Plan B for a B race – turn it into an A race
The report title refers to my initial race strategy for this race to be a ‘training’ race for IMUK – race hard until half marathon point and then walk/jog into the finish. The Ironman in Bolton was less than 4 weeks away and racing two full distance events so close is never the wisest thing to do.
So, why Austria? Austria is one of the most popular races on the calendar and you have to enter a full year ahead to guarantee a place. So, planning a year ahead I wanted a race which gave me a good shot at getting a sub-10 hour time and may be even fluking a Kona slot – the last qualifying slot in 2009 rolled down to 10 hours 12 minutes, a time I thought I was capable of. A quick note here about how Kona slots are allocated: each official Ironman race gets a number of “slots” (Austria gets 50). These are then allocated to each age group in proportion to the number of competitors in it. So, in my age group there are normally 5 slots which go to the first 5 who finish and who want to take their slot. Of course, not everyone wants to go to Kona and some of the top guys may have already qualified at an earlier race. If any of the top 5 doesn’t want to take their slot, then there allocation is offered to 6th. If in turn, they don’t want the slot, then it gets offered to 7th and so on until all slots are accepted. This process is called “roll down”. It’s not unknown for this process to roll down quite a way, so it’s always worth going along to the Kona allocation – take note Jeff Fidler!!
Anyway, as it turned out I managed to get my “sub 10” at the Cologne226 race in September so the only other box to tick was to get that highly prized Kona slot. Two things then happened to change my Kona strategy. Firstly, it became apparent that the 2009 Austria Kona slot allocation time was a bit of a freak, as the time needed to qualify in 2010 was 9 hours 28 minutes. And secondly, the allocation for IMUK at Bolton was increased from 30 to 50 meaning in Male 45-49, we now got 5 slots. IMUK as a race is not as competitive as Austria with half the number of competitors and the bike course is the hardest of the official Ironman races, which would play to my strength of being a skinny decent cyclist.
The only problem was that IMUK was only 4 weeks after IM Austria, which is far too short a period to race hard at Austria, recover and train-up again. Also, with recurring Achilles Tendons problems, a hard road marathon was possibly going to do them untold damage. But, with a bit of encouragement from Jeff Fidler and a much improved chance of Kona qualification at Bolton, I decided to enter Bolton and use Austria as a big training day but only really race the first half of the marathon.
Anyway, enough of the boring background, on with the ‘interesting’ stuff – the race itself.
The setting for the race, around Klagenfurt on the Austrian/Slovenian border has to be one of the most beautiful of the iron distance races out there. The lake has got that turquoise hue you get with glacial lakes. The mountain range (Karawanken) which separates the two countries is a stunning back drop to the whole area and the rolling super-green countryside is chocolate box perfect. The pre-race atmosphere on the days before the race around the lakeside, expo-area, registration and pasta party was tingling and this is where the first cracks started to appear in my “this is only a training race” strategy. How could I come all this way and be part of such a massive event and treat is as a B race. A drive round the bike course made me wonder about how fast this reportedly super-fast race was. It certainly wasn’t flat but the kissable super smooth tarmac and race day forecast of a virtually windless day encouraged me that a bike PB may be on the cards.
Swim
Wow – 2800 triathletes all stood on a sandy beach waiting for start – if this doesn’t get the adrenalin going nothing will. The pros were already in the water at 6.50am and were happily treading water at their start line 100m away. Our start line was the usual 50m behind them but we were still on the beach at 6.59am. With 60 seconds to go, they drop the tape that is stopping us getting in the water and we start to swim to the line. I had been tipped off about this beforehand and basically they start the race when the first age groupers get to the start line, so you don’t hang around. At this point I could see the usefulness of Mark Hudson’s short interval training. The ability to go hard for 50m (in 45 seconds) recover (15 seconds) and then race put me in a great position to start the race in the right place. I guess there were still people on the beach 50m behind the start line when the gun went.
The water temperature was a blissful 24 degrees – Fraser knows my aversion to cold water swimming, so when the worst of the ‘fisticuffs’ started to happen with other swimmers, I kept telling myself I’d rather have a warm water swim/fight with 2800 other swimmers than a cold water solo swim. And it was a very physical swim – by far the worst I have encountered and I’ve probably done about 30 open water mass start triathlons over the years. I was expecting a rough start and it didn’t really ease until 1000m. Sighting was easy on this first leg as I’d spotted the turn around buoy from the beach and had lined up to ensure the peak of the large pyramid shape mountain in the distance was directly in line. So, I just swam ‘to the mountain top’.
