Rachel's 2015 Ironman Canada race report

Posted by Rachel

After months of stalking other people’s blogs, trying to figure out what the IM Canada course is like and what the experience of a first time Ironman is like, it’s finally our turn. So I’m going to attempt to articulate to family, friends, and random internet stalkers what the experience was like for me. It’s going to be a long one, so I hope you have time (and a drink). And if you’re reading this because you’ve signed up for your first Ironman- just know that it’s different for everyone. Be prepared for anything.

There were a lot of Ironman-related logistics leading up to the race which probably aren’t that interesting to read about, so I’ll just glaze over those. I will note that Whistler is a beautiful place. Despite the clouds and scattered showers in the days leading up to the event, we were able to relax and enjoy the village, lakes, and bike paths. The day before the race, my family joined us in Whistler and we rode the ski lifts around for fun (Peak2Peak). I highly recommend this as you get time off your feet while still getting to experience the area. 

View of Whistler from the lifts

I’ll pause here to say how much I appreciate my family coming to cheer us on and help us out. So to Mom, Dad, Kristen, and Becky- words cannot express my gratitude. And to Paige, Paul, and Alison, who were also there in the cold rain cheering for us, and everyone else who supported us by watching online, you guys are wonderful. Thank you.

So without further ado… the Ironman.

Swim

The swim was a 2 loop swim in Alta Lake, which can be slightly choppy when there is wind (as there was during our practice swim on Friday) but wasn’t too bad on race day. 

The girls at Alta Lake before race day. Just prior to this, I had tried to take a photo when some man's dog jumped up right in front of my camera. The owner scolded his dog, "no photobombing!" The Canadians seem to have a good sense of humor. I digress.... back to the race report.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog (or if you know me), you know I grew up swimming. I felt fortunate to have my most “comfortable” sport first. For a while I had a goal of breaking an hour in the Ironman swim, but I decided to let that one go in exchange for swimming very easy and comfortably. I figured I would waste WAY more than a few minutes later in the race (which I did), and it just wasn’t worth the extra effort to have an ambitious swim goal of any sort.

When I got in the lake I wanted to stay to the outside of the rectangle, favoring swimming extra distance over being in the middle of hundreds or thousands of aggressive triathletes. I’ve done many open water swims before but never with more than 300 or so people at the start. I got in the water early and tried to line up on the outside around people who were saying that they swim a 1:05. However, as athletes were piling into the water, I somehow found myself in a tight crowd getting pushed toward the main swim aisle (picture getting pushed toward the stage at a concert when the headliner comes on).

My timing and positioning turned out to be a major tactical error. For the first 500+ meters of the swim, I got the shit kicked out of me. I couldn’t move and there were people everywhere, blocking me in front of me and swimming over me from behind. I got my goggles knocked off twice and had to kick and flip onto my back to put them on, and in the 5-10 seconds it took to do this everyone wanted to swim right over me. I found myself feeling thankful for all my childhood coaches who let us play water polo on Fridays because I didn't actually feel panicked in this situation. My feeling was more one of annoyance- I’m doing this sport which I absolutely love, except it’s not supposed to be a contact sport! Luckily, after the second turn (about 1 km) it had thinned out and contact afterward was much less frequent. I felt really good in the water considering the level of effort I was putting in. When we had about 1 km left I contemplated picking up the pace but decided not to, thinking to myself, “take it easy, you have a long day ahead”. Boy, was I right. I finished the swim easy feeling great and was very pleased with the time all things considered.

Official swim time 1:01:09

The volunteers in the changing tent (as well as everywhere else) were amazing. My volunteer was working quickly and basically doing everything for me- putting on my arm warmers, socks, etc. I told her, “Don’t worry, I’m not in a hurry” but she didn’t let up on getting me out of T1 as quickly as possible. On the way out of the porta potty I saw our cheering squad and grabbed my bike, and that’s when it really began.

Bike

Before the race I told myself that I would almost certainly face unexpected challenges at some point during the Ironman, and I tried to get as mentally prepared as possible for this. Of course, these challenges presented themselves during my worst sport- the bike.

In all fairness, we knew the weather report before the race. It’s just so difficult to know how to handle a condition that you have never trained in. California is drought-ridden and had beautiful 70+ sunny days all winter for our training rides, with temps creeping into the 90s for the past couple of months. We were ready for the heat they faced in 2014, no doubt about it. This year was a different story. In Whistler it was somewhere between 42 and 48 degrees with a solid bit of rain for the first 2+ hours of the bike. I didn’t have a jacket (I should have), so I just layered up a bit with regular clothes and got on the bike.

