Rhein-Ahr Triathlon, Remagen – Man, am I done!

The Bridge at Remagen MEmorial Plate

It was the weekend of my 40^th birthday. In a way that says it all: Thee birthday party on Friday night set the tone for the rest of the weekend. This weekend also included our last league race of the season at Rhein-Ahr Triathlon in Remagen on Sunday. You might have guessed that such a party does not end at 12pm. So when I finally got home in the early hours of Saturday morning only to get up again at 8:15am to hand the location back over to the manager I was quite done. The rest of Saturday saw me in "zombie mode" going through the motions of getting back home and setting up race gear. Team mate Jörn Gabler came down Saturday night from Marburg to take the Stutzer shuttle to the race venue some 200k away. The shuttle had to leave at 5:45am on race morning. You see, everything was set for a great race. Everything? No, not everything, it was getting even better! We had agreed to meet at the race venue at 8am and at 7:51am I received a text message from our fifth athlete that he was ill and had to pull out of the race. That very early notification left the four of us a little bummed. But what could we do but our best?

It was my first time racing Rhein-Ahr-Triathlon that took us to a quite historic site: The swim exit there is right at the bridgehead of what used to be the Bridge at Remagen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludendorff_Bridge), site of a fierce battle in WW II for the last bridge still standing across the Rhine when the allied forces reached the river.

Talking about the swim exit at the bridgehead means that the swim took place in Germany’s largest river: the Rhine. With quite a lot of rain in the days leading up to the race the river was flowing quite fast. So the ferry we would jump from took us upriver for some 3,5km to accommodate for the current. We had been warned that everyone who did not stay on the shore side of the buoys would be disqualified – no quarter given! There is a lot of ship traffic on the river and thus too much danger involved. Still, swimming in a larger group of athletes lead to me fumble at navigation a bit. So when looked up when approaching the first buoy I had to veer to the right to take it on the inside. What would have not been a problem at all without a current but proved almost impossible with the river flowing at ~7kph. This lead me to neither pass the buoy on the right nor the left. I hit the buoy straight on! Right there and then I felt the current for the first time in its full force I was pushed under water and quite some difficulty grabbing the net holding the buoy to get my head out of the water again. This split second felt like ages but obviously was not enough for a panic attack to hit. Nonetheless from now on I took to the far side of the buoys with a lot of space to spare. Even if the current was much stronger in the middle of the river, that was not worth the risk. I hit the shore after only 19min of swimming and was up the ramp and at my bike first of our team. Still this was a Kona rehearsal and so I put on socks and road cycling shoes instead of no socks and triathlon cycling shoes. This took a while and so two of my team mates caught up to me when I exited T1. Jörn dropped back almost immediately due to some back issues – it was not the best day for our team that day! But Alex stayed with me for some time until we passed a group of athletes and he for whatever reason stayed behind and lost about 1:30min. I played the usual catch up game. After riding through the field at three races I knew who to look for in order to figure out my position in the field. And when I passed the usual suspects for leading the league with about 15k to go, I knew that at least the bike ride today was a good one. I put the pedal to the metal for the final 8k and reached T2 five minutes after the leader, pro athlete Markus Fachbach. Yet, his wave had started five minutes before me so that made it look even better for the bike. Nonetheless the race for the runners was now on. And as the 2^nd Ferderal League guys of the wave before us usually do drafting races they can run! And run fast! So one guy after the other passed me. I noticed only two guys competing in my league though and so was quite contend with the run, too. And even if those fast runners passed me they still had to make up 5min in order to get back what I had taken out of their lead from their head start. I was waiting for Alex to pass me on the run all the time but he did not. Even at the last turnaround he had at least a 1min deficit and so I came in first of our team. Still I ended up fading badly on the last of the three run laps but I was just dead tired. In the end Alex and I were separated by only 40sec. I finished 3^rd in our league, a good 15^th overall and 2^nd in my new AG (http://www.triteam-sinzig.de/tri2013/ergebnis2013.pdf). And yes, even though the bike time included my donning of socks and road cycling shoes I still had the fastest bike time overall (http://tpks.ws/DpiE)!

Regrettably Jörn had a bad day and Oliver’s day was even worse: For whatever reason he had to throw up three times on the bike already and almost pulled out of the race. In the end though he persevered and so the minimum number of four athletes of our team finished.

 

For me the race concluded my rest week before the last two week block of big hours before leaving for Kona on Oct. 2nd. And man, was I tired Sunday night. In bed at 9pm I was fast asleep no 5min leter!

Kona is next and so it's time to evaluate the shape I am in:

The outlook for Kona is great regarding the swim and bike. The bummer though is my right foot - not "My left Left Foot, that'S one great movie! - which aches. This being my third foot issue of the year means the inevitable: I am 40!

