joereger.com
something opinionated and awesome goes here
| 11 Month | 7 Day | 2004 Year |
| 6 Hour | 40 Minute | PM |
Ironman Florida 2004 - 12Hrs24Min12Sec
This race was about my amazing friends and family who supported me throughout the year. Without all of you I couldn't have done this.
Whole new level of respect for the Ironman distance. That race looks pretty easy on paper but gets pretty hard when you do it. It's a long day. 2.4 miles of swimming. 112 miles of biking. 26.2 miles of running.
Awakened at 4:30AM via triply-redundant alarm system. Pretty good night sleep despite some evening butterflies.
Ate bagels, oatmeal, powder vitamins.
Grabbed my pre-packed gear bag. Walked from the hotel to the transition area. Got my body marked. It was cool out. Set up bike. Did my checklist which, as usual, kept me calm. Not bringing a bike pump was a bad idea that the organizers recommended. Borrowed one. Set up my bike to run bag with fresh Accelerade. Set up running special needs bag with some extra socks and some gels. Saw father who I handed my bag to. Last minute poop in the porta potty. Put on the wetsuit. Headed to beach at about 6:20AM.
Quick-release wetsuit zipper popped as I went to enter the transition area. Had to have somebody help me. Never really rushed but was annoying.
Lined up front far left. Watched pros go off about five feet from me. I didn't realize they were so close and thought that a bunch of overzealous age groupers had jumped the gun. Water was warm.
A few minutes before the race I got all emotional. Teared up thinking about all of the great folks who helped me throughout the season.
Gun went off. Mad house. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. 2400 people raging into the water. Very aggressive swimming for entire first lap. I swam directly down the buoys. Shortest point between two lines, right? Bad idea. Everybody converges to the buoys. I got slammed from all directions. Couldn't slow down. Couldn't speed up. Went anaerobic immediately. Slapped in face a number of times. Groped from behind.
Near end of first lap was able to get into stroke a bit. Came out of water on first lap at 35:00. One minute better than my Macon Half Ironman swim. A little frustrated but happy to have survived. With my calculations I knew that with my abilities it was now impossible for me to complete in under 10 hours.
Second lap was a little smoother. I was able to get into a bit of a smoother stroke. Overall though I was intermittently getting mobbed by groups. Sometimes I could get off onto my own and it was like butter. New wetsuit rocks. Some stomach cramp possibly due to bagels but most likely due to bad form and uneven breathing.
Generally did one side breathing for a minute or two at a time. Best swimming happened when I breathed to my left. Any time I looked East I got a face full of sun. Hard to see anything looking into the sun.
Headed out of the water in 1:12. I used the strippers. Looked fun. It was. Drop and they just grab at you like crazy, taking off your wetsuit. Neat.
Found my swim to bike bag easily. It was inside. Stayed outside the changing area and started to change. Pretty quick. Found myself wondering what else there was to do. Have done a number of tri changes and assumed that an ironman change had to me more difficult. It isn't. A girl took my wetsuit and bag... very high service. I was off to find my bike.
They call your number ahead and have an escort give you your bike as you come to it. Cool. I had to put my heart rate monitor onto the bike. Cost: 35 seconds.
Heart was high going out onto the bike. For the first half hour I was only outputting 135 watts or so with a heart rate of 160. This got me a little worried.
After an hour it settled down and I was doing 180 watts at a heart rate of 145 bpm. A lot higher heart rate than training at the same power. In training, even after swims of an hour before long runs, I've seen 130 bpm at 200 watts. More on why I think this was later. At least I was finally outputting some power.
Then my knew blew up about 25 miles in. Pain started. Frustrated. By 35 miles it was very painful. By 50 miles I was ready to quit. Every single pedal stroke called out "Quit." Over and over again. "Quit." I had to do something. With all of the great support from friends and family I just couldn't quit. I started trying things. Higher cadence. Still hurting. Lower cadence. Still hurting. Knee shifted out. Still hurting. Pull up on back more. Still hurting. Less push down on front. Still hurting. More left, less right. Still hurting.
