Race Report - Ironman Mont Tremblant 2013

This is broken down into aspects of the course, how my training went vs the other two races, and the outcome. 

Part 1 - Course / Location

-- Mont Tremblant is in Quebec ~1.5-2 hours between and north of both Montreal and Ottawa and ~550 mi north of Philadelphia, PA.  It is a ski resort in the winter, so the area is hilly.  When I sought information on the course elevation, I was confused by vastly different reports of altitude gain and have finally concluded this has someting to do with reports sometimes provided in meters and other times provided in feet.  A popular question is, "how does this race compare to such and such", and the following is my point of view on that.  The data tabulated below was collected via Garmin 910XT(IMMT and IMWI), Garmin 305 (IMLP bike) and Garmin 405 (IMLP run) with elevations corrections disabled. 

For starters, the area is absolutely beautiful.  The low humidity made all the vibrant colors in the area really pop.  Plus this destination has several activities right in the village (luge - pictured below, zip line, miniature golf, some fountains to run through), for keeping children occupied while a parent was off racing.  There appeared to be plenty of accommodations here as well, which was very convenient.  (Contrast - I didn't see as much in the way of close accommodations in Lake Placid.  And I think we simply waited to long to book our hotel for Wisconsin so we ended up staying some 10-15 from transition area.) 

-- Activities leading up to race day: The town seemed to have several special events scheduled, such as live music and fireworks.  It made for a very festive environment, particularly if you were staying in the village.  Not to mention the items above and the hiking and casino as additional entertainment options. 

-- Athlete dinner: I think there is some "ho-hum" that comes with having been to more than one of these.  The entertainment was better in Mont Tremblant vs LP or WI, but the inspirational stories were seriously lacking.  Also, perhaps b/c I'm not used to being in this situation, I thought the time required to repeat things in both English and French was cumbersome.  The food quality was certainly better than found at the banquets of the two American races I've done. 
-- Race day: The race began with a fly-over by a couple of fighter jets and the usual booms from a cannon.  The swim was gorgeous.  The lake was very clean and a bit cool.  The official water temp was reported as 66 °F on race day, but I do not think it was that low and thought it felt just perfect for such a long swim in a wetsuit.  This race utilized a wave start, about which I have mixed emotions.  I was in the last wave which went off at 7 am.  The swim start was more crowded to me than the mass start in Lake Placid where it was easy to stay wide for the first loop and avoid contact.  Here the swim start is fairly narrow as it is more of a marina than a beach, and I had contact with others for the first 3-5 of 13 buoys on the outbound leg of this single loop swim.  I loved the numbered buoys that made it very simple to guage how far along I was.  (Contrast - I had no idea where I was in Wisconsin as the buoys didn't appear to be numbered and that race was my first 2.4 mi single loop swim; so I was a bit disoriented during it and particularly so due to the absolutely non-stop thick contact with other participants for the entire WI swim course.) 
-- Transition is a long hike from swim out.  But the wide red carpet was well placed and made this fairly comfortable on my feet.  (Contrast with LP where there was poor crowd control and the spectators had tracked rocks all over the narrower astro-turf carpet and pulled up the seams leaving several places to possibly trip.  Also contrast with WI where the run was up a cold concrete spiral ramp.) 
-- The bike course, as described by others in race reports, has the hills situated in such a way that confident riders won't need to use their brakes except at the 7 U-turns.  That is except for the circumstances where, 1) there are a couple of narrower no-pass zones and I found myself coming up on athletes but had to slow down since I couldn't pass them, and 2) where there are athletes who fail to stay to the right of the lane (as mandated in absolutely every triathlon people!), so I had to slow down as the only real option vs riding into the wrong side of traffic.  Here I'm speaking about the super fun down hills along Chemin Duplessis.  Boy how it hurt to use my brakes there...  I would be very remiss if I failed to mention the absolutely perfect road conditions found in Mont Tremblant.  (Contrast with Lake Placid, where the wide shoulder that many use to train is absolutely dangerous due to the terrible pavement quality.  I recall most of Wisconsin's roads were fine in a chip-and-seal kind of way, while the roads in Tremblant were smoother than a baby's bottom.) 
     The second loop of the course brought head winds that varied in direction, which was a bit demoralizing.  And of course the challenging hill section of Chemin Duplessis was more difficult on the second loop, now coming at miles 101-106.  I have no idea what kind of gearing set-up it would take to be able to spin up this, but I found it easily managable by standing on the pedals and mashing.  I am always amazed to see competitors walking hills in Ironman races, and there were many doing so here (lap 2) as well as in Wisconsin (both laps!), and I saw none of it in Lake Placid. 
-- It was T2 when I realized there were no port-a-john's in transition(?).  How could that be?  I also only saw a few already-open bottles of water.  No water station for those coming in off the bike and it was just so very hot on this day. 
-- The run begins with some tough hills in direct sunlight before transitioning to a very nice (flat-seeming) rail-to-trail path comprised of crushed cinder and covered by a canopy of lush trees.  This area was just beautiful with lake and mountain views as well.  Most aid stations had 2 (I think) port-a-potties that must have been HEAVILY utilized b/c the stench from simply running by them while they were closed was gut wrenching.  For the second loop there were several sections that were a bit dark, which made footing a little uncertain on part of the course where paver stones are used for the cross walks, but had fallen under a bit of disrepair.  Small lights were strung up for the cinder path but they didn't cast much light.  (Similar - Riverside Drive in LP which was darker than dark except for the place where they brought in a generator-powered flood lamp.  Contrast with Madison which is a fairly well-lit state capital city.)  

