My first IronMan - Ottawa September 3rd 2011

It's done, I am now an IronMan!

Thanks to David Vincent for the picture ;-)


History:

It all started in May 2004 by a small Duathlon in my home town of St-Jérôme.  Then jumping to sprint triathlon, Olympic distance and half-marathon. Then did 4 half ironman distance and one full marathon in Niagara falls.  You can find some details of those last 7 years on sportstats.ca and in my blog.

Preparation for this IronMan.

It take a lot of involvement, time and training to prepare yourself to swim, bike and run for a total of 226 km and be able to do that non-stop for more than 13 hours in my case.

This year, I prepared myself with those competitions:

• 2 half-ironman distance, the mooseman and tri-memphre, magog 
• 2 half-marathon, one in Ottawa and one in lake placid

On the training side, here's how my months and weeks looked like: January to July: I was using Endomondo to track my training.

From mid July I bought a Garmin 310XT and started tracking my trainings and competition on Garmin connect. Click to enlarge the graphics.

Last two weeks of July:

First 2 weeks of August:

Last weeks of August and first days of September including the IronMan:

Day of the event.

You always want to be rested and prepared, but going for that type of event for the first time, it's hard to get a good night sleep. So at 2 am on D-day, I could not sleep anymore. I stayed in bed up to 4, then got a small breakfast, oatmeal and a banana.  I arrived on site at 4:45 and started my fist visit or many to Porta-John.  It's funny how laxative a triathlon can be ;-)

Swim - 2 loops of 1.9km

At 6:00, my transition was ready, my special need bag, with extra shoe, sole, lunch and sugary water was on site.  At 6:30, I was on the beach and jumped into the water of Mooney's bay for the first part of the Ironman, a 3864M swim.  We had two loops around the bay to do, getting out on the beach between the

two.

Here's the playback from Garmin.  Not very precise, because I was wearing my watch on my wrist and not on my head under the cap, so GPS signal was flaky. You can click on "View Details" and playback the swim.




According to my Garmin, I did 1h23m for a pace of 2:09/100M. Not bad for me, I was a bit tired in the last 10-15 minutes.Someone was drafting me in the water for the last loop, always touching my toes... Very bugging. Looking at Sportstats.ca, you see longer time, that's because the mat, recording you chip time is located after the transition zone before you get on  the bike, so the swim time, include the transition time.

Transition #1, SWIM to BIKE

The first transition is the longest one, because you need to run from the beach to the transition zone, around 810M away. I took the time there, to stretch a bit, put a bike shirt with pockets for my food, drink a bit of "ensure".

Bike - 12 loops of 15km

Just before I started my bike, I stop for a quick pee. You don't want to be stopping to much while doing the bike, so better to get this one done ASAP.  The bike course was almost flat, but there was a couple of challenges. There was two little "bumps" where you needed to push a bit more, I used those sometimes to get standing to give a break to be bottom.  There was also the north turn around, which was slow, with many people and not much width to turn. The south turn around, near the bay, was a bit faster and the timing
mat was there. Every turn for iron distance was announced by a support person, so you knew how many loop you had left to do.



At mid point, around 90km, I stopped for a porta-john and the special need bag to refill my food bag and my main bottle of water + Gatorade + CarboPro.  starting from around that time, my left pad on my tribar, started to move down and I started to get sore on both big toes.  This is around the same time, that my wife Marie and daughter, Ariane, where on the course near the south turn around. So I decided to do a quick stop to fix my bike and while they where working in this, I stretched and massage my feet.


During those loop, we had some strong wind that picked up a bit more at the end. So in total, I stopped 4 times. Garmin got me at a total of 6:08:04 and moving time of 6:00:33, so around 8min total stop time.  This give a average moving speed of 30.3 km/h.

Transition #2, Bike to Run

This transition was a bit shorter than the first one, around 340M. I took the time again to stretch, change the shirt and drink a bit.

Run - 6 loops of 7km for 42KM

Now the fun begins, at that point of the IronMan, you begin to feel tired, but you still have hours to go.  It was quite hot when I started around 2:30 pm. My wife said she saw 32 Celsius in the car thermometer. Other said more than 40c with humidity. For sure, it fell HOT!  During past experience, I had some heat strokes and I knew the precursor signals, like headaches. I started feeling that in the first loop, but I was prepared... in my
special need bag, near the south transition point, I had a towel, soaked and cold.  So I took it and put it on my head and put my cap on top of it.  At every aid station, I was pouring fresh water on my head to keep the towel soaked.  This helped me control my temperature.

Even with this, every time my heart rate was going near or over 140, I started feeling the pain on the right side of my head, so at that point I decided to walk to get my HR below 140.  So I was watching my HR closely and keeping it under 140 by doing run-walk while keeping it between 120 and 140. The other problem I needed to watch closely was an irritation under the left foot, or more specifically Metatarsalgia. This problem started in the peak of my training.

While trying to do a 27km run a few weeks back, I started having intense pain and I had to walk from 14km and stopped at 21 limping.  This started some 3-4 weeks before my IronMan.  So there was no way I would force that feet to perform, I needed to be smart around it.

So my plan was to walk when I started feeling the pain, go slow, at around 6min/km pace.  I also had in my special need bag another pair of orthopedic sole and another pair of shoes. So I started my race with my newer shoes, DS racers, with normal sole. At around 30km, the pain started to be too intense, so I switch to the orthopedic sole and did one loop, then back to the old shoes for another loop and then orthopedic sole in my old shoes.  Switching shoes/sole, got me going up to the end, but I still needed to run/walk to manage the pain.

In the end, I completed the 42km in 5:30, with a moving average pace of 7:11/km.  

Overall, the experience was good. I need to work on some physical problem that prevents me from being 100%.

List of things to resolve and get better:

1. The feet problem
2. The lower back stiffness, check bike position
3. Heat stroke... Not sure how to tackle this one?
4. Better overall speed and time... More training!

Photos of the event

Video

You can see me crossing the finish line on youtube.