction and that this Dublin derby, with points at stake in the chase for the league title, is what really matters. His central argument was that Shamrock Rovers will never win the Europa League but they’ve got a chance of claiming the Airtricity League title this season. What nonsense. Try telling Rovers’ players, supporters or club financial officers that the Juventus fixtures were meaningless. Of course Rovers were never going to win the Europa League, but probably only a quarter of the 48 mega-clubs that enter the group stage and hit our television screens this month have any hope of victory. That’s not the point. The point is to go as far as possible, to show self-respect, and to try and achieve beyond your own limitations, or certainly beyond the expectations that others have for you. It’s one of the beauties of the inherent inequalities of world football that an early round giant killing (or even just early round victory) for one club can have the same significance as ultimate triumph for another. It’s how Glentoran fans can get as much personal satisfaction from following our team as Manchester United fans do from theirs.

Juventus v Shamrock Rovers, 2010. The type of game that some would have us believe is now impossible.

Some thought that Allianssi in 2004 would provide a watershed for Glentoran. This was the tie that blew the myths that ‘foreign’ automatically means ‘better’, that we could never get a result away from home, that the words ‘full time professional’ somehow bestow the opposition with magical powers. Surely now the club would get hooked on the prize money, the players would start believing, and we as supporters would demand regular wins? Sadly not. Instead, the Allianssi win has turned out to be nothing more than a statistical blip and our results since have actually declined further.

The main Glentoran internet forum has been lively with discussion on this and linked topics since early summer. The defeatists within our number, dressed up as realists, yet vastly overestimating the realities in other European footballing backwaters, have been arguing that any small steps we take – like resuming pre-season training earlier, playing more warm-up games and ensuring our full squad is available for selection – will be fruitless as we will always come up against more sophisticated and technically superior opposition. They believe that entering European games with better physical fitness would matter for nothing against teams still able to pass the ball quicker than our players can run. And further, they believe that Europe just comes too early now for us to take it seriously – it’s unfair for us to expect too much from part-time players in terms of June training and July competitive games. And so let’s look at the facts based on what happened in the qualifying rounds this season. And, especially, let’s see if we can learn anything that will influence our approach, and our attitude, for next season.

We know what happened to our own club – we were beaten comfortably by a mid-table Icelandic side. In case you didn’t know, Iceland is an even more remote island than our own and has a population a fifth of that of Northern Ireland. The nation is also bankrupt and football isn’t high on its agenda right now. Yet the tie was over after 32 minutes of the first leg when we found ourselves 2-0 behind. Incidentally, a KR supporter reported his opinion on the internet that, based on our performance in Reykjavik, we are the worst European team ever to have visited Iceland (admittedly, there could be an element of exaggeration produced by post-win cockiness here). Ironically, following the Belfast leg, many of our supporters said the same thing about KR. The difference was, they won 5-2.

Gary Hamilton v KR Reykjavik, 2010

But I won’t linger on our performance because, as we’ve already established, we’ve given up on Europe and so our recent results aren’t really a useful guide as to what is actually possible. Instead, we’ll look at how comparable clubs from Northern Ireland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland got on.

Northern Ireland
Linfield has a confused relationship with European competition. Like ourselves, they can and do point to past (and rapidly fading) glories, and they have a small bunch of supporters that travels abroad to away games each year. Yet I get the clear feeling that David Jeffrey, and therefore his players, take the experience of participation much more seriously than the club hierarchy does. Both Jeffrey and the players seem to enjoy testing themselves against bigger clubs and full-time players, for example Rosenborg’s Anthony Annan who had played for Ghana in the World Cup in June. They go into games with both a self-belief and a tactical organisation superior to our own. And as a result, they’ve had more success than us over the last decade, albeit often in the form of honourable damage limitation against mighty clubs like Dinamo Zagreb, or positive results in home fixtures even if the overall tie is lost. This year’s performances in the Champions League second qualifying round against Rosenborg fitted that mould. A determined 0-0 at Windsor Park followed by an ‘immensely proud of my players’ 2-0 defeat in Norway. I’m realistic in my expectations in Europe and it has to be recognised that anything greater than this would have been a major upset, however I reluctantly believe that in the same circumstances the Glens would have settled for much, much less (as we did in the same competition last season when we tried to cover-up our humiliating 10-0 defeat to Maccabi Haifa by overstating the mastery of the opponents, whose true capabilities were shown to the world once they moved beyond the qualifiers). To prepare for the Rosenborg games, Linfield resumed pre-season training on 21st June for a first leg game 23 days later, which was nearly twice the training time allocated by the Glens. Although our friendly game time was disappointingly comparable – both clubs playing only a single match versus TNS and some in-house games during training.

Surprisingly, Portadown and Cliftonville were this season’s local success stories. Perhaps, being less frequent participants, they weren’t jaded by the routine negativity that surrounds our own annual European operations. Portadown played shrewdly to draw at home and win away to Skonto Riga – notably a superior club to the Latvian side we recently went out to – before losing at Shamrock Park to Qarabag and then gaining another good away result with a scoring draw in Azerbaijan. Cliftonville won at home and drew away to Cibalia of Croatia – an excellent achievement considering the strength of top Croatian football – before losing home and away with honours to famous CSKA Sofia. Both clubs received major boosts to coffers, morale, support and reputations.

Wales
The New Saints (TNS) led the charge this year; in fact, by opening themselves up to good fortune by achieving a single convincing win at home to Bohemians, they launched themselves on a six game run. When was the last time the Glens played six games in Europe in the one season? 1973-74. Winning 4-1 on aggregate against Bohemians – a fixture they were seeded to lose – gave them two glamour games against Anderlecht in the third qualifying round through which, while losing 5-1, they progressed to the play-offs of the Europa League before being eliminated 5-2 by CSKA Sofia. This shows the quirks of the system – by winning the Welsh league and progressing through a single round, TNS got six games and within a tie of reaching the Europa League group stages. Important lesson – good things happen to clubs that make themselves available to these possibilities. How did TNS achieve this? Well, they took Europe seriously, as demonstrated by returned to pre-season training on 1st June, six weeks before their first competitive game, and during this period they played a round robin tournament against the other Welsh qualifiers, in addition to a trip to the Oval. They put in the work and they got the rewards. There’s another lesson here. We often complain that there is no suitable opposition for us to face in warm-up games pre-Europe. TNS, and the other Welsh clubs, have shown that it’s as simple as picking up the phone to clubs next door.

In the Europa League, there was less, but still some, success. Llanelli were narrowly defeated 5-4 after extra time by Tauras of Lithuania and Port Talbot lost heavily to TPS of Finland. However, Bangor City salvaged some pride. An away draw in Finland and a home 2-1 victory against Honka meant that they progressed to the third qualifying round and glitzy, not forgetting lucrative, ties against Maritimo of Portugal, which they eventually lost 10-3 on aggregate.

Republic of Ireland
The most obvious point about the preparation of clubs from the RoI is their domestic summer football structure, meaning that Europe comes mid-season rather than at the very beginning. The significance of this cannot be ignored; although I’m not convinced that this advantage cannot be eliminated through better preparation on our own part (see TNS above), without having to overhaul the Irish League footballing calendar. Afterall, the change to summer football in the Republic had nothing to do with Europe, but rather was an attempt to attract bigger crowds to domestic games, and on this it, as a lone factor, has been a failure. But I’m straying off topic. The point is that all RoI clubs had played plenty of competitive games prior to their European fixtures and so issues of pre-season training dates and friendly fixtures do not apply to them. We can therefore assume that, aside from the regular pattern of mid-season injuries and fatigue, their teams entered the European fixtures at the height of their fitness and tactical refinement.

Bohemians screwed up, and surely they know it. They were heavy favourites to progress after being drawn with TNS in the Champions League second qualifying round. Afterall, RoI clubs now fancy their chances in Europe against Scottish clubs, never mind Welsh. They duly won their home leg 1-0 before mysteriously losing 4-0 in Oswestry.

In the Europa League first qualifying round, Dundalk were seeded and yet made heavy work of beating Grevenmacher of Luxemburg 5-4 on aggregate. They then lost convincingly against Levski of Bulgaria. In the second qualifying round, Shamrock Rovers showed us how to play against Israelis. After a 1-1 draw in Tallaght against Bnei Yehuda they went to Tel Aviv and won 1-0, thereby earning themselves a draw with Juventus in the next round. Everyone thought the days of facing clubs like Juventus in Europe were gone forever, but new European formats, and some determination, show that this simply isn’t the case. They lost 3-0 on aggregate and yet enjoyed a notable and proud event in their history, much like our own tussle with the Old Lady in 1977. Sporting Fingal – the new ‘community-based’ club from north of Dublin – played their first ever European games this summer and were fortunate to draw Maritimo of Portugal. On hearing the draw, manager Liam Buckley said “...we’ve waited a long time since winning the FAI Ford Cup last November to participate in European competition and we’ll approach this tie with the aim of winning it and securing a place in the third round.” Can you ever imagine a Glentoran manager, other than John Colrain, saying something like this, even when we’ve been paired with much more lowly opposition? And yet here it is, from a club only founded in 2007, with virtually no fans and zero European pedigree. Certainly it was good marketing – hinting that you’re going to put up a fight helps sell tickets – and it also helps establish the club as a serious entity. But more than that, it indicates a self-belief and an ambition that is sadly absent at the Oval. In actual fact, Sporting Fingal didn’t progress, but they can be content with two 3-2 defeats to a club that finished fifth in the Portuguese league in 2009-10.

Summary
So let’s summarise the performance of Northern Irish, Welsh and southern Irish clubs in Europe. The below table is a crude analysis – it doesn’t recognise seedings or luck of the draw, nor does it recognise the increasing difficulty of opposition as the clubs moved through rounds – but it is interesting nonetheless.

These are results from one season only, but a notable outcome is that each league performed roughly equal in terms of ‘points’ won; however, while the league table is never supposed to lie, I’m not sure it does full justice to the RoI clubs considering their stand-out performances such as an away win in Israel and a total of four narrow defeats to top Portuguese and Italian opposition.

Yet, the really significant outcome for Glentoran supporters is, once again, our own club’s underperformance. Linfield, Portadown, Cliftonville, TNS, Llanelli, Bangor City, Bohemians, Dundalk, Sporting Fingal and Shamrock Rovers can all be argued to have had more successful (or for some, less unsuccessful) European campaigns than us. Yet, from the list above, only Linfield, Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers can have any claim to be a club of the size, support, heritage and European experience of Glentoran.

Which begs the questions – how and why do others perform consistently better than us? Why are we content with clubs from countries like Wales and Iceland being superior to us? And do we care enough to do anything about it?