I was getting desperate. Then, by luck, I stopped pedaling and extended my right leg all the way. I flexed my right quad and pushed my knee backwards. Then I started pedaling. Less pain! I didn't know what I was doing at first. But it wasn't what I was doing. It was what I had done. I refocused and thought. I recalled the stretch/flex. I did it again. Less pain! I found that I could stop pedaling every three minutes or so, extend my right leg and flex my quad. And the pain in the knee continued to go away. At least to a tolerable point where it wasn't screaming in my face all day.
This was one of my biggest achievements all day: pragmatic adjustment.
I was snotty on the bike. Not because my new wheels rock (they do). At first there were big massive loogies. Then snot dripping out of my nose. For the first couple hours I sniffed it up. Then I gave into it and just started letting it drip down my face. Or I blew it into my hand, which really meant onto my face. I was covered by snot all over my face.
The weather was cool. Probably mid to high sixties.
Incredible support from the volunteers. Every ten miles they had Gatorade, Gu, water, bananas. And they cared. Handoffs were fun. One girl reached across my bike and I was sure she'd trip and topple me, but she didn't. A number of missed handoffs.
I mixed enough Accelerade for the protein into the aerobar drink holder. Then I threw in Gatorade.
I witnessed many approaches to peeing. Whip it out, pee off side. Stand up and pee in suit, dripping all over. Stop on side of road and pee while on bike. Stop and run into woods. Stop, get off bike and pee three feet from it. Saw a girl peeing on the bike. Neat. Was right behind a guy when he let rip on the bike. Swerved with three other guys. Really wide into the other lane.
I peed on the bike only once. I was pretty good at managing my fluid intake. Lessons learned from training.
But I was sticky. Somebody had handed me an open goo. So it got all over my hand. Then I had to put my hand onto the bars. So my entire right aerobar was sticky. And I had used Gu packets in my right jersey leg, tucked under. They must have dripped down my right leg. About three minutes after I peed the back of my right leg started to stick to itself on every revolution. Painful skin ripping. A really surprising sort of issue to have. Nothing like this had ever happened in training.
I had to sip some gatorade, spit it into my hand and slick it onto the back of my leg. This worked for a couple minutes but then the air dried the water and left the sugary residue. More sticking and pain. So I kept at the spitting. I didn't have any water on the bike with me. It was another pragmatic adjustment.
I hit the salt tablets pretty hard. Lots of Gu. Nothing solid. Enough fluid to keep me on the edge of peeing.
I had my timing chart and was on split for an 11 hour race the entire bike. Felt good about this.
The family set up on the bike course at about mile 80. There I was pedaling along and I saw my wife. All I could do was point, wave and smile. Just a few seconds I was mad that I hadn't yelled "I love you Terpa!"
Pulled back a bit near the end of the bike. Wanted to have some left for the run. Maybe didn't pull back enough. Last ten miles in the saddle were rough. I've never done 112 miles without getting off the bike once. The most I've done is 112 miles with two breaks of a couple minutes.
Exited the bike with a total bike time of 6:06. Not bad. I've done the same distance in 5:55 with less heart rate. Probably many reasons for this. More on that later.
I headed into transition. Pretty quick. Still feeling OK but worried about the run.
The run felt great! Absolutely great! Good stride. Good heart at 150bpm. Good pace. I was loving it.
But problems would arise. I started to get stomach issues. I couldn't eat Gu. Odd, it worked for the bike. Time for more pragmatic adjustment. I started doing water and gatorade. Fail. I started to do water and banana. Fail. I started to drink accelerade from my Fuel Belt. Fail. Darnit! Finally, I found the combo: pretzels and water. Who would have thought?
Despite feeling good I started walking at points. I was surprised. My heart rate was under control. There were no pain spots on my body. My legs felt great. No blisters. No headache.
But I found myself walking. Why? I think it was my core. My stomach muscles weren't up to the challenge. And a number of training mistakes which I'll get to later. I couldn't get my heart rate above 130bpm. When I walked it would very quickly drop to 105 bpm. And then when I ran it would only get to 130 bpm. Very odd an unlike any race I've done. Generally I fight to keep my heart rate low. It usually jumps to 170 off the bike immediately.
It's hard to describe. It's like I could up the pace at any time and run but somehow I didn't feel compelled to. It's as if it was a motivational issue. I'd chalk this up to Tim Noakes' description of athletic performance being limited by the brain as a safety valve.
First lap of about two hours. So I knew that breaking 11 hours was out of the question as I went out on the second lap. I set my mind on breaking 12 hours. I upped the pace just a bit but more than that I decided to try to not walk as much.
