RACE REPORT: Ironman Coeur d'Alene: Part 3 - The Bike

Yeah, this race report is slow in coming together. Just been too busy since we've gotten home to sit down at the computer! But here's the bike portion...

LAP 1

There is no feeling on earth like riding through downtown Coeur d'Alene, streets lined with screaming people, cowbells clanging and horns blowing. You feel like you're doing something totally epic (which, of course, you are), and the energy is mind-blowing. Then a few turns later, you're out on this beautiful road by the lake, and you can't help but feeling euphoric at this point. I especially loved the bagpipes at the top of the hill on the first part of the course, harkening back to my Scottish roots and raising the hairs on the back of my neck. Then you're at the turn-around and ready to zoom back into town and through the crazy mob again. Overall I felt okay through here, but for some strange reason my heart rate was really elevated - 30 beats higher than it should've been for this level of effort, according to my race rehearsals.

I knew Wayne and the kids would be on the overpass leading to highway 95, but just as I was blasting up the on-ramp, I dropped my chain, luckily managing to miss getting hit by the people behind me as I came to an abrupt stop. Then I saw my lovely cheerleading daughter screaming her lungs out and my hubby smiling, and their energy sent me out onto the harder part of the course. At this point, the adrenaline of the swim had worn off, and my heart rate was still really high. I had no idea what was going on with my body. My brain panicked and remembered my swim from Friday where I had to sleep for several hours afterwards. I was worried that my body was just not recovered enough from the food poisoning to hold out for this race.

Somewhere before mile 20, I broke out in a total body sweat, even though it was still really cold outside. Now I don't sweat much in the best of circumstances - a mild sheen is all you'll see on me on the hottest days of the summer. But sweat was pouring out of me, like I had just eaten a bowl of tabasco sauce or something. Then abruptly, it was over, replaced by a crushing fatigue that had me about ready to cry. Mind you, this is on a flat part of the course, before you face the hills and the wind.

At this point, I was filled with despair - this was it. I was going to DNF at mile 20 of the bike. All of my training, all the sacrifices from my family, all of the support from everyone, it was all going to end here. I wanted to throw my bike off the side of the road and just lay down and sleep. I was wrung out. But somehow I just kept cycling. Kept turning the pedals over. I didn't even know why I was doing it, I just did. One of my goals for the race was to just stay "in the box", per Endurance Nation's racing strategy: "the box" is what you can control this moment. At this point, that's all I had. I figured I would keep biking easy until I either felt better or simply had to stop. Eventually, I did just start feeling better. The sweat had dried and the fatigue lifted, I began to feel like I might actually make it.

So this is the point in the race where you look up and see the first of the big hills on the bike course. Damn! Psychologically, I was not so ready to face this. But I remembered what I set out to do when I pre-rode the course a month back, when I had mentally prepared myself for this moment. I looked around and found the peaceful green valley off to the side of the road, letting it fill my mind with a feeling of serenity. I vowed to look for it again from the top of the hill, because I knew I'd have a gorgeous view down into the valley from up there. That was it, time to grind upwards!

The nice thing about this course is that the hills really aren't hard. No terrible grades, and at this point in the day no searing heat. It was a pleasant temperature and I just put my head down and headed on up. At the top, I had some anxiety about the descent. As I mentioned in my pre-race write-up, my race wheels felt sketchy and developed a speed wobble when I pre-rode the course. I just took it easy on the downhill and yes, I rode the brakes. Yes, people passed me flying down the hill while I gave up my free speed and braked. But it's my race darnit, and I wanted to feel safe.

Of course, I regretted that the instant the hill ended and the winds began, because I had to work harder into the wind and up the next hill than I should've, but at least I didn't crash and burn and that was something! I did hear later in the race that a couple of people had bit it crashing on the hills, so I think for myself that decision to take it easy was a good one.

The rest of the first lap was a grind into the wind. Wind, hill, wind, hill, wind, hill. The turnaround seemed to be a distant possibility that came all too slowly. My time at the turnaround had me thinking I was in for a 7-hour bike ride. Ugh! I did NOT want that. But I had underestimated how much wind there had been, because once I turned back toward town, we were flying along with a good tailwind. Nice!

LAP 2

I figured that my family would've gone back to the hotel by now - I told them they didn't have to cheer me for the whole bike course. So imagine my surprise when I saw them there at the overpass. As soon as Asa saw me, she started yelling and cheering. I got lots of appreciative comments from riders around me about her enthusiasm. That was a great way to start my second loop.

I was looking forward to going through town and out along the lake again, and it didn't disappoint. Wow, this has to be one of the world's best Ironman courses for the crowds and the views. The bagpipers were still there as well, and I thanked them as I went past. The only moment of frustration in this section was a male cyclist in a bright green jersey who would not let me pass him. I had been coming up on him for awhile, but as soon as I passed him, he didn't even wait to drop back out of the draft zone but immediately re-passed me. Then he zoomed ahead, and after a few minutes he sat up, stretched, got some nutrition, slowed down again, and I had to over-take him again. This scenario repeated itself so many times I was getting mad. Ride your pace dude! I consoled myself with the thought that after his quads blew up, I would pass him on the run (I did). Other than that though, this part of the course was highly enjoyable.