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Ironman Switzerland 2010

2010-08-16T16:29:00.000-07:00

Pre-race
Those who have read my previous IM race reports will be delighted that this one is (a little) more concise. It’s not a race I’ll remember with huge fondness, either for the experience or my performance. My level of motivation for the race was well below par and that’s matched by my shortage of enthusiasm for writing about it. But there are two ironies in this – firstly, I clocked a personal best of 11:41; and secondly, my continuing disappointment with the day, rather than making me accept the plateau I’ve firmly arrived on, has given me a shot in the arm and helped me set ambitious new targets for next year. More about that later.

I think my biggest mistake was in deciding to do two Ironmans within 12 weeks. Even the pros, who’re getting paid to think about nothing else, will rarely do more than two, three at a push, long-course races per year. This was my fourth IM in less than 23 months – Ironman UK in September 2008, Ironman Brazil in May 2009, Ironman St. George in May 2010 and now the latest instalment, Ironman Switzerland in July 2010. I found it much more difficult mentally than physically. I’d booked the double-header nearly twelve months ago in a state of post-Brazil vivacity. With a growing habit, one IM in 2010 just wasn’t going to be enough. Ironman had become a lifestyle and I was hooked on the training, discipline and community. I loved having my calendar defined by a huge event looming on the horizon that dominated my thoughts, awake and asleep, and shaped my social life. Everything in the future was measured in units of time before or after the race. I was addicted to an obsessiveness that gave context to everything else in life. And so the theory was that I’d do IMSG first – a new race on the circuit but one that was guaranteed to be a monster – and then, with endurance fitness safely in the bank, I’d have twelve weeks to add some speed for a big PB at the much quicker IM Switzerland. What really happened was that IMSG was so tough, yet such a great experience, that afterwards I just wanted to bask in it for a while. To eat and drink what I wanted and enjoy my first summer in my new home city of Vancouver without incessant training. The weeks started to slip past. In late May/early June I started training hard again. I was putting in the miles but something was missing. I just wasn’t feeling the usual pre-Ironman sense of panic, doom and, occasionally, excitement that serves to drag my arse out of bed at 6:00am for a hard 2,000m in the pool before work or forces me to up the ante on the last 20 miles of a four hour ride. I believe in training hard (I’m naively suspicious of athletes who’re too reliant on heart-rate training because I suspect ‘keeping within certain zones’ is too often used as an excuse for laziness), yet week by week I was procrastinating on doing that speed work that was key to a sub-11 in Zurich. It wasn’t just a malaise of body, it was also one of mind – the prospect of this race just wasn’t sparking me like my previous three have.

I was smart enough to do some races during June and July, which served as hooks to hang my summer training on – Victoria half-Iron on 20th June; Vancouver half marathon, with another 7 miles tacked on beyond the finish line, on 27th June; 4,000m swim in Lake Sasamat on 1st July, complete with a cringe-inducing rendition of O Canada before the gun; and finally the Squamish Triathlon (Olympic) on 11th July. All of these went ok. I was pleased with my 4:58 in Victoria and content with 2:19 in Squamish. But I still wasn’t that excited about Zurich. About two weeks before the race I realised I hadn’t even checked out the bike and run course profiles and I hadn’t been doing my usual trawling of internet forums to find out what other athletes were saying.

It wouldn’t be Ironman if my job didn’t interfere in the race build-up and I still in the office at 2am the night before leaving Vancouver for London and onto Zurich. We were fortunate to get an upgrade to Premium Economy, giving just that little bit more leg room, for the overnight flight and after dinner and TV I slept pretty well. Those two and a half years of catching the 6am X90 Oxford-London has given me the skill of being able to sleep anywhere. With a short stopover in Heathrow T5 and the impact of the 9-hour time difference we arrived in a rather soggy Zurich nearly a full 24 hours after leaving sunny British Columbia. We did, but my bike didn’t. It’s a pretty cosmopolitan bike – continental Europe on several occasions, the Channel Islands, back and forth to Singapore, South America, North America, all around the UK – but this was the first time it had gone missing in transit. Thankfully the authorities at Zurich airport knew it hadn’t arrived before we did, which gave me great confidence that they were in control. We went onto our hotel, dinner and bed and sure enough, when I got up on Friday morning my bike bag was safety stored in the hotel’s left luggage room.

That was the only pre-race drama. That and the rain. It didn’t stop all day Friday. Dave and Stephanie weren’t due to arrive until later on and so Andrea and I went off in search of race HQ. When we eventually found it there just didn’t seem to be the same vibe around as what there had been in St. George or Florianopolis. Hardly anyone was at the expo and the HQ set-up was poor, with important services such as registration and massage hidden away and badly signposted. This isn’t what I’d been expecting from the Swiss. Even the Ironman shop was pretty weak and I decided for once not to spend a week’s salary on M-dot mementos. Registration itself was remarkably simple and felt more like what happens at a local race – give your name, show your ID and collect a race bag. In fact, I don’t remember if we even had to show ID. That was it. No multiple processing points, no separate race chip hand out before ceremonial distribution of freebies, no elaborate body marking, just a single bag containing everything we needed. I discovered then that the race would have a traditional transition zone and not the T1 and T2 bags and changing tent set-up I’ve got used to at Ironman races. This helped explain the ease of check-in and lightness of my race bag. Anyway, it was still raining, heavily, and we took refuge in the large tent where a few hundred athletes had gathered for the race briefing in German. It was still 75 minutes until the English race briefing but with it being damp outside we happily sat and listened, picking up the main points through catching the odd word and reading the slide show. Then came the English race briefing and the tent flooded with Brits. This, Austria and France, followed by Lanzarote, are probably the biggest races in the British triathlon calendar. Lots of us were wearing Ironman UK race kit, but many people, like me, do it only once to show some kind of loyalty to our home IM before going on to do international races were we’re guaranteed better weather, organisation and support. Quick calculations showed that 300-400 of the 2,200 competitors were British, and there was a large Irish contingent also, complete with their paddywackery and flag waving.

Toby (an ex-colleague of Andrea’s) and Dave showed up sometime within half an hour of each other and, after introductions, we had a simple pasta lunch while the much quieter French briefing went on behind us. It was great to see Dave again. Earlier that morning I’d built my bike and taken it for a spin around the hotel area, with no problems whatsoever. All I had to do at the expo was pick up a few CO2 canisters and I was good to race. With a traditional transition zone there wouldn’t even be much to do the following day apart from drop my bike down between 4:30pm and 5:30pm. With all this free time I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Friday night dinner at the bistro in the station that I’d last been to a few years ago on a Liechtenstein v Northern Ireland trip (1-4, Healy hat trick) and home to bed. Breakfast in the hotel on Saturday morning was a fashion parade of old race t-shirts, as we all got stuck into the better-than-expected buffet. It was still raining, although less heavily than the day before, which was exactly what had been forecasted. The rain was due to clear up during the day and we were to have a dry Sunday. One advantage of the downpour and milder weather was that the Zurichsee temperature was cooling from a high of 24.4 degrees on Thursday – perilously close to the non-wetsuit temperature of 24.5 degrees. I had a gentle 20 minute jog and Andrea and I, unused to having such a stress free few days before a race, took advantage and went into the centre of town to explore. Later in the afternoon Dave and I caught the train with our bikes and then pedalled directionless through central Zurich to race HQ. Bike check-in was uneventful. I’d got a pretty good spot at the end of a rail and close to the bike exit. The organisers were handing out bike covers to protect from overnight rain. We didn’t hang around. Back to the hotel to collect the girls and a return into town for a lovely Italian meal, booked by Stephanie. I don’t know the reason, but I wasn’t that nervous. Yet don’t mistake this for meaning that I was looking forward to what was ahead. Most of Saturday was spent checking at my watch doing this-time-tomorrow and only-x-hours-to-swim-start calculations, in a rather condemned man frame of mind. I certainly wouldn’t say I was up for it, and I think this affected my performance the following day when I kind of resigned to my fate when the going got tough.

Bike check-in

I dropped off to sleep beautifully at 10pm, with my alarm set for 4:15am, but wakened at midnight and slept on and off from then. That was ok. I didn’t feel jet-lagged. But again, in stacking up the evidence in my race post-mortem, maybe there was some latent tiredness from pressures at work and long-haul travel. Anyway, early breakfast in the hotel and I met Dave downstairs to pack onto the bus. We arrived in the transition zone a perfect 1:20 before the 7am start, giving plenty (but not too much) time to prepare our bikes, store our dry kit and get ready for the swim.

Swim – 2.4 miles
Dave and I walked from the bike racks to the swim start together. We knew that Andrea and Stephanie had rose early and travelled down by taxi to watch but we couldn’t see them in the crowd. It was a beach start and we got good spots on the far left of the course, with a straight line to the first turn buoy, and hoping to avoid the mess of flaying body parts from those who’d chosen more technically difficult spots on the beach to our right. I heard the gun for the pro start and saw 15-20 swim caps disappear off into the distance. Two minutes before 7am we were told to enter the water and I swam out to the start line. Within seconds of arriving and with no countdown the gun went and the race was underway. It was surprisingly calm. Within 10-15 strokes I’d found my own clear water and could get into a rhythm, at this point unaware that the mayhem would begin in 10 minutes time when the hundreds who’d started to my right would attempt to angle in to get around the first buoy. The water was beautiful – clear and comfortably warm. All the same, everyone was glad it was wetsuit-legal as the buoyancy of the neoprene saves at least 10-15% of time in comparison to non-wetsuit swims.

The rough and tumble began a couple of hundred yards before the first buoy and there was nothing else for it but to get involved. If you let that guy who’s trying to swim over your back get past you then you can bet there’ll be another one right behind him. Definitely better to fight for your own space and know that after the 90 degree turn things will relax. It was a two-lap course and the argy-bargy continued at each buoy. I was in a fighting mood and gave good shoves in the back to a few of the inconsiderates who stopped to breast stroke and take stock of their position just as they approach the turn points.

It was around this point at the end of the first lap that I realised I still hadn’t peed since getting up at 4:15am, despite having sipping water and energy drink all morning. Making sure your bladder is completely empty at the end of the swim is the easiest 2-3 minutes you’ll save all day, and usually means I can survive the rest of the race with a single pee-stop. I went under the bridge and took time to glance up and see the crowds hanging over it and cheering before being helped onto the island for the 100 metre run to the other side and dive back into the water for lap two. There was much more room now and I was fairly pleased how things were going. Lap one was slightly shorter and so with 32 minutes on the clock I was bang on schedule. I was even managing to catch onto some feet and draft.

But then I remembered my bladder issues and grew increasingly obsessed with peeing. I really didn’t want to have to stop in T1 or even early on the bike course. Come on, squeeze one out. I kept going, realising that the swim course was disappearing behind me and that another 2.4 mile Ironman swim would soon be complete. It felt like I was swimming ok and I was happier than usual with my sighting, meaning I wasn’t zigzagging any extra distance. But occasionally I’d realise that I hadn’t been concentrating for several minutes at a time as I tried to tease out some wee. I was trying every mental trick in the book but nothing was happening and I was convinced I could feel that my bladder was full. When I eventually came under the bridge for the second time and was pulled out of the water I checked my watch to see 1:15. This was disastrous. I’d collapsed on the second lap and clocked a personal swim worst, a full five minutes slower than St. George but in much faster conditions. And I hadn’t even managed to urinate.

