Ironman!

I survived!
Here is my report of the day...

Jean phoned me about 5 mins before my alarm, just over 3 hours before race - 3:20am. I had slept surprisingly well. Breakfast of bread, honey, coffee, a little fruit and a teeny bit of cereal/milk. Walked the 1 mile to the start area with wetsuit and swim gear, and made a final check of the bike (always a worry but no burst tubes or anything). Got into the water 15 mins before the start just to get the wetsuit sitting properly and turn the arms over. As the siren went I avoided the mad panic by staying towards the back and easing myself in for a nice relaxing swim. I had heard so much about Nice and the crazy swim start and how there is no room for most of the race. It wasnt like that for me at all - I was swimming for 5 minutes before I even touched anyone. Came out after the 3.8k in 1:15 feeling warmed up but not tired at all.

I had a plan to go very easy on the bike. This was my first Ironman, and there were over 2000 meters of climbing, not to mention a Marathon afterwards in 30+ degrees Celcius and no shade, so I wanted to be conservative. A cray amount of people passed me in the first hour. I was seriously starting to doubt my plan, but I stuck to it. Eventually I started passing a handful, than more than were passing, and by the end I had caught most of those that passed. In retrospect, I possibly could have pushed a tad harder on the hills and still not overcooked myself. Time for the Bike was 6:37.

Started the run like the bike - nice and slow. I did avail of the nice cooling showers on the course, but this was a double edged sword - I had to stop twice to wring out my soaking socks in the rirst 10k (I stopped caring after that!) The run was 4 laps of Nice promenade. Hot hot hot. No shade at all. No real breeze. Lots of great encouragement from random spectators. But by lap 4, you realise why people don't like a 4 lap course format. It's really very tough mentally My plan was always to walk every aid station, and I started at the first even though it was within 1 k. I took in a couple of gels early on, as well as some banana. Later I just did water, some coke and some Powerade. I think this worked well. I was able to run the whole course. I had read in a few places that you should expect at least two bad periods in an Ironman - usually on the run. At about 18k I had my first - nothing serious, just felt a bit off - slowed very slightly for a k, and felt ok again.

At about 32k I felt pretty tired - I was starting to run out of gas slowly but surely, but the finish was close so I just dug in and kept going. Very pleased with the run, as I'm usually being overtaken by lots of people during a triathlon run, and although my time of 4:21 may not be the fastest I still passed about 300. It's a case of slowing down less!  Crossing the finish line was a huge relief. Overall time was 12:27 - which is pretty much my ideal scenario time.

Felt fine till I sat down - then the sun and the noise and the oncoming nausea got to me and I had to dive to the floor, where I actually felt fine again lying on my back. Nice girl gave me a foil blanket too. Managed to drag myself to Massage table after 45 mins, more resting and a lovely gentle massage, which left me well enough to pick up my bike and gear and head back to the hotel.

So that's it - my first Ironman and I'm extremely pleased. Felt like I had a good plan and stuck to it, everything came together pretty well, and I'm already recovering surprisingly quickly.

Rank: 256 of 571

Overall Rank: 1082 of 2469

BIB:	1681
Division:	40-44
Age:	42
State:	Caulfield
Country:	IRL

Swim:	1:15:19
Bike:	6:37:28
Run:	4:21:26
Overall:	12:27:52

Tapering v acclimatisation

I can't believe a week has gone by already. When I arrived In Biot at Sean Doherty's place (thanks again Sean!) a week seemed like a really long time, especially as I was planning on doing a whole lot of nothing. But it's gone by in a flash.
Being weighed down with 40kg of luggage isn't something I tend to do very often, so I had little option but to take one of Nice's overpriced taxis from the airport to Biot/Sophia anapolis, which is apparently the silicon valley of Nice. Well, I could (maybe should) have rented a car for the week).

The apartment is really nice, complete with a large balcony perfect for some stretching and gazing into the distance. And there is a pool, which means I can keep my feel for the water.
Luckily, considering it's a bit away from any town, and I didn't get a car, there is a Casino supermarche right next door, so I have everything I need. Somehow on day one I missed said supermarket and cycled to a big Carrefour which had everything but I just didn't feel comfortable leaving the bike outside while shopping. Incidentally, I was wondering why I confusingly saw signs for Carrefour everytime I hit a roundabout - seems "Carrefour" is roundabout in French. Never knew that before.

