Note: This is a little long for such a silly event, my apologies, but I write these things mostly for my own posterity because when I reread them I usually find something good in them. I have no ego invested in whether anyone else actually reads this, but I know some people like race reports, so here goes.
Preamble
It’s called ChickenMan since last year (when I did it with 2 friends) after finishing, we went to Dell Rhea’s Chicken Basket in Willowbrook, IL, which has the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. Also the best homemade biscuits, hush puppies, mashed potatoes (WITH SKINS!) and chicken dumpling soup.
This year I decided to go solo, because I needed the timing of this to be far enough out from the Goofy Challenge to not impact my run training. Because of that, and the fact that one of the usual suspects has a sprained ankle and can’t run, and the other was out of town this weekend, and I can’t convince anyone else to partake in the lunacy, I was happy to do this alone.
The format is all indoors—swim in the pool, bike not on my own bike on a trainer, but on an evil Precor C846 stationary bike, and run on the treadmill. I say the Precor bike is evil because if I push known wattages from training on my bike on it, my heart rate is always higher, so I don’t sweat it and figure the conversion factor for me from regular bike to Precor means I need to bang out only 47 miles on it. It still sucks, and I know you, the reader doesn’t care, but it’s a technical detail. Trust me, it would be MUCH easier to do this on one of my own bikes, but then it wouldn’t be as fun or challenging to me!
I got 9 full hours of comatose sleep the night before. Not that I had anything to be nervous about that would disrupt my sleep—I figure I can get out and do a ½ Ironman pretty much anytime except for maybe the week after I just did one or within 3 weeks of an Ironman. And of course, my coach would NEVER have me taper for this—he thinks it’s crazy, but understands and helped me pick the right weekend to do it.
I awoke at 5AM with the intention of beginning to swim at 7AM, giving me plenty of time to finish before the Masters swim, which begins at 8AM. I live ½ mile from the YMCA that I belong to, which is cool because I don’t have to spend much time at all to drive there to swim or run (I lift weights exclusively at home, where I have a range of dumbbells from 2-30lbs. each, a 40-lb. barbell which can be loaded with way more weight than I need, and a Parabody machine, that provides high and low cables, a pec flye station, etc.). So I knew I needed to leave the house like 6:45AM, and I would already have my swimsuit on.
My pre-race nutrition consisted of 2 mugs of coffee with creamer, one Powerbar Triple Threat, and a ½ serving of Glycoload, for a total of about 500 kcal. I got the Powerbar down by about 5:30 while futzing around online, and then chugged the Glycoload at a little after 6AM. I then packed by swim and run/bike bags, put defogger into my swim goggles, put my swimsuit on (today’s choice was the black leather-look suit), got dressed and headed to the YMCA.
The Swim
Data: 2100 yards, leisurely (OK, I’m slow) pace, :39 on the dot. Average HR=101, Kcal=250.
Experience: The best choice for open lane had one guy in it, who had his name written on his pull buoy and Zoomers—Russ Nelson. I had actually met this guy before sometime at the Y, but I don’t think he remembered. No matter, I wouldn’t have remembered his name, either, except for it was there for the whole world to see. When he stopped at the wall, I asked if it was OK for me to swim next to him, and he said yes.
I then began futzing with my goggles, and I was watching Russ swim, and it seemed like he continued to swim down the middle of the lane. Apparently, out loud, I said (not too loudly, though), “Why are you swimming down the fucking middle, you know I’m going to be next to you?” Another man who had just arrived noticed the situation, and I said to him, “Did I just say that out loud?” He said, “You said why are you swimming down the fricking middle.” I smiled that he had made a word substitution, explained that I was sorry for my language, and that I thought I had worked it out with Russ. Russ returned to the wall, and I politely said he was kind of swimming down the middle, and he smiled at me and said, “You mean I need to move my ass over!” I smiled back and said, “Yes, come on I’m only half your size you can still have most of the lane!” and then I got in and started swimming.
Russ was pretty sweet to swim next to—he doesn’t create a huge wake, and he isn’t one of those splashy kickers. But I did notice from time to time he would veer a little too close to me, and since he was wearing paddles for a lot of his intervals, I was a little concerned. He rapped me lightly once, but other than that, I enjoyed swimming next to such a good swimmer! He has a really great backstroke. He’s not so bad to look at, either. Very tall, fairly muscular, not much fat on him.
The guy in the adjacent lane, though, not so much. He was wearing a swimsuit that should go in the rag bin, it’s so ugly and worn. And he’s got a nice pot belly, and his right arm just smacks the water when he’s swimming freestyle. I’ve seen him before and call him Splashy. He creates a lot of turbulence with his kick, too, and a few times I got a mouthful of water care of Splashy. Oh well. It made things interesting to focus on not getting smacked by Russ and not getting drowned by Splashy.
T1: 17:47. I obviously took my time here. Took a full shower, including washing my hair, because I didn’t want to smell too chlorine-y for the rest of the day. Plus I knew this would be the best I’d smell for about the next 5 hours.
The Bike
Data: 47 miles on Precor C846, Time=3:06.49, Average HR=118, Kcal=1550.
Experience: I took my trusty tall, 16-banger (that’s how many 12-oz. beers it holds) cooler plus a gym bag with my running shoes, gels and CD player over to the bike, loaded up a CD, put one 32 oz. bottle of Gatorade on the bike and 2 gels, and took off.
