Race Report - Ironman Boulder, Aug 2014

-- Race morning (staying at Hotel Boulderado). I got up at 3:45 a.m. and was out the door by 4:15 a.m..  I walked a couple of blocks to run special needs (to drop bag off) and to the high school (to add nutrition to my T2 bag), and got into what looked like a very long line for the shuttles to the reservoir.  It moved along pretty well.  At the reservoir, I put my nutrition on my bike and got into a slow-moving port-a-potty line.  With only 10 min left for pre-race swim, I threw my wetsuit on as fast as possible and dove into the water.  Then I walked my morning clothes bag to its drop-off spot and joined the massive swim-start line, all while in good spirits for kicking butt.

-- Swim at Boulder Reservoir. This was my first race using a rolling swim start (swimmers self-seed against finish time signs, similar to how marathon corrals work), which seemed like such a humane way to start the day.  I was short of breath immediately during the swim, which is not unusual but it didn’t dissipate like it usually does.  This was made worse by the sensation of hands being clasped around my throat.  I was pulling at my wetsuit neck line with such a furry that I realized two things simultaneously: I needed to calm down before I shot my self over the line of full panic, and I probably needed to act more calm (even if I didn’t feel it) before I convinced someone to pull me out of the water.  I’m guessing I was ~0.7 miles in to the swim before I had comfortably regulated my breathing, but I still had an uncontrollable reflex action of pulling at the neckline of my wetsuit throughout the next mile.  I was certainly more calm in this IM swim vs any other with regard to my proximity and contact with other swimmers, and never felt like I was simply cruising along at my usual “steady as she goes” pace, which is why I am a bit disappointed by my swim time.  But since I couldn’t get my wetsuit to stop strangling me I changed my head position to ease up on the pressure – head higher when straight ahead and tilted back when breathing to the side.  I doubt my form is generally very good so can’t really say what kind of effect this may have had on my time.  Water temp of 74 deg had me a little warm by the time I got out.  What would have been better –a wetsuit only from the waist down --> floatation pants with no choking!  This was an easy to follow triangular course with no leg heading directly into the sun - - > bonus.  Some are reporting they think the course was long.  My Garmin indicated 2.62 miles but truthfully, I’ve never only traversed 2.4 in a course of that distance before.  If someone could teach me to swim in a straight line, I’d greatly appreciate it.  For what it’s worth, the GPS trace of my swim trajectory doesn’t actually look that bad. 

Swim + T1 and a few feet of Bike

-- S-to-B transition (Boulder Reservoir). I think this may have been the shortest distance T1 of any of my IMs, at 0.31 mi.  (I logged 0.46 mi in Wisconsin and 0.49 in Mt Tremblant).  I passed the strippers b/c it’s easier to run in my wetsuit than to run while carrying it, and it really doesn’t take me any time at all to get it off now that I know about TriSlide.  One minor ding – no fluids in transition?  My throat was pretty dry. 

Gear issues -- I messed up multisport mode on my Garmin.  Hitting the lap button just brought up new swim segments, which I noticed within the first few feet on the bike when I couldn’t find the screen/display I wanted.  So I started a new bike ride and later a new run, and throughout the day never knew what my overall time was.

-- The bike course was nice with mainly rolling hills; the only thing steep enough to get me out of the saddle was a very short (reportedly) 14% grade at ~mile 103.  The climb up Cheminn Duplessis at Mt Tremblant, which we hit twice, was significantly more challenging.  I think the difficulty factor for Boulder was the lack of shade, dry air, and thin atmosphere which combined to make the sun feel very intense.  I went through an unprecedented 10 bottles of fluids.  Ten.  True, one of them was used solely to douse my head/chest/back but still, 9 (20-24 oz) bottles and I never needed to pee.  I had a hard time eating because my mouth was so dry that chewing wasn’t wetting my food enough to swallow it.  I passed more than one participant lying under a bush to catch a little reprieve from the sun.  I passed another lying down in the road b/c his legs had seized up.  The cyclist in front of me hopped off his bike to help and I offered salt, which was the only helpful thing I had. 

