On my last post I wrote about what I did the day before the Ford Ironman World championships and about the swim leg. In summary it all went rather well. I had no idea how fast I swam since I had no watch and saw no clocks. All I concentrated on was on getting on my bike and riding out of transition. There is quite a bit of climbing on the first 6 miles of the Hawaii Ironman so the last thing I wanted to do was to push the pace. I tried to stay calm and relaxed. This was not an easy thing to do, trust me. Rider after rider was going by me. I tried to stay to the right of the road and not move as all I was doing was getting on their way. I just kept on reminding myself that the day was young. Knock yourself out guys. Finally I got on the Queen K highway and life was not as stressful there. My fiends and MarkAllenOnline Elite team members Chad, and Kelly who I trained with a bit, passed me around mile 15 to 20 so I know my swim was ok. That is what I expected to happen. My goal was to find a small group of people to ride with but that really never materialized. It seems that riders kept on passing me all day. That was a little demoralizing but I stuck to my plan. I stayed steady and did not get caught up in a pack race.
Did I say pack race? Oh yes. As you know drafting is illegal right? This is not an ITU event yet. In this race it was hard to tell if it really was an ITU race or not. I saw so many packs. I was going to rename it the Tour de Kona. Sometimes it is hard to get away from a pack because even if you follow the rules you can still get caught in a pack. The rules state that you have 20 seconds to pass another rider so that means that you can draft for 20 seconds until you overtake the rider in front of you. At that point the overtaken rider has to fall back, well if that rider slows down so does his/her hear rate so he /she will later proceed to overtake the same rider that passed first. I think there may be a waiting period rule or something as they do not want people to go back and forth all day. Well, the race organization must not have had good turn out at the German and Japanese pre-race meeting. These guys were not even trying to fake it. I saw this one guy right on the wheel of the guy in front of him for a long time. After one pack passed me I noticed a marshal pull up and I stood up and waived to him to see if he was going to do anything about the situation. He then rides up to the pack and yells “break it up guys”. That is really going to work dude! What about waiving that little red card you have and writing some numbers down.
Well back to my race. I would have loved to be able to do some legal drafting. By that I mean to have a small group of about equal strength to go back and forth with. The problem was that as soon as I tried to stay with a group my heart rate will jump up to 150 bps. Oh no, I am not going to do that and sacrifice my run. Sure I can keep up, do some legal drafting and get a good bike time but not at the expense of my run. I was not fit enough to ride aerobically with these guys. Ideally you want to be right at your max aerobic pace when passing a group but as they pass you your heart rate should drop a good 10 beats or more. That was not happening, and that was basically the difference between my bike 10 years ago and now. I was now at max aerobic when they passed me and if I wanted to pass I would had to get too high of a heart rate. So as a result I would fall off the back. My weight showed its advantages and disadvantages. I will pass so many people on the down hills, only to see them again on an up hill.
I only had two small issues on my bike ride. One was right around mile 20 when I had some stomach discomfort. In one of my early Ironman races I had an upset stomach on the bike. I do not eat solids so it had to be swimming related. I can not pin point the cause but ever since that occurrence I always bring some Pepto-Bismol tablets with me. Pepto-Bismol is an over the counter medicine that settles your stomach. I took about two tablets and that did the trick. I was back feeling good and drinking in about 30 minutes. I had to curve my drinking for a little bit while my stomach settled. That is one dangerous problem but luckily I was ready and survived it.
The only other small problem was on the last 30 miles of the bike ride. These miles were my fastest miles like just like everyone. We must have had a slight tail wind. Not much of one I can assure you as many will tell you there was no wind or a head wind. In any case my left hip was bothersome so I was getting off the saddle and extending the leg often. It was about this time that I peed off the bike. For those of you that do not know this. In an Ironman you pee on the bike. You are usually soaked. So what you do is find a downhill, coast and relax the muscles. Then let it go as you wash it down with water from a full bottle, hopefully water anyway. If you do not make sure it is water, it can get messy. Some guys can actually lean their bikes and go off the side of the road. I think I will crash. The story goes that one year during the Hawaii Ironman when Dave Scott and Mark Allen rode together all day. The only time they switched positions was when each of them had to pee. The cameras were shut down and they went about their business.
My bike nutrition was on target. I took the Mark Allen Fluid energizer which I have been training with. I had one bottle of really concentrated fluid. I put about 6 bottles worth of the powder in one bottle and mixed it up. Then all I needed was water from the aid stations to pour on my Profile handlebar drinking system. I poured enough of the concentrated drink into the system each time. I know what it was supposed to taste like when mixed correctly so if it was too strong I added more water, or if it was to water down I added concentrate. My turn around needs bag had another bottle of my concentrated mix. The special needs were conveniently located after the turn around. When I got there on the way out I yelled my number to this little boy that was hanging out. My hope was that he would have my bag after I turned around and got back to the kid. Guess what? He was waiting for me when I got there and was holding my bag. I felt like a Tour de France rider getting his feed bag. I could have not gone any better. I did not miss one second of time.
Now here is the deal. What if I was not lucky enough to have a kid there that helped me so much? What if my bag was given to someone else? That can happen and I have heard of it happening many times. This year Cameron Brown one of the favorites could not get his bag and he decided to go on without it. Now the word on the street is that this is why he had a sub-par race. Here is my suggestion. Have a secondary plan. You have to for a big race like this. Many people do not want to wait and have no plan. What I did is I trained with Gatorade too as that is what is available at all aid stations. So I was prepared to use Gatorade should had I not received my bag. Some of my athletes had a big bag of powder stuff in their “bento box”. If they did not get their bottle of concentrated fluid, they can mix their own. It would have been a bit tricky but it is a better option than having nothing.
In addition to my Mark Allen Fluid Energizer I also took Gluco Burst. What is that you may ask? Well if you read what Mark Allen recommends for race nutrition. He recommends you take glucose. Where do you get that? Not many places I can tell you. But if you do an internet search you can find some Gluco Burst gel packs. It is not marketed for athletes, it is for diabetics. But that is exactly what you want and your body absorbs it in an instant. Nothing wasted whatsoever, that means there is nothing going to your colon. When there is waste, you body at some point has to get rid of it. I rather not do that in the race. I had a flask full of their gel and took sips about every hour. I think you can get a free sample online. Check it out. www.glucoburst.com
So that brings me to the end of the bike ride. The entire ride was was fairly uneventful. Mentally I was prepared for it and it went fairly fast. I did not feel speedy and all the people passing me did not help that either. But part of that was the good swim I had. I got to transition and handed my bike and my bike shoes to the volunteer. Then they made us run all around the transition area. My back felt a little stiff but it actually loosened up by the time I entered the transition tent. My friend Charles Johnson, remember him from my previous post? He was a volunteer at T2 and helped me with my stuff. He also took a picture of the top of my head. I am not sure why. Some lady ran her latex-glove covered hands all over my face and neck. She asked me if I wanted sun screen but I did not know that was how she was going to apply it. It felt sort of gross and it did not help. I got this nasty sun burn at the end of the day.
Let the marathon begin. In my next post I will write about that.