Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Ironman 70.3 World Championship RACE REPORT!


Many of you have been asking about my race report for the Ironman 70.3 World Championships, so here it is!  It’s not a short one.  So grab a cup of coffee and put your feet up for a few minutes.

I made a promise to those that would read this blog that I would not write on a consistent basis.  Seeing as I have not posted anything in over a month, I feel that I am holding up my end of the bargain pretty well.  I also made a promise to myself that I would not use this blog to share negative emotions.  If you want drama you can go watch Jersey Shore or Keeping Up with the Kardashians (I am not even going to take the time to see if I spelled the right…).  I wanted this to be something witty, educational, and fun.  I didn’t want to be forced to feel like I had to write something, simply because it had been a week since I last wrote something.  That being said, the suspense is over…race report is below.  Read away!
I had a meeting in Flower Mound on Tuesday night, which ended a bit after 9PM.  On my ride home I had more free time than I usually do to think about things.  As I sat in the mess of glaring red taillights, that used to be known as “121” and now is referred to by many as “WTF, really”, I began writing my race report in my head.  And let me tell you, folks, it was pretty dang good.  Below you will find what my mind was able to regurgitate, once I finally arrived home at 11PM...thanks to “WTF, really.”

I got up about 4am on Sunday, September 9th to eat my pre-race breakfast.  Like a good little athlete, I sat down and ate what seemed like far too much food to handle at that time of the morning, just so I’d be ready for my swim wave to start three hours later (and my body would be good and done with all its processing before I crammed my way into a teeny tiny little speedsuit).  Getting ready for the swim portion of a triathlon is very similar to getting ready to go skiing, especially if you have to wear a wetsuit.  As careful as you are to pee 27 times before you get all geared up, inevitably, the second you pull on that last bit of gear you have to pee again.
I ate my breakfast and since I had three hours to kill, I’m a strong believer in making the best use of your time, I laid down on the couch and set my alarm for 45 minutes later.  I’ll be totally honest with you.  I didn’t sleep at all during that 45 minutes, but I rested.  I had slept like crap the night before.  In fact, I can’t even guarantee you I really ever slept.  I went to bed around 9:30PM on Saturday night.  We had been watching a movie and I was falling asleep on the couch, so I headed off to bed.  I took half a serving of ZZZquil (yes, I do refer to it as a serving, not a dose, this may be detrimental to my health, but I’ve personally come to terms with that) and laid down to “sleep”.  I always tell my athletes that the most important night of sleep before a race is two nights before.  Why?  Well, I can pretty much guarantee, if you are human, you will want to do well in your race and you will be so caught up the night before in how to do everything perfectly so that you end up doing well, that you will fret yourself out of any potentially good sleep that might have been sneaking your way.  That being said, Saturday night consisted of pretty much no sleep.  But Friday, Friday I slept GREAT!
About 5AM my parents asked me how I was going to get down to the race.  WHAAAAAAT???  They had so kindly been totting me around for the past couple of days and they ask me this???  EEK!  Stressor #1, check.  I informed them I would appreciate if they would be so kind as to take me and we headed down to the swim start around 5:30AM.  Yes, I dropped my bike off the night before and yes, it was a clean transition, and no, I did not need to be there that early.  BUT, I am OCD and Type A and probably too much of a planner for my own good, so I wanted to be down there early.  Plus, I would have to visit the porta pottie a multitude of times to pee (does anyone know WHY you have to pee so much when you’re nervous???), so I wanted to get down there early.

My wave started at 7:15 (I think, I honestly can’t remember at this point) and I started slipping into my speedsuit a little before 7.  I ate my Gu 15 minutes before my wave started and then I headed down to be corralled into our swim waves. 
My stomach was in knots.  It was like my stomach was in a fist fight with itself.  There was only one long distance triathlon that I was not nervous like this before, and that was Coeur d’Alene.  I don’t know why, but I had been calm before my Ironman.  Today, not so much.  But this nervousness was usual and I know my race day self well enough to know that once I got my rhythm and warmed up in the swim it would go away. 

