Ironman Wales Race Report – Beat the beast!

This is it!

Whenever I travel to the British Isles for an Ironman it works out. And this time was no exception. It worked out pretty well in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales on Sept. 16th. *Attention: Blatant bragging ahead* After 9:28: of swim, bike & run I ended up in 14th place overall winning my age group in the process. *End of blatant bragging, Section # 1*



All smiles at the end!

Intro

After a loooong break following my last rather mixed Ironman race in Kona 2011 last year there were not many Ironman races left to enter in spring. Still some vacation planning we decided to add an Ironman to our UK travel itinerary that already included Edinburgh, the West Highland Way and Glasgow for September. Fellow trimates Alex and Andreas Fellmann were also signed up and had booked a cottage right next to ours so we thought the trip could be “fun”. With Ironman Wales scheduled for Sept. 16th I entered into proper training pretty late in the year. So the results at the other races I had committed to do for my club were moderately at best. And so also my confidence going into this year’s A race was not really there. When you limit your triathlon season to just five races and the last one is the big one that’s one of the priced to pay, I think. Still the key training sessions did work out well and with such good memories of my two IM races in the UK (11th at the IM UK ’08 and 33rd at IM UK ‘06) I was still confident that I’d have a good race.

When Michelle and I arrived in Pembrokeshire Thursday before the race I immediately felt at home: Greeted by the ever present Green of British rural roads aka “Grüne Tunnel”, the cha-racteristically rough surface of the roads, some decent breeze from the west and no more than 17°C it had Tim’s Tri Country written all over it. Then there was out cottage, the Little Loveston Barn. A beautifully restored farm house by Ruth and her husband Tim it was the ideal base for out four days in Wales:

Our private cottage

 Thursday also was my birthday and so after our arrival we headed out to a local pub with Alex, Andreas and two other Germany who had taken on the Iromnan Wales Adventure.

Friday
On Friday I went through the usual pre race routines: Put in the last few sessions and get familiar with the course. That meant attending the official swimming session which greeted us with pancake flat water at Tenby’s North Shore. My arms felt as if they were getting into race mode. Good! Still, teammate Alex was not all too impressed with my form on the beach *yawn*:

Before this though we had taken it on to inspect the bike course by car. Michelle recounts these three hours as follows: “He was not able to speak in complete sentences. All that came out was something like: “Wow is this sooo cool!” “Awesome”, “OMG!” Why? Because the bike course of Ironman Wales is a strong cyclists paradise and I considered myself this at that time in the car.: just about no flat section at all for 180k with some 2.300 meters of climbing in total, winds coming from the sea all the time and a road surface so rough that it subtracts at least 2kph from the speed you would ride on Germany roads. With no hill longer than 2k but a lot of them steeper than 10% (two of them with grade of 16%) I went for a last minute chance of cassettes: 12-27 instead of my usual 11-23. My best decision regarding bike equipment this year! What did I not do: Look at the run course. The bike course is what people talk about regarding IM Wales but they forget that the run course is even more of a shocker: As well as on the bike there’s not one flat section on each of the four laps. Just up and down again and again with some 500m of climbing on those dreaded 42k. That much I knew and more I thought I did not have to know more. I rather enjoy such run courses and prefer them by far over flat courses where you legs get the same kind of pounding all the time. The race briefing as well as the carbo loading dinner are two other pre race things on my itinerary when doing a race for the first time and Ironman Wales was no exception. And at the race briefing there was a little confusion concerning one of my questions: They only served Gatorade on the course and I am used to my PowerBar energy drink. So I wanted to find out whether there was an aid station for special needs on the bike and where it would be located. Yes there would be one, I was told. But where, no one knew! I would be told on race morning. Well, nothing to do about this, let’s have a look when we get there, I thought.

Saturday
A short bike ride for about an hour to wake up the legs and test the new cassette. Some last adjustments to the shifting and then on to check in. No big meals today just small quantities of food throughout the day and some pasta for dinner. Saturday was over fast and ended with my most liked pre race nutrition in the world: two pints of Strongbow cider!