Bike – 112 miles
T1 was uneventful and I caught sight of Andrea and Stephanie at the bike mount line. The first 20 miles of the bike course were flat and fast, taking us around the head of the lake in the centre of town and then out of Zurich on the main lake-side road. I knew that for a 6-hour bike leg I had to average 18.5 miles per hour and for the first hour I was struggling to hold myself below 22 or 23mph. It felt easy and towards the end of this 20-mile stretch the field started to settle down as swim/bikers found their natural position in the line-up. Dave came past me after about 8 miles, which actually encouraged me as after my dreadful swim I’d assumed he’d come out of the water ahead of me. When he checked the results later he saw I beat him in the swim by only 4 seconds, but he’d stopped in the portaloos in T1 giving me an advantage of several minutes. This would be my only victory over him all day. Then came the hills – the infamous Beast and the multiple rollers that wound their way through the towns and villages in the mountains to the south-east of the city. The locals were out in number, with cow bells so heavy they had to be swung two-handed between their legs and shouts of “hupp, hupp, hupp” to help us up the hills. The course felt too busy. With the number of athletes and the frequency of hills it was impossible to observe the 10m drafting rules. Others were simply ignoring it and occasionally a pack of 10-15 riders would pass, clearly cheating. I came up behind an American girl called Julie who was wearing an Ironman St. George cycle jersey and we chatted on-and-off for the next 10-15 miles about that and other races we’d done around the world. The poor girl had even had the misfortune to travel from Maryland to Bolton last year to do Ironman UK, only to discover that the mile markers on the marathon course had been stolen the night before. Anyway, her UK experience provided a happy ending as she managed to grab a Kona spot.

Back on the lake-side for five miles into town, around the head of the lake and past the race HQ towards the Heartbreak Hill out-and-back making up the final 10k of each loop. This gave me a chance to judge my position in the race as the faster guys beginning their second lap were passing on the other side of the road. The first time up Heartbreak Hill was probably the high-point of the entire race for me. It comes 52 miles into the bike course and so some fatigue is starting to set in and suddenly you find yourself at the foot of a very sharp climb that’s flanked by spectators two or three deep. The roads are covered in chalk messages, there are live bands playing and as you get near to the summit you can’t even see the tarmac ahead before the crowd parts immediately before you and lets cyclists through in single file. People are slapping you on the back and leaning over to shout in your ear. This YouTube video gives a good idea of the experience - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_dAbWsoRlo. Towards the top I caught sight of someone to my right running alongside me and realised it was Andrea. She was shouting encouragement and telling me Dave’s position. As I came down the steep descent the other side of Heartbreak Hill I jammed on the breaks and finally stopped for that pee, a full three hours after it refused to leave me during the swim. Back onto my bike and I was started to hurt but took encouragement from the hundreds of riders behind me and still heading to the climb as I passed HQ and began my second lap. I went through half way on the bike course around 2:56 and, at the time, felt this gave me a decent chance of a 6-hour ride. Yet on the flat stretch along Lake Zurich I could now see my computer flickering between 18-19mph and it didn’t feel easy anymore. I was beginning to have to stand on the pedals to stretch every now and then and couldn’t stay comfortable in the aero position for more than a few minutes at a time. The Beast and ensuing rollers actually gave some relief as they allowed me to stand to climb, although the five mile slog uphill beside the train track felt several times longer this time than on lap one.

I wasn’t feeling happy. In the grand scheme with only 30 miles to go I knew I’d broken the bike leg, but when you’re suffering 30 miles feels like a very long way ahead. I sum it up in sentences in a race report but when actually living it each minute passes in real time and I was watching my mileage slowly grow every tenth of a mile. I knew my time was slipping simply by comparing my speed at certain milestones to what I recalled they’d been on the first lap and I began to get depressed. I tried to make up for this by taking a few more chances on the sharp descents and was actually pleased by hitting the low-mid 40s a few times. By the time I got to lakeside again I was really unhappy. The ten miles of flat followed by Heartbreak Hill felt impossible and my negative state of mind was compounded as I came around the head of the lake and cycled past hundreds of athletes already out on the run course. I started to scan faces for sight of Dave but couldn’t see him. Heartbreak Hill the second time wasn’t as much fun. As it turned out, I was still top half of the field, but many of the spectators had already moved off the hill and gone into town to watch the run. Finally I got to the dismount line and checked my watch to see over 6:15 for the bike. Across swim and bike I was at least 20 minutes down on where I'd planned to be.

Run – 26.2 milesT2 was easy. I decided to play it safe and change my socks but managed to morph into a runner and get out on the course within a couple of minutes. As usual I stuffed some energy chews and gels into my tri top pocket and as usual I carried them untouched for the next 26.2 miles, preferring instead to survive on a diet of fresh fruit pieces and Coke. In an effort to be spectator friendly, the run course was a four-lapper and was going to test my mental strength. On lap one everything was new – the course, the signs I saw spectators waving, seeing Andrea and Stephanie, the live bands, the smells of cooking burgers, the location of aid stations – but none of this was to be freshly discovered on laps two and three. I was feeling sluggish and pissed off with myself. I knew my sub-11 hour target was down the toilet and began to give up. My only goal was to finish, enjoy my remaining holiday in Switzerland and the UK and forget about triathlon and Ironman for a few months. At the frequent out and backs I was searching everywhere for Dave to see how far ahead he was and if catching him would be possible, but there was no sign of him. As it happened, he started the run half an hour ahead of me (and just within the striking range that I’d previously thought possible) and increased his lead by nearly ten minutes over the marathon. Due to the querks of the course this meant that while I saw just about every other of the 2,200 competitors during the run, I didn’t see Dave. I could tell, however, that he was going strong as Andrea stopped giving me updates on his progress whenever I passed her at the end of each lap.

Suffering

As suspected, laps two and three were brutal. They handed out the first lap wristbands only half way into the lap, which gave a momentary sense of accomplishment and fooled me into thinking I was a quarter into the marathon rather than an eighth. It seemed to take forever to earn the second wristband. By now I knew that even my must-do target of a sub-4 hour marathon was out of the question and that, as well as losing to Dave, each of my swim, bike and run targets for the day were missed. I was pretty grumpy and not speaking to many people on the way – just trying to knock off the miles and get to the finish line to end the misery. Mercifully my spirits lifted a little halfway through the third lap and as I hit the 20-mile mark I checked my watch and knew that I’d need to get a move on if I was to beat my 11:44 Brazil time. Going slower than that, after an additional twelve months training and on a quicker course would have been a killer. And so I actually ran well on the final lap. I stopped taking on nutrition with about four miles to go, instead concentrating on the best line through each aid station and stretching out towards the finish line. Eventually I rounded the corner into the finish chute and knew I was below my revised 11:44 target but with one guy 10 yards ahead to sprint past. In doing this I didn’t see Andrea and so didn’t stop for the customary hug and kiss. I’d been considering a pause on the finish line to bend over and pot an imaginary black in homage to Alex Higgins but, to be honest, I was too angry with myself to do anything but scowl, grab my finishers’ towel and medal and wait for Andrea at the fence behind the bleachers. Exhaustion, frustration and anger resulted in me giving her an emotional hug and apologising for letting her down. She promised me I hadn’t and I hobbled off into the food tent for another large cup of Coke and some fruit. I’d finished in 11:41. I still don’t know my exact splits, overall or age group position because I can’t bear to look them up. And I only put on my finishers’ t-shirt for the first time yesterday, three weeks after the race.

With Dave shortly after finishing

What I do know is that I’m capable of much better and need to make serious changes to my training if I’m to make a leap forward (I might even buy a heart rate monitor). Continuing to knock out Ironman-after-Ironman in the very respectable but ultimately unremarkable 11:41-12:25 range, which I’ve done so far, is not an option. I’d rather take up something new (baseball?) than cease to improve. And so I’ve set myself very clear goals for 2011. I’ve been told that broadcasting your goals vastly increases your chances of achieving them and so here goes. I’m going to qualify for Clearwater and I’m going to complete IM Coeur d’Alene in sub-10:45. Training starts now.

Ironman St. George 2010

2010-05-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

It feels a lot longer than a few months ago when I blogged about using the gym bike and turbo trainer and looking forward to getting out on my road bike, freshly arrived on air freight from the UK. Maybe it feels so long as so many 5.5 mile laps of Stanley Park have now passed, each one etching their patterns of bumps, lumps, loose stones and potholes on my brain. February to late April saw plenty of riding, initially with Pacific Spirit Tri Club but increasingly alone as I learned some routes away from the urban grid system and needed to put in more and more steady mileage without the sociable coffee stops or hanging around for slower group members. I managed a couple of century rides – one that included the Pacific Populaire race, two punctures and getting very lost, and another along the Sea-to-Sky highway to Squamish and back in 5 hours 45 minutes of rain. Swimming went even better. Having the Aquatic Centre only a 20 minute walk from home meant I was able to swim regularly before work and the 50m pool length makes it so much easier to knock out longer distances during standard swim sessions. And running went to plan both in frequency and duration; the only thing missing was a few more half marathon, 16 and 20 mile races in the Vancouver area, which is a much more fun way to train than plodding around alone on a Wednesday night. Andrea and I did do a couple of half marathons, one in Fort Langley and the other in Abbotsford, and I even managed a third place finish at Abbotsford having led for the first four miles and been in second until 11 miles – my first podium since primary school sports day. Not that there was a podium, prize money or even mention in the local paper.

All totalled, between January and April I clocked 41.63 miles of swimming, 1,025.3 miles cycling, 37.8 hours on a static bike and 269.5 miles running. In volume alone this exceeded my training for Ironman Brazil last year and so the numbers gave me confidence that I was in good shape, even if scary reports about the IMSG course and non-existence of results data from previous years (this being the first year of the race) made it difficult to estimate how I’d do.

Of course, hindsight tends to gloss over the hard times. As the training period went on I started to hate the pool, the early alarms, stomping up and down the same path on the sea wall, limiting my intake of latte and muffins, hours and hours in the rain, cold and dark. I got bored of Ironman, of focusing so long and hard on something that many of my friends were bored by or simply didn’t understand or care about. And I had plenty of spells of self doubt, terror and panic. The worse of these was seven weeks out from the race when I was behind on my bike schedule and unhappy that my weight wasn’t falling fast enough, and I got a stark and real glimpse of Ironman racing by spending the day and night online following Dave’s excellent 11:30 at Ironman New Zealand.