Stressor #2, check.  It didn’t go away in the swim.  I felt like crap.  Getting to the turn buoy took an eternity.  I headed back toward the swim exit, but it was nowhere in sight.  How long was this 1.2 mile swim?  The village where the swim start/T1 were located had an Italian theme to it and there was a bridge crossing the lake that reminded me of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy.  I knew once I made it back to the bridge I wasn’t far from the swim exit.  However, at this point, I was feeling terrible.  It had taken me forever to warm up and my swim just wasn’t what I thought it would be. 
In the last year I have stopped wearing a watch during the swim portion of my triathlons.  The swim is my weakest discipline, and knowing that so much of these endurance sports is mental, I knew I could not look down at my swim time.  If it was not what I hoped, or felt, it had been the rest of my race would be negatively impacted.  I got out of the swim, feeling as though it had been awful, didn’t look at the clock, and therefore had the ability to tell myself it hadn’t been as bad as I thought it was, it was just nerves.
T1 was a joke.  Really.  It was quite ridiculous.  We exited Lake Las Vegas on the left-hand side of the lake (no, I do not know directionally what side I was on, so I will stick with left, right, ahead, and behind, for us lay-folk), ran up a hill, over a bridge, down through a canyon of purple porta potties and to our bikes.  I had looked down on this crevasse the day before and truly dreaded it.  But to be honest, that portion of T1 ended up being less rough than I had imagined.  I grabbed my bike and headed up (yes, UP) and out of T1.  My wonderful cheer squad was there yelling for me the whole time.  I couldn’t tell you who was where, but I heard all of them J  The T1 exit included a switchback.  Yup, that’s right.  No jokes here.  It was much steeper than I imagined it would be, but it was over quickly.  I mounted my bike and head like a bat out of hell, oh wait, that is not right…like a snail up and out of the Lake Las Vegas Resort area onto the main bike course.
A switchback, in T1? Necessary?  I think not.
I had done a sweat loss test the day after I arrived in Las Vegas.  It was dry heat and, fingers crossed, maybe it would be cooler and I wouldn’t sweat as much.  WRONG.  30 minute run, 3 pounds lost.  Damn.  Unfortunately, I know that sad truth that I am not cut out for hot weather races.  I just cannot replace all the fluids I lose, for as much as I sweat.  Even if I tried to consume enough liquids, my body would not be able to properly absorb them.   
That being said, mile 10 rolled around on the bike and there was nothing but desert around me (HA, when I proofread this, I realized I had written “nothing but dessert around me,” THAT would have made for a great bike course).  No water.  For those of you not as familiar with triathlons, most Half Iron distance triathlons have water hand ups on the bike every 10 miles.  I was sucking vapor out of my aero bottle and began to panic.  This is where knowing your body is so important in training and races.  At this point, I knew I was in trouble.  No, I wasn’t dehydrated yet, but I knew that if I didn’t get water soon I’d be well on my way.  The first bottle hand up wasn’t until about mile 15 on the bike.  Stressor #4, check (those of you who are perfectionists are wondering where #3 went…keep reading). 

I had entered Lake Mead and it was absolutely gorgeous.  This portion of the bike course, I would relate somewhat to a train wreck.  You don’t want to look, but you HAVE to look.  I kept convincing myself that I would not have to climb those distant hills (mountains?), but as I rode closer I could see little shiny helmets making their way up.  The turnaround provided me with an absolutely beautiful view.  Like something out of a movie.  It was breathtaking. 
The next water hand up wasn’t until mile 30ish on the bike.  I had tried to conserve my water as best I could at this point, but was sucking vapors again as I came up to water hand up number two.  I was toast.  I had goose bumps and could tell I was getting dehydrated.  It was somewhere around this point that I started laughing to myself, no not because I was dehydrated and delusion, but because I knew all eyes were on me that day.