But the second lap quickly found me walking more and more. I knew that 12 hours wasn't possible by the first quarter of the second lap... about 16 miles. But I also knew that 13 hours would be broken with ease. So I set my mind to enjoying the end of the day. It was getting dark. And cool. The sky was beautiful.
I was in absolutely no pain. I can't reiterate this enough. No pain. My legs felt great. No headache. No upper body pain. No blisters. No lung pain. No heat exhaustion. Absolutely nothing was bothering me at all. I was just not running very quickly. But I was running comfortably, fluidly and happily. It was the oddest of paradoxes. Motivation or mental fatigue must have played a role, but I was completely lucid, excited and ready to go. It was a new situation for me.
The weather all day was perfect. Probably one of the best days for Ironman ever. High of 70 degrees. No wind. About 50 degrees at the start. Perfect!
I enjoyed listening to other competitors. I enjoyed thanking the volunteers. I enjoyed looking off to the side at the beautiful sky. I enjoyed talking to other competitors. One woman was improving her personal record in the Ironman distance by over 2 hours. One man was on his first lap as I had one mile to go. I enjoyed thinking about the year that had passed since I signed up for the Ironman race. Lots of training. Great friends. I got married. Set off on my business dream. Learned a lot. Made a lot of mistakes. Trained a lot.
The miles on the last lap slowly ticked by. I enjoyed it. It got dark. While at the beginning of the day I swore I wouldn't wear a glow stick, by the end I was glad to put one on. They were thin neclace glow sticks. I remember seeing what amounted to hundreds of bobbing circular UFOs lining the streets of Florida.
Before I knew it there was only one mile to go. With a quarter mile to go Rusty ran beside me, but tripped on a pylon taking a massive spill. Then I saw Heather. Then my father. Then the finish.
Crossing the line was great. It's something I'm very proud of. They announced my name, called me an Ironman and gave me a medal. Then they made sure I was coherent. I thanked as many people as I could.
I grabbed my bike and gear bags. Then I got to give Heather a big hug over the transition area fence. It felt wonderful!
Every story needs a little mystery: as Heather and I put the bike into the minivan after the race I noticed that the rear tire was flat! I have no idea whether or not I was riding with a flat tire. I tend to think I wasn't and that it was somehow otherwise flatted. It had enough air in it to be ridden without being noticed. But I think I would have noticed. I didn't hit anything hard. The streets were fairly clean. So, there's your mystery for the story.
Said hi to everybody outside the hotel. Took a long shower. Went out to eat. Had a big steak and french fries.
How did I feel? Not bad. A little stiffness crept in by the end of dinner. I was tired... I had been up since 4:30AM and I burned a lot of energy throughout the day. But overall I was coherent and I was able to walk. I've felt worse after some workouts.
Amazingly, my knee felt fine. I've done ten minute runs in the taper period that caused my knee to ache for two days. I do an Ironman and the damn thing feels fine.
Went to sleep after watching some Saturday Night Live Best of Tom Hanks.
So what did I learn? It's funny, I usually come back from races with a bunch of technical learning. What to eat. How to adjust my bike. How to transition.
The lessons from the Ironman were more about spirit, determination and adjustment. Kind of corny but that's how it turned out.
Be able to adjust to conditions. This was the key for me. Lots of things will try to end your day. Be willing to listen to them so that you can adjust, but don't fall for their treachery.
Be thankful for the people who support you. When out there I really realized how many people supported me all year in getting to Ironman. Without them I wouldn't have been there.
Have a desire to finish, even if it doesn't go perfectly. One step at a time. Goals are great but finishing is better.
I made a number of mistakes in training.
Bad taper with too little working out. I lost a bunch of fitness in the last three weeks. I could feel it in my lungs. I wasn't sure if it was lack of fitness or fitness soaking in to my body. It was the former. Now I know. Tapers have been historically difficult for me. I need to get better at them. Late in the season the line between overtrained and peaking became hard to distinguish. The cold/flu that I got for two weeks made things even more difficult as I felt its effects for over a month.
Increasing my mileage too quickly due to the cold hurt my knee. Which made workouts afterwards less than effective.
Not enough long bricks with bike/run.
Number one problem: core strength. Gotta get the belly in shape.