But I pushed on and the weeks passed and as always with Ironman or any of the big endurance events I’ve done, it was a huge relief to get to the taper. I trained pretty hard until two weeks before the race, peaking with my second 100 mile ride backed up with a short run. And while I continued to do something active every day bar two or three until race day, it was a real mental treat to lose some of the structure and only face half hour sessions rather than two hours in the mornings or after work.

My change in life circumstances compared to Ironman UK 2008 or Ironman Brazil 2009 benefited me massively as my one-block walk to work in comparison to coach journey in and out of London bought me at least four extra hours per day. All considered, for such an early season race, the preparation went well. It was going to be windy and hilly and I didn’t expect a personal best, but I knew I could travel to Utah feeling good.

Wednesday 28th April
We flew Vancouver-Las Vegas on Wednesday 28th April, three days before the race, hired a SUV at the airport, took a quick and unintentional cruise down the Strip, and then got onto I-15 for the 110 mile drive north through Nevada, cutting across the corner of Arizona and to St. George, Utah. Our hotel – Wingate by Wyndham – was one of the ‘official’ race hotels and there was a welcome banner in reception and several other competitors around with game faces already on. The hotel staff were great – they seemed genuinely excited about the race and very flexible to our needs, letting us take bikes to our rooms and doling out directions and weather reports. This was the beginning of a huge local welcome that we’d see throughout the stay and that will probably make Ironman St. George one of the most popular races in North America. As an economic or cultural centre, the town of St. George doesn’t have much to offer. It does, however, have great scenery and is the gateway to Zion National Park, hence the abundance of hotels, and so the people are used to welcoming visitors, especially those who’re going to stay and spend money. The town also hosts one of the top ten marathons in the US and so is used to big sporting occasions. Many small and local businesses were displaying Ironman welcome banners, even those whose services we were unlikely to need to use. Most people on the streets knew about the race and were keen to ask where we’d travelled from and tell us how crazy they thought we are. And an Ironman festival started up near Town Square the day before the race with food stalls, arts and crafts vendors, entertainers and kids’ areas. I couldn’t help comparing this to my experience at Sherborne in England a couple of years ago – a town only a little smaller than St. George – where the locals gave their best impression of both apathy to the occasion and disgruntlement that their route to B&Q was blocked on a Sunday morning.

Thursday 29th April
I hadn’t unpacked my bike the night before because I was tired from travel and knew that the mechanics’ workshop at the expo was already closed and so if I found any problems I wouldn’t be able to do anything about them until Thursday anyway. So immediately after breakfast and a gentle run I set to work slicing off the copious layers of bubble wrap, attaching the saddle bag, bento bag, two bottle cages and straightening up the aero bars that I’d collapsed for travel. A problem. I couldn’t attach the rear derailleur. It’s a straightforward screw mechanism but I simply couldn’t get the screw to take in the thread. I tried for 10 minutes, moved onto something else to stop myself getting too wound up, returned to it still without success, and so on. Andrea arrived in the room from being in the gym where she’d gone to stay out of my way, and she gave it a try but the screw just wouldn’t attach. There was nothing else for it – I had a quick shower to clean off the oil I was covered in and loaded the bike into the SUV and headed the couple of miles to the race expo and mechanics’ workshop at the Dixie Center. Two days before the race and the place was buzzing. It seemed that most of the 2,000-odd registered athletes had arrived in town and the usual frenzy of buying last minute gear, registering, body marking and bike fixes was going on. I was on edge – I’m always paranoid about mechanical issues and this time they were actually happening to me – but it was a strange compensation to see 20-30 other bikes checked into the workshop and realise that I wasn’t alone. The mechanic told me that the derailleur hanger thread was corrupted. They didn’t have a replacement part suitable for my Blue bike in stock and wouldn’t be able to order one in time, but could try and remove some of the corruption so that it would at least attach, if only tentatively. I needed to leave it with them and sweat it out for a few hours and after taking my ticket the mechanic told me that “it should be ok for the race, but the first thing you need to do when you get home is get a new hanger”. I wasn’t sure whether or not to take assurance from that.

Pre-race bike mechanic...at least I was in company

Anyway, I used the time to register, buy a race branded bike jersey, mug and M-Dot sun visor, eat lunch and generally soak up the atmosphere. I had planned to use Thursday for a short practice ride and to also recce the swim venue, but I now needed to be flexible with that. Another source of stress arose. The store hadn’t received their order of CO2 canisters and none of us who’d travelled by plane had been allowed to bring our own stocks on our flights. The shop promised they’d arrive on Friday morning, although details on exactly what time or the size of the order were vague.

I returned to the Dixie Center in the afternoon and collected my Blue. The procedure had gone well and the derailleur was attached, although I didn’t jiggle it to see how firmly it was on for fear of it coming off irreparably. $15 well spent and my race was back on. I carried the bike outside to the SUV, put on the wheels, hooked up the chain, pumped the tyres and took it for a quick spin around the car park to check everything was ok, before going back into the race HQ for a thirty minute massage and to get my number ink sprayed on my upper arms and left calf. Two days before the race seemed early for this but I was assured nothing would remove the ink for 7-10 days, and it made one less thing to worry about on race morning. I went home, laid out all my kit on the bed and headed into the town centre with Andrea in search of dinner. The main street was lined with race banners and the workmen and race organisers were out building the finish chute, spectator areas and support tents. We had a quick meal in Pasta Factory and then returned to the Dixie Center for the athletes’ race briefing. As far as these go, this was pretty slick. It came at the end of the athletes’ dinner, which Andrea and I had skipped, and the organisers showed appreciation that no-one wanted to be there longer than necessary. Most of the 2,000 competitors were in the room, as well as sponsors’ representatives and VIPs, including Paul Newby-Fraser, local resident, wife of Race Director Paul Huddle, and eight-times Ironman World Champion, and Dave Orlowski, third place finisher in the original 1978 Hawaii Ironman. After a few introductory remarks from Paul Huddle and short comments by the official race medic, the remainder of the briefing was delivered by pre-recorded film on big screens around the room. As well as livening up the briefing, this meant that the organisers could screen certain parts of the course and show us the locations of transitions, hazards, points of interest and so on. After an hour and a quarter and with my head buzzing with information, the briefing was over.

Friday 30th April
After breakfast I went for a ride for 15-20 minutes, partly to give my bike a once over and partly to assure myself that I could still balance on two wheels. Outside the hotel lobby I saw a guy from Texas who was setting out on a jog and we got talking about how much colder it was than we expected, especially first thing in the morning, and our thoughts on adjusting our clothing plans for the bike leg. Getting out of the cold water and onto the bike at 8am the following day would be chillier than either of us had been anticipating. The ride went well, the bike was running smoothly, and I went back to the room to pack my T1 and T2 bags.Around 11am Andrea and I went back to the Dixie Center in search of the CO2 canister shipment. FedEx boxes were in the store, still unpacked, and despite me trying to look as anxious as possible and several other competitors pacing nervously around the shop the staff didn’t look like they were in a rush to open them. We decided to split up – Andrea would stay in the store ready to pounce on four 16 ounce canisters, while I went to the town centre to drop off my T2 (bike to run transition) bag. I got back to the Dixie Center to find Andrea outside, shaking her head and looking downcast. One of her little jokes, the canisters were in her bag and I could relax. I went back to the hotel and got my stuff together to drive up to Sand Hallow Reservoir. When I opened the car door on arrival I felt a massive gust of wind – it was fairly breezy up there and the water was choppy. I racked my bike, dropped off my T1 (swim to bike transition) bag, went down to the edge of the water, put on my wetsuit for the first time in nine months and stepped in for a practice swim. It was definitely cold but I dived under quickly and swam a few strokes. It wasn’t cold enough for me to get a numb head, so certainly warmer than what Heron Lake would be at this time of year and what most other athletes were making it out to be, yet the high winds were creating havoc on the surface and making both sighting and breathing very difficult. I swam out 200 metres, went around a buoy and turned back for shore. The swim was supposed to give me confidence as I hadn’t been in open water since the Singapore International Triathlon last August but instead it worried me. If the conditions were going to be like that the following morning it wasn’t going to be a good experience. I put on a warm sweater and drove to the hotel. I was getting more and more nervous, however having racking my bike and deposited my kit I was pleased that all the pre-race melee was over and all I had to do was eat dinner and relax for the evening. There were fast food restaurants all over town but the options for healthy, hearty food were limited and so we went back to a slightly busier Pasta Factory and I had a large plate of penne, grilled chicken and a light pesto sauce.

Race day
This was my third Ironman and while I knew my training had been sufficient and issues with my bike resolved the rest of that evening, night and early morning was tortuous. I don’t think I’ve ever been as nervous before a race and I can’t quite figure out why. It was party fear of the conditions at the swim – the cold and the wind. My alarm was set for 3:17am and I slept soundly until midnight before waking and then tossing and turning, all the while semi-dreaming and fretting, until the alarm finally sounded. I hadn’t wanted to rely on the hotel providing an early breakfast and so after a hot shower I had my regular morning meal of orange juice and Cheerios with yoghurt bought from Walmart the day before. After double and triple checking I had everything I needed I said goodbye to Andrea and drove into the town centre to drop off my bike special needs bag, slip a t-shirt and some energy chews into my T2 bag and catch one of the athletes’ shuttle buses to Sand Hallow.

Standing in the queue for the shuttle bus I was joined by a couple of lads from Wolverhampton, one of whom was wearing a Human Race Ballbuster fleece from the 2006 race, which I’d also done. In fact, I was wearing a hoodie from the same race in 2009 and we smiled at the coincidence of travelling to southern Utah to meet another guy who’d done the same relatively small race in the Surrey hills. This would be Paul’s 10th Iron-distance race and he was determined the one he would retire after. I kidded that he has probably said the same about each of the previous nine, but he seemed fairly adamant. Funnily enough, Andrea got speaking to a couple of Union flag waving women later in the day who turned out to be the wives of these lads, and they kept each other company and teamed up as a three-strong support crew for much of the bike and run legs. On boarding the yellow school bus I heard “hello, David” and saw Andrew Sixsmith, another Pacific Spirit Tri Club member and fellow Brit sitting near the front. I joined him and we spent the journey to Sand Hallow chatting about different races we’d done in the past and hope to do in the future. On arriving at the venue, still pre-dawn, we said goodbye and wished each other luck as we went off to prepare for the race.