Sunday - Race Day
Alarm clock went off at 3:30am. Outch! Eat 1.200 calories & keep hydrated. That’s the real work on race day: Getting in that many calories in the middle of the night. Head over to Ten-by, find parking and last checks to the bike at 5am. When the wind picked up at around 5:30am I finally got a little nervous. Why? Because yes, I think do have adequate cycling skills in the technical department. But still, navigating a Zipp 808 front wheel in 50mph winds is not an easy task. And the first part of the bike course to Angle and back is quite exposed to the westerly wind that began to pick up on race morning. But then there’s this saying: When the going get’s tough… you don’t have another choice. A very funny thing about Ironman Wales is the fact that T1 is located more than 1,3k from the swim exit and the route there takes you directly through the historical center of Tenby. And before the race all athletes set out on a march from T1 to North Beach together. Quite a sight to see! Then you deposit your extra pair of running shoes near the swim exit to put them on for this first on hard tarmac.

Swim
What am I to say? I was a little afraid. Why? Last year a lot of athletes had taken a shortcut to the first buoy. They had not swum diagonally towards the buoy but run left on shore and then headed out straight out. To prevent this, race organizers changed the swim course for 2012. But only 10 minutes before the start of the race did they announce this! We were told to swim straight ahead to a first small buoy no 150m from the beach. Only from then on we were to swim towards the first buoy. This meant a certain probability for serious carnage at that turn. Nonetheless I seeded in the second row from the front and hoped for the best. What else war there to do?

The water was calm and when the gun went off I tried not the launch in a 150m sprint and panic at the buoy. To my very surprise I was able to take that left turn without much of a problem. I received only one kick to my head >>>  black eye… no serious damage, though. Somehow relieved I took on the rest of the supposed 3,8k of swimming. When I hit the shore after the first lap after only 25:20min I suspected the swim course to be a bit short but that was all the better for a weaker swimmer like me. The second loop went by quickly and I reached the North Shore of Tenby with a new PB for an IM swim: 52:35min. To be honest: On a regular course I just can’t swim that. I might have had the form for a sub 56min swim but not any faster. So the course must have been at least 200m short. But I did not mind much!

T1
It was: Take off wetsuit, put on trainers, run up the ramp into Tenby town and to the bike. And that was a treat! Spectators were lining the streets five deep at a time and cheering. Awesome! And you did not notice that for sure running up the switchbacks to Tenby town saw the highest heart rate of the whole day. I was on my QR in one second and off to the west the next. From here on the fun would start! And it did! I really had to control my perceived effort as the numbers on my B.O.R.-powered SRM were quite high even though I did not feel like putting out more than 300 watts - at first. So I backed off a little and tried to settle into some kind of rhythm. That though proved quite difficult because even on the first loop towards An-gle it seemed rather like big gear intervals rather than a constant effort you try to maintain in an Ironman. Nonetheless I slowly made my way forward through the field. When I hit the small loop around Angle the race leaders were just heading out. I so figured that I was roughly 12min behind them. This meant I must have lost more than 5min in fourtysomething kilometers. This made me worry a bit as I had hoped not to lose more than 10min to the leaders during the whole 180km. Perhaps that was too much of wishful thinking. A few words on the bike course: The first 50km to Angle and back had some of the best scenery on any Ironman bike course I have ever seen. Little Welsh villages mixed up with some coast line and then cycling through dunes with views of white sandy beaches. Had it not been for the winds that really made me hold onto the handlebars tightly I would really have been able to enjoy this scenery:

The Dunes before Angle on the bike course.

