'So Vince, I hear you’re an ironman, that’s pretty cool.'

Oh no, I’m thinking, here we go again. It’s another NTP (non tri pal) who’s been misinformed.

'Er…well no, actually I’m sort of half an ironman.'

‘What the hell does that mean?  Did you drop out?’

‘Nope, I’ve done a couple of half ironman races.  It’s…well…it’s only half.’

As this sentence yet again reluctantly slips between my lips, my shoulders slump as the standard response of  ‘oh, well that’s still pretty good I suppose.’ Grates like nails down a blackboard.

‘So how’s Leo?’ They quickly move on, seeing steam blast from my ears and nostrils.

‘Yeah he’s fine.’

So I decided in December that I had to get this ironmonkey off my back, I gotta do an ironman, this half stuff is great, but until I get the full one done it’s always gonna be...

‘oh yeah Vince... yeah I know him, he’s that half ironman guy.’

Ok so which one.  Well most of the European and American ones were pretty much booked already.  So Lanza was an option.  I looked into and it seemed to be the gnarliest.  Eventually, it was Tongy’s report from last year that sealed the deal.  He made it sound like the sort of event I hoped it would be.  Really really really really hard.

My Ironman pit crew consisted of Caroline (light of my life), Leo (8 month old baby/hamburger with arms and legs) and my Dad (So is it biking first?).

We flew into the grot on Thursday afternoon, me and C caned it straight to La Santa to register and listen to the race briefing which, as usual, harped on about drafting and being fair and staying hydrated blah blah, wear a helmet, blah blah no wheelies in transition blah blah and finally do all this right and you’ll be an IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIronman….ok fine, high five, can we go now please.

Getting a cab back to Puerto del Carmen was a nightmare.  Most clever people had a hire car, but I figured we were only gonna be there the weekend, so why bother. It was getting late and I pretty much asked every smug car hire driver to take us back to the Carmen with no success. 

We had decided not to stay at La Santa as the race starts and finishes 25km away, right outside the Fariones Playa hotel.  If you do this race, don’t stay at La Santa, by all accounts it is a major shag trying to and from the race.

So eventually after scurrying after people on my knees, pleading with tears streaking down my face, this uber tall German dude and his wood chopping frauline offered us a lift.  I start gabbing excitedly in the back of the car about ironman and triathlon stuff and Uber dude just nods a bit stroking his uber chin.

‘So how many ironman races have you done?’  I ask.

‘Ohh just seven.’

Gulp

‘Seven, huh. What sort of time you do these in?’

Stefan, I find out, is quite the triathlete.

He mumbles stuff about going sub nine hours a few times and that he’d gone 9:20 at Hawaii last year because of stomach issues.  Then he tells me, ‘But offff courze zeese are ferry easy i-ronmanz, Lanzarot-e is a real i-ronman.  Why didn’t you start wiz ze German i-ronman? It is nice and Flet and zere is no wind.’

I look at Caroline who is nervous about me doing this race anyway and kind of smile.

‘Uh… well you see, I’m like er…well…..oh look lava.’

‘So you will qualify for Hawaii in which age group?’ He says craning his head around and eyeballing me like I’m actually gonna have a chance of snatching his place.

‘Um…30-34’.

‘Oh, zen I will see you on ze course.’

Yup, I’m sure you will Stefan. But you’ll be sitting at a restaurant having finished hours ago.

Stefan tells me there are some very fast euro guys in our age group and that it will be very competitive this year. I again try to explain that it’s my first IM and that finishing is going to be interesting seeing as I’ve never actually run more than 25k in one go before.  He laughs, punching the dashboard a little too hard, the car rocks on it’s suspension.  ‘You’re going to be fine.’ His head cranes around on his impossibly long neck. ‘I see you on the course, Wince.’ He says, deadly serious.  ‘We are here…get out get out.’

Friday...

One day to go and by 7am I already know that racing with clean pipes tomorrow aint gonna a be a problem.  Maybe it’s the water or something, but damn, there’s regular and there’s REGULAR if you know what I mean.