The transition area was very dark, but mercifully the air was still – there was no sign of the high winds from the day before, a massive relief. We were in the middle of what felt like a desert and only one floodlight had been set up in the bike rack area, and it was on the other side of the lot and not shedding much light over me or my stuff. I’d deflated my tyres the day before to avoid any afternoon blowouts and so had brought my own track pump, thankfully avoiding the long queues for the air station. I took turns with a guy beside me inflating tyres as the other shone iPhone light on the procedings. I slipped my drinks bottles into the cages, added some lube to the chain, checked the bike was in the right gear for when I would hop on it after the swim, and wandered off to find a portable toilet. It was still before 6am and I’d plenty of time. In fact, I was starting to wish I’d given myself an extra 20 minutes in bed. But the toilet queue moved really slowly and it was over half an hour until I got my turn, meaning I returned to my bike at 6:25am just as the announcer started encouraging us to vacate the transition area and move to the water for the swim start. I applied liberal slappings of baby oil to my lower legs, shoulders and arms, slipped into my wetsuit, grabbed my caps and goggles, packed up my dry clothes bag, dropped them off for transportation to the finish line, and joined hundreds of others shuffling towards the arch marking the swim entrance. The atmosphere was pumping now, music was blaring out of the speakers and the announcer was talking everyone through exactly what would happen, when and what we needed to be doing minute-by-minute. The preparation was over; I was ready to go.

This is where the race report begins. I don’t apologise for the long description of the build-up, even if it is both tedious and a little boring. As I’ve learned in my three Ironmans, this is all part of the race experience. The day itself passes in a blur and memories of it are often condensed into small snapshots or two or three meaningful encounters or events, but often the success of the race hinges on the success of the pre-race preparation – the travel, kit organisation, bike mechanics, diet, hydration, sleep. In many ways, setting aside all the training, I consider my Ironman experience to begin the moment I leave home for the airport, and anyone reading this who plans to do their first Ironman sometime soon needs to give suitable thought to how they’re going to structure the two or three days before to do everything they need to do as efficiently and calmly as possible. I’m getting better at it but can still improve.

Swim – 2.4 miles
There was a lot of nervous energy around as we herded down to the water’s edge. We were separated from spectators but many were scanning the crowds lined up and shouting last minute declarations of love and the odd quip of gallows humour. I was just glad to be going. I knew from experience that as soon as the gun goes all nerves disappear and I’m completely in the moment, an aspect I love about racing, and playing all sport, and I was only a few minutes away from that, even if many hours separated me from the finish line. The announcer was telling us all to keep moving forward but I got to the water with over 10 minutes until the start and was relieved to hear him tell us that if we didn’t want to get in just yet we could stand to the side. It wasn’t warm standing there in the fresh morning air, but it was a lot colder in the water, and I avoided getting in for nearly five minutes. Once in I swam straight out to the start buoys and found myself a good position on the inside line, about third or fourth row back. I could see the bank lined with thousands of spectators, hundreds of athletes still getting in, and a media helicopter hovering overhead. Suddenly I heard the Star Spangled Banner playing – exactly the kind of hyperbole I wanted from a US race – and hundreds of people bobbing around me in the water whooping and cheering as it ended. Before I knew it, and with no notice or count down, the gun went and mayhem began.

Swim start in Sand Hallow Reservoir

The water was 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) – chilly for everyone but not unreasonable for European or Canadian competitors, particularly for an event at the very beginning of May. For the Americans, on the other hand, especially the large numbers who had travelled north from Arizona and Texas and east from California, this was a big issue. At the race briefing the organisers advised everyone against buying neoprene boots, particularly if never used before, and stated that gloves were banned, but did recommend that people wear neoprene caps, a handy stock of which had arrived in the WTC store at the expo. For my part, I was nervous about the swim, but mostly due to the choppiness of the day before, and I opted for my usual code of tri shorts, wetsuit and two swim caps and was fine. Adrenaline adds at least a couple of degrees of warmth, as does urine. It barely needs to be said that there was the usual thrashing, overtaking, undertaking, elbowing, zigzagging and ankle grabbing for the first 1,000m. After that, I was mostly able to find clear water, especially as I was prepared to take a wider line on the long, straight stretches. Visibility was just about good enough for me to glimpse pink flipping feet before my eyes and I tried to draft a few times.

The course was simple – a single loop with four legs (1,000m, 500m, 1,700m and 600m) going anti-clockwise, and so with three 90 degree left-hand turns. Between the fights and skirmishes I was concentrating on my stroke, thinking about all the time I’d spent in the pool in Vancouver and concentrating on the same issues of form that I do there – high elbows, long stroke, glide, good catch, pull right back to my hip. Trying not to sight too often and breathing every second stroke. My watch got knocked three times and I had to pause and restick the Velcro strap, other than that the only annoyance was the rising sun, which was shining directly into our eyes after the first turn. I couldn’t see the buoys, and this was mildly panicking, so I just followed the orange caps ahead of me and hoped the guy at the front knew where he was going. Another turn and onto the long 1,700m stretch. In one straight line this leg was 200m longer than the entire swim at an Olympic distance triathlon. I just tried to concentrate on form, although knew that due to the conditions and recent lack of open water training I wasn’t swimming as well as in the pool. Eventually the red rock island in the middle of the Reservoir appeared on my left and I swam alongside this until the final turn buoy. I knew I was near the end of the swim. With a couple of hundred of metres to go I could hear the PA system on the shore and start to see the exit and so I quickened my pace and started kicking harder to get the blood flowing in my legs – I knew that if everything went well it would be at least another 11 hours before I’d be horizontal again. I’m convinced you move faster by swimming than wading and so I swam until so close to the edge that my feet started kicking the bottom and a volunteer hand appeared to help me up. I pulled off my cap and goggles, stripped my wetsuit to my waist while jogging, and got to the peelers who lowered me to the ground and pulled my wetsuit off completely. I ran down the rows of T1 bags, grabbed mine and dashed into a very busy changing tent where I was helped by another volunteer who stuffed my wetsuit into the bag while I put on socks, bike shoes, tri top, bike jersey, number belt, sun glasses and helmet. As I jogged back outside I could see the hundreds and hundreds of bikes still racked, which picked up spirits up – my watch had said 01:10 as I exited the water and this was at least five minutes slower than I’d been hoping for, but it seemed I was still well up the field. A volunteer was handing out blobs of sun cream and I managed to grab some on the way past and smear it down my left arm and left leg. This meant I ended the day with pretty bad sunburn on my uncovered right arm and leg. Steering my bike by the saddle I ran over the timing mat and mount line.

Bike – 112 miles
I checked my watch and the bike leg was underway after 01:17. I wasn’t exactly sure what was ahead as unlike many I hadn’t driven the bike course, yet I knew there would be about a 20 mile stretch with sweeping ascents and descents back into St. George and then two 45 mile loops, each one comprising over 30 miles of climbing followed by 15 miles of fast downhill. The first 20 miles were a dream. On the climbs I sat back, slipped into a very low gear and spinned, and was pleased that I was gaining places. I also took the chance to eat and drink. At Ironman Brazil last year I bombed at the start of the run and one possible explanation for this was under eating and drinking during the bike, so I was determined to fuel early and regularly. I tried to remember the numbers and kit of the few cyclists who screamed past me during the first hour of the bike as going too hard, too early would be a sure way to blow up on this course.

Due to the logistical challenges of split transitions and Sand Hallow being so far out of town, Andrea hadn’t seen the swim and I’d missed her being there so it was nice to catch sight of her at the side of the road, and waving the Ulster flag, at the beginning of the first 45 mile loop. I checked my watch and it was exactly 9:30am – bang on the time I’d told her to expect me. So far, so good. There were a few ups and downs but before long it was obvious that the general trend was upwards. Nothing too steep, just long grinds. At times false flats – the roads looked level but when I checked my bike computer I was only travelling at 14-16mph. This continued and the road surface got worse. We were heading into the countryside and there were few spectators, apart from the occasional farmer and wife who, finding themselves imprisoned in their homes for the day by road closures, decided to set up chairs at the end of their driveways and watch the show. I’d heard about ‘The Wall’ but couldn’t remember where it was. After going through an aid station a guy pulled alongside me and said “the next few hills we’re hitting are going to be hell” and over the following 10 miles we tackled three big ones, the third being The Wall and taking about 10 minutes to summit with a mix of low gear spinning and standing on the pedals. From the top it was wide roads and either flats or gentle descents, leading into steeper descents past Snow Canyon and this was a chance to crank into a big gear, get aero and sit between 28-42mph and make up some time.

Stunning scenery on the bike course

Half way into the bike and I was starting to hurt. I’d read that anyone doing this course on a tri bike would get a very sore back and neck and this is where I was developing pain. My spirits were also dropping. By the end of the first loop I’d been racing for around five hours. Fatigue was starting to set in and yet I still had a lot of pedal turning ahead of me before the marathon. The false flats and gradual climbs were even worse the second time around. I was working hard, breathing hard and my heart rate was high and yet at times I was moving no faster than 11-12mph uphill and into a strong headwind. This was my first Ironman using a bike computer and watching my distance increase virtually metre-by-metre I knew that at this rate it would be another couple of hours until I got to the top of the loop and began the descent back into town. Also, by this stage the field was starting to thread out. There wasn’t much overtaking and very little chat from the other athletes as everyone was suffering. I was still taking on board gels, Powerbars and half bananas, as well as switching between Gatorade and water.

This time I knew exactly what was coming up and was out of the saddle a little more on the three big climbs as well as standing to stretch my back occasionally on the flats. I was encouraged to make up at least 10 places on the second epic trip up The Wall, even if my lungs did feel ready to explode. I had a mini celebration at the top knowing that the hardest work was over, before remembering that there was still nearly 20 miles of speed work to go and time to be recovered. For the previous 30 miles I’d been playing cat and mouse with the same bunch of riders and this continued down past Snow Canyon, however strong cross winds were giving us serious wobbles and forcing us to touch our brakes at times on the steeper parts of the descent. I was getting the usual end-of-bike emotions, which are always accentuated by tiredness. When thinking about an Ironman I always look forward to the run – by that stage, no matter how wrecked I am, I know my feet are on the ground and I’m back in complete control. I’m no longer at the mercy of a machine, even if it’s a well cared for machine on which I spend a lot of money. Completing the swim and then the bike feels like a major milestone. I swept back towards town, saw Andrea and her new friends all looking like they’d just come from Last Night of the Proms, went through the no-pass zone and travelled down South Bluff Street in the opposite direction to those athletes already on the run course. The crowds here were great and I got a real lift being on the closed roads back in town and cheered by thousands of people behind the barriers. After taking rights at two roundabouts I saw the bike finish line and unclipped, jumped off and let a volunteer catch my bike. I struggled to run, especially in my cleats. Someone on a loudspeaker had announced my race number and it allowed a volunteer to be standing waiting with my T2 bag, which I grabbed on the way past and into the changing tent.

Run – 26.2 miles
My leg muscles were quivering, my back aching and I sat down to change. 08:03 was on the clock. This was ok – I knew it was a 12 hour plus race before beginning. I struggled to speak to the volunteer who was tipping out the contents of my T2 bag and asking me what I needed for the run. I ripped my race number off the belt and had to spend a minute replacing it with the spare I’d packed in my T2 bag. I took off my bike jersey, Vaselined up, changed socks and shoes and shuffled out of the tent and onto the run course. I was feeling ok. My legs were unsteady and hamstrings tight but not as bad as I’d experienced before and I knew it wouldn’t take long to loosen up and find my running form. 26 miles to go.