I practiced my nutrition every single week- about half my calories would be from liquid (Infiint) and the other half solid. Sometimes, things don’t go as planned. The beginning of the bike ride is rolling net downhill from Whistler to Callaghan, and it was VERY cold and rainy. I noticed that I was struggling to get my water bottle because my hands were so cold and decided to hold out on fueling until mile 13 when we began the climb, figuring I’d warm up. I was wrong. I didn’t warm up. My fingers literally did not work at all, and I couldn’t function them enough to drink and barely enough to shift gears. I feel like I have partial amnesia about this part of the race. I remember thinking the climb was not that bad compared to the Bay area hills. On the way down, I was so cold that my whole entire body was shaking. All I kept thinking about was surviving the weather while simultaneously wondering if bikes can hydroplane. At the bottom of the hill there was an aid station and I ended up pulling over/stopping to try to drink something or take in calories. My hands were so cold that even while I was stopped I could not manage to grab my water bottle. This is where Travers passed me and I saw him for only a split second. Instead of being super happy I was just confused, mostly about why he just passed right by me without stopping to check on me! I guess he was also really struggling with his gearing and braking, so no hard feelings :)

This was also the point where I saw a lot of people dropping out of the race, and I felt devastated for them. I hope they were able to get back out on the course after getting warm, or at least that they are in good health right now. As I did the rolling climb back to Whistler there was a lot of internal motivational pep-talking going on. At some point I saw our friend (and fellow blogger) Matt as he passed me and I remember telling him “my hands don’t work!” He casually replied with something along the lines of “bummer, I hope they warm up soon”. Sooo unsympathetic! 

Photo interlude- if you don’t believe me about my hands- here’s a picture of them the next day. I still have no idea what I did to myself on this ride. I knew it couldn't be good to be doing this to my body, but there was no way in hell I wasn't finishing the race as long as I was physically capable.

Cue the jokes about my Nutty Professor right hand. Try shifting gears with a balloon hand and fingers that don't bend!

After passing through Whistler we began the long undulating descent to Pemberton. I also feel like I have a lot of amnesia about this part as well. I stopped 3-4 times, including at an aid station, to try to drink something. Every single time I was unsuccessful and just could not grab onto my water bottle. My hands were getting worse instead of better. In order to fuel I had to stop and just scoop soggy Bonk Breaker out of my bento box and shove them into my mouth. Yes, it was as disgusting as it sounds. I couldn’t shift gears literally at all, so I was just cruising down the descents in a super low gear that enabled me to climb when we hit the up-rollers.

We hit special needs just after the halfway point and another great volunteer helped me out. Luckily I had packed extra solid foods in there, and since I had missed about 500 planned liquid calories I decided to pick up some of the solids. I couldn’t open the bars and waffles (of course), so I told the volunteer that my fingers weren’t working and could he please help me open the food. He was great and did everything I asked and I was off.

There are about 30 miles of flat in Pemberton with a tailwind out and headwind back (slight). It was warmer here and I got into my aero and starting pedaling and something miraculous happened here- I regained function in my hands!! I was finally shifting gears, and soon after that I was able to drink water. In hindsight, I can’t believe I rode 60 miles of an Ironman barely drinking or shifting gears. It’s absurd. I was so excited about being able to drink water that I chugged 2 full bottles and immediately regretted it- I had to pee at the following two aid stations- including waiting in line for several minutes at one. Oh well. Pemberton was a nice place, and I think with better weather it would have been absolutely beautiful. I got to see Matt, Travers, V, and Mark on the out and back (which was great) but I missed Chen and Katie while I was in the bathroom line.

After Pemberton comes the famous uphill into Whistler. There was so much anticipation coming into this, and even other bikers around me were grumbling about the impending climb. For about 14 miles, there were a few miles of uphill at a time broken up by short spurts of downhill. The first short hill was probably the steepest, but I just put it in granny gear and spun. I found myself really enjoying this section of the course. I had trained for this, and there were a lot of other triathletes around that I was able to chat with. I think I was so ecstatic to be able to shift and drink that nothing could bring me down! My watch randomly stopped at one point at mile 94.68 (it did this once during a long training ride as well) and so I was pleasantly surprised when I found out we were on mile 98 instead of 94! I’m not sure why it took me over 20 minutes to realize I wasn’t progressing according to my watch, but oh well. The hill did seem to fly by. Once we reached the top it was mild rolling uphill back into Whistler and all the people I was chatting with pulled away. They were all better flat-rolling riders (I’m relatively stronger at climbing) and I found mile 104 through the finish to be the longest part. Riding alone, I was ready to be off the bike. I tried to thank all of the spectators I saw for standing out there in the rain. And then finally, after seeing our cheering squad, I was back in the village in T2 and onto a sport I enjoy a lot more.

