Ironman Wisconsin 2010

Where to begin???

After getting into triathlon late in the season last year, I decided to go big and sign up for IMWI 2010 - my plan was to volunteer at IMWI '09 to ensure I would get a slot.  Plan was going well until the neighborhood gas explosion that badly damaged my house on 09/12/09.

Though that event stopped my trip to Madison in '09, I still registered for the race later that fall, and pressed ahead.  To finish IMWI exactly one year after the fire was a wonderful way to bring this past 12 months full circle!

I had ambitious plans to dedicate massive amounts of time to training for this race, but some major life events happened - dealing with the house fire aftermath took over 6 months to settle, work has been busier than normal, and I met a wonderful partner this past spring - a woman I love very much, and am blessed to have in my life today.

So, my priorities shifted accordingly, and Ironman training wasn't the end-all-&-be-all of my life.  That's not only OK, it's how it should be - maintaining proper balance in life is ever important.

Yeah, so the training... I didn't want to admit this until I actually finished the race, but - truth be told - I didn't train much at all (relatively) for this thing.  No coaching, and in fact, no training plan whatsoever.  I've never been much for training plans; after all, I do all this stuff for fun, right?!?  I'm blessed that I can get away with this plan of no-plan given my current level of fitness and my own self-discipline - sure, I know I'll never set any course records or do my super-best-possible, but that's OK right now.

I simply swam, biked, and ran when I had time for each, and fit in long runs & rides where I could.

No surprise then that my overall prep in all three disciplines was lacking when compared the weekly training hours of any intermediate or advanced IM training plan.  Run training was OK, but nothing stellar (only two 20-mile runs all year - averaged well under 30 miles/week for the season).  Bike training was a single century ride in late April, one 80-mile day in July, and nothing even close to that otherwise - I had just two other weeks all season when I rode more than 45 miles on the bike.  But my biggest concern was still the swim - I went over one mile in open-water only twice (one 1.5, and one 1.2), and went 2 miles in the pool also only twice.  And no true "bricks" at all - those are when you do training events back-to-back, like a bike ride followed immediately by a run.

My saving grace was that I was very consistent at regularly working out - though my total hours & miles weren't impressive, I often did 2 or 3 workouts a day, and worked to balance intensity for my weak areas versus available time.

Still, even after admitting all of that, there was never a doubt in my mind that I would complete the Ironman course within the 17-hour requirement.  But I truly had no idea how I would fare time-wise once I tried to combine a 2.4 mile open-water swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run all in one day.  I was secretly hoping I'd be able to pull it off in 14 hours, but I didn't ever share that with anyone because I didn't have the training experience to give me any reliable perspective.

Michelin came along on the trip with me and provided fantastic support throughout - thank you, baby!!!  This whole experience was made so much better with her being a huge part of it :)

We arrived in the Madtown area Thursday afternoon, checked into the hotel, and then I hit the Expo for Athlete Check-In.  The expo was surprisingly lame - I expected a monster expo, and this was really small and unimpressive.  Oh well - I wasn't there to shop or ogle, so no big deal.  Check-In went fast & smooth, and then back to the hotel.  We stayed in Middleton, which worked out fine (~20 min drive), but it would've been great to be walking distance from the Monona Terrace - unfortunately, that also equates to being hideously expensive.  So, plusses & minuses either way...

Friday was very relaxed - just packed up my 5 race-day bags, final prep on the bike, and a quick 30-min run.

The 5 bags:
1.) Swim-to-bike transition (T1) - Bike helmet, shoes, sunglasses, race belt, plus some other stuff
2.) Bike-to-run transition (T2) - running shoes, visor, a few other things
3.) Bike course "special needs" (SN) bag - spare fuel bottle to swap out halfway through the course, and some other emergency items (tools & fuel)
4.) Run course SN bag - emergency-only stuff (can of Red Bull:), l/s shirt, etc)
5.) Morning bag - for my street clothes before/after the race

For those of you who may be curious what I specifically did for race-day nutrition, what I carried on the bike/run, packed in my transition/SN bags, and more nit-noid stuff like that - drop me a line, and I'll be happy to share more details.

Back to the Terrace Friday night for the "mandatory" Athlete Pre-Race Briefing.  Nothing really useful there - just a regurgitation of the Athlete Info Guide we all had.  Michelin & I didn't do the fancy Friday night dinner event before the race briefing, and no regrets there - you'll get your fill of IM hysteria that weekend, so I recommend you enjoy that night away from all the hoopla.