The single-loop 112 (only one very short out and back segment) was new for me and I anticipated being very lonely.  A number of my events of late have been wave starts with my age group (or relay status) starting last.  This, combined with being a mediocre swimmer, usually leaves me in the dust on the bike course, but not this time.  I rolled this course pretty well, passing people consistently and only stopping to put my dropped chain back on and to reconnect on one dropped hand off.  The volunteers were fantastic – one even ran after me when I missed grabbing the Gu Chomps she had (Seriously, who runs after a cyclist to hand them something?  That was above and beyond the call of duty on her part!).  Some seemed strangely surprised by my request to have bottles with the lid off, i.e. OFF (is there another way to express this?).  Once I depleted the caked nutrition in my bottles, simple bottle exchange was easier than filling on the fly, but I’m actually glad I had my own bottles for most of the course as there were some 3 or 4 bottle-launching  bumps out there (rail road tracks covered with rubber mats, each with volunteers to provide adequate safety warnings).  The roads were otherwise generally in fantastic shape, second only to Mt Tremblant.  One request for the sake of beauty: it would be great if the RD could replace the portion east of I-25 with almost anything else.  I imagine putting us over there creates less of an impact on the locals vs keeping us to the west which is more populated.  I wonder - did those unfamiliar with the area think they had biked to Iowa?  (Yes, I know that CO does not boarder IA.). 

One very strange thing – my Garmin appears to have recorded the entire bike course, but reports the distance as only 97.03 miles (a shortage of 13.4%).  But it also shows 4573 ft of elevation gain, which is remarkably close to the 4496 ft reported on the course elevation profile (difference is 1.7%).  My previous IM course elevation recordings (collated in my Quassy report) ranged from -3.7% to +29.7% vs the reported values:

 - IMMT reported: 1800 m = 5906 ft, found: 5686;

 - IMWI reported: 5780 ft, found: 6437;

 - IMLP (2010) reported: 4326 ft, found: 5601, map has since been updated to report 6898 ft. 

Anyway, it’s a good thing I followed my coach’s plan of keeping my heart rate within a specific range and avoiding obsessing about my speed because, with my watch showing an average 14.4 mph, I would have been in a panic looking at that. Yes, really - I only monitored heart rate and cadence for this entire ride.

T2 on the track/field of Boulder High School.
Black squares are changing tents.  Brick color
line to F is the finish on Pearl Street.  Green H
is the Hotel Boulderado.

-- T2 (at Boulder high school) was loooooong.  It had to be more than a quarter mile between dismount (where solid blue line becomes dotted with white) and bike hand off (where blue dots start), and almost another quarter mile before hitting the run start (solid red line).  The path was narrow and people walked their bikes where they wanted, which did not leave a clear line for those of us with enough spunk and desire to run it.  I have to think those who left their shoes on the bike and ran barefoot regretted that decision hugely by the time they got their transition bags on the black rubber-asphalt track surface, which I later read on ST had reached 103 deg.  I had help with T2 (she carried my bag, dumped the contents out, and put things I was done with back in) which I greatly appreciated (there wasn’t quite enough help to go around in the women’s T1 tent).  I ran out of the tent toward the sunscreen station but didn’t make it there before changing to a walk.  It was just so-freaking-hot, though I am amazed to hear the high temp was only 86 °F (was it higher over on the east side of the bike course??).  I actually enjoyed all the minutes the nice lady took to put sunscreen on me b/c it gave me a legitimate reason to stand still in the shade provided by her tent.  At this point I seriously wondered why the hell I was continuing – to get another freaking t-shirt?        

-- The run (Boulder Creek Path) was – thankfully – mostly shaded; I don’t know that I would have survived a full-sun run like Challenge AC had.  I was an unhappy camper coming out of transition, lurching along at 14 min/mile and nowhere near the game plan pace.  I think my primary driving force at that point was getting to the closest source of ice, as there wasn’t any in transition.  And when I got it, I put it everywhere: down my front, down my back, in my pants and a few cubes rubbed on my face.  Armed with the knowledge that I should start to feel better, I slowly increased my pace and reached the intended range for miles 4 and 5.  But this was complicated to hold between the course being very twisty-turny-undulatey and my walking a portion of each aid station in order to fuel up.  Remember, I came in slightly under nourished from the bike because I couldn’t swallow my food.  My Garmin and the race splits disagree quite a bit, but both show I failed to maintain any pace consistency. 

The "Flux Capacitor" run course consisted of 3 out-and-back segments, run twice.  The jagged nature of the line reflects actual turns on the path, and not that I was stumbling like a drunk!

The spectators along the route really helped.  Many of them called me out by name and told me I looked great, stay strong, etc which I know sounds like nonsense but it did help keep me engaged in something other than the early misery of having 20-how-many-? miles left to go.  Some things loosened up and I was beginning to feel pretty good, simultaneously with some things tightening up or chaffing uncomfortably and beginning to weigh on my mind.  But the beauty of the course and the tranquility of the trickling creek really helped to make the experience enjoyable all-the-while.  This was undoubtedly a beautiful venue. 