I get down to the swim start for a practise loop and eye up a few other keen beans flapping arms and adjusting goggle straps.   The water looks pretty calm, just gentle rolling waves.  It’s around the race start time so this would be perfect for tomorrow.  I dive in and start heading out. 

The intention is one lap of the 1900m course to see which starting wave I should get into.  Everyone starts at once but they grade the start, Pros, sub 65min and over 65min swimmers.

As I turn left at the first buoy I’m flying, cruising like flipper, the sea bed is racing by, oh look at me, I could tow a water ski display team.  Ok reality check as I turn at the next buoy some 800metres later and find I’m going sideways. Yikes.  I turn at the next buoy and I’m in one of those endless pools just swimming on the spot.  Not great.  The pyramid of skiers has collapsed behind me.

The current wasn’t so bad actually, but I’d taken 38minutes which was pretty far off what I’d hoped. However, it confirmed I’d be starting at the back, which was a bit of a relief.  I reminded myself that somehow I always pull my swim together on race day, so I’d hopefully be going quite a bit quicker, especially with drafting.

We had access to transition at 3pm.  I waited till 5pm so that there was no queuing and I’d could stroll in and dump my stuff.  But more importantly, I could check out everybody’s ride.  Loads of super lean, gnarly legged, tanned tri folk were fiddling around with their bikes, some were letting air out of their tyres and others were pumping them up.  I didn’t know what to do, so I just sort of fiddled about with my bike and practised putting on my helmet until I realized was just being a dick and left.  I hadn’t brought a track pump with me and had my tubs pumped up to 150psi before packing my bike away.  This was soft enough to be comfortable and hard enough to be fast.  Although most of the roads had been resurfaced there were still quite a few km bumpy enough to hammer your backdoor into submission.

So all there was left to do was wait…and wait and wait.

Race Day

The alarm went at 3:30am.  I’d expected to be far too excited to sleep but actually I managed excellent kip.  I flipped out of bed and silently cartwheeled down the hallway.  Leo was already up and ready to give me a pre race strategy talk which consisted a constant stream of Nnnnnnaaaaaaa Naaaaaaaaaaaa and a 15 second raspberry.  I tucked him back in and told him not to wake his mother.  He ignored me and continued briefing me on when to put the hammer down.

I got busy slappin’ on the ol’ P20 all day sunblock.  Lanzarote sun is really strong and sunburn is a real problem. 

The hotel had opened breakfast at 4am for all the irondudes and there were irondudes a plenty.  We were like a plague of locusts chomping through the buffet.  In a matter of minutes I’d gnarled through 6 bread rolls loaded with choco spread hmmmm deeeelish.  I started loading my plate again, trying to copy what the really fast sinewy guys covered in logos were eating but then realized that changing my regular pre race breakfast is just dumb.  I never eat cold boiled eggs and slabs of weird sweaty spam for breakfast, this was not the time to start. 

I was so excited sitting there watching all these top athletes yabbering away in various euro babble.  All the top guys must be staying here right by the start so they didn’t have to mill about outside waiting.  I started pretending I was one of these top dudes and this was my day job. I burst out laughing and got up for more pipe cleaning intervals.

I was feeling pretty good and naively confident that I would finish the race.  I really had no clue as to what time I was going to finish, but I had a plan. Gonna stick to a perceived effort of just below my threshold and just top it out on some of the tougher climbs to maintain momentum.  Nutrition for the day was a total mystery as I’ve never really done any long runs and my longest bike rides have been in the middle of winter where 3 bottles and a few powerbars were enough.  I never had to recover from a 3.8k sea swim and then start one of these rides.  Little did I know that this was going to be the reason for some real suffer time in the saddle a few hours later.

The Swim

So I lined up at the back of the swim with some of the older and fatter athletes.  I hugged Caroline and Leo and gave my dad a stern handshake.  I was now totally petrified.  It was finally starting to filter through what I’d let myself into.  I started to panic.  Were all those threshold intervals on the turbo trainer enough? Why didn’t I

try to get in some more open water swimming?  Or just more any sort of swimming. 

