Ironman Cozumel Race Report

Hey guys,

I know it has been a long time coming to write my race report...our computer was broken so thus no race report. I am also so very behind in blogland.

Where to begin....

Pre Race

I woke up race morning feeling okay. I choked down my breakfast; I always have a hard time eating race morning. Got all of my stuff, had a shower and we were out the door. Once I got to the race site I had the race dread feeling...but not like last year. I can not believe how different your second Ironman is compared to the first. You don't have the same unknown excited nervous anxious feeling. It was just the same old race nerves.

I got my bike all set up, to the porta potti, dry clothes bag drop off, body marking was done the day before...so all I had left to do was a 3.8 km swim, 180 km bike, and a 42 km run. No worries right?

Swim.

I saw Chad and Susi's parents (who are a great cheering squad) on my way out to the swim. The swim started off of the pier so into the water and I did the same as last year at IMC - lined myself up with the buoys. In water swim starts are not nearly as exciting as standing on the beach because yoiu have no idea what is going on until you are swimming.

This was such an easy swim. It was not very rough at all - the same craziness at the turns though. We swam with the buoys on the left in a counterclockwise direction in a big rectangle. We were against the current until the first buoy, but the water was soooo nice a calm you could hardly tell (especially with the waves leading up to the race).

After the second buoy it was smooth sailing because we were with the current. The water was sooooo crystal clear, I saw fish, starfish, and got stung by four jellyfish. The swim was really uneventful....I was sight seeing the bottom of the ocean the entire time. There was some guy who was drafting off of me the entire time who kept touching my feet which got pretty annoying after an hour or so.

T1

Transition went pretty smoothly. Except running on the gravel hurt the feet and the door to the womens tent were proped open a bit and there were tons of people wandering around outside - they maybe got a bit of a show. I wore a swimsuit in the water and changed into my shorts and jersey.

Bike - 3 laps

I think this is the hardest bike ride I have ever done. I had so much stuff going on I will try to remember it all.

My legs were tired and feeling dead right away. I was trying to spin them out to get them moving but they weren't having it. This happend to me at Sylvan this year too...not too sure what that is about. There was a crazy head/crosswind on the southside of the island which was like nothing I have ever experienced. This will keep you honest let me tell ya. I just couldn't get comfortable in aero and I must have been hitting a nerve because I was getting numbness down my leg. I think this was do to the wind, I must have been sitting funny because as soon as I turned out of the wind it stopped.

After about 50 km I was beginning to feel good and I put the hammer down for awhile. I was making some head way into having the race I wanted when I got a flat at about 100km. There was no cloud cover yet so I was sweating it out in the sun while I changed my tire. This was the turning point in the race for me in a couple of ways.

Once I got back onto my bike I resumed my nutrition plan and intensity right away. Live and learn...do not do this...especially in the heat when it is harder to eat anyway. About 20 min after getting back on the bike my stomach started acting up. I was also mad about all of the time I lost changing my tire. I think the only reason I was so stuck on this was because I wasn't feeling so good and once you get into negative thought spiral it is hard to get out.

A three lap course is so hard mentally! I didn't think it would be but holly crap it was aweful. The wind had gotten worse which I didn't think was possible and my GI problems just continued to get worse. I was so very excited to get back into town and hang up my bike.

T2

Transition welcomed wobbly legs for me and I could really feel the humidity. I changed, hit the porta potti and was out the door.

Run

This is what everyone warned me about of flat courses. They use the same muscle groups on the bike and the run - no hills to break it up. Normally when I get off the bike I am ready to rock...not so much. I had a hard time regulating my breathing and finding my legs - they were tired already - uh-oh was all I could think. Even so I kept running and my stomach kept hurting and the negative/positive thoughts were rambling around in my head. I kept flipping back and forth from "it will be okay...you had a rough bike...your legs will come around...this race goal is not out of reach for you" and "if my legs hurt this much within the first 5 km what and I going to feel like for the last half of the marathon." Around and around I went for the first lap of the run.

3/4 of the way through the first lap my legs started feeling better but my stomach still was not. I was able to run and maintain an okay pace but it was not happy. I started trying everything I knew to get rid of an upset stomach; the problem was that they didn't have the same stuff at each aid station. Crackers, water, pop...I tried it all.

The second lap was my best on the run. I had managed my GI problems enough to run with it and my legs were not hurting as bad and Greg told me to try and catch him. So I did. At about 1/4 of the way into the third lap I realized I wasn't going to get my goal time and gave up a bit. I was taking more and more walk breaks and my GI problems were getting worse. I was having sharp pains across my abdomen and mentally I was having a tough time. I did the run walk run thing for awhile until I could come up with a new game plan.