Within a few hundred yards I heard Andrea screaming from the other side of the road and frantically waving a ‘Running is your discipline’ poster at me upside down. I shouted back that it was upside down, teasing her, and grateful for the gesture. She was right, I can run strongly on an Ironman and knew I could gain a lot of places over the next four hours if I paced myself properly. The first four miles were uphill, first shallow and steady and then steep. Shortly after seeing Andrea a guy called Christopher from Phoenix, Arizona pulled up alongside me and we spent the next five or six miles pacing each other and distracting each other from the pain by sharing triathlon stories and swapping thoughts on the bike and swim. We hit the 800m, 5% gradient at mile four together and pulled each other up, picking up another guy on the way as most other people around us were reduced to a walk. But after a while I realised that he was stretching me too much and, as nice as the company was, it would be suicide for me to try to stay with him. I wished him well and let him go, sticking to my own pace. There was an aid station every mile and I tried not to look forward any further than that. The volunteers on each aid station were fantastic and each one was configured identically, meaning I developed a routine that became almost a ritual as I passed through each one. First I’d grab a couple of cold sponges and clean my face and squeeze the rest of the water over my head, then I’d grab a cup of water and take a gulp, then one or two orange wedges and finally a cup of flat cola. Being new in town and not wanting to upset the locals, the race organisers were very hot on rubbish disposal and there were strict time penalties for anyone dumping packaging on the course outside specified areas, and so 50 yards after the end of each aid station there was a ‘Last chance trash’ sign forcing me to consume what I’d lifted slightly quicker than I’d like to have. I was carrying gels and energy chews but didn’t feel like taking them or any other of the solids on offer the entire run. I was slightly tempted by the chicken broth at one point but a hit of sugar from the cola every mile proved enough.

I was feeling ok, or as ok as can be expected several miles into an Ironman run, and was churning out 9-10 minute miles, reeling more and more people in. I think I was only overtaken by three or four athletes the entire marathon, excluding the handful of pros who eased past me behind their outriders, one full lap ahead. I reached the 6.5 mile turnaround and started the back stretch towards town. The run course was an out-and-back times two and since most of it took us out of town and into the hills above there weren’t many supporters for long periods. The general profile on the return leg was downhill, although with enough variety to merit concentration. After a few miles I drew alongside and then past Christopher. He had slowed and was obviously suffering while I was grinding it out at a consistent and sustainable pace. I saw Andrea just before the run special needs area and once again when I looped around the roundabout at halfway and began my second 13.1 mile out-and-back. Her face and arms were looking red after a long day in the sun and I shouted at her to put on some sunscreen. I reserved the right to be the only one wincing and moaning the next day! I told myself I’d just a half marathon to knock out and I’ll see Andrea again at the finish chute in a couple of hours. I was becoming more and more determined that I wouldn’t walk a step and was feeling tired but strong. Now the course was familiar and I knew what I had ahead. The long, slow drag, the up and down cul-de-sac, the steep climb, the loop cul-de-sac, the turnaround and the same steps again in reverse. I was ticking off the mile markers and watching the minutes pass on my wrist, knowing that at my current pace each minute represented a bit more than 10% of a mile or 1/260th of the marathon. I ran for a couple of miles tucked in behind a woman in the 35-39 age group with ‘mother of six’ inked on her right calf. Six neglected children, obviously, because she couldn’t have been making such good progress without a lot of training time away from home.

Finally I reached the 22 mile marker that also represented the top of the final significant hill high above the town and I started to stretch out. I knew I’d beat 12:30 and my target had become sub-12:25 – my time from Ironman UK in 2008. Ironman UK was tough but this course was a whole different level of difficulty, probably the new toughest race in North America, and a faster time here would be sure progress. I quickened to nine-minute miles, which felt Olympian as I breezed past more people, but in hindsight I know that nine-minute miles never look quick. The final mile – a long, flat straight seemed to last forever but a smile started to spread across my face as I knew I’d done it and could soak it all up. I started to high five rows of people in the crowd. I was still keeping an eye on my watch, pacing myself to finish sub-12:20. I turned right at the roundabout and could see the finish chute 400 yards ahead. I searched the crowds for Andrea and she was standing behind the barrier exactly where we’d planned the evening before. I took off my visor and sunglasses and gave her a hug and kiss before putting them back on and sprinting down the chute, overtaking one last guy on the way, and being cheered on by spectators in bleachers on each side. I crossed the line and stopped my watch at 12:19:51.

Finish line

I didn’t hear my name being announced, I don’t know if it was. I was caught by a female volunteer who got me a space blanket, which I quickly disposed of, my medal, took my timing chip, walked me over to have a finisher’s photo taken, and then walked me through Town Square, talking to me and looking into my face the whole time to judge my physical condition and see if I needed medical help. I didn’t, I felt ok, and went straight to the food area to sit down and wait for Andrea. I tried unsuccessfully to eat some pizza and downed a can of cola. Still no sign of Andrea, she was having trouble getting through the crowds, so I put my name down for a massage and lay down for 10 minutes, chatting to both the therapist as he rubbed me down and the happy athlete from Salt Lake City on the table beside me. Eventually I met Andrea and we posed for photos and swapped quick stories about our experiences throughout the day. I wanted to get into warm clothes so hobbled to collect all my bags and bike, changed in the street and we made our way to the SUV and drove to the hotel. After a shower and some ice cream I had a vague plan of returning to the race finish to watch the last competitors finish and the fireworks show, but this didn’t happen and I was asleep for 10pm. Mission accomplished.

With the flag of Northern Ireland

Post-race
I went online the following morning and checked the official results:

Swim: 01:11:00
T1: 00:05:54
Bike: 06:46:15
T2: 00:04:48
Run: 04:11:55
Total: 12:19:52

I’d came 337th out of 1,274 male finishers. 18% of athletes who started the race didn’t finish it, one of the highest DNF rates in Ironman history. I came top 31% of my M30-34 age group.

All in all, I’m happy. On reflection, I didn’t feel like I was smashing any part or section of the race, but I do think that I paced it correctly and finished in a strong and solid time, especially for that course. Once again my bike leg was weaker than either swim or run, although still top half of the field. This is where I need to improve if I want to make any leaps forward.

Next races for me are the Subaru Victoria Half Ironman on 19th June and Ironman Switzerland on 25th July. The course in Zurich is much quicker than St. George and I hope to take a chunk off my personal best of 11:44 set in Brazil last year, ideally going sub-11 hours. It’s two weeks since the race and I’ve been relaxing and eating whatever I want. But 14 days of that is enough. Now it’s time to shape up and start training again.

Thanks go to Andrea for all her wonderful patience and support.

My photos from the race build-up and race itself are here:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=209032&id=544078435&l=1633dd00ad.

The road to Ironman St. George...

2010-02-02T16:38:00.000-08:00

Bye bye, gym bike

Hello, road bike

Ironman training isn’t easy for the pros. It’s even tougher for age groupers that need to hold down jobs, especially those trying to put an equal amount of effort into advancing a career. Add in a trans-continental emigration and it really messes with your head.

I’ve arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia – my home for at least the next two years. For a triathlete in training this seems like heaven – good roads, lots of mountains, a sea wall and path that runs for nearly 15 miles around the downtown area, including the beautiful Stanley Park, a public 50m pool that opens at 6:30am every day, all the open water you could ever need, several active tri clubs and an all-round outdoor and health-conscious culture. So in the future this place is going to be fantastic for me, but coming here, and of course the freezing weather we had in Oxford the first two weeks in January, has meant my four month programme leading to Ironman St. George has got off to a slow start. Well, I say that, but the nature of this sport and the people that do it (i.e. me) means we’re convinced we’re never training enough, that we need to be consistently doing two sessions a day instead of just one, that 30-45 minute runs need to be done at the highest tempo possible to compensate for them being so ‘short’ and that we really must find the time for more core and weights strength training.

The positive from January is that after a lazy-ish few months I’ve got back into the routine of training 6-10 times a week, including swim, bike (either turbo trainer or hotel gym bike...yawn) and run. The negative is that the weather and the move across the Atlantic and prairies has severely limited the long slow miles I’d like to have done on my bike as base training. In fact, I haven’t been on my bike since the second weekend in December when I went for one last brick, for old time’s sake, with Dave in Reading, Henley, Pishill, Nettlebed etc. After that it was Christmas and New Year, then snow, then frozen snow and then a flight to Canada on 12th January. My bike followed by air freight and actually arrived yesterday morning. I can’t wait to get out on it – first ride will be with the Pacific Spirit Tri Club on Saturday. I need them to show me some routes and teach me how to cycle on the right hand side of the road. I’m going to look the part as I have a new Gore windstopper and dhb bib tights that I got for Christmas to try out.

After saying last year, after too many long bikes and runs in the British winter, that 31st May (Ironman Brazil 2009) was the earliest I’d ever do a long course race while living in the northern hemisphere, I’ve gone back on my word and been seduced by the chance to enter the first ever IMSG (Utah), which runs on 1st May 2010. An Ironman in the US has long appealed as the over the top nature of some Americans is exactly what I need from spectators eight miles into the run, plus the USA is the home of the sport and I expect them to know how to organise a top notch event. But the established races there are tough to enter due to a mixture of popularity and very few spaces for overseas athletes, which is why I jumped at IMSG when it was announced (with no track record or priority lists) early last year. That it’s now only a two and a half hour flight and two hour drive, instead of an eight hour flight plus drive away just makes it even better. And a weekend in Vegas after the race seems a pretty good way to wind down.

So that’s the short term target. It’s going to be hot and hilly – early afternoon temperatures could top 100 and apparently less than a mile of the run course is on the flat – but this one is all about notching another for experience and building a big foundation that I can layer speed onto for a fast time, for me, at Ironman Switzerland on 25th July.

I’ll add the occasional update here on how my training is going. It’ll be taking in a few half marathons in British Columbia, including the Shamrock ‘n’ Race St. Patrick’s Day special next month, so I’m sure there’ll be stories to tell.

Twelfth of July and Glens in Europe 2009

2009-07-11T00:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve a very confused and contradictory relationship with my homeland these days. Since leaving NI seven years ago I’ve always felt most homesick on and around 12th July. I miss the sound of flutes and drums in the evening, bonfire hopping around Belfast and Newtownabbey on the 11th night, counting the English and Scottish bands and the lodges from across the Commonwealth, and the sheer anthropological spectacle of the parades.