Why not more of all sorts of stuff?  What about that yoga stuff you were gonna look into and those really long rides in the little chainring going at electric wheelchair pace? You haven’t RUN ENOUGH.  Ok hyperventilating a bit, pee in the wetsuit, it’ll take your mind of it….ahhh its hot but it feels good.

Just stay calm, take it easy, just get through this.  Then the gun went off and that irrepressible competitive crazy man inside screamed at me.  GO DUDE GO.  Oh bugger.

I started wading through people and hit the water running.  Oh no going too fast, go slow, go slow.  Thankfully I managed to get a hold of myself and started swimming more sensibly.  .  Every time I felt the lactate build, I backed off.  I started to overtake quite a few people.  I hit the turn around and managed to get on some good feet.

There’s the shore, my god I’ve made it.  I was so excited,  but then I realized we still had another lap to do.  I started wading toward the beach, my heart pounding so hard I though it was gonna explode, great pacing Vince…idiot.  I emptied my goggles and ran around the short beach turn around in a drunken stupor.  The crowds were awesome, so much cheering and screaming.  I searched the frantic faces for Caroline and Leo but everything was a bit blurred through my steamed goggles.  I sort of splashed back in rather than dived and went for lap 2. 

It wasn’t as bad as I thought and I can’t tell you the relief as I saw the beach again.  I felt pretty rough and was now in serious doubts about the rest of the day.  Still, it was the furthest I’d ever swum and a quick glance at the watch showed just over the hour so I was pretty stoked.

I stopped in the showers mid way up the beach and pulled off my wetsuit.  Caroline was there and screamed with what sounded like relief more than excitement.  I half walk jogged up to T1 trying to let my HR settle and prepare myself for the bike.

T1

The tent was packed with dudes slopping about like seals trying to get out of their wetsuits.  I’d already got mine off in the shower and took a seat while some nice gal slapped sun block onto my red raw neck.  I screamed like a little girl and grabbed my socks, a handful of sliced up powerbars wrapped in greaseproof paper, (a stroke of genius I’d regret hours later) and exited the tent.

The Bike

As I burst out of transition on my bike, it was all I could do to stop laughing hysterically, not only had I survived the swim but there was just barely more than a breeze out on the road.  I threw it straight into the big ring and ramped up the watts.  Not the textbook way to start an ironman bike leg, but the excitement was just too much …..mistake number….oh I’ve stopped counting.  As we got down to ‘El Gulfo’, some 10km later, the wind whipped up and blew straight at us.  It was pretty hard going but not the classic slap in the face that makes you cry for a compact chainset.

