Ironman Austria Detailed Race Report

Picture from the pasta party, had to include it in the race report was quite impressive.

Ironman Austria Race Report July 8 2007- Klagenfurt

Weather: Very pleasant, around 70’s climbed to high 80’s at one point. Sunny all day with slight cloud coverage in the afternoon.

Water temperature: felt like lower 70’s

Going into the race I was:

- Undertrained regarding hills.
- Felt really strong biomechanically (thanks to all the great weight training that my coach Dominick made me do.)
- 20 pounds overweight than what I should have been ( 150 pounds)
- A bit arrogant that I could just do this event and did not even think I should worry about cutoff times – not intimidated that much(which changed after we drove the bike course with the bus) Since we were told this was the fastest bike course of the IM events I thought it would be easy.
- Well rested since I took almost a complete 2 weeks off from training, taking taper to the extreme.


Predictions going into the race:

Swim : 80-90 minutes
Bike : 14 mph - 16 mph
Run : 12 min/mile - 14 min /mile
Finish time: 13:50 - 16 hours

Actual:

Swim : 95 minutes
Bike : 13.7 mph
Run : around 14 min/mile




Race Morning:

Woke up at 3:50 AM
There was a quietness in the breakfast area everyone focusing on their pre-race ritual. Most brought peanut butter with them and was eating it with bagels/bread that they brought. No one was goofing around.
Ate fruit salad, topped with some yogurt and muesli had some coffee at 4:00. I had given my 2nd Perpetuem bottle to the bar asking them to freeze it, thanks to language
barrier they put it in the fridge so it was not frozen. Topped off both bottles with ice. Warm perpetuem does not sound appetizing but after a point the taste does not really matter in these kind of events, I will just have to stick to my nutrition plan for the race which was :

Before the swim: Have Heed (energy drink) just before the swim start.



Bike: Eat a Hammergel immediately at transition 1.
While riding, 2 bottles of Perpetuem which have 5 servings each, totaling to 700
calories one bottle per loop ( planned each loop to be around 3:40 hours)
At the top of every hour eat ½ hammerbar take 1 antifatigue capsule.
Total calories while on the bike : 2200 – about 250+ calories per hour

Run : Take the ‘Cheese Combo’ while heading out from Transition 2 ( T2)
Walk until you finish the Cheese combo.
Then alternate food+energy drink with gel+water at each aid station which is about
2 km’s apart.( a bit more than a mile)
After mile 20 start caffeine with eating the caffeine hammergels that I had with me
and the coke that will be served at the aid stations.

Bike and Run special needs bags I had cheese sandwiches and a pack of Cheese Combos in case I wanted to have some substance/real food. We would only have access to each once and they were not returning these bags back to us.

One thing I was told which was absolutely true, not only for nutrition but for everyplan in the IM is
“Make a solid plan for your nutrition/bike/run/transition/nutrition then be ready to improvise because it will all fall apart”

Ferit called at 4:10 (that felt good I usually get a bit antsy race mornings and he knows how to calm me) to wish me a good race.

Host hotel that we stayed at : Hotel Moser Verdino



Headed off to race start at 5:00 with the shuttle.


Pumped the tires, put the hammerbars,bottles,antifatigue tablets saddle bag( which had money in it, lesson learned from GFT 05, as a bop’er- back of packer- make sure you have money to buy hydration/nutrition if stands are depleted) on –Mephisto(my bike). Took some last minute pictures with Ilene and Andrea in transition Tried to find Steve, could not see him so placed the packet which had a collage I made on his bike. Squeezed myself into my (now too tight) wetsuit. There was no bodymarking which I found odd.




Put on the bodyglide on my neck so I would not chafe from the wetsuit, handed the warmup bag which had the clothing I wore to the race and the stuff that I will need after the race – like recovery drink - to the truck.

3.8 km swim:




It was really hard trying to get to the Swim start at the Strandbad, there were so many participants, spectators me and Ilene had to elbow our way through to get to the swim start.


I had thought I placed myself to the left back ( later found out that I somehow ended up in the middle, there were other people on the other side of the dock )

I did not hear the Cannonball for the start-guess my heartbeat was louder. There was no national anthem either ( I wanted to hear the Australian anthem) everyone just started going. The start was non-impressive other than 2200 bodies hitting the water at the same time.

