IM Canada: Week 24 – Chen’s version (i.e., we’re doing an f-ing IRONMAN, and pre-race thoughts)

Posted by Chen

I lied in my last post when I said that the next time I blogged, it would be an exciting race report. I forgot that I’d have to recap week 24 also, with the exception of the race itself, since that will obviously warrant its own post (or three). I’ll just warn you right now that this post may be slightly to moderately incoherent, as my brain has been all over the place this week/weekend.

Week 24 has mostly been busy, busy, busy – between getting everything in order at work to doing laundry and packing to double checking that I packed correctly (even now, as we’ve already dropped off our T1 and T2 bags, I’m still not convinced that I have everything) to driving over a 1000 miles to get from the Bay Area to Whistler – it’s been a whirlwind week.

Passed by Mt. Shasta on our drive north

Then there’s the stress level. I feel like nerves keep coming at me in waves all week – from itty bitty waves during work and during all of the packing and traveling, to massive tidal waves thanks to a couple unsettling things we’ve experienced since arriving, starting with our practice swim in Alta Lake yesterday.

I am SO GLAD we did this practice swim, because we learned that there will likely be some pretty rough chop anytime we’re swimming southward. I’d never swum straight into chop before, so imagine my surprise when I went to sight, and instead of seeing a nice yellow buoy, I instead got a wave TO THE FACE. The chop was also making it hard to breathe, as the waves would often crash over my head and straight into my mouth, so I of course started to tell myself that there was no way I could swim 2.4 miles in this nonsense and OMG I’m not a swimmer and WHY THE HELL AM I DOING AN IRONMAN???

After freaking out internally for a minute, I just told myself to keep going and try to find a method of breathing and sighting that would work. I learned that if I just looked backwards as I breathed, I would mostly get air and not water, and that if I sighted by popping my head waaaaaaay out of the water, I would avoid waves to the face (we in our group like to refer to this as whale breaching). Both of these methods result in a swimming form that isn’t ideal, but my only goal in the swim is continuous forward motion, so it will do.

Alta Lake. Not quite the 95 degrees and sun we were prepping for over the last two months. Instead, the forecast has an 80% chance of rain and a high in the low-to-mid 60s. Different.

This buoy size will do.

The other unsettling thing that has happened since our arrival was witnessing a cyclist get hit by a car yesterday. We had just finished our short shake out ride, and Katie and I were walking back to the house after dropping her bike off for minor repairs. As we approached a busy intersection in the village, we heard some crashing and yelling and looked up to see a cyclist lying in the middle of the road. She tried to get up but couldn’t and was moaning in pain. She was immediately swarmed by concerned passers-by, and since there was nothing we could do to help, we continued on our way as we heard the sirens of an ambulance arriving at the scene.

I felt absolutely awful for the cyclist (who was likely a racer), and I couldn’t shake the incident from my mind all day. I’ve said time and time again that cycling scares the shit out of me, and witnessing incidents like this doesn’t help matters. I was already planning on riding VERY conservatively and cautiously during the race, especially given the forecasted rain, and this certainly drove that point home. I just hope the cyclist will be OK, and I need to keep reminding myself how lucky I am to be on the course tomorrow.

So, you can probably imagine the number of extreme emotions I’ve been going through over the past 7 days or so, but I don’t want to make it all sound terrible. Interspersed between bouts of stress are also bouts of genuine excitement.

I mean – we’re here! We started training for this beast 29 weeks ago (including 5 weeks of basebuilding), and we’re actually f-ing here! I couldn’t sleep last night for a couple hours, so I spent my time reading through some of my earlier blog posts, and I couldn’t help but get just a teensy bit emotional as I thought back to my first days of swimming when I couldn’t swim more than 100 yards at a time, and to my first ride of training when I thought I would actually have to bail at mile 4.

It sounds so cheesy, but this whole thing really has been quite a journey. Lots of ups; lots of downs; and lots of learning what I’m capable of.

Athlete's village

Olympians were here!

Bike course prepping at its finest. There's a good chance this info will all have been washed away by the rain overnight, but at least I'm vaguely aware of aid station and climb locations.

Everyone keeps asking what my time goal for the race is, and I keep saying that I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen, and that I just want to finish within the 17-hour cutoff. This isn’t me sandbagging – it’s the honest truth. I mean, this is a flipping Ironman, for crying out loud – anything could happen. There will be a number of things out of my control, including weather, flats, digestive issues – you name it.

The only thing I can do is to focus on the things that I can control, and the things that will give me my best chances of making it to that finish line. I can keep reminding myself that I’ve swum over 150 miles in training and that I CAN complete the swim comfortably, chop or not.

I can keep my effort “stupid easy” early on in the bike ride to ensure I have enough juice left for that final climb between miles 90-104. I can also make sure I eat around 300 calories per hour during the bike to keep my energy up and to avoid any bonking.

At the start of the run, I can make sure I don’t take it out too fast, as I am often (unwillingly) inclined to do at the start of every brick workout because I can’t control what my legs are doing. And when things get really tough, I can focus on the positives, remind myself that I’ve done the run portion 27 times before, and think about the fact that I’m on my favorite sport ever.

Mainly, I just want to make sure that I have fun out there tomorrow. I’m not doing this to place in the top X% of my age group. I’m not doing this to prove that I can come in under a certain time. I will likely only do one Ironman in my lifetime, so I want to make sure that I soak in every moment and appreciate my ability to be DOING AN IRONMAN (maybe I freak out a little every time I type or think that).

Man, this post really was a cluster. Sorry I don’t have an eloquent pre-race-thoughts soliloquy for you – this is all I got. In summary, I am all of the emotions right now, but mostly, I am ready to do this thing. Catch y'all on the flip side! 

IM Canada Week 24 Recap:

Monday: 

• PM: Running slow progression run in Golden Gate Park: 6.1 miles 50:51 (~8:20 pace)

Tuesday: 

• AM: Swimming 1600 yards, including 2 x (250 swim, 250 pull, 250 paddles) (average pace of 1:45/100yd)
• Immediately followed by stationary biking with hill intervals: 8.5 miles 30:16 (16.9mph)

Wednesday: 

• Rest (driving all day)

Thursday: 

• PM: Running part of the run course with Rachel and Travers: 4 miles (my Garmin was all wacky, so I don’t have an accurate time/pace)

Friday: 

• PM: Biking part of the bike course with the entire group: 12 miles (I disabled auto-pause in anticipation of race day, so again no accurate time/speed)

Saturday: 

• Rest (unless you count the 1.5-2 mile bike ride to T1 to drop off our gear)

Sunday: 

• Stay tuned!