 

On the upward spiral (staircase) - 10th at Cologne 226 Half

The Upward Spiral (see below for deatils)

Sometimes your mind play tricks on you. The trick my mind played on my last weekend was that it wanted to get another half distance in before Kona no matter what. No matter that the one I already did was a good one at the Ironman 70.3 Euro Champs, no matter that Monday thru Saturday I would train approx. 22 hours of a solid build block. It wanted to do one and it was the last weekend that had any half distance within driving distance. So I found my right forefinger clicking through the web on Wednesday searching for a race still open. Two would be possible. One a bang for the buck race at €65 but with the swim in a pool and an out & back bike course of 12k that I would have had to do seven times. Then there was the Cologne 226 Half race and upon closer inspection even though it had the much higher late entry fee of €215 it looked better. That was because they offer to pay back your entry fee should you finish the race in under 4:15h. On a pancake flat course that looked doable. So after a six hour ride on Saturday I set up everything for a spontaneous Sunday race. One more thing at the Cologne race appealed to me: I would return to the place I had done my first triathlon some 29 years ago. Two days after my 10^th birthday I had done a triathlon there (350-25-8) together with my dad, see the certificate below for proof ;)
 





I had never been there since and wondered whether I’d recognize anything. I would not. Nothing looked remotely familiar when I arrived on race day. Luckily the race started at 12:30 and so I could sleep in an only had to leave home at 8am. Registration went through without problems and they were even able to get me into the first wave of elite competitors which only had some 70 athletes.

Swim - perfect!

The gun went off and I was too slow. Too slow to catch any group worth to speak of as I am just not one of those that can go all out for those critical 150-200m after which the speed settles down. So I was almost alone but that was not too bad. The swim venue is a lake specifically designed for rowing races and has buoys every 10m connected with a rope just about one meter below the surface. You can follow this rope all the time you never have to look up. That made for an acceptable swim time of 28min flat and no brawl to speak of at the turn around. I arrived at my bike and the race was finally on.

 

Bike - out of gas after 60k

 

 

 

I had made the swim exit in the middle of the 70 athletes of my wave and was silently hoping for bike ride that would see me enter T2 in the top 10. This plan worked quite well for the first of two laps where we passed by all of the sights Cologne has to offer including the impressive cathedral – which I did not look at once I noticed after the race. By the end of the first lap I was all too busy getting rid of about six athletes that had tried to stay with me when I overtook them at around the 30k mark. It took me some 15k and some effort to get rid of them but in the headwind section at the northern end of the course they finally gave up.

At the end of the first lap turn around I counted about six athletes in front of my. Exactly how many I could not be sure as there were some athletes of the other waves and the full distance also on the course. The second, shorter, loop of 25k was real work though. I had started the bike at an effort more fitting a race that I would have tapered for and so slowed down quite a bit on those after 65k. The wattage dropped significantly from around 290 Watts to something like250 watts by the end of the bike. Nonetheless I entered T2 in safely in the top 10 overall with a net bike time of 2:12h for the 90k. Race time when I hit the run course: 2h 44min. So I had about 1h 30min left for the half marathon if I wanted to get my entry fee back. Really it was my mind that wanted to get the race in for training purposes and not for any result. Thus the priority was to get to the finish line in under 4:25h not to fight everyone that would come up from behind. So I let a few guys pass and settled into a good rhythm at around 4:10’/km. Holding this speed would safely get me to the finish in time and I put an emphasis on good hydration all the time. Then at the end of the first of two laps it was: the spiral staircase I had been warned about before the race. You run on both sides of the Rhine river and yes somehow you have to cross it twice on every lap. At the 9k mark of every lap this takes you up this spiral staircase. Some 40 steps and a real bummer as it takes at least 15 seconds off your time for that kilometer. Still for me this thing somehow defines the development of my shape these days. Everything seems to go in an upward spiral. I had no problem at all holding the 4:15’/km and it felt like cruising at times. I got passed two more times on the second lap and thought myself to be somewhere around 12th to 15^th place. To my very surprise when I reached the finish line after a race like a Swiss watch in 1:14:29h they announced me as 10^th overall and winner of my age group. Not bad for hours 22 to 25,5 of sports activity this week. ;)

I was cold & lonely on the podium at 7:45pm.

 

The bad parts

So much for my race and the fact that I enjoyed it very much. There are though a few drawbacks if one dos this race in different parts of the field. Within my wave of only 70 athletes there did not seem to be too many drafting issues. The two waves of about 350 athletes each that followed though were a different story. As the course heads out and back on quite a few sections I was able to take a good look at some really bad drafting problems. I just hope that the marshalls – there were many of then! – took care of that problem in the right way. The other thing was that it took a long, long time for the awards ceremony to begin and there was nowhere you could get shelter and warmth or even a shower. It was only 15C yesterday and many people were very, very cold especially among the full distance athletes. No showers and no warm place for them was simply a shame!

 

Will I be back for more at this race? As a mind calmer before Kona perhaps – for any other reason – no.