Back to the Terrace Saturday morning to drop off the bike, and the 2 T-bags.   Wandered around the expo a bit more, but spent most of the day just trying to stay relaxed.

Slept pretty well Saturday night - a good 6 hours, which isn't bad for a race like this!  Up at 3:00 am - shower, breakfast, final packup, and then jumped on the 4 am shuttle bus to the Terrace.  Transition opened at 5:00 am, and I wanted to be there for it.  Arrived a little early, so I grabbed a coffee at Starbucks and just enjoyed the calm, cool, and dark morning - it was a really neat pre-race energy building out there!

Got body-marked right at 5, dropped off the 2 SN bags, and put fuel bottles on my bike in the Transition Area (TA) - all done before most of the other folks arrived.  Then just went in the Terrace, and relaxed for a while before the race - I nursed a Powerade after finishing my coffee.  Michelin found me in the Terrace as I was waiting - she's amazingly good at being in the right place at the right time ;)  I love you, sweetness!  Here I am waiting in the Terrace:

I put on my wetsuit at ~6:20, and headed down the Terrace's east Helix to the swim start area.  Dropped off my morning bag there, and headed to the water...

I was standing out in the water at 6:40 - the energy & vibe was incredible - lots of folks were out warming up, but I didn't feel like jumping out there quite yet.  Water was 68 degrees and calm - absolutely perfect conditions.  The announcers kept telling us to head out further to make room, so I swam out with a herd of others towards the first red buoy (upper right in pic below):

The small group of professionals started earlier than the rest of us regular age-groupers - they started at 6:50.  The rest of us (2700+ total racers) all start the race at 7:00 am.  Ironman swim starts are a mass start - no matter where you are in that huge starting gaggle, everyone's chip time starts when the cannon (yes, a cannon!) goes off at 7 am.

So this is where it got interesting... a growing group of us were right at that corner buoy.  You see, I was under the impression that the course distance included that space between the shoreline and that first buoy, but that wasn't the case - and that finally became obvious to me at that point.  Yet, even then, I still wasn't really putting 2-&-2 together - I was actually in a primo starting point - right at the "start" buoy itself, so I had a straight-shot along the buoys lined up in front of me.  Sounds ideal, eh?

Well, the problem is that I'm NOT a strong swimmer, so that was in fact a bad spot for me to be in (more on that in a moment).  By the time I realized this, we were all packed in the water so tightly, I couldn't move out of the way.  Given the fact that I'm not a fast swimmer, I would've more ideally been further back and/or closer to the shoreline to start.

The videos below should help give some perspective on what I'm talking about - these are two videos I found on YouTube of the race start that morning.  Bear in mind, this is ~2700 people all going at once!  In the videos, I am near the front of that farthest end of the race gaggle as you see it - you can see the line of racers was packed thick all the way from the shoreline out to that first buoy - absolutely NUTS!





The entire first loop of the swim was constant contact with at least one other racer - it was insane!  A total wrestling match out there - grabbing, pulling, pushing, kicking...  My sprained wrist took a hard kick that really hurt the rest of the swim & bike.  My goggles got completely kicked off my face twice, and my nose plug was a very early casualty - it was gone right away (should have put a string on it!).  I was petrified my Garmin watch was going to get kicked off my wrist - mercifully, it didn't, but I will never again wear it during the swim portion of any race!

Since I was literally at the front of the pack with the fast racers, they all made quick work of trampling right over me, and it was all I could do to keep up with the ensuing "washing machine" as best as I could.  It was chaos out there, but once I got over the initial shock of how nutty it was actually going to be, I started to like it!  As they say in NASCAR: Rubbin's racin', and I ended up doing just fine holding my own around the course.

Around the first turn buoy (upper left in pic above), all racers traditionally yell Moooooo! as they go around the buoy - it was pretty funny listening to everyone as you pushed around that turn :)  The second loop was a little bit mellower, but not much.  All the same, I was very happy to finish the 2.4 mile swim and get out of that mess!

To give you an idea of what that "washing machine" is like, here's a good video :)  Though this is a parody, that is exactly what these IM swims feel like!



T1 went fine - I came out of the water not too wobbly, and the wetsuit strippers helped me out of the suit.  Ran back up the Terrace helix to the TA, swapped swim gear for bike gear, and headed out.

Here's a pic of the bike TA at the Terrace that morning...

