Well the day had finally arrived. My alarm went off at 4:30am, I ate my bowl of cereal, had a small cup of coffee and then Kimberly and I were on our way to the race site. There were two options for parking in the morning. One option was to drive to the Gunstock Mountian resort and shuttle down to the race site. The other option was an athletes-only parking lot at Ellacoya State Park, right by the swim start. I had read before-hand that this parking lot would fill up by 5:00am so I wasn’t expecting to find a parking spot but we drove down anyway. When we got there, vehicles were still being directed in so it looked like we were going to score a parking spot at the race site – and we did! We would come to regret this later on when we found out that the gate to the parking lot would be locked until 3:15pm since it exited onto the main part of the run course. Totally understandable, but it also would have been very nice to know this before-hand!
Having arrived with time to kill, I took my time setting up my transition area, waited in line for a bathroom break, re-checked my transition setup and then walked down the beach to the swim start. We got there early enough that it was still pretty quiet on the beach. As we sat there at our picnic table looking out at the calm, morning water, it was actually pretty relaxing given that my race was going to start in a little over an hour. The rest of the athletes slowly filtered over and I saw all of the colour-coded swim caps gather together to get ready for their wave starts. My wave started 45 minutes after the first wave. After watching a few of the waves take off, I got into my wetsuit and headed over to join my fellow age-groupers and get ready for the start. After a very anxious 30 minutes or so, I felt a bit of calm settle over me as I stood there waiting for the race to start. I didn’t feel any butterflies as I heard the announcer counting down, but I was focused and ready to go and was waiting for the horn to sound.
At 7:45am, we were off! My wave had 162 starters and it was a bit frantic at the beginning. I got bumped a few times and probably did my own share of bumping, but after the first 200-250m everybody seemed to be sorting themselves out and I was able to settle into a rhythm. It was a bit uncomfortable for that first few hundred meters, but once I got settled in I felt really good and the swim seemed to go by a lot more quickly than I had expected. I swam a bit wide, and as a result didn’t have much traffic to contend with but in the end I came out of the water in 35:37, which was pretty much on par with what I had hoped going into the race. I had a bit of a surprise coming out of the water when I wasn’t able to un-zip my wetsuit. The zipper was snagged on something and no matter how hard I pulled, it wouldn’t budge! I ran to the wetsuit strippers and thankfully they were able to free me! After a semi-quick transition it was time for my favourite part of any triathlon – the bike!
The ride started out on the freshly paved highway 11 and went uphill straight away. I had heard ahead of time about how hilly the Timberman course was, and because of this I had done the majority of my training in Gatineau Park, QC. I was delighted to find out that even though Timberman was “hilly”, it was definitely no Gatineau Park! The first hill was pretty gentle and I found myself rolling up it at over 30kph, even with my legs still wobbly from the swim. After a few km’s of flat or downhill riding, the second hill started. This one was a bit longer, but also had a pretty gentle gradient and caused no terrible hardships to the legs early on in the bike course. The course became a bit more rolling after this and the third climb was actually pretty steep, but it was also quite short. I decided to expend a bit of energy here to power up over it and bomb down the opposite side to being settling in for the ride out to the turnaround. On the course profile, it looked like a net downhill after the hills to the turnaround, but I was expecting it to be flatter. It ended up being a very, very fast section of the course. I wasn’t pushing too hard, but Strava tells me that I averaged very close to 40kph for this 25km section of the course. My legs felt very comfortable and I wasn’t pushing too hard, fearing the consequences of such pushing once I started the run. Of course, after the turnaround I had to do this all in the opposite direction and into a slight headwind. I was maintaining a speed of just over 30kph at this point, so I started pushing a bit harder to bring my speed closer to the mid-30′s. Once I got back to the hilly section of the course I decided to slow it down a bit because I still had no idea how my legs would feel on the half-marathon after a 90km bike ride. I spun as much as possible over the hills without slowing too much, and accepted the free speed of the downhills whenever it was available. I rolled into T2 with a bike split of 2:37:12. This was also on target for what I had expected – maybe a little bit slower. Strava file is here: http://www.strava.com/activities/19191478
At this point my whole cheering squad had made it out to the race site and spread themselves out so I saw people on the bike-in; while I was in transition putting my runners on; and then again on the run-out! Awesome! I even heard my uncle yelling, “Go Chris!” as I was putting on my shoes in transition. My T2 was about a minute quicker than T1, and then I shuffled off into the unknown. What the heck were my legs going to do to me on a half marathon after riding 90 km’s?!
As I was running out of transition, I found myself really concentrating on slowing myself down. I wanted to make sure I was going too slow, if anything, at the beginning of the run. I set my Garmin to show my average running pace and kept a careful eye on it, trying to keep it at or just below 5:00/km for at least the first lap. As I got going, my legs felt pretty good. “Alright, this is good. Just keep it steady”, I told myself. I hit the turnaround and still the legs felt good. Steady… ran up the hill at mile 5 / km 8 and still felt good. Coming into transition to finish my first lap, I was still chugging along at the same pace. I felt great! One lap to go and my legs hadn’t started rebelling yet! A few km’s into my second lap and I started to feel a dull pain on the outside of my left foot. Alarms started going off in my head. Just over 2 weeks ago I had to abandon my final long run after 15km’s because my foot was hurting so much in that exact spot that I thought I was developing a stress fracture. I had nightmares of having to pull out of Timberman because I couldn’t run. Once I started having this sensation in my left foot, I tried to keep myself calm by slowing down a bit and trying to focus on landing softly and maintaining good form. As I was approaching the turnaround for the final time, I seemed to have the foot problem under control but I started to feel a tingling sensation in my right hamstring that I recognized all too well as a fatigued muscle that was wanting to cramp up soon. Crap. I started taking cola at the aid stations and again tried to run as smoothly as possible. There wasn’t going to be a negative split today, but I could at least try to maintain my same pace and finish in a decent time. The cola seemed to help maintain my energy levels, but my hamstring was still arguing. Wtih about 2-3 km’s to go, I hit the final climb and shuffled my way up. The temptation to walk was very strong but I made myself run the whole way up. 2km’s to go. “You’re close enough now, just take a short walk break. It won’t hurt you. In fact, you’ll probably feel stronger after you do”, is what my mind was trying to convince me. I ignored it and kept running. 1km to go. I could hear the announcer and the music. I was almost done! At this point the adrenaline makes it easier to subdue the voices in your head that want you to immediately stop what you’re doing and go sit down in that nice, shady patch of green grass, and instead I kept my head up, looked ahead and picked up the pace. As I rounded the corner to the finishing chute I saw a few people ahead of me who were finishing their races as well. “Those are places in the overall standings. There might even be somebody in your age group up there!”. Well, the voices in my head had certainly changed their tone from a few km’s ago! I did the best impression of a sprint that my tired legs would allow and picked off a few people (including one person in my age group ;), crossing the line with a run time of 1:47:06 and a total time of 5:05:05 (http://www.strava.com/activities/19191479). I did it!
I staggered through the finishing area, allowing a volunteer to remove my timing chip, grabbing my finisher medal and a white cap soaked in cold water (very refreshing!). My family was waiting to greet and congratulate me. We took a few photos, then my Dad and Uncles made a quick exit to get in a round of golf. They invited me but I politely declined ;).
So my first half-Ironman is done, and it was a great success! I went in with so many unknowns in terms of pacing, and how my body would react when running a half-marathon after a long bike ride. I am very pleased to have pulled it off with no real problems to speak of, and I had a really great race! There will be another 70.3 in my future, that is certain, and hopefully I’ll be able to build on my successes from Timberman.
-Chris