Swim 2.4 miles (1 loop)
BOOM!
At the sound of the cannon, the water begins to foam with the arms and legs of 2361 triathletes. Mass swim starts like these are infamous for clawing, kicking, elbowing, punching, dunking, leg pulling, and general mayhem. Oftentimes, people will simply swim right over you if you get in their way. I wanted no part of that, so I “self seeded” myself at the very back of the pack. By starting so far behind the start line, I might have added an extra hundred yards or so to my swim, but it was a small price to pay for not getting manhandled.
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| Waiting for the Cannon. |
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| We're off! |
The swim was a lengthwise course along Tempe Town Lake, from one bridge to another and back. I’m a horrible swimmer, but I thought I made good progress this past half year. By taking a swim clinic and training in the pool, I was able to cut down my 1k times from 28 minutes to 22 minutes. This translated to a swim time of a little over 90 minutes for the 2.4 miles. Add in a “fudge factor” of 15 minutes for getting lost in open water and whatnot, and I really thought 1:45 was achievable.
One hour and countless zig zags later (I'm having a hard time swimming straight), the starting bridge was still figuratively and literally a mile away. I started to get concerned that I would not make the 2:20 swim cutoff. It would have really sucked to train my ass off for half a year and not even get to bike and run. For the last hour, my thoughts were consumed with the cutoff. All of my friends were following me! You better F-ing make it out on time Stephen!
Unfortunately, unlike biking or running, I only have one speed when I swim. Slow. Paradoxically, any attempt to swim faster by “going harder” only slows me down and makes me tired. So even at this critical point in the race when every voice in my head is screaming at me to go faster, I had to calm down and trust that my training will be enough to get me there on time. I’ll finish when I finish. And finish I finally did, in 2:08 with twelve minutes to spare!
Looking back, I honestly don’t know what went wrong with the swim. Yes I kept getting lost, but by 30 minutes? Really? Maybe my stroke fell apart. Maybe I got tired and didn’t notice. I dunno. I’m just glad I made it.
One more thing I want to say about the swim. I’ll be forever grateful to the kind volunteer kayakers who tried to keep me on course. One pretty much took pity on me and personally guided me through the second third of the race. A million "Thank You"s to them all! If you are a runner or triathlete who races regularly (or even if you aren’t), please consider volunteering in at least one race each season. The athletes appreciate you so much, and the karmic benefits are worth it!
My swim time: 2:08:19
My placement in Age Group: 334/334 (Yep. Dead Last. LOL!)
Fastest Pro Male: 47:44 (Damn fish.)
Fastest Pro Female: 51:13
Fastest Male in my AG: 50:50
Slowest Male in my AG: You're looking at him! Woo Hoo! I should get a special medal for that or something.
Median Male in my AG: 1:17:30
T1
The thing with swimming in cold water is that the cold gets into your ear canal and messes with your balance. I'll often exit the water and stumble around like a drunk sailor for a couple of minutes before finally regaining my sense of balance. Ironman does a great job making sure the athletes make it to the changing tent in one piece by saturating the swim exit with volunteers.
The swim/bike transition (“T1”) was a trip. Usually, I would struggle to take off my wet suit, walk around dazed looking for my bike, and fumble around with my bike gear. Here, wet suit strippers pull your wetsuit off for you! Sweet! Then, every 10 or 20 feet on the way to the changing tent, there is a volunteer standing there making sure you're safe, warm, and on course. Inside the tent, a nice volunteer emptied my bike bag and laid everything out neatly in front of me. He even offered to wipe sand off my feet! I took my sweet time getting ready. As I ran out of the tent, a final volunteer already had my bike unracked and simply handed it to me as I made my way out of transition. I felt like a freaking rock star. :)
My T1 time: 9:47
Fastest Pro Male: 2:17
Fastest Pro Female: 2:46 (It's funny that the fastest pro females were consistently slower than the fastest pro males in what basically amounts to clothes changing. That's right. Even in triathlon, the guys are waiting for the girls to get ready.)
Fastest Male in my Age Group: 3:13
Slowest Male in my Age Group: 25:38
Bike 112 miles (3 loops)
After over two hours slogging my way through the water, I couldn't wait to get on my bike. It's by far my favorite leg of the triathlon. I mean, who doesn't love going fast on a bike? My arms were still a bit sore from the swim though, so it took about 30 minutes before I finally settled into my regular biking rhythm.