From Pembroke the course went up north past our Little Loveston Cottage and the hills took their toll on my legs. Somehow I just did not have the power I expected to have and my wat-tage was dropping on the hills. Good thing that I had the 12-27 cassette so I could tackle the hills at a half way decent cadence. Even though I roughly maintained some 290 Watts on the hills it did not feel too good. So I tried to play tricks on my mind to get into a better mood: The weather was my kind of weather. windy and no more than 17°C with chances of rain later on in the day. If I suffered out here the others would suffer even worse. This made me overcome some doubts at the 90k mark and with higher spirits I went in to the two steep hills at Wiseman’s Bridge and Saundersfoot. There the choice for a granny gear really paid off. At the ascent after Wiseman’s Bridge I overtook two pros that were really struggling with their gears. They must have pushed a cadence of less than 40 up the 16% grade. And at the hill in Saundersfoot… well I did not really notice any hill. Because at the foot auf the hill hell broke loose: I had never expected so many spectators here but there they were shouting, clapping and again I heard a “Well done!” even though I had another 80km to go on the bike. That was awesome! And from now on I had a blast! After Saundersfoot I started to think about my special needs bag again that I had dropped off in the morning. Even at the drop off for the bags no one could tell me where exactly I would get the bag. One person said I would get it at an aid station before the end of lap one, another said there would be a special aid station at the beginning of the second loop. Just to make sure I called out “Special needs… where!” at the last aid station on lap one. To my surprise one volunteer said: “Back there!” meaning at the end of that very aid station. Even though it might have cost about 30 seconds I took the time to grab my bag and get the three bottles and 2 Bars and 5 Gels stowed away. When I went up the last hill into Tenby after that some guy shouted something like “You’re 15th. Hmmm…. too bad after all my bike ride seemed to be. Going through Tenby I spotted Michelle and Andreas in the crowd and gave them a hang loose:

There were only five more guys I overtook on the second lap. And from how I overtook those guys I think I can derive what made me feel not all too good on these undulating hills. The first pass was about 10km into the second lap on one of the few flatter sections of the course. Down in the aero bars head down tucked low I just flew past the guy. And when I looked at the splits after the race I got my suspicion confirmed: On this, the flattest section of of the course of about 15km only one athlete went faster than me. And that was Sylvain Rota, the pro who set a new bike course record here in 5:04h and outbiked all other pros by 10 minutes. So what is the answer to why this happened? It’s: “Practice what you preach!” I always tell people to train on terrain that is similar to what the race course of you’re a race will be. Did I myself do that in 2012? No, I did not. I stuck to my usual terrain and did my long sessions in the flats. That’s why my bike did not work out 100% as planned. Still I managed the only goal I had leaked before the race. When my teammates asked me about my goals for Ironman Wales I only said: “Top 10 off the bike and let’s take it from there!” And after a last pass not 500m before T2 I bagged this one: I got off the bike in 10th place. 10th was also the place my bike split of 5:21:24h ranked overall in Tenby, third fastest among all age groupers and fastest in my age group. Little did I know of this during the race, though. I did not have much of an idea in re-gards to my placing until about 30 minutes after finishing. To give a comparison just of how hard this bike course is compared to other Ironman races: My best bike split withing an Ironman is a 4:35h from Ironman Florida 2010 and this year a postet a quite decent 4:26h in a relay at Challenge Roth.

So still this beautiful bike can do it's job:



My QR cd 0.1 in racing clothes for IM Wales

 T2
But right then and there I screwed up for the first and luckily last time on race day: I removed my timing chip strap to put on those ugly compression socks. In the heat of the moment I then forgot to put the strap back on and only noticed this some 200 meters further. Just as I was just exiting T2. So I ran back, got the chip and was off. Time lost: approx. 90 sec. And during this time I had already lost two places and started the run in 12th place.

Run
“Run” is not really the right term for this thing they have you do in Tenby. It’s rather a roller coaster ride in running shoes: It goes up and down again and again. And at the top of every climb you get so slow that you think you are only just not going to make it over the hill. Luckily for every runner in 2012 the wind came from south west and the long climb was up to the north east. At the time I hit the run course the wind had really picked up and going up the hill did at times not feel like going uphill at all. With the wind you almost sailed up the hill. Michelle stood at the previously agreed upon “hot corner” where we went by four times on each of the four laps. When I went out on the first lap I just heard a “looking good!”.