I realized I needed to pee, so I bee-lined to a porta-potty on the way to my bike.  Two problems there... One, IMWI makes you wear your bike shoes out of the TA - bike shoe cleats and wet plastic porta-potty floors make one helluva slippery combo - I almost bit it hard blasting out of the porta-potty - not cool!  Two, in my great haste to pee, I obliviously ran right past the sunscreen-slathering volunteers - HUGE MISTAKE!!!

Grabbed my bike in TA, and headed to the mount line.  On the bike, and down the opposite helix (woot!) and off on the 112 mile course!

My plan was to be very conservative on the bike course overall - the bike will make or break your IM race...  Go too hard, and you won't have enough left in the tank for the run.  Also, you take care of your nutrition foundation for the day while on the bike - take in enough calories to keep you going just right on the bike itself, and also prepare you for the run.  In 140.6 races, nutrition is indeed the 4th event.  Taking in either too many or too little calories and hydration can both be equally crippling - it's a very fine line to walk for each individual athlete, and requires a well-prepared & tested plan ahead of time.  I won't bore you with details of my own plan here, but I'm happy to answer any questions y'all may have about what I did - my nutrition plan worked very well, I was 100% pleased with it.

IMWI is widely regarded to have the overall most challenging bike course of all IM races - this is because of the hills - while they admittedly ain't mountains, some of them are damn steep, and there are lots of them - you seem to be going up or down almost the entire course.  It was constant work to ensure you stayed in a proper gear on the bike that a.) maintains your desired speed & pace, but b.) doesn't spike your heart-rate - the key to a great IM bike leg is steady consistency with regard to your power output.

I don't train or race using heart-rate data or power data, so I base my pacing on speed & pedal cadence (that data displays on my Garmin watch).  Honestly though, that's just a fancy way of saying I basically wing it ;)  I hoped to average 17 mph, and ended up doing better than that overall, and felt pretty darn good throughout the entire bike portion.  But a few issues did plague me out there:

1.) My right wrist was sprained from a bad crash at race earlier in the season, and it was re-sprained during the swim.  It hurt like hell on the bike since it was my primary shifting hand - on this IMWI course, you are constantly shifting gears, so I kept aggravating the sprain.  Annoying, but not crippling.

2.) My neck was completely jacked up somehow from the swim.  Tucking in the aero position on the bike was brutal for the first 30 miles or so - I couldn't turn my head at all to the left, and that freaked me out.  Eventually, I just got used to it - what else can you do, after all?

3.) I got stung THREE effin' times by bees!!!  On the first loop of the course, one went in a small vent on my helmet and stung my forehead.  Then, on the second loop - at the very same friggin' spot on the course! - another one got caught in the top of my sunglass frame, and stung my left eyebrow - that one swelled up much worse, and my eye was burning & watering bad for a while there.  Finally, on the lollipop leg back to the Terrace, one stung my torso as I tried to flick him off my jersey.  Lovely.

4.) I got absolutely fried in that oppressively glaring sun over those 6+ hours on the bike.  Ouch!

In case I forget to mention this later, the volunteers & folks out cheering the racers all day were ALL nothing short of phenomenal.  There were over 3000 volunteers, and they made the entire race event -- from check-in on Thursday through SN bag pick-up on Monday morning -- a truly unbelievable experience.  Mad props to all of the wonderful volunteers.  And huge thanks to all of the folks who cheered the racers on the bike & run courses - absolutely amazing.

The hills of the IMWI bike course look like the Tour de France when it comes to crowd support - check out some of the crazy folks in these pictures (link borrowed from a fellow Slowtwitcher).  I busted out laughing at some of the nutty stuff I saw out there, and that was exactly what I needed on those ass-kicking climbs - too funny!

Link to IMWI bike course pics (slideshow will automatically begin playing)

Wrapped up the bike course feeling good with a final climb back up the helix at the Terrace, hit dismount, dropped off the bike, and booked into the TA for my run bag.  Realized I was crazy sunburned, so I let the sunscreen volunteers slather me up this time!

At this point, I still have not looked a race clock at all, and my Garmin was not set up to display time of day, or elapsed race time - that was intentional - I didn't want any time-related pressures to develop over the course of the day.  I knew I had done well so far, and I knew I was going to finish the race overall, so I was all smiles heading out on the 26.2 mile marathon - the final event!