-- After crossing the finish line I wanted to lie down.  My catcher walked me to get my finishers shirt and cap, and over to take my picture, and offered to get me a chair, but I didn’t want to expend the energy necessary to sit upright – I only wanted to lie down.  I felt ok mentally but noted that I felt physically worse than I did after any other finish – I believe including the 16:36 one at Lake Placid.  My feet were killing me (as they were after Lake Placid), like they had been pounded with mallets, but I also had shooting pains through my legs.  I imagine this was due to the concrete trail we ran on.  I ingested plenty of salt, so don’t think that was my issue.  After a bit I cooled down and one volunteer got me a Mylar blanket.  Then I started shaking uncontrollably and at this point I was no longer successfully convincing the volunteers I was ok.  I managed to get up and get moving before that last one came back with reinforcements, as I think he was going to have me dragged to the medical tent.  Once moving, Pete found me and I found that I didn’t have enough breath to both walk and talk at the same time.  I was very winded.  I warmed up with a bath but couldn’t rest at all b/c my legs were so very uncomfortable.   

Despite still feeling pretty lousy, I went back outside for the final 20 min to cheer on the people who had been at it literally all day long.  I was amazed those crossing in the final minutes before midnight looked as good as they did.  I was also a little surprised the crowd wasn’t bigger.  I assume it will grow over future years, but then again, I guess people in Boulder (as in Madison) have enough other things to do that staying up for this isn’t as enticing as it may be in more rural resort towns such as Mont Tremblant or Lake Placid.

How I feel about my day -- I knew this race would be tough.  While I might not be as happy with my overall time as I wanted – goal time being a somewhat-arbitrary number on a piece of paper – I am at peace with it as I can’t think of a single place where I could have given more on this course.  I crossed that finish line with nothing left in the tank, and three days later still felt sensitive to sunlight and short of breath when trying to string multiple sentences together.

               S – 1:36:34 (3 min slower than PR swim at IMMT)
    B – 6:46:14 (4 min faster than PR bike at CAC)
    R – 5:10:43 (9 min slower than IM PR run at IMWI)
    O – 13:51:28 (4 min 12 sec new ironman race PR)

Also want to mention how surprised I am to have moved up in the rankings through the day, from 105th place in my AG for the swim, to 67th after the bike, to 46th after the run, out of what was presumably 133 starters.  Percentage wise, this is a much higher finish (top 35%) than I'm used to (IMWI - 47%, IMMT - 68%, IMLP - 3rd from last).  I'm guessing that the higher-quality athletes made other plans.

-- Other notes on the race venue/management. Pre-race: check-in was a snap, being shorter/easier than for any other of my IMs; combined with CAC in July, maybe arduous check-in procedures are a thing of the past?  The pre-race meeting was held 3 times, which was convenient; it still gave no new info, or even as much info as the very well-done videos that were posted on FB in the week preceding the race, so was not really worth my time (very much like most pre-race meetings).  It would have been nice if our athlete wrist bands allowed us in to practice swims at the reservoir for free, vs the $20 fee.  The $25 gift card for restaurants in lieu of the Friday night athlete dinner was a neat idea.

This event ran smoothly and was less complicated than you might imagine a point-to-point course being.  That said, I would have been one extremely hurting unit if I had to go back over to the high school to collect my bike and bags myself.  As it was, disassembling and packing my bike myself the next morning was a chore.  It would have been nice if morning clothes bags were brought to, and if post-race massage were held at, the finish line.  I enjoyed that the award ceremony and athlete breakfast was outdoors, particularly as we found seating in the shade; it’s nice to sit out in a beautiful space when the weather is nice, but I hope they have a plan in the event of rain. 

On racing at elevation -- I know I’m lucky it was only 86 degrees.  This area has the potential to be in the 90’s this time of year (as it was one week before the race), which probably would have been a nail in the coffin for more than a few participants, myself included.  I shared an airport shuttle ride with a guy who looked to be my age (or maybe up to 10 yrs older) and had finished his 13th iron distance race in Boulder.  He noted that his 14 h race time was a bit longer than his usual 11-12 h finishes and that he couldn’t generate any power on the bike or get his heart rate to settle down.   Other than having trouble catching my breath in the swim, and at the start of the bike, I felt mostly ok and like perceived heat was my biggest issue at the start of the run.  And the truth is I don’t think I was as well-trained for this run as I was for Wisconsin, so maybe my issues there had nothing to do with either heat or altitude.

PS - My hip felt totally fine.  Even days after the event, my hip feels totally fine.  I might be ready to work harder on my running this winter, as long as I stay off concrete paths :-)