-- Finishing shoot experience: Mont Tremblant was extremely fun with spectators eating at outdoor restaurants, standing on the balconies of their hotel rooms and lining the walkway as the path snaked down the Pedestrian Village (above) toward the finish line, which boomed with music and people cheering.  This was kinda magical and similar to the covered Fourth St Live where IM Louisville finishes.  (Compare - LP has good crowd support in stands at the finish line but it is a bit thin and dark (!) leading up to and entering the skating oval if you are a late finisher.  Contrast with Madison, where the crowds were somewhat thin at the finish line for the later finishers.)  

-- Spectators: They were pleasant but tame.  There were many fewer spectators here in costumes than in LP or WI.  The course setup is perhaps not very ammenable to getting around. LP, WI, and KY all had busses to move people to a remote viewing area (remote with respect to transition anyway), but I'm unsure this course did.  There was some festivity at the turn around in Saint-Jovite with people sitting outside at restaurants and shops blaring music, but I'm unsure there was a means provided to transfer spectators to/from this location.  And the run spectating was sparse on the cinder trail, which honestly wasn't wide enough anyway to have the additional people.  (Compare LP, which also had lonely remote sections on the bike and run.  Contrast WI, which had multiple viewing places on the bike course as well as home owners in lawn chairs playing music AND a run through the busy areas of State St and the Univ campus which were loaded with people.  WI gets the best course spectating award in my limited experience; too bad they aren't at the finish line though.) 
-- Volunteers and race staff: Fantastic.  If you asked for something and they didn't have it, they knew where to get it (such as 2 tables down or aid station #4).  I passed one station that was out of fruit and I ran on sad only to have a volunteer sprint after me and ask if I'd like some apple sauce (which hit the spot!).  I had medical personelle inquire how I was feeling while on the bike course (medic on the back of a motorcycle), while in the transition tent, and multiple times in the finish area.  They were very attentive.  I can't count the number of times I saw a motorcycle pass with extra bike wheels on it.  I saw such things pass a couple of times in LP and in WI, but litterally countless times in Mont Tremblant.  If I happened upon a volunteer that didn't understand me well, they were always quick to find someone who spoke my kind of English.  And they brought a bunch of energy to the run course where it was getting late and people were feeling kinda awful.  (Contrast examples in LP 2010 - the bike course director who could not be bothered to answer my question during the question and answer time at the athlete pre-race meeting, and who instead actually replied with a snippy response.  And the timing guy who told me to calm down and not yell when the music was pumping so loudly I couldn't even hear myself think.) 