Starting the run

After I had lost another two spots over the next four kilometers her comment was a little less encourageng “Run your race. Don’t look at the others!”. This made me worry again, because I really felt quite good. Still I thought: “Do I really look that bad? Already?” From where Michelle stood we headed into Tenby town again and that was another treat: Usually the smells of Coke, energy drink and sweat surround you on the run of an Ironman. Tenby could not be more different. You run through the center of a well liked weekend destination of Brits that’s full of Fish & Chips places. It smelled like fish, chips and the ever present vinegar all through town. Quite a funny thing that. And not only did a lot of spectators have a their newspaper wrapped fish & chips in hand. Quite a few even gave us a toast with a pint of lager in hand. Oh, was I longing for one of those! But before three more laps were to complete. On the second lap I was not overtaken by anyone and just about kept up the speed of lap one. Well… I was passed by one guy, but he was one lap back. Alvin, you gave me the creeps when you went by. Thanks for letting me know you were a lap back. By the end of lap two my teammate Alexandra was also heading out on to the run on her way to a second place in her age group.

I was just about to tell Michelle by the end of lap two that this was going to be a piece of cake. Nonetheless I skipped that and just trotted on. From now on only fueled by cola. Lap three then saw the most extreme mood swings: Going up the long hill felt really hard and I was getting tired, really tired. So an extra boost of Red Bull was needed and it kicked in no 3km later. Right then the wind was blowing in my face at ~30kph and rain had also set in. Nonetheless I had one of the very few runner’s highs I have ever experienced. Knowing that there were no guys within at a minute behind me I was running into the rain & wind and was on top of the world. Never before have I experienced this in an Ironman. If not for some im-mediate needs and a visit to the port-a-potty I think this could have lasted longer than just 3-4 minutes. In no time I was out on the last lap on what appeared to be a really fast aka short marathon. On my way back from the first of three turnarounds of lap four I spotted two guys running together a mere 35 seconds back. From their bib numbers I could tell that one of them was racing pro but the other one was a late entry that I could not place age group wise. So on the last downhill section I really gave it all and at the last turn around they were a minute back. With no more than two kilometers to go I was rather safe. Still the three up and down sections in Tenby town really hurt and only down the finish chute could I be sure that I would not have to sprint to the line. I looked and looked but only in the last second did I spot Michelle about 10 meters from the finish line. She had hidden behind her camera to take this pic:

There was time for hugs & kisses and then I was off. Even though I felt great I must have looked really old as the announcer presented me as the 14th athlete overall and winning my age group… 45-49. ;) My "marathon" was clocked at 3:03:54h, some 16 minutes faster than any other marathon I have ever run at an Ironman. How come? It might be that the run course was a little bit short. Still I do not mind because everyone was out there for the same distance and under the same conditions. And I was only overtaken by two guys on the marathon. That's new record and so my running form can't have been all too bad either. Seems that Uwe Widmann's plan for Kona 2011 which I copied for Wales 2012 was a good one. Thanx again, Uwe!  

Monday
The day after the race saw me going through the usual motions after an Ironman: Looking like the official representative of the Ministry of Silly Walks I limped to Carew Airfield to spend a load of money in order to just spend a lot more money come October 2013. And of course they got trophies for Alex & me:

On a side note: At the race briefing the announcer said the after the overwhelming support Ironman Wales gets from those little communities in Pembrokeshire in the second year already one thing was clear: Ironman works best in small communities. I could not agree more! The people in Pembrokeshire really got into it! I got so many “Well done!”s I can’t count them. So many smiles and so many cheers, just awesome! It’s the people that make a race. And the people in Wales did an unforgettable job. Thank you!

The Bottom line:
Ironman Wales is one hell of a ride. Just do it! But you have been be warned.


And as I did not have enough of these ups & downs in Wales Michelle and I headed right off to walking the West Highland Way in Scotland.  Just a few more times up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down ...