Alas, sighting got much harder after the 90 degrees turn. The organisers had decided that the second turn buoy instead of being bright orange like the first one, should be dark blue in colour. Against a brown/green background of lakeside woodland, this was impossible to pick out so I just went with the flow of everyone else and luckily it turned out okay. The final 90 degree turn had us heading back to lakeside and with the sun now head-on, and no obvious distance marker, I again followed the flow. By this time the kicks and punches were becoming less frequent and I could actually start to concentrate on some swim technique. No, I didn’t try any of Marks’ backstroke leg drills but his high elbow with ‘lazy’ hand recovery, seemed to be a good way to ease the tension of the physical encounters and try and give the shoulder some brief respite from the work of pulling.
Anyway, my technique concentration was broken as we approached the lake side and we had to funnel into the really “fun” part of the swim. The last 900m is down a tree lined channel no more than 10 metres wide. The field which up to this time was probably spread 50m wide suddenly got very intimate again. If I thought the start was physical, then this was a step up again. The good part was that with so many people packed in together, we inevitably created our own little (or big) current with the flow of water (think of swimming very close behind Robin, Rouge and Nick in arrow formation!). Twice I got kicked in the goggles (I wouldn’t mind but they were brand new – well 1 swim old – remember the golden rule, never try anything new on race day) but thankfully they remained on my head.
More than a couple of times I nearly ‘lost it’ with people hitting me but realised that no one was doing it on purpose, it was just a factor of such a big field. A little tip here to anyone planning to do open water races – get used to swimming in groups. Head for Boundary Park or Salford and purposefully get amongst other swimmers – it’s not nice but get used to the physical contact at a training swim where you can at least stop if it gets too rough. But it will mean you will be much better prepared to deal with rough starts and the bunching that happens at turns on race day.
Anyway, I survived the swim in an official race time of 68:01over the timing mat – though I’m booking it down as a 67’ out of the water!
T1
Bizarrely the swim ends in the grounds of a hotel and you actually run through its service underpass and on to a road to the bike park. It’s about 400 m from swim exit to bike park so lots of time to have a go at bare foot running that lots of people seem to be evangelising about these days. Collect my bike wear bag stuffed full of wind & waterproofs (big lesson learned from Bala) but with the sun well up already and 75 degrees forecast I stuck with just my trisuit. Into the mandatory changing tent, and straight out again as it was full, I found a little corner space to fumble with wetsuit and pointy aero hat. Bike collected and zig-zagging thro a maze like transition area I was on my bike in 5:02
Bike
The bike course though fast is certainly not flat but the hills are the good type that they are steep on the way up (max 11%) but nice and gradual on the way back down so you get the ‘pay back’ over a much longer distance.
I took the first of the two loops of 56 miles pretty steady keeping a close eye on my heart rate. From long rides with my power meter I knew that to maintain an even sustainable effort then my heart rate should start at about 130 beats per minute and gradually rise to 145 bpm. This initial 130bpm feels very easy indeed and I was being overtaken by more people than I was overtaking. What was also becoming quite obvious was that some quite big groups were beginning to form which were certainly not draft legal. To be fair I think riders were trying to stay legal but with so many on the course at the same time, it is difficult for everybody to keep the 10m. This got quite frustrating as once the head of group got ahead of me I had to soft pedal and even freewheel for spells to allow the group to pass and for me to drop off the necessary 10m. Even at this distance, I could feel the ‘pull’ of the peloton and found it easy to stay ‘off the back’. I then had the problem of either riding well within myself to the detriment of my race, or make a big effort to get ahead of the group and stay there. Luckily, at this point in the race the rolling hills started and these groups started to splinter which made it easy to make progress.
There was great support in the villages and on the hills – nowhere near as good as the Solerberg at Challenge Roth – but inspiring all the same. The worst climb comes after 40km and is about 1.5 miles long and has a max gradient of 11% (averages about 6%). The crowd really lift you on this one but I was holding back as I was still very conscious of riding an even effort and trying to keep the ‘spikes’ of output to a minimum. So, I averaged a pedestrian 9 mph up the climb and dropped quite a few places but caught most of these athletes on the two fantastic descents that followed the second of which is a 7 mile steady drop where your speed really shoots back up again.