I’d vaguely planned to go home for the Twelfth this year; I haven’t stood in the traditional family spot at the top of Balmoral Avenue for several walks, and I wanted to show Andrea Ulster’s answer to Notting Hill. But instead I came to work in Singapore for a few months. I’m still proud enough, and have enough other t-shirts in the wash basket, to have worn my ‘Gerry Armstrong’ 82 World Cup retro shirt to Starbuck’s for my Saturday morning newspaper and coffee today. Yet it’s brilliant being in deepest Asia where a considerable number of people, even well-travelled and well-educated people, haven’t heard of Belfast, Northern Ireland, George Best, the IRA or Orangemen. They ask me if I’m English and I mostly answer yes. I do live there, afterall, and I assume they’re using it as shorthand for British.

Anyway, something else happens at this time of year, which July-by-July chips away at me and my perception of where I come from - Glentoran’s participation in European football. It sounds stupid, but it’s always obsessed me. I’ve travelled to see them lose in Israel, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway twice and the Republic of Ireland. Annually I can’t wait to find out our opposition and analyse the competition format and UEFA co-efficients for weeks beforehand. I draw up, revise and re-do lists of my preferred destinations, partly on criteria of adventure and partly on winnability. But we never do win, or rather, when we did win once in my era – against Allianssi of Helsinki in 2004 – I wasn’t there.

As with all Irish League clubs we lose, often heavily (embarrassingly so), because we’ve given up. We’ve got a huge inferiority complex. Our manager and players give the same interviews every summer – I came to Glentoran to be involved in European matches, we want to give a good account of ourselves, this club has got a great European tradition, we’re not just representing Glentoran but the Irish League, we’ll give it our best shot – but our results get consistently worse. This year will see one of the biggest massacres, possibly on a par with losing to Ajax 14-1 on aggregate in the 70s. We’re up against Maccabi Haifa, a team that beat Man Utd 3-0 in the Champions League group stages a few years ago. They’ll destroy us, completely and utterly. To rub in our capitulation over the last decade, they only beat us 3-1 on aggregate in the Cup Winners Cup in 1998. Three goals in 180 minutes; this time I suspect we’re liable to conceded three goals in each half of each game.

Now I’m all for the romance of the plucky underdog. But the adjective is the operative word, not the noun. I want to see us fight. I want to see us start pre-season training early enough to be match fit, to ban our players from missing the games due to beach and clubbing holidays in Ibiza, to prepare with more than knockabouts against Nortel and Sirocco Works, to outlaw the legendary piss-up that our players embark on after an away game, even after losing heavily and having the reverse fixture less than a week away. I want us to stop believing that just because they’re foreign they must be better. I want to see the Board and management put more emphasis on the Champions League than the Co. Antrim Shield. We won’t win the former and sometimes win the latter, but that’s not the point.

I want to see our supporters demand more. But they don’t. If anything, the surrender culture, the rotting decay in our game relative to the progress of other countries, stems from the supporters. They talk about “full-time” opposition as if that puts their players on a different stratosphere, rather than being poorly paid lads stuck at clubs on the fringes of the Baltic or somewhere near the Arctic Circle who train for eight hours a week compared to our players’ four. And besides, who said our players can only train twice a week?
I want to see foreign journalists stop writing articles about how we’re a team of car mechanics and factory workers and how our top striker smokes 40 a day. I want us to start showing a little self respect. Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen, and that eats away at me because Glentoran runs through my core and yet so does a need to achieve as much as I can, to fight against my limitations, and to make some kind of small impact in life. The two feelings just aren’t compatible – how can I support a club with such limited ambition, when even our supporters – and sports fans are normally bigheads and fantasists – couldn’t care less as long as we beat Linfield in a scrappy derby, in a crap stadium, every now and then?

Macabbi Haifa v Glentoran; UEFA Champions League Preliminary Round 2, first leg; Wednesday 15th July.

Ironman Brazil 2009

2009-06-13T08:49:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 26th May
The journey to Florianopolis started early. My employer threw a spanner in my race plans by sending me to Singapore for the three weeks prior to the race. A brilliant opportunity but awful timing. It was too early to taper and I missed a few key sessions planned in the UK, including my third 100-mile ride. There was nothing else for it – I packed my bike, as well as swimming and running gear, and headed to Asia from early May. The welcoming and very dedicated Singapore Joyriders ensured I got in a couple of hundred extra road miles around the island, mostly between 5-7am before either the sun or traffic got too aggressive. And I sacrificed Saturday morning swims in Heron Lake for endless laps of a neighbourhood 50m pool. With a handful of runs backing up my solid 3:35 at the Belfast Marathon earlier in the month I was tired through travel and hard work, but ready to go.

Singapore to London.

Wednesday 27th May
Arrived home in Oxford feeling reasonably fresh after a night in BA business class. The morning was spent paying bills and catching up with other admin and a few loads of washing. I’d hoped to make it to the gym for a gentle spin and swim but time beat me and I’d to settle for a race haircut in the Covered Market, visit to Beeline for some gels and bars, followed by a massage with Phil. As usual, Phil was full of calming advice and motivating stories from Oxford Tri members’ exploits at Ironman Lanzarote the weekend before. Foregoing the Champions League final to ensure a peaceful reunion with my girlfriend, Andrea and I ate in Pizza Express, full of anticipation of what was ahead. Neither of us had been to South America, nor had we spent so long away together. If we’d known that pizza and calzone is the staple diet of Santa Catarinia maybe we’d have gone to Zizzi or News Cafe instead

Thursday 28th May
London to Rio.

Andrea and I met Dave and Tors in Terminal 5 and I showed off my newly waxed legs. The girls were definitely more jealous than Dave, who was exuding a quiet confidence about the race. I realised I’d forgotten my Ulster flag shortly before boarding. Thankfully Glorious Britain was on hand to sell me a large Union Flag. A proper finish chute celebration was in the planning – Dave was considering a Brazilian-style pointing to the heavens in tribute to his recently deceased cat.

The flight was ok apart from the alcoholic Italian in the aisle seat and an entertainment system that didn’t work. I compensated by catching up on some sleep, although twisting to put my head in Andrea’s lap gave me a worryingly sore left hip flexor for the next couple of days. Lesson learned – I’m stuck with economy class for several more pay rises but don’t risk anything before a race by contorting myself into strange sitting/lying positions during a long haul flight.

Saw Gareth and met Sarah, his girlfriend, when leaving the plane. Gaz in Ironman Florida polo shirt, Dave and I with Ironman Switzerland 70.3 rucksacks. It was fairly obvious where we were headed. They’d had a similar journey from Hong Kong with a single night in the UK. The advertising on the website was true and the hotel really was upstairs in the airport and so the six of us were off the flight and checked into our rooms within half an hour.

Friday 29th May
Rio to Florianopolis.

Walked downstairs with our suitcases and bike bags to check in early for the Gol flight down the coast to Florianopolis. It’s a cheap airline and we’d made an amateur mistake in simply assuming there’d be no problem with bringing sports equipment. In the end there wasn’t, minus the R$100 charge, but we were lucky the hordes of American athletes were on other flights.

We were at our resort apartment in Canasvierias by lunchtime and celebrated by taking a stroll along the beach and finding an outdoor restaurant for burger and chips. While staring out to sea we saw a few individuals in wetsuits trying out the water. More and more we started spotting tanned and lycra clad guys pedalling the streets on top-end tri bikes. After lunch we built our bikes, both with no problems or damage in transit – phew – and in early evening we took a taxi to race HQ in Jurere. Well, we took a taxi to near race HQ but as it was soon time for registration to close and everyone was feeling hungry again we diverted to go for dinner…pizza. Second amateur mistake. Lesson learned – register as early as possible.

Saturday 30th May
We were discovering that our apartment was great but slightly isolated from the Ironman expo. After a couple of dodgy experiences with unofficial taxis the day before, Dave and I decided to brave the local bus system to go to register and spend plenty of money on stylish Ironman Brazil stash. Three buses, two terminals and only one fare later we made it. We both bought IMB bike jerseys and a few other bits and pieces. I did my piece to camera for my personalised IMB DVD – naturally forgetting everything I’d planned to say and instead rambling on about how rubbish the weather was – and we sauntered over to the registration tent at 11:30am. Only to find everything packed up and just a handful of staff remaining. It had closed at 11am and we’d missed registration. This was our third overseas trip for middle or long distance races and we’d got complacent. Lesson learned – don’t be slack with pre-race routine. Anyway, apologies and a little pleading later and the race staff sorted us out with wristband, race programme, race numbers, stickers, timing chips, health declarations and freebies. Ten minutes later we bumped into Gareth and Anthony in the expo tent and told them what happened. They stared back blankly – they hadn’t registered either. I jogged with them to the registration tent but by this time it was completely empty. I last saw them disappear into the main building, reaching for their wallets and ready to bribe someone. Next time we spotted each other was on the beach the following morning, two minutes before the hooter, and it was a relief.

Back to the apartment to pack swim, T1 and T2 bags and take the bikes out for a final spin to double check everything worked. I followed this up with a 10 minute run. The main drag in Jurere had been packed with runners, some of them really hammering it, other just showing off their gear from other Ironmans and their race-ready bodies. I just wanted to burn off some nervous energy and remind myself I could still run. That came in useful eight miles into the marathon the next day.

After that we packed the bikes and kit into our newly acquired ‘hire car’ (owned by the receptionist’s mate who gave us a verbal rental agreement – “one dent ok, but two and there will be big problem”) and drove over to check them in. The race organisation was fantastic. Every team we encountered over the next 24 hours, whether bike and helmet checkers, the people that showed you to your bike station in T1, the guys in the changing tent, even the body painters, had designated English speakers, easily identifiable with Union Jack’s on their t-shirts. They were also friendly and full of encouragement. The atmosphere was really building now, the music was blaring out of the speakers all over race HQ, and I walked around T1 a few times to memorise the location of my bike.

We arrived back at the apartment earlier than expected and Andrea and Tors made a perfect simple pasta dinner and then we all had an early night.

Sunday 31st May
I slept really well – I’d settle for an uninterrupted six hours every time before a big race – and the alarm woke me at 4:11am. Cornflakes, yoghurt, banana, orange juice and a shower. The previous day Dave and I had arranged for a taxi to collect us outside the resort gates at 5am, leaving the hire car for the girls to follow us down at a more sociable hour. We arrived there, Dave already in his wetsuit up to his waist, and a car boot party from the previous night was still in full swing in the village 100 yards along the road. But no taxi. We gave it ten minutes before accepting the driver was still in bed and Dave walked back to the apartment to wake Tors and ask nicely for a lift. Next thing I knew I heard a horn and saw someone frantically waving out of the back of a small car. Dave had bumped into Alexandro, an Argentinean athlete who we’d spoken to in the resort the previous day, and he and his wife offered us a lift. There was plenty of chat for the first five minutes of the journey before we all went quiet, obviously thinking about the day ahead, especially as the car struggled in second gear up the hills we’d face later on the first lap of the run course. I remember saying something to Dave about how for months beforehand we live off the anticipation of Ironman with all our friends knowing about it and forever asking how we’re getting on, and now, unfortunately, the day had come to actually have to do the 2.4, 112 and 26.2 miles.