Then all that was left was The Big Grind (or so I nicknamed the 2nd half of the course). This time I knew about the wind (although it had picked up some since the first loop), and was feeling better about my wheels and my ability to ride them on the course. So all that was left was just to go head-down and get 'er done. I had a little scare at the turn-around when I started heading back to town and had a headwind. WTH??? If I was going to have to battle the wind both ways, I would lay down and cry right there! Fortunately it was short-lived on a section that curved in the other direction. As soon as the road curved back, my friend the tail-wind re-appeared and ushered us back toward town.

NUTRITION

This was the only sticky spot of the whole bike ride. My stomach was playing not-very-nice, which gave me a little frisson of fear for what was coming on the run. I felt slightly queasy on and off through most of the bike. I was very grateful that I had a solid and well-rehearsed nutrition plan. I had a 6-hour bottle of very concentrated Infinit in my Speedfil on the bike frame. It was like drinking sludge, but Infinit's ability to customize your drink formula let me dial the flavoring way way down, so it didn't taste bad at all. I had water in my Torhans 30 bottle on the front, and made use of the aid stations to grab a bottle and refill on the fly. I'd never done that before, and was happy with how easily it worked. I could grab one early, dump it in, and toss it to the side before leaving the aid station area. Slick! Other than that, I took a Bonk Breaker bar with me for 2 hours into the ride, and one more for 4 hours in. I had other fun stuff to eat like Sport Beans, but with my stomach acting up I decided to stick to a very simple plan and give it very little to have to work on digesting.

So far so good, everything I put in stayed down. I had to pee a few times so I knew my hydration was fine. I decided to stuff my arm-warmers in my back pocket and not stop for my special needs bag. That saved me a few moments of having to get off the bike.

PACING

The night before the race, I gave Wayne a piece of paper with my estimated split times - where I would come by his spot on the Hwy 95 overpass. I based this on a pretty conservative estimate, given what I was feeling like this week. I had hoped I could go faster than this, but 'twas not to be. On my sheet, I predicted that I would go past him for the last time at 7:50, and it was actually 7:49 and change. Pretty darned close. One thing I know is that I'm good at estimating what my body can do in any given circumstance. I played the bike pretty darn conservatively, but at this point I figured that was the best thing I could do to set myself up for being able to actually run the marathon. In retrospect, I'm happy with the way my bike went. I think if I'd pushed it harder, I could've looked at a DNF either on the bike, or later on the run. So although I'd like to see a faster split sometime in the future, this is what I could accomplish on this day.

RACE REPORT: Ironman Coeur d'Alene: Part 2 - The Swim

How can you describe the swim start of Ironman Coeur d'Alene to someone who hasn't been there? Two-thousand athletes, shoulder-to-shoulder. A narrow stretch of sand. Two thousand hands hovering above the buttons on their watches. Without warning, a cannon fires. Two thousand voices collectively say "Oh shit!", press the start button on their wrist. Two thousand tiny beeps emit as we start running toward the water. The word "terrified" doesn't begin to cover the emotion of the moment.

In this life, some luck gets handed to you, and some you make happen. In this swim start, the luck that got handed to me was from an experienced CdA athlete from Endurance Nation who told us about "the pole position". You see, there's this big telephone-pole-like thing sticking up from the water about halfway down the beach. Naturally, no-one wants to swim into it. So people don't like to line up behind it, and when they start swimming they give it a wide berth. I lined up right behind it.

The luck that I made happen was that I turned to the people around me and asked them if they were all in the correct section of the beach. I told them that this was the "nice people zone" and that everyone standing there was going to be kind to their neighbors during the swim. I said we would be swimming under an aura of rainbows and unicorns. I believe that when you plant an idea like that, it takes on a life of its own. The people around me were smiling, and as the "oh shit" moment arrived and we ran into the water, they really were quite nice.

I aimed right for the pole, with the intention of skimming just beside it on the left side. This is where my straight swimming skills come into play because fortunately I didn't run into it and knock myself unconscious. As predicted, other swimmers gave it a wide berth and so it was that just after the photo taken above, I found myself in a giant bubble of clear water for the first 150 or so yards of the IMCdA swim start. Not a bad way to begin!

Soon though, I saw to my right a converging mass of humanity, all of whom unfortunately seemed to be still swimming my speed. I know for a fact that almost none of them would be swimming my speed at the end of 2.4 miles. I know this because only 98 other people did just that. But the several hundred folks around me all felt that this was their pace, and so it was up to me to keep up with the blistering charade until they all petered out somewhere around the point where they said to themselves "Shit, I'm really out of breath, I ought to slow down before I expire out here in the lake!"

This was about the time that I took a hard blow to the head, Rocky Balboa style (can you imagine the water flying in slow-mo away from my swimming face?). This was also about the time that the first of the wind-inspired whitecaps reared its ugly head. Now I'm not saying that this swim was any IMSG 2012 or anything, or even as bad as IMFL when I did it in 2006, but the chop was formidable. I took in a nice big mouthful of lakewater after the headshot and boom! Panic set in just like that. Frantically I took a breaststroke. Big mistake! People in back of me, not appreciative, kept on swimming right over the top of me. Only thing to do was to go head-down, swallow the lake water, and as Dory says, keep on swimming.