Back to the halfway point just next to the transition area in 2 hours 28 mins, and now I thought a sub 5 hour ride would be on the cards. So, back out along lakeside I now settled into race mode as the distance and speed was now starting to feel like a race effort after the relatively comfortable start. Two other guys and I got into a draft legal pace –line (all at 10 metres but riding at the same pace) and this helps a great deal as you chop and change at the front depending if you are going through a good or bad patch. We started to pass quite a few riders and mini-pelotons and I felt great knowing that I had probably got my pacing strategy right.
There were plenty of feed stations (6 per lap) but they were unevenly spaced and a couple of times I ran dry of fluid and started to feel low on fuel but just about got away with it. Back on the long descent back to town was the only time I went above sensible race pace. So keen was I to get a sub 5 hour bike and still thinking I was going to walk/jog the second half of the marathon I finally ‘put the hammer’ down recording my fastest 5 mile split of 27.5mph (it was downhill!). But it was not to be, and I ended up with 5 hours 2 minutes which I was still over the moon with.
T2
Pretty straightforward, allowing myself a fresh change of socks whilst chatting to the young boy helper of about 13 who already had ambitions of doing the race when he was 18! Crikey it took me until I was 44 and with 20 years of competitive sport to think I could do an Ironman and here’s a lad of 13 who already has it in his sights.
Run
With such big crowds feeding the adrenalin, it was easy to set off at a decent, if too fast a pace (4.40/km) and despite feeling comfortable I knew this was unsustainable so I let the average pace slowly rise to 4.50’s. I felt remarkably good at this stage considering the run training I’d done but knew that the wheels would eventually fall off at some point – I just wanted to get to the half way point in 1hr 45 and then I’d be happy and take it easy thereafter. It was at this stage I started looking at the overall race time and a sub 10 could be possible if I ran a 3’42 marathon. If I went through the first half in 1’45 then a second half of just under 2 hours was all I needed. At every kilometre mark I’d start going through these mental calculations about what I would have to do to go sub 10. It’s a great way to distract you from the pain and the time seems to pass much quicker.
The sun was now making its presence felt and I was making full use of the very regular feed stations (every 2km) – water, cold sponges, gels, iso-drinks – and I certainly got my moneys worth! 2 laps of 21km take you along the lake and then into the town of Klagenfurt itself with lots of support along most of the route. In the centre of a square in the town they rig up a bell suspended about 9 feet above the pavement. Every time the bell gets rung by a competitor a Euro gets contributed to a local charity. I did my bit but the leaping and landing is near cramp inducing so you can pay a personal price for the charity. On the second lap I nearly paid a bigger price as a guy coming in the opposite direction jumped at the same time as me and we nearly collided in mid air. Luckily, we just suffered a glancing blow but it could have been a lot worse and a bizarre way to end a race.
Anyway, my race calculations continued until 30km where not only a sub 10 was on the cards but a PB entered my thoughts (it was previously at 9’53 from Cologne 226 last year).
The run by this time had entered what I call my tunnel of pain. Every step hurts, the outside world starts to be cut off because all your conscious effort needs to be preserved for telling your body and legs to keep moving forward. It’s at this time I started speaking and even shouting at myself everytime I saw my pace drop below 5min/km pace. At one point I shouted out so loud that the guy 10 metres in front thought I was shouting at him – I apologised when I got to him but I don’t think he understood.
So the final half hour is all a bit of a blur but my pain seemed to subside when we got to the point where you left the course and turned into the final barriered off 400m. For the first time in hours I finally felt the pleasure of the race and the achievement of getting to that blasted finish line. The stands either side of the run-in were packed and with the music blaring and the commentator shouting his encouragement it was the easiest 100m of the race. Up the ramp and over the finish line in 9:47:05. And the relief and emotion and exhaustion of finishing a momentous and stupid race all hit me at the same time. From a sprightly final km of 4’33”, within seconds I could hardly walk. And in common with the other 3 ironmen races I have done, I started to get far too emotional for a 46 year old man.
I was obviously in a bad way because though I said I was okay and could get to the finish tent on my own, one of the helpers insisted in walking me there. With the usual post race feeding, showers and massage it capped a wonderfully organised race. And as the pain subsided I started to reflect on what I had done and whether it was sensible with IMUK only 4 weeks away, but I may never have an opportunity to race that fast again so I say take your opportunities while you can.
All I have to do is race just as well as that at Bolton and I may have a decent chance of that Kona slot after all.
Thanks to Warren for this indepth insight into the mind and body of an Ironman.
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