Part 2 - How my training went 
-- Training certainly did not go as planned.  That I got to participate in this race at all was a fortuitous outcome, let alone that I was able to finish it considering in February I was told I needed surgery to debride a torn hip labrum.  So while I hired a coach for this, I was only able to train for 15 weeks beginning from a place of almost no base fitness vs the prior efforts over 20 weeks that began from a solid base of swim/bike/run.  Interestingly though, divided by the number of weeks, my training shows a larger time commitment at ~13 hours per week.  Mileage is not far below that for WI even though I did almost no run training.  "Other" consisted of a mix of ice hockey, which I played weekly, occasional yoga, and a couple of vigorous weekends of re-sodding my property, leaving my friend Pete to opine that I was "gardening toward Ironman".

Part 3 - How my race went 
-- I took the swim easy hoping to draft off the pack of possibly faster swimmers vs killing myself to get by them only to be passed again.  But I think I'm no good at establishing who is worth drafting.  Ultimately this swim was a non-taxing PR, though I was still ready for it to be over at buoy 10 of 13 on the return side.
-- The bike segment started off well enough, but something didn't go right with my nutrition and I was feeling terribly bloated only 2 h into the ride. Despite this, and perhaps because I may possibly be crazy, the only 2 cyclists to pass me my first trip down the Chemin Duplessis were pro's finishing their 2nd lap.  What can I say, descents are fun!  The second lap, however, was anything but.  I felt increasingly ill and was barely eating anything.  Not to mention the headwinds that shifted to face us in every direction.  Nope, not my imagination; other racers felt it too.  I finished the bike segment feeling completely demoralized by my +30 min split difference and really wasn't sure I ingested enough to make it through the run.  I was hot, thirsty, ready to explode, and there seemed to be no needed services in transition. Interestingly, my hip didn't seem to be a problem at all.     
-- I started the run feeling unable to take a deep breath because I was so bloated.  But I remembered something I told a participant at the 1-off Ironman "New York" when she came in off the bike visibly upset and crying lightly.  "Soon the sun is going to go down, it's going to get a bunch cooler out, and you are going to feel better."  Turns out to have been pretty good advice.  I managed to negative split a marathon (by 7 min) that I didn't really think I was prepared for.  Before this, my longest run this year was 10 miles.  Yeah, seriously.  I walked all the aid stations and ate an untold number of orange slices and finished feeling like I had pulled that run straight out of a magic hat. 

Part 4 - Reflections

-- After Wisconsin, I had hoped to continue to move steadily away from being a BOPer (Back of Pack) toward being a MOPer (Middle of Pack) in Mt. Tremblant.  And I'd like to say, "Oh well, maybe next time..." except that next time is in Boulder, Colorado and, as I have difficulties adjusting to altitude, I predict that will be a very difficult event for me and not a new PR.  This is not meant, however, to express disappointment in the outcome of my IMMT race which, in all honesty, I'm lucky to have been able to start and even luckier to have been able to finish given the shorter training schedule and on-going uncertainties with my hip.  For this I must thank my coach, Jack Braconnier (Cadence Cycling & Multisport), who was willing to help me (Uhm, hi? Yeah, I have this big triathlon coming up, but can't do any running b/c I'm injured. Can you whip up a training plan for me? Oh yeah, it also has to include yoga and playing ice hockey. Thanks!) and not only believed early on that I could complete this race, but guided me to a finish without further injuring myself.

-- Finally, some additional shout outs.  To my friends Heather, Ashley, Jill and Matt who were also racing this course.  The out and back layout made it possible to see them several times which added some great motivation whether I was getting dropped on the bike or slowly gaining on the run.  This was extra special as I got to share high-5's with Ashley a few times as she closed in on her first full Ironman race finish.  And for a fun new experience I was able to cross the finish line with Heather, who is the one who "dragged" me in to ultra distance racing in the first place 4 years ago.  To Pete, for taking 8000 photos and talking me down from more than one anxiety attack about this race.  And to Ed, who filed an expedited passport application and drove 1100 mi in a 4-day weekend, to spend a 22 h day running around along side a 140.6 mi race course just to cheer me on.