Ironman has this great online tracking system where you can very thoroughly track (or stalk, as I prefer to call it) your friends that are competing in an Ironman event.  I am a very avid stalker of my friends on days I am not racing and because of this I knew exactly what all my friends back home were doing.  They were refreshing their computer screens far too often, wondering what the hell had happened to me.  The people I train with are like college roommates, maybe not as messy and don’t go out drinking as much, but they know you.  They know you better than you could ever think they do.  They know your race splits well enough to know when you had a slower swim than usual.  They know your bike splits well enough to know that it shouldn’t be taking you as long as it is to get through the bike portion as it is.  And they know your run splits well enough to know when you’re having a tough day.  They do not research this, they do not study your past races, they just know.
It was at this point in the bike that I began to smile.  I was laughing to myself.  And then this 60 year old guy came along and passed me going up a steep climb…my smile faded for a moment and then I read his bib.  “Bruno”.  He was from Italy.  I smiled again.  Go for it 60 year old, Italian Bruno.  You’re kicking ass.  And then I started laughing to myself.  I imagined all my training buddies back in Fort Worth watching my every move online.  Then I imagined all the texts that the people who were in Las Vegas were getting from people frantically asking if I was ok.  I know this is what was happening, because it is EXACTLY what I would have been doing.

I couldn’t even tell you the mile marker where I came upon water hand up #3, but I think it was somewhere near mile 40.  Here, I stopped.  Yes, you read that right.  I stopped.  If you know “race Liesel” you will have read this statement in shock and then re-read it to ensure you read it correctly.  I don’t stop in races.  I just don’t.  But here is where my “race smart” mentality kicked in.  People often ask me why I think I do so well in races.  I am a naturally gifted athlete, I will give you that, and I am extremely dedicated to my training.  But, beyond that, I train and race smart.  I know what my body is capable of and I know what I need to do to succeed.  This isn’t to say I don’t still make mistakes, but I do my best to always remember to train and race smart. 
So, yes, I stopped.  I had been informed there would be sunscreen applicators at the exit of T1.  If there were, they were not making themselves very visible.  So I had headed out on the bike, essentially, naked.  I’m white.  Let’s not lie to ourselves.  I am of German decent and I used to get this AMAZING bronze tan just from being outside.  However, somewhere along the line, that nice little asset was traded in by the sun tan gods for a deep red “boiled lobster” look.  Stressor #3.  It had been on my mind the entire bike ride.  So I stopped (I keep repeating this for effect, because I DON’T STOP!).  I asked the volunteer for two bottles of water and sunscreen.  I filled up my aero bottle and lathered up as I drank the other bottle.  Sometimes ego has to go out the door in order to race smart.  Racing smart can be the difference from finishing your race (even if it’s not the time you wanted) and DNFing. 

I got back on my bike and headed towards town (T2 was in Henderson).  A little before mile 50 I’d had enough.  I was dehydrated, my legs were tired and I was disappointed.  This was due to a personal mental error.  Part of racing smart is entering the race knowing what you are capable of.  I was competing in the World Championships.  I was racing with some of the strongest Half Ironman athletes in the World.  I, who am used to finishing somewhere near the top, was very well aware, that my ranking would be flipped in this race and I would be somewhere near the bottom.  Some of you may be thinking this is negative self-talk.  Sorry to burst your bubble, but it is quite plainly just the truth.  And I was ok with the truth.  I was ok with it, until I began to believe what others were saying, when they’d tell me I’d do better than the 6+ hours I expected on the course.  They were not trying to mess with my mental plan, they were merely being supportive.  They believed in me.  BUT, I knew I wasn’t trained as well as I could be, this was going to be the most difficult Half Ironman I had competed in, and I was racing with the best in the world. 
Because I changed my plan in my head, I began to get disappointed in my time.  My goal bike time was far gone and I still had many hilly miles ahead of me.  So I began to get down on myself.  This is why it’s so important to KNOW what you can do going into a race.  To know this and to know that you are simply being honest with yourself and in your abilities.  You know you best. 