Arriving during euro 2012 was also a big bonus, with games to look forward to most nights.










On my second day I went for a Recee of some of the Bike course - including the short 12% climb at the 20k mark, as well as the first few k of the 20k climb later on. The initial part of the ride was a bit busy and uninspiring, but once I got out onto the small roads and into the hills, I could see why this is considered to be the prettiest Ironman courses around. Though also one of the toughest.

On Sunday I rode down to Antibes, a very pretty town that I hadn't really seen on my trip here last year. The old part of the town is really quaint, and I love the old defensive wall surrounding it.  It's definitely somewhere I wouldn't mind spending more time soaking up the sun, eating at some of the many restaurants and enjoying a beer or three,  but for now my focus is on Sunday's Ironman, so no such indulgences.

Monday saw another bit of a course Recee, and my last "long" ride before the big day.
Sean's place isn't that far from the start of that aformentioned 20k climb, so I decided to do a little more of it - up to the beautiful village of Gourdon - self proclaimed as one of the prettiest villages in France (they're not wrong). It was a hot day, so doubled as a good heat acclimatisation workout.

It's been a bit tricky balancing the tapering and acclimatisation - one calls for shorter and shorter workouts as the race approaches, the other for a minimum of 100 minutes a day in the heat exercising at a moderate level. Hopefully I'm managing to get the balance right

Nice flight

Well the time has arrived. I'm sitting in Melbourne airport waiting to board the flight to Dubai and onto Nice. On the other side of the world, Ironman awaits. No hassles with checkin - had 1.5kg to spare of the 30 that Emirates give, which was all my triathlon stuff basically - normal clothes are relegated to nice to have but not that necessary, and even with super light packing and jamming heavy stuff like adapters into my coat pockets, I was still tight on the 7kg limit (this laptop takes a good chunk of that!)
And yes - that is a pic of me writing this very post - cool - but kinda sad - in equal measures :)

My back has been playing up since the Whittlesea challenge and it's still not quite right, so we will see how it is after 14 hours to Dubai and another 7 to Nice. Seems like all the little niggles that have been keeping hiding have come out once they knew it was time to really piss me off-  in the last 3 months I've been fine, but in the last 10 days I've had the back pain, hamstring tightness (first right, then left), sore Achilles (both, on one night - magically gone the next day) and calf cramps today on an easy swim. It seems like my body doesn't like this tapering stuff.

At least I managed to stretch out a bit on the Dubai layover :)

Whittlesea

This weekend I completed in my last long ride before Nice - the Whittlesea challenge - one of the challenge series events run by Cycling Victoria.  

Thankfully we had really good weather - if it was one day later we would have been looking at this:

Instead we had a foggy morning clearing to a cool but lovely sunny day, perfect cycling weather so long as you have enough layers on (5 for me) to keep out the wind. I wasn't planning on doing this ride initially, being so close to IM, but Michael pulled out, deciding probably wisely to rest his shoulder more after his accident in the last ride.  So Nadia and I headed to Whitlesea shortly after 6:30 Sunday morning.
This time we actually made the start and left in a bunch somewhere towards the back.

The first hill wasn't long coming, within 5k we were climbing towards Kinglake West for several uninterrupted ks of gradual to steep ascending. Near the top I pulled over to wait for Nadia and take in the countryside and watch the other cyclists labouring up the hill - interesting to see the mix of smiles and grimaces that long climbs  bring out.

After the first rest stop where we filled up on bananas and yummy cake, we decided to split on the next long climb. This one was tougher and included a fair bit of double digit gradients, but felt good nonetheless. It was really pretty countryside to cycle in, especially around Flowerdale, and I decided I'd definitely come back to ride this section again. Towards the end, the clouds came in and I decided to push hard for home in case the expected rain arrived (it never did).  I probably pushed a bit too hard, cause when I got to the finish my back was pretty badly locked up and I took advantage of the free apres-ride massage offered, as well as gobbling down some gumbo while waiting fro Nadia to arrive - she made it without walking any of the hills, which is more than a lot of folk.

Today I saw the Physio about the back and some hamstring issues I had been having - turns out they are related and I need to tilt down my saddle a bit as well as try to adopt a more "butt out" stance to stop straining the back (and hamstrings). Thankfully the back feels likes its getting back to normal, as with three weeks to Nice I can't really afford any injuries at this stage.