It had been a battle since km 100 on the bike so I was happy just finishing the race but I could not allow myself to enter into the 15 hour mark. I may have been close but I suffered my way to the finish line.

What a day.

This race tested me in every way possible. I learned so much about Ironman from this race - Ironman Canada was a piece of cake next to this one. It will take me a long time to willingly sign up for a flat course again. It was physically and mentally tough - I like the hills, they break up the race so much espescially for the bike. I am happy I did it for all of these reasons - that is why Ironman is such a great accomplishment. You can have the perfect training season, but there are sooooo many variables that can make up your day. I am not done with Ironman...there will be more of them for me just not next year :)

The part of this race that I didn't mention in my report was the people out there cheering you on. Going through town on the bike was awesome - it was like mainstreet IMC 3 times but in spanish. So fun and the people there were so great. I have so many pics that we took of the trip - you will have to make a coffee date with me to see most of those because we took over 400 pics and hardly any of those were of the race. I still have to order my official photos also - but they got some good ones.

That is all I remember for now.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Race Ready!

Holla!

So we have had an interesting trip so far. On Wednesday we were up at 3:30 am and off to the airport by 4:30am. Got there, got checked in, through security, waiting by our gait and my name gets called to return to security.

INSTANT PANIC! So I go back and had to watch on a little screen while they looked through my bag. \i have all of my race stuff in there so I was worried. Alas they found my CO2 cartriges that I thought I had hidden so well. If Greg tells you you can get them through...he lies. SO got that taken care of, go meet up with the group and 5 min later my name gets called again. BLAH! This time I had to go to the agents desk. Turns out the security people don't talk to the agent desk...and they called me about the same thing. Again get back with the group and my name gets called a third time. By now I have had about 3 hours of sleep and I was getting really cranky. They needed my address for some reason, so after that I made it onto the plane and safely to Dallas.

The rest of the trip went pretty good until we got to Mexico and then it was a shit show again....well a little bit anyway. The cab drivers are crazies! We made it to playa del carmen through mant many back roads; if we had to drive ourselves there I don't think we would have made it. So we get to this road and the guy tells us that we are at the ferry terminal and to get out. There was no water anywhere...just stone buidlings and a crap load of people. \you can hire these guys on bikes to carry your luggage to the ferry...they started loading our stuff up and took off towards this mysterious "ferry." We finally found water and a boat and two of us had to go with the luggage and the others went to stand in line. Keep in mind that to learn this there were hundreds of people around who only spoke spanish and just pointed to us to tell us where to go. I was a little afraid of loosing my bike!

Once on the ferry I learned that this is the roughest ferry ever and for the first time in my life got seasick. It was terrible. Thank goodness for Susie's mom Kate for having gravol. I am sure that kept me from heaving all over people! We got to Cozumel...got to the condo and then went for groceries. Again....store closing and trying to read spanish labels to buy food! Blah. We had also been up for almost 20 hours by this point.

Other than the first day it has been pretty easy going. Everybody is super friendly. I even bartered for a necklace! Yeah me.

tomorrow is race day and I am not nervous yet. This will change once I get to the race site.
Now for all of you Ironman newbies following the race it is:

Swin 3.8 km
Bike 180 km
Run 42 km

we have 17 hours to complete it. My number is 59 and you can search at www.ironmanlive.com and I will hopefully update my blog in the next couple of days!


Until then...

Adios

Lots to get ready for!

Hey!

Thanks for the words of encouragement - it helps so much knowing everyone is at home cheering me on!

Almost ready to go. I think everytime I have everything done something else comes up, this Ironman stuff is a lot of work. Now all I need to do is get on the plane!

I am ready to get to the race site so that I feel like I am doing a race. Even with all of the training I don't have the same Ironman buzz. Maybe it is because it is my second one or maybe because it is November and I haven't been biking outside?? I am not too sure, but nothing fixes that more than being at Ironman village!

Next time you hear from me it will be from sunny Mexico!

Feeling the taper blues

Hey!

I was so excited for taper to roll around and my volume of training to decrease. It has and I feel like crap. Gotta love it. I am tired, I am achey and tight, and I can't wait to get this thing done. I was feeling good after swimming last night and that only lasted until I woke up this morning!

I am very happy that I have only one more pool swim left to go. I promised Greg and Darryl I wouldn't skip out this weekend and I think they are going to hold me to it. Soon my swimming will consist of floating in the ocean looking at colorful critters!