I wanted to quit.  I convinced myself to finish the bike.  At least once I finished the bike I would be greeted by my cheer squad and it would give me the motivation to keep going.  This is where I really missed having all my training buddies racing with me.  When we did Coeur d’Alene, my bike time was over six hours.  But it was the fastest six hours ever, because I spent the entire time looking for the other 11 people I trained with.  Here, in Las Vegas, I didn’t have that.  When it comes down to it, your final time in triathlon is individual.  But, to me it’s a group event.  The support you get from your training buddies, while on the course, is priceless.  I missed having that.
I came into T2 and got really excited.  They took my bike for me!  I didn’t have to rack it, I just handed it to some wonderful volunteer who took it off my hands and I headed to my run bag. CRAAAAAAAAAAAP!  I had left my Garmin on my bike.  In my sheer excitement, of this great red carpet service, I had forgotten my electronic life line.  I realized this as I was reaching down to grab my run bag.  Split second decision, go back and lose time finding my bike and getting it or head out without it?  It is at this point, that I will suggest to anyone reading this that you go back and get your Garmin if you rely on it as heavily as I do.  However, I was dehydrated and I knew my heart rate was shot.  So I left it.  I took off my heart rate strap and helmet, tossed them in my bag, threw on my shoes and visor and headed out onto the run course.  As you have well become aware, I decided to give the run a try and not quit.

I came out of the tent and scanned the supporters for my cheer squad and their red and black shirts.  I scanned and scanned and scanned.  My heart dropped.  They were nowhere.  All I wanted was to get a little encouragement from them.  All I wanted was to see them.  There were eight of them and that’s a pretty big group to get coordinated.  I figured they hadn’t left the house in time to catch me go out on the run.       
Since I was Garmin-less it was time to run free.  This was going to be a perceived exertion run.  Here goes nothing.  When I started all this endurance stuff, I would go hard at everything and I WOULD NOT STOP nor would I walk.  However, in the past few years, and with the discovery of my ridiculous sweat loss, I have come to rather enjoying walking the water stops in races.  For me, this is a necessity.  Until I master running and actually being able to consume more water than I spill on myself, I will walk water stops.  I would like to thank the WTC for providing rather lengthy water stops on the run portion of this course.  Long water stops meant an excuse to keep walking.  So, I walked.

This was by far the most challenging run course I have done in a Half Ironman.  It was a mile+ uphill, a mile+ downhill…times six.  It was brutal.  As I came near the end of my first loop (the run was three loops) I heard hooting and hollering from across the street.  There was my posse J  Monica and Cristal had made a sign for me. 
I honestly don’t remember what all the front and back said.  But they had printed out and taped on pictures of many of my training buddies, so that they “would be here with me.”  I looked over at them, but was pretty much in the bite me phase at this point, so I’d be lying if I said I jumped up and down with joy and waved at them.  I looked at them and then looked back ahead.  I did not acknowledge them.  Now, some of you may believe this is rude, for those of you who have done an endurance event…you get this. 
I cleaned up my attitude after this and as I began lap two I saw Tim and Jenn.  When I saw them I stopped to talk to them.  Yup.  I stopped again.  I was morphing into the honey badger.  I mentioned, in passing, that the course was brutal, and headed back out.  Lap two was tough and lap three was just cruel.  I’d had a stitch pretty much the entire run and spent my meanders through the water stops trying to get rid of it.  I drank coke and visited numerous porta potties, only to discover that whatever I was feeling while running disappeared when I tried to ride myself of it…The last mile of the course was downhill.  I kept saying “less than a mile” over and over in my head.  I wanted to be done and I WANTED WATER.


I finished and was given the biggest medal I have ever received.  It was well worth not quitting for that.
Although I had mixed emotions during this race I have walked away from it as an absolutely amazing experience.  It was like the Olympics of triathlon for me.  There were people from all over the world.  The expo was huge and the atmosphere was just amazing.  It was the toughest Half Iron course I have ever attempted and it is well deserving of being the World Championship course.
Facebook (oh lovely Facebook!) was plastered with congratulations from people who had known I was racing.  It lifted my spirits.  The thing I love, about those I train with, is they don’t care what your finish time is.  They could care less if you finish first or last, they just care that you’re out there doing it.  At points, during the race, I felt like I was letting people down.  I was there representing everyone I train with and my time was not what “MY” time would usually be.  But I realized it wouldn’t matter to anyone if I came crawling across the finish line as the sun set.  All that mattered was that I was there.  For this, I am truly blessed.
WATER!!!

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