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| Riding down the Beeline Highway. I'm in "aero position" here. |
The bike was… windy and miserable. Sustained 15 mph winds all day. It rained on me a couple times, but I heard from other riders that they actually got hail. Heh. I averaged about 21 mph uphill with the wind at my back and 13 mph downhill riding into a headwind. I kept wanting to go harder, but if there was one piece of advice I heard over and over from my coach and all of my friends, it was “Don’t hammer the bike on your first Ironman. Save your legs for the run.” So I didn’t.
Instead, I took it easy, stopped to pee 4 times and stretched my back and arms another 2 times. I also fueled up on my all-in-one liquid nutrition, with the occasional infusion of Hello Pandas. When you’re out there burning through 10,000 calories over 16 hours, the all important “nutrition plan” becomes something you follow religiously. All the training in the world isn’t going to help when you run out of energy and end up bonking on the marathon.
I generally don’t like to fiddle with food packaging while riding a bike, and have trouble swallowing yucky tasting bars while exercising, so I opted to go with a special water soluble powder that has all the carbs, electrolytes, protein, and caffeine I needed. One bottle an hour. It’s easy. The idea is to consume enough calories to make up the deficit you generated by swimming, sustain you through the bike, then take in a little bit extra to get you started in the first few miles of the run. Each person will usually have their own nutritional strategy that they will practice extensively during training. Again, you don’t want to try anything new on race day. I had no problems with nutrition at all that day, so I was pretty happy.
I ended up finishing the bike in 7 hours. I was hoping to be closer to 6.5 hours, but with the wind and the rain and everything, I was pretty content with 7. Sometimes, you just have to take what the race gives you.
Oh, and I got to see my friend Deb at least 4 or 5 times on the bike course, cheering me on. I can't say enough about her. She welcomed us into her home, fed us, and was pretty much our own personal cheering squad and support crew throughout the entire race day. Just awesome in every way. She and her husband Steve drove all over the course in order to see me as much as possible. That was pretty great! Thanks Deb! :)
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| Here's me complaining to Deb about the wind... and the fact that I still had to run an F-ing marathon. You can see that I'd finally had enough of the wind and opted to retrieve my jacket from bike special needs. |
My bike time: 7:01:42 (looking back, I prolly gave away 20 minutes peeing and stretching)
My placement in Age Group: 284/329 (5 people DNF!)
Fastest Pro Male: 4:21:38
Fastest Pro Female: 4:47:06
Fastest Male in my AG: 4:50:59
Slowest Male in my AG: 8:16:51
Median Male in my AG: 6:11:45
T2
Three words. Valet Bike Service. Dismount, hand your bike to a volunteer, and run to the changing tent. Pretty damn sweet, man. Decided not to risk chafing and changed into my running underwear and shorts instead of keeping my tri shorts on.
My torn up foot held up pretty well on the bike, probably helped by the fact that I didn't really exert much upward force on it like I would have had I been going harder. I carefully wrapped up the balls of my feet and slipped on my socks and running shoes.
It was at this point that I also noticed I couldn't see clearly out of my right eye. It was as if I was seeing everything through a white film. I was a bit concerned because the last time I saw the world like this was right after my laser eye surgery. I thought I had read somewhere that the flap that they cut on your eye doesn't ever completely heal (yes I was thinking this during the race), and was afraid that with the crazy wind blowing on it all day, that it might have dried up and something got messed up somehow. I wasn't freaking out though, because it wasn't painful or anything. Tried splashing water into it, but that didn't help. So just to be safe, I ended up running about 90% of the marathon with one eye closed in order to keep it from drying out even more. It eventually turned out to be nothing serious. Just a hell of a case of red eye!
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| Finally cruising into T2. Time for the marathon! |
My T2 time: 11:15
Fastest Pro Male: 0:57 (less than 1 minute!)
Fastest Pro Female: 1:05 (Again, the girls get beat by the guys... this time in shoe changing.)
Fastest Male in my Age Group: 0:59
Slowest Male in my Age Group: 19:02
I should mention that the slowest T2 in the race was 50:56 !! I heard the next morning at the awards banquet that this guy pretty much sat down in the changing tent and had a full leisurely lunch. The saddest part? He still beat my overall time by 30 minutes. :/
Run 26.2 miles (3 loops)
Coming into the race, I knew the run was going to be the great mystery. This was going to be my first marathon. In fact, due to various injuries during training, the farthest I'd ever run up to that point was only 15 miles.