I kept drinking and drinking, panicking that I’d dehydrate.  God knows why, I guess it was just the excitement of the ironman, but I was in danger of bloating to the size of a waterbed.  But even water beds can be overfilled. Just before the climb at Timanfaya the seems were straining.  I had to pee I thought I was gonna go off like a fire hydrant.  I tried the soft pedalling and peeing straight into my shorts….oh come on, we’re all athletes here.  Yes I peed in my shorts.  But this is never very effective and so I decided to get off and get the job done properly.  Oh sweet Lord practically fired off a barrels worth, I must have just swam with my gob open the whole time.  I reckon the water level in bay must have dropped a couple of inches.  It felt like the whole race passed me by.  I jumped on my bike and smacked it up fire mountain.   At the top the wind was still not too bad.  I was making back quite a few places but I just carried on drinking and soon enough I had to stop again.  I was starting to despair, anything I drank seemed to slide straight through.  I was like a gut bypass straight to the bladder.  Well the weather got worse and clouds rolled in.  By the time I hit Haria, one of the harder climbs of the race, it had started to rain.  I managed to grab back quite a few places here, but was getting low on food.  Then to add to the stress, one of the bolts holding my bottle cage fastened to the back of my seat came undone and the bottle cage flipped round dumping my spare tubs and canisters on the road (are you still counting mistakes?).  I stopped….peed…and then grabbed my spares and transferred them to the other bottle cage.  More people zoomed by.  I think they were starting to pity me as I’d been passing these people all day after each pee stop.  I was about half way now and it was time to pick up the ‘Special needs’ bag.  This is supposed to contain stuff that you desperately need half way round the course.  Well I had no idea what to stick in this bag, so I only had another couple of powerbars in there.  I was getting pretty jealous, seeing what some of the other guys had.  A big ham N’ cheese roll, a big flapjack apple thingo.  One dude, probably Austrian, had a fricken giant tin of some nasty lumpy red crap that slopped all over his bike.  Yuck.  Anyway, I looked at my rubbish powerbars and started chomping away, trying to replace some energy.  At about 110km I hit the climb up to mirador del rio, the highest point on the course.  The sun came out and fried my ass, it was so damn hot, but by the time I got to the top the winds were back again and nearly blew me over the wall to the zillion feet drop below.  I was starting to get pretty tired and stopped at the aid station to make sure I loaded up with banana and whatever else they were selling.  The descent was fast, and I mean crazy fast.  I managed to stay in the aero bars for most of it and was hitting 80kph with low blood sugar and trying to unwrap a powerbar with the wrapper glued on, this was pretty sketchy and I’m lucky not to have nosed it off the side of the road into the comfy lava and cacti. 

I’d pretty much spent the day riding on my own, this course really isn’t one for drafting, so the biker referees are looking out for crazy riding.  I was pretty subtle about nearly falling asleep at 80kph through lack of sugar but this Austrian guy swooped past at some nutty speed and totally cut the corner on the wrong side of a traffic island.  The referee was right behind him and I think he got red carded for it straight away.  He must have been well gutted, but it was totally whacky as there was the occasional car on the course and it would have been so messy.

I’m at around the 130km mark when things start to really go Pete Tong.  I’ve not been eating very well and everything I drink seems to go straight through me.  I’m now one of those guys who start to wobble just before taking a nose dive into a ditch in a state of total hypoglycaemia.  I remember reading something Peter Reid wrote about there being times during an ironman when you feel so low that you think you can’t possibly go on, but if you get through them, you’ll feel good again not long after.  I stopped, necked a gel and had a swig of water to try find my happy place.  I reluctantly climbed back on and started to slowly push the pedals.  Within about 10minutes I could see my speed had picked up slightly and after another 10 I was catching people again.  At around the 150km mark I’d recovered quite a bit and was trucking again.  The last 15km heading back to T2 were awesome super twisty winding roads.  It had been headwind for what seemed like forever but I felt pretty strong and was looking forward to getting off the bike, although I really believed that the second my feet hit the ground, cramp and fatigue were going to smash me like a freight train.

T2

I slipped out of my shoes, started running and sent my bike crashing into a volunteer in true Stadler style, except I stopped and ran back to check if he was ok.  Miracle number one, the legs didn’t cramp.  I headed straight to the loo as, yep you guessed it, there was more peeing to be done.  This one was like one of those Austin Powers efforts that seemed to go on for days, stop and then go on again.  I was so pleased that I’d put a clean pair of socks in my transition bag as pee from earlier in the day had gone down the leg and filled my left shoe.  Too much detail?  Hey I’m all about sharing. 

I sat there for a second grinning that I’d got this far and slipped on my trusty nikes (what? A triathlete not in asics).  Another gal slapped more sunblock into my open neck wound firing me out of transition like a cannon.

The Run

Anyone who says they’re not nervous about running a marathon is lying.  It’s a long long way and you suffer a good portion of it.  I’d always wanted to run a marathon but never thought the first one would be at an ironman.  As I set off, I was really excited, kind of scared that I wouldn’t be able to do it, but knowing that this is the part of triathlon that I seem to do ok at.  I kept telling myself ‘just run till the wheels fall off, then walk a bit, you’ll get through it. 