After that, it was just battle-the-chop for a view of the buoy, head down and swim, battle-the-chop, head down and swim. Rinse, repeat. Fortunately, I got some big patches of clear water along the way, mixed with times where I was shoulder-to-shoulder. After we turned the 2nd buoy and headed back for shore, the waves were coming from behind us now and it almost felt like body surfing in. Swam right up to the beach, jumped out and ran through the timing gate. 29 minutes. Nice! Run back into the water and head out for round two.

The second time around was better, and worse. Better because there were far fewer people around me. Worse because the wind picked up and that meant the waves were worse. Sighting was pretty much a joke, but I could see there were bright colored swim caps in front of me so that was probably the right direction to be going. Through the entire second lap, I had two swimmers flanking me, probably pacing off of me - one off of my left shoulder and one off of my right. At first I was a bit annoyed, but then I realized that these were my guardian angels. As long as they were there, no one could run into me. That made me smile and I enjoyed the second lap with my angels in place. Wayne got this shot of me swimming with my two angels, me in the pink cap and them in green. Isn't this awesome??

By this time though we were starting to overtake the swimmers who were still on their 1st lap. These are the dangerous people: the zig-zaggers, the breast-strokers, the panicked flailers. A kayak zoomed in front of us towards someone in trouble and we almost ran into it. Halfway to the beach heading straight in and a swimmer came out of left field swimming perpendicular to our course. I have no idea where they were headed but it wasn't remotely in the right direction. We wove around the obstacle course of the first lap swimmers and with the wind (and choppy waves) at my back, I realized that the part of the day I love the most (minus the Rocky Balboa part) was rapidly coming to a close. Oh when will they start the Ironman with a 10k swim? Sigh.

That was it for me. 1:01:47, 98th person out of the water. Not as fast as I had hoped, but with the wind, waves, and mob, I was happy with that!

Then it was on to being gloriously spoiled by the race volunteers. Lay down, let them peel your wetsuit off. Someone else goes and finds your bag. One of the best things about being one of the fastest women swimmers is that the changing tent is pretty empty when you get there. I got my pick of chairs and volunteers and I got a good one. If I knew her name, I'd say a big thank you! My transition bag had exactly what I needed and no more, I went through my items just as I had practiced, although I dithered over whether or not to put on the arm warmers or not. My volunteer said "it's pretty chilly out there, better take them", Thank You O Wise Volunteer! I was very glad to have them when I got out on the course.

As I mounted my bike, I saw Asa and Wayne right at the bike exit yelling my name. Asa had made bright blue shirts that said "Team Robin, go Ironmom!" and that girl has some theatrical lungs on her so they weren't hard to miss. I was so happy to see them sending me on my way, out onto the prettiest part of the Coeur d'Alene course.

Next Up: The Bike!

The Ironman Coeur d'Alene Experience

Ah yes, it's the week after the Ironman. My legs are more or less non-functional, so I might as well sit around and blog. Yes, I'm working on writing up my race report - isn't that what everyone does on completion of an Ironman?? But first I wanted to take a little time to talk about the experience of doing this particular race - Ironman Coeur d'Alene. My friend Sharon (here with me in the world's awesomemest M-Dot shirts) has done IMAZ, and I've done IMFL, and both of us agreed that the IMCdA was simply amazing,

To get an idea of why, you have to picture coming down 10 blocks of downtown Coeur d'Alene with both sides of the street lined with cheering throngs of people - you zoom through here on the bike several times and each time it just sends your spirits soaring. You feel like you're in the Tour de France or something. Then of course there's the beautiful scenery - the lake, the rolling hills, the green valleys. Simply spectacular.

The aid stations and on-course support are also terrific. From the Mardis-Gras themed aid station on the run to the bagpipers on the hill of the bike, there was something around every corner to keep you smiling when the race got tough. People in neighborhoods sat out with boom boxes or squirt guns, dance music and entertainment along the way.

Then, the finisher's chute is downright crazy. Those downtown streets have even more people than before, and all of them are going nuts as you run the last eight blocks toward the big Ironman arch. Wow.

Of course, there are also some difficult aspects of this race. The weather in Coeur d'Alene changes by the minute. In the five days we were there, we had everything from chilly to hot, from calm to windy, and from dry to absolutely torrential rain. There was also a big lightning storm thrown in for good effect (fortunately not on race day). The lake was 53 degrees when we got there, but had warmed to the high 50's by race day (I do NOT believe it was 62 as the race officials said - they always lie about stuff like that, and I know what a 62 degree lake feels like!). So you're definitely playing roulette with the weather when you sign up, you might get a scorcher or a freezer or anything in between.

Overall, this race was quite an experience though, and I really enjoyed myself on this course. I'll write up the particulars of how it went for me personally, but I would highly recommend this Ironman to anyone who is looking for a terrific race in a gorgeous location.

Blue Lake Triathlon: Day in Pictures