This weekend will be a busy one; we will be packing and doing the last minute errands for the trip. Only 10 more days until race day and 6 until we leave! Yay!

Race day plan for number 68

I am currently working on my race day plan for the big day. 18 days to go.

Training wise I am feeling ready and wanting to get this done; now I have to focus on the other parts of the trip!

Darren graciously is letting me borrow his bike box to use! Yay...one thing taken care of. Now I still need to get new tires, top up all of my nutrition, bike tune up, bathing suits, etc, etc, etc.
The list continues to grow daily!

Thats about it for me:)

Happy Remembrance day

35 more days

Hey!

That's right 35 more days until Ironman...thank god! I remember this feeling last year. You are coming to the end of training...about a month left and can't wait to get this race done!

This was my last crazy build weekend. I don't care what anyone says 6 hours on the trainer is a long time. My butt has held up well, some of you will think I am crazy when I tell you that I didn't wear bike or tri shorts for this...just a good old pair of capri's! It was way better than when I wore tri shorts. I found I wasn't as sore the next day. Anyway 6 hour ride and 45 min run makes a very tired me!

Today I did another brick. I had the best intentions of going to Katie's class but I could not drag my very tired body out of bed at 7am. My legs were not very happy either. They felt okay for the first hour, but hour number 2 I was getting pretty tired. I suffered through and then went for a very slow 30 min run.

5 weeks till race
4 weeks till leave
2 weeks till taper

Happy Training!

Bizzzzzie Bee

Hey,

It has been a month since I last visited my dear old blog so I figured I should update and let you folks know what has been going on.

Here are the basics:

I get up
I eat
I go to work - I eat and do moderate exercise most days
I eat
I go home
I eat
I train
I eat
On really awesome days I get to nap but that has only happened a few times
I sometimes train again
I eat
I sleep.

So there you have it - I work, train, eat, sleep with some slivers of normalness in there like meeting a friend for coffee, going out for dinner...but its not very often. No one said training for Ironman was easy!!!

In all honestly I am feeling pretty good and training for Cozumel is going well. I was really hoping for a nice October but it snowed and my ass got stuck to my bike sitting on the trainer. Oh well!
5 hours on the trainer is not very fun as I found out a couple of weeks ago...this weekend it another big one 5-6 on the bike followed by a run on Saturday and Greg doesn't want to disclose Sunday yet...but it will be biking and probably running...maybe even some swimming thrown in there somewhere. At least bike class has started up so that helps to have a group to ride with 2 days per week. I may join Katie's bike group on Sunday morning - I may need the motivation to sit on my bike after Saturday :)

39 more days!

We bought a new car

Hey guys!

Yep thats right we finally did it and it is niiiiice. We now have a roof rack and we will be going back to the dealership to get a bike rack on the top. It is so much fun to drive!

Still training tons. Last week was really tough to get all of the training sessions in between getting stuff ready for the car and I had training all week at work. Not a problem back on track and getting everything in!

Monday I did hill repeats with rexy at the dog park. I don't think she likes them either because by like number 3 she is right behind or beside me and always keeps going straight at the bottom:)

On Tuesday I was over at edworthy doing hill repeats and I was flying back down the hill when a bug flew in my shirt. I thought it was a fly so I wasn' t too worried until it stung me! I have never been stung by a wasp but man the hurts. So there I was biking downhill trying to get a wasp out of my shirt that had just stung my boob. I ended up squishing it and waiting until I got to the bottom to remove it. ouch.

Wednesday I went for a swim and even though the water was freezing I king of enjoyed it. Then again I wasn't doing 25's or 50's so I am always more prone to like swimming when that isn't in the mix.

Thursday was rainy and windy and a little on the cool side so I biked on the trainer. There were some longer tempo intervals in there. I also did some weights...legs...hamstings hurt.

Friday I was lazy and took rexy for a walk and then planted my ass on the couch. Man was I tuckered out.

Saturday was a 3 hour ride...except that I got caught up running errands and didn' t get home until it was too late to bike outside. Onto the trainer for me, it was the longest 3 hours ever. Next week I will be doing a 4-5 hour ride and it will be outside!

Today I have a run and swim and weights on the agenda. I had better get to it.

Happy training and happy recovery!

Oh yeah, there was a weim walk yesterday - 20 weims in the park it was awesome!

Rexy and Duke (her brother) playing, oblivious to everything around themA few of the weims Duke (brother), Rexy, Addison (sister)