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| Beginning of the run. You can tell because it's still light out. And I'm still running. |
The run started off well. My coach had instructed me to go out with a fast turnover of 180-200 steps per minute for the first couple of miles to help my legs transition from biking to running. There’s no way to do that without going at least a 9:00/mile pace. The strained calf that had been bothering me the past several days suddenly became a non-issue, for which I was very happy. Maybe the seven hour bike ride worked out the kinks! Now I can just focus on running with no distractions. Aside from being basically blind in one eye, that is.
The course itself was a flat 8.7 mile loop by Tempe Town Lake, bookended by two bridges. It was a very spectator friendly course because you could easily walk between different points on the run to see your runners multiple times in the same loop. Deb found me at least 3 or 4 times that night. Unfortunately, much of the run was also on concrete, which is not the most friendly on your feet. I was running along at around an 11:30 pace for the first 12.75 miles or so with no problems. My legs still felt really fresh, and I had no doubt that I would finish. Then, as I slowed to walk through an aid station to pick up nutrition, my right knee gave out on me as I started to run again. Just pain. I’d never had knee pain during training, so this was new to me. After a few more strides, I decided to start walking. The run special needs pickup was only a quarter mile away, and I had stashed an Advil in there.
Ironman Arizona (and most other Ironman races) gives you 17 hours to finish the entire race, from 7am to midnight. The swim cutoff, with which I am intimately aware, is at 9:20am. You need to be off the bike by 5:30pm. But of the three legs, Ironman is most generous on the run. Even the slowest cyclists are given 6.5 hours to complete the marathon, which is easily doable with a half run/half walk strategy. Most people will have much more time than that, which means most people would be able to walk the entire 26.2 miles if they wanted to or were forced to due to complications. I started my run at exactly 4:30pm, which gave me 7.5 hours to finish. The knee never really got better, even after the Advil, so I decided to shut it down for the day and walk it home. There was no need to be a hero tonight, as long as I finished. Even with my busted knee, I was pretty confident that I would finish with time to spare. But you better believe I triple and quadruple checked my pace against the remaining time left!
Some of you know me as a fast walker or a fast hiker. You’ll be glad to know that all of those years of fast walking finally paid off, as I speed walked my way through the last 13 miles. I was averaging anywhere between 13:30 – 15:00/mile. A bit over 4mph. I even ended up passing some of the "runners" who had slowed to a shuffle. Why even make the pretense of running at that point? Walking is faster and infinitely less painful!
I gotta say something about the volunteers at the aid stations. They were just tremendous. Out there straight through midnight, they kept us all going with their outrageous outfits, music, and infectious energy. They handed out everything from water and sports drinks to flat cola and even warm chicken broth! They also stood there with trays of grapes, bananas, oranges, cookies, pretzels, chips, and sports gels. Just awesome. I can't thank them enough! :)
4+ mph is fast for a walk, but that's still 3 hours of walking remaining. Every few miles, I would test out my knee by trying to run, but the pain would always still be there. So I kept plugging away, just glad I was able to walk without pain.
Two times, I would finish a loop, and two times, I would look wistfully down the left fork in the path that led to the finish line as I headed right instead. Now it was finally MY turn to make the left turn. As my walk turned into a run for the final quarter mile, all the pain seemed to lift away as I'm greeted by musics, cheers, and high fives from the crowd. Impulsively, I spread out my arms and fly my way into the finish.
Finally. After a year of build up, through 6 months of hard training, swim clinics, 7 hour bike climbs in 100 degree heat, and every foot and leg injury known to man... I hear the words I've been waiting to hear since 4th grade:
"Stephen Soong, YOU ARE AN IRONMAN ! ! !"
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| Yeeeeaaaaahhhhh!!!! |
My run time: 6:11:10 (14:10 minute miles)
My placement in Age Group: 287/321 (13 people had DNF-ed at this point)
Fastest Pro Male: 2:48:12 (6:26)
Fastest Pro Female: 2:52:56 (6:37. Chrissie Wellington is a beast!)
Fastest Male in my AG: 3:07:23 (7:10)
Slowest Male in my AG: 8:51:26 (20:17)
Median Male in my AG: 4:48:57 (11:02)
Summary
My overall time: 15:42:10
My placement in Age Group: 304/334
Fastest Pro Male: 8:07:16 (Timo Bracht)
Fastest Pro Female: 8:36:13 (Chrissie Wellington won by 29 minutes and was 8th overall, Men and Women. Wow.)
Fastest Male in my AG: 9:14:03
Slowest Male in my AG (that finished): 16:51:26
Median Male in my AG (that finished): 12:42:46
(epilogue to come...)
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