Official bike time 7:25:41 (15.08 mph)

Overall, I could’ve had a much better bike split. I could have dressed warmer, I could have not stopped so many times, I could have not waited in line to pee, I could have gotten one of those fancy water bottles that goes between your aerobars with a straw so that I didn’t need functioning hands to hydrate. But I am happy with my time. I am also very happy with my training- no regrets. I put in hill work every single week and found my preparation to be solid for the course. Future IM Canada participants- as for the last climb, if you’re training hard in the hills of the Bay area and you don’t go out too fast on the bike, you are 100% ready.

Run

Running is a much better sport for me than biking, but the terrifying thing about the Ironman marathon is that you just have no idea what is going to happen. I also knew that I had messed up hydration/fueling on the bike and I didn’t know what do about it for the run. I was feeling slightly nauseous as I began to run and wasn’t sure how to remedy this, so I decided to go with the “take in as many calories as possible” approach in hopes it would save my run.

The run course has two short but nasty uphills within the first couple of miles in the loop around Lost Lake, but after that is all very gentle/gradual climbs and descents. During those first few climbs I knew my heart rate was way too high/unsustainable and decided then I would settle into a pace that felt very comfortable regardless of what the numbers on my watch said. This pace ended up being 9:20ish (including time stopped at every single aid station), which seemed ok to me. As I got out onto the run course through the shaded woods out to Green Lake, I was really enjoying myself. Green Lake is stunning and there were awesome spectators lining almost the whole entire course. I was sticking to my plan of calories at every aid station and holding steady around 9:20/mile pace. I really felt better than I anticipated at this point. The out-and-back was great because I got to see all of my training buddies- Matt, Travers, Chen, Katie, and Mark- and they all looked so happy and awesome!

The run was pretty uneventful and I was just holding pace waiting for the marathon to get very difficult, which it eventually did- around mile 18. Here I really focused on just moving forward and the spectators were really uplifting. My pace got slower but not by too much- I was between 9:40 and 10:00 including still stopping to shove my face with calories at every aid station. It was this point where I felt that having about 5 years of marathon experience was really helpful. I don’t think you need to be a runner to do this by any means, but I thought that it helped my pace not drop off too much. 

After about 45 more minutes of convincing myself to just keep moving forward, and eating massive  quantities of honey and potato chips, I was finally coming up to the finish. It’s a great feeling at the fork in the path to head toward ‘finish’ instead of ‘2^nd loop’. When I had about 0.3 miles left I found my legs and ran in strong. I tried to remember what I had read in other blogs- give people space and take your time in the finisher’s chute, which I did. My family was there and I slowed to high-five and thank them, then finished the race with a huge smile.

Official run time 4:09:44 (9:31/mile)

Photo credit to Justin, who somehow got a perfectly clear screen shot from the live video feed over the internet

Official overall time 12:50:31

If you had asked me before the race if I thought I could break 13 hours I would have told you it was “highly unlikely”. Even though I knew it was a possibility during the run, I was so happy to actually see this result after 6+ months of hard training!

Post-race         

My volunteer catcher was also great, and Travers came and rescued my catcher from having to deal with me for too long.  I started violently shivering about 2 minutes after finishing. Luckily Travers had been done with his race for about 25 min and seemed to be doing just fine, so he dragged me over to the food and wrapped himself around me to keep me warm while I force-fed myself one slice of pizza. Frankly, I felt absolutely terrible. I kept standing because I didn’t want to sit, fearing I might pass out, and it ended up taking me an entire hour to eat that one slice of pizza. I staggered slowly over to my family (still holding my pizza) and my mom was concerned about my shivering, so I went to go change into dry clothes with Travers’ help while she got me a giant hot chocolate (yay). I heard the announcer tell Chen she was an Ironman while I was in the changing tent and I felt awful for missing her finish, but I was in really bad shape. Changing into dry clothes made a world of difference and I was able to cheer Katie and Mark and a bunch of others in.

The next day we woke up and got our finisher’s gear. Most of us had already decided this is our only IM, so we figured we might as well get the swag. 

We did it! 

The best training buddies and crew to celebrate with!

Besides my weird hand, really sore legs, and having issues breathing deeply for a day (lung/chest muscle pain), the recovery is going fine. It’s now Tuesday and all three of those ailments are improving from yesterday. We even went on a bike ride in Vancouver (sort of). I’ll give my final thoughts about why I will not do another Ironman in a separate post, but I’m glad I had the experience and an awesome crew of people to share it with!

Went for a casual 5 mph rental bike ride in Vancouver with our race numbers still on our helmets

But this bike ride was NOT a training ride :)

I realize this post is really long and it’s all about me. There’s nothing I can really do about the latter- the Ironman is a very personal experience. You’re inside your own head for hours, constantly evaluating and adapting. It’s quite an experience and I’m looking forward to recovering and not having regimented training for the rest of 2015. Thanks again for all the support from everyone, near and far. It’s time for my two week vacation!