Going into this race I only had one goal. I wanted to finish. That said, in the back of my head I had some times that I thought I could hit. It's just too easy to whiteboard your training times and conclude that you can do a certain time. It doesn't mean I thought I could do any of them... just that they were targets.
I thought that with a perfect day maybe I could do sub 10 hours. Here's the logic: I've been swimming 1:40/100 in the pool. Add a shiny new wetsuit for a few seconds per 100 and some adrenaline and you have 1hr out of the water. I've done 5:55 on the 112 miles. Add some shiny new wheels, perfect weather and a perfect taper. Maybe you have 5:35. I've run 1:30 half marathons in training without pushing too hard. I've run 3:30 toward the marathon distance in training without pushing it much. Would 3:20 be possible? On a perfect day. So maybe 10 hours isn't out of the question? It's easy to dream.
But ten hours was not possible after the swim.
So I considered 11 hours. I had 11 hour splits for the bike taped to my stem. Every 25 miles I got a split. I was hitting them within a minute or two all the way to the end of the bike. This left me needing to run something like a 3:42 marathon. Not out of the question. And at the beginning of the run I felt great. Final time of 11 hours seemed possible. But then I walked. And then some more. By the end of the first lap of the run I knew that 11 hours wasn't going to happen.
But I knew that given my pace 12 hours was possible. But it wasn't to be.
My final time was 12hrs24min12sec.
How humbling! Ironman kicked my ass!
The Ironman distance does some weird things to you. It's not a distance to simply go out and conquer. Not for me at least. I think that I can improve my time significantly, but it'll take a lot of work. This race humbled me. I needed that. Now I get to work harder.
In think that instead of time, my new goal is to be able to race one of these things. Regardless of the final time, I want to know that I was able to output power from the start to the end. I faltered on the run. So I need to work on that. When I say "race one of these things" I mean I want to be able to keep my heart rate up throughout. Keep my form throughout. Not fall apart on the run.
I'm signed up for Ironman Lake Placid in June/July (I forget which). A much harder Ironman with many more hills. What will my time be for that one? At this moment, I don't care as much about my time as I did going into Ironman Florida. There's so much more to be gained just from completing the race.
Sure, I'd love to string together the perfect race and break ten hours. But it's not the only thing that matters.
I'm writing this the morning after the race. I popped awake at 5:30AM and couldn't get to sleep. The sky is beautiful. The ocean is calm. It's cool. My body feels sore but not overly so.
The biggest difference is in me. I accomplished a goal that I set forth to my father in college. I told him that I wanted to do an Ironman before the end of school. I was off on the timing by about eight years, but I finally came through. It was special to have him there at the end of the race. Throughout training I've thought about that forgettable moment over ten years ago when I offhandedly mentioned to him that I wanted to finish one of these things.
So what's different about me? It's hard to articulate but it deals with ego. I went into the race caring about my final time. Wanting a time I could advertise. Believing that some digits meant something. I still want that and will strive to improve, but it very clearly matters a lot less than going through life with my friends and family. I realized during the run that it's not about me... it's about me and my friends and my family together. That's the biggest thing. A humbled but expanded sense of self.
I am truly the luckiest person on Earth to be surrounded with my friends and family... kind of odd that it takes 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of biking and 26.2 miles of running to remember this!
By the Numbers:
I was 1111 out of 2032 who finished.
In my age group I was 85 out of 132.
In the swim I was 81 age grp and 1024 overall.
On the bike I was 86 age grp and 1178 overall.
On the run I was 88 age grp and 1251 overall.
Pos Time Name City St Cty Rep Plc/Total Cat # Cat Ovr Time /100m Tr1 Cat Ovr Time Mile/hr Tr2 Cat Ovr Time /Mile Penalty
1111 12:24:12 REGER, JR., JOE ATLANTA GA USA 85/132 M25-29 265 81 1024 1:12:56 1:56 5:53 86 1178 6:00:53 18.6 3:12 88 1251 5:01:20 11:31
Swim Distance
4400Swim Time
1hrs : 12min : 0sec
Bike Distance
112Bike Time
6hrs : 0min : 0sec Bike Ridden
Run Distance
26.2Run Time
5hrs : 1min : 0sec Run Shoes
Adidas Supernova(Second Pair)Run Terrain
Pavement
Related Posts