This part of the day was pretty boring. Just ride, internally curse the damn Precor machine for being geared like some alien torture device, sweat like a pig, hydrate (I drank ½ of a 12 oz. can of Ultra Violence (Code Red) about halfway through, and finished it at 2 hours in), occasionally look at the TVs on the wall, look around at the other crazies in the cardio area, change CD’s on the hour, wipe some of the sweat off my head every so often and stand up on the pedals every 10 minutes or so.
Things became a little more interesting with about 20 minutes (by my estimation) to go. I saw a woman get on one of the treadmills with a Timex M-dot hat on. And it looked like it had the Ironman distances printed on the back. My Kona hat has the distances printed on it and also Kona 2004, so I was wondering if it was a Kona hat. I was also wondering where she got the hat, since she didn’t look like someone who’s done an Ironman. OK, get your fucking grenades out and throw them at me for saying that, but you do know what I mean. She was wearing slightly flared Capri pants and “tennies.” That seemed to be the dead giveaway, and then she had the treadmill set to barely jogging. So I thought it was safe to assume SHE wasn’t the one who did the Ironman. I figured her husband. And I wanted to know. I was hoping she would tough out at least 20 minutes so I could ask her about the hat. Which I was obligated to do. Because I wanted to know who was the mystery Ironman at the Y? I thought she might be the wife of someone I know there who just did Ironman Florida for the second time, so I thought it would be nice to have her say “hi” to her husband.
As an aside, even though the effort was not easy, many times during the ride, my legs felt totally weightless, and I was truly in a “flow” state.
I finished my ride (after cleaning off the smelly bike, of course) and went over to the treadmill. I asked the woman in the hat, “Which Ironman did you do?” To which she said, “What?” I pointed to the hat and said “You’re wearing an Ironman hat, so I figure you or perhaps your husband did one, and I’ve done a few myself, which is why I recognized the hat.” She said she didn’t know what Ironman is. So I asked her where she got the hat and she claimed her husband got it at a 5K race where they were being given away. I just said, “Oh, how nice.” And walked away. Everyone who believes that’s how the story ended, raise your hand. Nobody? You can fill in your own blanks. At least it was free entertainment!
T2: 11:27—changed shoes, nabbed a treadmill under a high-speed fan, got some more fluids out of the cooler and 2 gels, and started out.
The Run
Data: 13.1 miles on the treadmill, Time=2:04, Average HR=125, Kcal=1225.
Experience: I noticed I had salt streaks on my bike shorts, how interesting! The treadmills at the Y each have their own TV, but I almost never watch it, and today I sure wasn’t going to. I’m on there to run, to focus on running, to keep running, and then stop. I just can’t pay attention to anything on a TV in front of me while on the treadmill. If I do turn it on, it’s usually The Weather Channel, where I can periodically go, “ooooooh---look at the pretty colors.”
My legs didn’t feel too bad coming off the stupid @#@^$&@$ Precor, but hey, treadmill running is boring no matter how you cut it. So I played with the speed control to mix things up a little, and wasn’t terribly motivated to go real fast, although this is probably the fastest I’ve run 13.1 on the dreadmill. For some reason, I can’t run as fast on it as I would outdoors, if you go by my HR, and I don’t let it bother me. I mostly run by time and intensity.
I had my “floaty” legs a lot during the run. I think the hardest thing was just being on the treadmill going nowhere! I probably could have amped up the intensity, but without a taper, and considering I will be back to normal training on Monday (I get Sunday off, oh joy!), I didn’t see the point.
The only excitement during the entire run was when I grabbed for a gel and spastically dropped it on the belt, and it went flying off. There were 2 or three guys who grabbed for it and one of them handed it up to me, and I thanked him. Whoa…..you could make an entire movie about THAT.
I drank primarily Ultra Violence while on the treadmill, as the caffeine makes it slightly less boring. I don’t remember much of anything else during the run except that I was running, and I felt like I kept up a good cadence.
Race Nutrition
Item Kcal
4 gels 400
76 oz. Gatorade 475
32 oz. Ultra Violence 450
Total 1328
Looks like I nailed it for calories taken in and fluids--about 22 oz. fluid per hour. Perfect!
Post-Race
Everyone knows that the BEST SHOWER EVER is after a hard workout, and this one was going to be no exception! I was just about done showering when an Asian woman that I usually see at the Y when I’m swimming came into the shower area. She’s all suited up to swim, and I’m butt naked. She remarks how she hasn’t seen me in awhile, and I told her it’s because I swim early in the morning most days now. Then I’m just staying in the HOT water because it feels great (I did manage to stretch about 15 minutes before I showered), and this woman looks at me and smiles and tells me I have such a nice shape. And while she’s saying it she’s making the outline of the, ahem, curvy aspects of my figure. I said thanks (really, I wasn’t the least embarrassed, why should I be?), and then she said, “No, really you have the nicest figure” while drawing the curves in the air again. What could I do but smile? I’m all endorphined up, someone’s telling me I look good, what the hell, I’ll take it. What I find interesting is how many women will be very direct (and they are not gay women, either), while men just stare. I have no problem going up to male bikers and telling them they have a nice ass or legs, though. I hope they appreciate it, because I only say it if I mean it!
I’ve just finished getting my post-race nutrition down, at least the start of it. I need to lie down, and this will be a good time, because I think the chain saws are about to be retired for the day, as twilight is approaching. Nothing more for me to do the rest of the day but eat, drink and rest!
Thanks for reading!
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