I got in the very back, then I saw that somehow there were a lot of people who started on the left side as well, which left me at the mid back. There were several choppers above probably for the live broadcast. (picture from last year)


Took a couple of strokes then suddenly went out of breath. Treaded water, let everyone go, tried again. Nopes.. I just could not breathe, my lungs suddenly felt like they were being clenched and I was only able to use 10% their capacity. My heart started racing and I thought to myself ‘so this is what they mean by hyperventilating’ this had actually happened to me 3 weeks ago when I went to Wekiwa, I had given that to having forgotten my swim cap and goggles. It hit me full force, I tried backstroking, or just kicking on my back, breaststroke but nothing helped. The water had a very odd chop to it from the 2000+ people who had just swum by the washing machine, as it is called.
I have been talking to others on how to handle it so now I had a first hand experience of it. It was not pretty !


I guess this must be a aqua version of a panic attack – which I have witnessed but never experienced – so I thought to myself:

‘ you will recover, you just need to be patient and let your body settle down, everything will come back together’

but some other voice was saying

‘ Do you want to drown out here, just quit and let them take you back to shore it is not worth it’

Now everyone was gone and here I was by myself treading water, the kayak approached me asked me whether I needed help, I loosened my wetsuit (which was ok when I got it but was very snug after I gained weight ) this helped me breathe a little better. Slowly started out after everyone was at least 5 minutes ahead of me.

Surely enough I was able to start swimming breathing every other stroke (I usually breathe every 3 strokes ) and in about 25 minutes I had caught up with the back part of the swimmers and was passing some of them. It was very crowded, a lot of support boats, kayaks. I had a difficult time spotting the buoys which were orange on the bottom but navy blue at the top (not a good idea to have navy blue buoys – cant spot them) so I followed the crowd, and I used a castlelike structure as a landmark to aim for. We got awfully close to shore and I was actually enjoying the scenery of the beautiful homes by the lake with the boats docked in front of them then suddenly everyone in front of me started standing up. We were off course about 200 yards at least and had swam ashore, missing the second turnaround buoy. The kayaks were with us and they did nothing to warn us to say that we had went off course. Got back on the course and headed to the canal entrance marked by big Power Bar Buoys – these were nice and visible-- where the last 900 meters of the 3800 meter swim was. I was really mad cause I had not zigzagged and had done pretty good in sighting, but I just could not see the buoy so I was off course and that had cost me approximately an extra 400 yards.

In the last 900 meters of the swim which was in the canal I was actually glad that I was at the back since I can not imagine swimming there with a crowd. I think it was only about 10 yards wide, so we were crammed in there, it was not deep either especially on the left side my hand was touching the bottom people were trying to swim on the right. The bottom was not pretty and all the mud had been kicked up by now and I saw quite a few swim caps that were tossed floating around. It was interesting to see all the spectators lined on the side of the canal cheering like crazy this is the only tri I have done with swim spectators. I continued passing some participants.


Got out of the swim did not feel dizzy because I had learned to kick hard the last
couple of minutes to get the blood flowing back to my legs. The volunteers were pulling us up as the exit was a pretty steep ramp. There were no wetsuit strippers. I was relieved to see that I had a time of 1:35, still 15 minutes off due to hyperventilating and going off course but definitely way below the swim cutoff which was 2 hours 20 minutes. There were several bikes still on the racks which meant that there were people behind me in the swim, which usually is not the case since my swim is very weak.

Went to the transition tent there were no volunteers and no supplies, in GFT there were several volunteers who would help participants, and at GFT there was a table in the middle with essentials like sunscreen, nutrition, hydration, vaseline. Women had to enter from the guys side to go to the womens part which was a small section partitioned off, found that interesting well this is Europe I thought everyone is much more relaxed about going natural.
There are about 2400 participants and only about 300 are women probably that’s why.

Thinking of it it was actually good that there was nothing comforting in the transition tent since I do tend to lollye and lose time.

I had my bike gear on so all I had to do was to peel off the wetsuit put the wetsuit, cap and goggles in the transition bag and put on helmet, glasses, sunscreen, socks shoes. So that was pretty quick.


180 KM ( 112 Mile ) Bike



Headed out on the bike course. I felt really good looking forward to riding since I had not been riding for at least 2 weeks now and the course looked very pretty when we took the bus tour. It was a 2 loop bike course, starting by the lake side then heading inland to where the hills were.