The hour before the race was the usual blur. I inflated my tyres, attached saddle bag, bento box and pump to my bike, rechecked my T1 and T2 bags were still on their hooks, did some stretches, had a small snack and eventually slapped on some baby oil and slipped into my wetsuit. I also had a quick chat to the American athlete beside me for whom this was his 19th Ironman. Dave and I then took the 10 minute walk down to the beach and had a quick dip to test out the ocean before walking up the beach to the start line. We’d cut things fine and there were less than five minutes to the start, which turned out great as we’d no time to think. I saw a girl bawling her eyes out. Her face was red and she looked distraught. I gave her the thumbs up and a smile and really hope she started, and finished, the race.

Then we were off. The beach start wasn’t as crazy as I’d expected but once everyone dived the water was very busy for the first 10 minutes with the usual tugging, zigzagging, over and undertaking, elbowing and attempted drowning. I wasn’t enjoying the swell – it felt much larger than it had looked from the beach and I couldn’t sight the buoys ahead because of oncoming waves. I ended up having to follow the white swim caps ahead of me for the next 2.4 miles, which probably meant my course was inefficient but it was the same for everyone. We came out onto the beach after the first lap. Running along the beach in a corridor formed by the crowd was great and I checked my watch – 00:38 – surprisingly on target considering the first lap was 2,100m. The second lap definitely felt shorter, also helped by there being a lot more clear water. I’d someone on my feet for half of it but didn’t manage to get pulled along myself. I exited in 1:10, ran up the beach and was delighted to see teams of people to help us out of our wetsuits. Then through the crowds again to the changing tent.

Starting lap two

I’d a good T1, much quicker than Ironman UK last year, mostly due to planning. I got a big cheer from Andrea and Tors a couple of hundred yards into the bike and off I went. 112 miles. My bike is definitely my weakest discipline and I was prepared to lose places to the weak swimmers but strong cyclists over the next 30 or 40 miles. That happened but I was ready for it and enjoying the ride. I also knew from my swim time that it was unlikely that Dave was ahead of me and got more and more pleased when every rider that passed turned out not to be him. I knew that as long as I stayed in the lead on the bike until at least 50-60 miles then my stronger run would still make me favourite. We hadn’t talked about it much in the few days beforehand, but our rivalry is a big driver for both of us and I knew Dave wanted to avenge defeat at IMUK last year. Anyway, the sun was shining, which was a very pleasant surprise as the day before had been horrible and the forecasters had predicted showers throughout the morning of race day. On the whole the roads were good, especially as we were on the main dual carriageway into the city and then the main A-road along the coastal front, but I still kept my eyes peeled for the occasional pothole. Aid stations were so regular that after a while I ditched my two bottle strategy to save weight and stuck with one. Worst thing that could happen would be losing a bottle and having to wait only another 8 miles for a drink. Unfortunately, no gels or bars were being handed out on the bike and half-bananas were the only solids on offer. I’d a couple of those, two gels and a bar that I’d brought with me. Along with Gatorade and water I was keeping well fed and hydrated, even as midday temperatures were starting to pick up to around 20 degrees.

Halfway into the first of two laps I saw Dave at a turn point about three or four minutes down on me. I started to hurt over the next 20 miles. Nothing major, just the usual dull ache in legs, back, arms, shoulders and, mostly worryingly, brain. It was far too early to be hurting and I was finding myself out of the saddle too often. Got to the turn point with Dave still a few minutes behind me. It was great to get back to the crowds, hear the music and MC and see Andrea and Tors by the roadside. I shouted to them to look out for Dave as he was only a few minutes back, did the 180 degree turn and headed out for the second 56 miles. 02:55 so far – bang on target for the 6 hour bike I’d planned.

Enjoying the bike

I continued to hurt. It never got unbearable but I had to put in more and more effort to maintain the same speed. I was trying to be as efficient as possible and spending at least half the time on my aero bars. A guy went past me on a downhill on the carriageway with http://www.triuk.com/ on the back of his trisuit. That’s where I’d bought my bike – he was obviously one of only 11 British athletes who’d made the trip. Dave eventually caught me approaching the first of four passages through the tunnel on the second lap and he pulled alongside for a welcome chat. We were both sore and neither had enjoyed mouthfuls of the salt water on the swim. After a motorbike marshal shouted at us for drafting (drafting when riding abreast?) I told Dave to go on. We’d seen a lot of people yellow carded and, as nice as the company was, it wasn’t worth a 5-minute time penalty. I reckon Dave put three minutes into me fairly quickly after that, maybe motivated by finally being in the lead after a combined 19 hours of Ironman racing in Sherborne and Florianopolis (!), but a turn point thirty miles later I was pleased to see he was still only five minutes up. I didn’t enjoy the rest of the bike and just wanted to get finished and onto the run. The last 5k into Jurere was the longest three miles I’ve ever cycled. Saw Andrea and Tors with a mile to go – they were in a great spectating spot and I’d see them there again 15 minutes later a mile into the run. I didn’t really appreciate at the time that they’d been standing there for over six hours, just for two quick glimpses of Dave and I, but we heard all about it over the next few days. A pampering tent in the expo for Ironman girlfriends is definitely needed.

One mile to go...before the marathon

I’d a bit of an emotional wobble on the final mile. It had been the same at IMUK last year. I’ve grown to love the bike, but it’s always the leg I’m most nervous about, and so the relief at finishing it combined with the onset of real emotional tiredness brought a tear to my eye. After manning up I threw my bike to the catcher and was pointed towards the changing tent. Bike in 6:08 – I’d slipped during the second lap and was behind my target time but not too worried.

Changed from my bike jersey into my tri top, socks, running shoes, gel into my back pocket and the first of probably twenty cups of flat Pepsi and off I went on the marathon. The balls of my feet were killing me. I’d had new cleats put on my bike shoes before the race and something about them had bruised me. Thankfully, after hobbling the first few hundred yards the pain went away. Everyone hobbles the first few hundred yards of an Ironman run so I didn’t look more ridiculous than anyone else. It was good to be running. I’ve lots of confidence in my long distance running with six marathons, a few ultra marathons and the Marathon des Sables behind me. I’d also done quite a few running races during March and April in preparation – Reading half marathon, Kingston Breakfast Run 16-miler, Maidenhead Easter Ten and the Belfast marathon. But by this point I was more tired than hoped and I already knew a 3:45 marathon was a very outside bet. Saw Andrea and Tors again in the same spot and turned to run out of town on the first 21k loop. I soon passed Dave. He was walking and not happy. You ok, I asked? Feel sick, he mumbled. I shouted something about drinking plenty of water and moved past him, trying to look strong, and knew I’d really have to blow up for him to catch me again.

I did blow up, but he didn’t catch me. I really went downhill fast over the next six or seven miles. The course was very hilly and we were running in a demoralisingly straight line out of town and away from the finish line. The 20 miles left started to loom and I began to panic. I hadn’t expected to feel this bad so early. I slowed to a walk for a few minutes, angry with myself as I’d ran every step of the IMUK marathon, even through all the aid stations. At this point I was looking down the barrel of a 6 hour marathon and wasn’t happy. I saw Dave again at a turn point and he seemed in much better form. Afterwards he told me he’d been through a good patch, which coincided with my bad patch and he came within a few minutes of catching me. Then I saw Gaz about 5 minutes behind him. Maybe seeing them spurred me on; maybe I just came out of an inevitable slump, but I somehow picked up and ran strongly for the next 18 miles to the finish.

The sun started to go down during my second lap. The run course was boring and very lonely in places, but it was well configured with a 21k loop followed by two 10.5k loops. I was running strongly and keeping a close eye on my stopwatch. With 15 miles to go 11:45 had become my revised target. Andrea ran along with me for a few yards and gave the usual boost, while I could see Tors filming me at the side of the road. I asked how Dave was and they told me he’d thrown up but was still moving. The end and start of each lap were great as they passed by the finish chute and the crowds and atmosphere were brilliant. I was getting good support from American spectators who recognised me as American or British, either from the name on my race number or else my relatively pasty complexion.

Starting the final lap I passed a, ahem, very fit looking female American who was running beautifully and I told her to stay on my shoulder at 6 minute kilometres and we’d break 11:45. How fast do we need to go?, she asked. 6 minute ks. F**k that, she answered, and away I went. It felt like I was blasting along at this stage. I was passing loads of people and feeling pumped up at being within an hour of the finish. But I know from my splits that I was looking only mildly less pathetic than everyone else. Saw Anthony with only three miles to go. He was grinding it out on his second lap and shouted something about being very jealous.

For the last ten miles I’d been very ballsy at aid stations, screaming “Pepsi” and “aqua” throughout each one until someone stepped out and handed me what I needed. The quartered oranges were also going down a treat. I reckon I must have eaten about 12 oranges and drank a couple of litres of Pepsi. I went through this routine for the last time at the top of the two-mile straight down through Jurere and to the finish line. I kept checking my watch but was fairly confident of beating 11:45. Once I passed the split point for those athletes finishing a lap and those going to the finish chute I started high fiving the lines of people on each side. I felt incredible. The joy of finishing an Ironman beats just about everything. It’s not only an unbelievable achievement on the day but the end of months of training, constant tiredness and many sacrifices. At the start of the finish chute I saw Andrea and Tors. Both got quick, and probably very sweaty, kisses and Andrea handed me the Union Flag. They were both excited to see me and gave me superb support. I ran the next hundred yards to the line with the flag over my head. There was no-one else finishing in front or behind and the crowds in the bleachers gave me a great reaction. I could see 11:44:57 on the clock as I crossed the line.

What a feeling

Someone came up, put a towel over my shoulders and asked if I wanted something to eat. I said hello to Andrea and posed for a few photos before heading to the tent for pizza, more Pepsi and ice cream. Your body just tells you what it needs. Then I changed into warm clothes and went back out to meet Andrea and Tors and cheer others in. Gaz made it in 12:34, Dave finished in his hoodie in 12:58 (living his sub-13 hour dream) and Anthony in 13:18.

With Andrea post-race

I’d missed my target time but it was hard to care immediately after an Ironman. Two weeks later and I’m still not that bothered, just proud. I know I need to improve my bike. I maybe also didn’t rest enough in the final few weeks, and the travel from Singapore-London-Oxford-London-Rio-Florianopolis in the few days before the race probably didn’t help. But after comparing results from IMUK and IMB in 2008 I still reckon I made a slight improvement, and there’s definitely more to come. Next stop Ironman St. George (Utah) on 1st May 2010…or, if I can swing an extended stay in Singapore, then it’s Ironman Western Australia at the start of December. Bring it on.