The smiles didn't last too long - the run hurt.  Well, of course it hurt!  But it hurt worse than I anticipated given how good I felt after the swim & bike.  I disparagingly lapsed into the ol' run/walk IM shuffle strategy almost immediately.  So, a few thoughts there...

1.) I knew I had a safe amount in the tank, but I didn't know how much.  More (hell, any!!) brick training would've helped out there.  That being said, I played it super conservatively - the last thing I wanted to do was get cocky on the run and blow up so hard that I couldn't finish the race.  Though that's never happened to me in other triathlons, it's certainly not uncommon!  I came too damn far to DNF the race during the run - NO way I was going to let that happen.  If that meant I take it all slow & easy, then so be it...

2.) The IM run is almost ALL mental - it's a battle between your body screaming to shut down, and your head fighting off that urge.  I gave in to my whiny body a lot more than I should have, but hindsight's 20/20, so that's easy for me to say now.  Though I never ever did stop moving forward during the run, I admittedly walked a lot when I could've darn well been running.  That was just me losing the mental battle every now & then.  Sometimes I walked because I was being a wussy, sometimes I walked just to take in the sights & interact with the crowd and other racers, and sometimes I walked because I simply couldn't run.  But I'd always start running again soon - it wasn't fast, but at that point, you'll take whatever you can get! ;)

3.) The first half of the run was late afternoon when the sun & high temps (upper 70s) were at their worst - it was rough out there.  I was so crusted over with salt all over my body, I began chafing badly - both armpits were burning like hell from the salt & friction, but I finally noticed I could get a handful of Vaseline at the aid stations, and I went to town with it - oh how I love thee, mighty Vaseline!  Much better after that.  The second half of the run was more tolerable as the sun got lower & temps began dropping.

4.) The Aid Stations on the run course were fantastic - it was like a wonderful buffet at each & every mile!

5.) While walking at various points, I met a few other racers involved with Racing For Recovery (I was wearing the R4R race kit top) - it was motivating to talk with each of them.  It was a good reminder that though I wasn't feeling exactly tip-top on that run, it sure as hell beat being drunk!  And chatted with any other random racers I happened to be walking with - everyone has a cool story of how they arrived at doing an IM race - great stuff!

I ran in the last two miles (that stretch of State Street was INSANE with awesome crowd support!!!), and then full-on sprinted hard for the final 0.2 mile - passed 6 people in that last stretch and came across the finish line at max blast!  I was so light-headed from that sudden burst of energy, I didn't even hear good ol' Mike Reilly call out "Chris Halloran - YOU are an IRONMAN!!!" as I crossed the line.  No biggie - just was thrilled to finally be done!

Michelin met me at the finish, and I was a total mess - this pic sums it up perfectly - that's me trying to smile - lots of emotions & adrenaline going wild at this point, muscles suddenly & violently cramping, and my left eye is still swollen from that damn bee...

Even here, I still have not looked at a race clock yet - during my finish-line mad dash, my entire focus was to not fall on my face as I sprinted in - I blocked everything else out.  I was hoping I was somewhere close the 14-hour mark, but I couldn't see a race clock from where I was in this picture, and didn't have the energy to go look for one - the finish-line area was a total madhouse.  Michelin helped me inside the Terrace where I struggled to get out of some of that nasty kit - I wore that same kit (top & shorts) all day, and I was one stinky, sticky, sweaty, salty, and just plain gross hombre!  At some point while changing, I glanced at a wall clock in the Terrace and noticed it said 8:06.  WTF?!?  I asked Michelin if that time was right - she just smiled :)  It was only then that I realized I came in under 13 hours - given my overall weak base of training (and that trainwreck of a run!), I never dreamed I'd get under 13 hours at this first 140.6 -- I was elated then, and still am now!

My final results here

Will I ever do another 140.6?  I'd love to someday, although I think I told Michelin that night in the Terrace, Never again!!!  But I'd like to do it with a coach next time - I now know I could easily go sub-12 with proper training, and I think I could do much better than that.  I don't think I'll ever Kona-qual (KQ), but it would be fun to get sub-11, and I don't believe that's out of reach for me.  Someday!

Definitely no 140.6 in 2011 for me though, and it may well be several years before I do another one.  And that's perfectly OK - Ironman and other 140.6 races will always be there when I am ready again.

For those of you considering getting into triathlon, do it!  It's SUCH an amazing community of people, and if you ever decide to do an Ironman event, it's a powerful experience you won't ever forget - and I mean that in a good way :)

A work in progress - always & forever...