Scenery on the first part of the loop was breathtaking along the lake. There was a little island with a spectacular church at Maria Worth. There were several cute beautiful hotels, inns along the ride all having impatiens in the windowsills. Saw Daphne near their hotel riding her bike(recognized her from the wing tattoos on her calves). Then things started changing as we headed inland. The Lake part was relatively flat with slight inclines which allowed us to coast a lot.


However once we went in hell broke loose. There was almost no flat stretch, we were either hitting the hills with inclines ranging from 1-2 % to 17% -- yes I saw 17% on my bike computer—or barreling down the hills.

Sometimes you thought you were on a flat stretch it even looked like a descent but you could not go fast. Then I looked at the grade, it was 1-2% even if it looked like a downhill. Never was able to figure that out.

The first loop really hurt and I cussed at myself for not doing any hill training and gaining weight and congratulated myself on my decision to put on a 27 on the back the last minute in Klagenfurt. The spectators were indeed as I was told, closing in on participants yelling, hoppa ! suppa ! bravo ! with all the noise makers that they were banging away with. At the top of the most respectable hills was a dj playing very loud music. I have never seen such an enthusiastic local support, it is almost as if they stopped their lives for this event. Later I heard that the race was covered live 17 hours on tv – that is the first that I know. All of the bike course was closed to traffic all day long.

We passed by little cute towns and one large sunflower field. I was even tempted to pick up a sunflower but thought against it due to aerodynamic concerns.

Got passed by Ursula’s, Geoff’s, Stefan’s which confirmed that my swim indeed was faster than my bike which was not the case a couple of years ago. I really need to work on my bike speed that used to be my fastest leg now it is starting to be my worst. My swim seems to have stabilized there is still some room for improvement, my run is still improving.

I like my training / sports because it gives me some quiet time listen to my body, my breathing and just get lost in the whole cycling/running motion. Here having the crowd support but nice but I admit at times that I missed silence at times. On the other hand in the second loop most of the crowd had left and I did a lot of hill walking, which I am not sure would be the case if there was a bunch of people cheering, it almost acts like peer pressure to stay on the bike no matter what.

The hills hurt during the first loop, and I started getting slightly worried for the second loop. The 1st loop took about 3:50 minutes ( 14.6 mph which I found as an acceptable pace for me given the terrain.

At one of the aid stations they were hosing the participants I said ‘ Hit Me ! ’ thinking that if the cold water helps the Tour guys it definitely should help me too. Oh boy, did I regret that ! My left inner thigh suddenly seized up after being hit with the cold water and cramped up into a ball. Luckily it recovered quickly but gave me quite a scare for a couple of minutes until it relaxed.

When I stopped for the portalet ran into a girl who had quit and was waiting for a sag she said she fell asleep on one of the downhills now that was scary. Suggested that she bump up her nutrition and try to go on slowly assessing carefully whether she was recovering but I do not think she went on. It was her first IM event.

Saw Chip at the first bike loop turnaround who said cheerfully ‘HEYYYY !!! How is it ‘ I said ‘BAD’ I did not even have energy to mumble more than single word I was extremely worried on how the second loop was going to happen, let alone run/shuffle a marathon after that but fought against thinking one step ahead. In the IM’s I had to think within a small box and not intimidate myself by thinking of the part of the event that is still ahead of me. That would crush me !

Starting out the second loop of the bike I changed my bike plan since I was not able to ride up the hills I surely needed to make the most of the downhills and work the flats(not that there were that many)

I stopped at the bike special needs and grabbed the extra biofreeze packs and took my spare inner tube since we would not be able to claim these later. Did not feel like eating the cheese combo or the cheese sandwich that was in there.

After hitting inland on the second loop the demons started appearing in my head tempting me to quit and call it a day. I started walking any hill that was > 5% grade. The Sag vehicle stopped to ask whether I needed a ride I eyed him as I would a vulture and shooed him away ‘NO!’ (I hope I was not very rude). So I pulled up my strongest mental weapons that I use when I hit walls in IM distances. Usually the walls appeared during the second part of the run, this time they had a strong presence on the bike.

“Pain is temporary quitting is forever”
“Do you have anything better to do today other than finishing this race?”