Tongy had told me that even though you totally feel like you won’t be able to run, just start moving and it will get easier.

The course goes out along the coast for 5 and a bit km then you turn round get slapped with a headwind and come back to complete the lap at 10.25km  You get within metres of the finish before collecting a coloured hairband and having to go out for more laps.  The grandstand is right there and people are going nuts, waving inflatable freebie stuff and cheering.  It’s so awesome.  You get such a rush as you go out for each new lap.  The volunteers at the aid stations are amazing, they even chill the drinks.  Many of them are kids that are so excited to be part of the event.  I love them all, except one little girl, who gave me a coke when I asked for water.  Not realizing this, I threw it straight in my face.  I spent nearly a whole lap trying to lick it from my chops.

I started clipping off the ks at a bit under my half marathon pace.  I thought, just walk the aid stations and see how far you get at this pace.  I find running at an unnatural pace is far more tiring than trying to alter your gait to fit in with some pace plan you think you can maintain for the distance. I’m a fan of the run walk method.

I ran the first 10k in around 42 mins and felt ok.  I was starting to really enjoy myself, Caroline, Leo and my Dad were out on the course poised at the nasty little hills, not steep enough to do too much damage but long enough to sap energy.  The sun was out in force now and not a cloud in the sky meant the temperatures were ramping up to the point where you could feel the heat radiating from the road.  Still the kms clicked by and my pace seemed to just stay in a nice groove.  I was overtaking so many people that I couldn’t stop smiling.  I saw pros walking and one dude lying on the pavement knackered.  I kept muttering keep on keeping on.  I tried a gel but as it hit my stomach it fired straight back up and out like a giant purple sneeze.  From that moment I stayed on the coke.  I walked every station without fail, I refused to skip one, making sure I was getting my sweet miracle cola on board.  After 25k I was in no man’s land, I’d never run this far before.  Now I was starting to get really worried.  I felt pretty sick and dizzy but still my pace seemed to hold.  That third lap was really brutal but I knew that even if I’d have to walk some of it I’d run the last one.  Luckily I managed to hold it together and that last lap I seemed to run on nothing but this crazy euphoric energy that I guess only those who’ve done ironman will know. 

When I saw the finish some 300m away I started sprinting.  I have no idea why, I had no clue what my time was or who was in front of me.  I held out my arms like I’d won the race and high fived anyone who had their hand out, I think I might have hit a few cheeks along the way as well.  

Crossing that finish was totally amazing.  I felt all kinds of awesome.  I still had no idea of time or anything.  Only that I finished.  I grabbed Ken Gasque (race organizer) and hugged him, he squirmed free so I grabbed the photographer, then some other volunteer gal presenting the medals.  And then my legs went seriously wobbly and a medical guy caught me.  Wow what the hell happened.  I managed to regain control of my legs and was led into the medical tent where all the pros were hooked up to IVs.  I was gonna get one just so I fitted in with all the cool dudes, but I could see Caroline and my Dad looking through the fence nervously and thought it might freak them out, so I knocked it on the head and leaned back on my stretcher.

My family was waiting for me on the other side of the tent and seeing them made me get all emotional.  I really didn’t think I’d have such a passionate reaction as a result of completing a race, but Ironman really is a special event.  I was so pleased to have completed it.

Time: 10:13.51  Swim 1:06 bike 5:48 run 3:07

So I didn’t qualify for Hawaii, I’m not too worried about it.  I hope I’ll do it one day, but this day was special for other reasons.  It’s been a crazy rollercoaster ride since I did that first Olympic distance race at Windsor last year.  Ironman is so awesome.  I know many of you have done at one if not more and I really hope you all get to do at least one of these races.  To those who haven’t nailed this one yet, as Paula Newby Fraser says, “Your Ironman charisma is not complete without doing this race

Oh and what happened to Stefan the Uber German Triathlete?  He  suffered on the run but finished in 9:56 and qualified to go to Hawaii…..again.