When I tried to ride the hills my heart was beating so strong that my ears were ringing/throbbing. I was not dehydrated and I was on top of the nutrition plan although I had dropped my antifatigue tablets so it was clearly the overload on my poor cardio system (being a smoker,couch potato until 12 years ago ) while trying to haul that fat ..ss over the hills which I had not trained for.

So I came up with a plan that I could work with. Having a plan in situations which seem hopeless makes it a lot more manageable and gives one a feel that they are in control – might be a placebo effect but it still works.

And the plan was to:

- Walk up steep hills whenever the speed goes down to 5 mph or the incline goes > 7%,
- Barrel downhills since now I knew the technical sections of the descents from the first loop.
- Keep the momentum flowing, be aero as much as you can.

I would walk up the hills (including the 1.5 mile Rupertibe) trying to keep my speed at 2.5 mph – 3 mph.

Due to the long climbs that I was not used to my lower back,neck, shoulders and triceps started hurting pretty bad. So had to stop 3 times to rub Biofreeze and take tylenol. I also started taking pepto bismol as insurance since I knew overexertion combined with lots of weird food (perpetuem, hammerbar, antifatifugue tablets) were certainly a recipe for GI disaster that could arise on the run.

I was hearing the DJ’s music at the top of the main hill, and as I almost was at the very end of the climb (walking) the music stopped. I hollered ‘Hey I am still here don’t stop the music!!’ He said ‘I am going to be there for you at the run, don’t worry you are not the last on the course’

I hooked up with a couple of people along the way who were in trouble like I was, one was Geoff who had taken a fall, David from Texas Irons group. But then we split wishing each other luck and to make it to the cutoff.



After a lonely ride which had a lot of digging in deep, scraping the bottom of my willpower jug,

2nd loop finished ! Chip was there again cheering, Thanks Chip !

The total elevation read as 5100 ft. although it certainly felt a lot more.

It took me about 4:30 to finish the second loop (12.4 mph) and I was 30 minutes away from the cutoff (cutoff was 10:30 hours into the race) I was extremely happy to rack my bike and change into my running gear in the tent. I had about 7 hours to complete the event and I knew I would make it if I did not do anything too aggressive.



26.2 Mile Run:




After changing into the run clothes I took off eating the Cheese combos happily and trying to find a restroom. Since I had not studied the run course beforehand in detail, while trying to find the restroom I crossed the 1st finish line timing mat---wondering why everyone was giving me a high five when I was one of the last ones -- then ran back out (running back from the finish line was pretty embarrassing), asked around to find where the loop started. No one seemed to know where the run route was, I was running around like crazy trying to get back into the course. Finally I found it and walked up to the first aid station enjoying my combos (and hearing the cheers for people already finishing) I lost my lucky teddy bear towel that I used at every IM sometime around then. Lost at least 10 minutes thereas well going in circles, oh well.. price paid for not studying the course.

We were to do 2 out and backs from the transition, one towards downtown where we ran through the Alten Platza / the restaurants, and the other in the opposite way by the river/railroad.



Part of the run course downtown Alte Plaza one day before race day.


My original plan was to run at 10:30-11:00 pace for 4 minutes walk 1 min, then run to the next aid station which were about 2 kms apart. I think I came close to the plan during the first loop.

Now simplifying things I figured that if I ran each leg at 45 minutes (8X45minutes – average of 13:45 min/mile) that would be a 6 hour Mary which would be just fine, since the PR hope was out the window and that still gave me about 1 hour to cutoff which was at 17 hours.
I had my Garmin GPS which came very handy in keeping my pace steady and giving me an idea what I needed to do. I could do without a bike computer but the GPS is a must for my IM’s.

At the first couple of miles I had to run to the portalets a lot( I made at least 3 stops), I did not have any severe problems but still needed to go. That cost me a lot of time.

Took the following nutrition alternating at aid stations:
1 aid station Gel & water
2nd aid station Sports drink & ¼ banana& slice of melon – 1 peptobismol

I was taking peptobismols at every other aid station as I knew that my stomach usually starts bothering/shutting down on this portion of the IM. I did not have the stomach for the Hot tamales, or the crystallized gingers and did not feel brave enough to continue with the Antifatigue tablets either, not wanting to push my luck since my stomach had held up relatively well up to now.

I saw Andrea on the 1st and 2nd loop and Ilene right behind her in the first loop. They were at least 8 miles ahead of me.

In the distance I was hearing ambulance sirens, indicating there were some of us in severe distress. It had gotten pretty hot at one point (when I was towards the end of the second bike loop) probably that had hit some people who were not used to the heat.

There was this drunk guy on the 2nd part of the run look who was hollering ‘IRONLADY’ ‘IRONMAN’ it was so annoying. There were 2 teenagers screaming from the second story of an apartment playing some loud music which seemed similar to what my daughters listened to. ‘Hmm so the teenagers here do not dig Waltz either’ I thought to myself.

Headed downtown and ran among the people who were eating dinner/ enjoying their icecreams. The course came about 100 yards close to my hotel too, and tried not to think of my nice bed waiting for me and how tempting it was. Everyone stopped eating and cheered as we passed by ( at this point there were only a handful of us out there). Hop hop hop, bravo bravo…. Clap clap.. clank clank..

At the end of my first loop I saw the sweep bike with the ‘Last Runner’ signed pacing a jogger. How stressfull I thought to myself having being paced by the sweeper. I think that person was about 10 miles behind me do not know whether he actually was able to finish or not it did not seem likely though.

As on the bike the second loop of the run started getting pretty lonely which was still ok for me as I needed the peace and quiet to compose and focus and dig in / follow my plan. I was not having any biomechanical problems, my neuroma on my foot was not acting up, there were no toes hurting, no blisters forming no quads/calves cramping, no knee/hip pain, everything was working perfectly. I was really thankful to all the weight training which I attribute this sturdiness to despite my weight gain. The bike had acted as a warm up and as long as I did not hit any hills on the run my other muscles seemed to be pretty fresh and ready to fire away for a long time at a slow pace.

I do not think anyone passed me on the second loop cause most of them had a blank stare( if not sprawled at the side of the road with their legs propped up by volunteers) and were on a death march. I had a fairly descent clip although the plan had slowly changed to

.4 mile run .1 mile walk.then changed to
.3 mile run .2 mile walk then to :
.25 mile run .25 mile walk.

Looking at the others which were still on the course, I was very pleased to see that I looked/felt in pretty good shape. If only I would have been able to bike those hills .. I would have done a lot better I thought to myself.

Then at the last 8th segment heading back to finish I saw Daphne and Steve walking and I joined them for the last 4 miles. I still had some jog left in me but thought again that since I was not going to PR and was not going to jeopardize the cutoff I might as well hang on to them and chat to the end. After all it had been an extremely lonely day. We had a good time chatting along keeping a pace close to 18min/mile, I usually am against slowing down to chat in an IM but this was worth it, they are a lovely couple!

Daphne split before the finish line and just before we were turning the corner for the finish chute Steve fell tripping over some kind of ledge. Luckily there was no apparent damage and we crossed the finish line running together.


A volunteer immediately approached me and wrapped me in the foil and tried to support me. I actually was feeling pretty fresh but he still would not let me go afraid that I would collapse. We walked towards the recovery tent with Steve and Chip came with my bike with a smile on his face saying ‘ you made it !!! ‘ he was quite a sport staying out there all day supporting/ cheering.

Went to the tent there was no chicken broth left, only xtra small tshirt left and I just wanted to head back to the hotel and do my post race ritual took my warm up bag and headed to the hotel with a cab.

It was quite a day, and I learned a lot. It was not my hardest IM ( I think my first IM which I finished at 16:57 GFT was the hardest) but it certainly challenged me mentally a lot and I got a lot of lessons out of it.

Lessons learned:

1 - Study the swim,run,bike course in detail. Do not assume that you can just follow the participants.

2 - Plan to have ample time after the race to go back into the water(to cool off the legs)/ or make arrangements for ice packs at the hotel and get a massage. These are essential – not a luxury.

3 - Train for the terrain you will be racing in, I had not done any hill training and that almost cost me the race – It was going to be my first non-planned DNF. Which would have been a really expensive one.

4 - Never go into an IM again weighing more than 135 pounds (I was about 150)
No amount of Ben & Jerry,bread,honey, honeysmacks, cheese/bread pleasure can amount to the pain suffered due to a fat ass on the hills. I wish there was a way that I would feel the pain that I felt on those hills when I touch the icecream at home.

5 – Long hill trainings are a must on a trainer, since there are no hills longer than ½ mile in Orlando.(access to a computrainer would be really good where I could download the race course and ride it )