better late than never! ( that's what they said to me at the end of the race too ;o) )
Roth is a small town in
Bavaria, rural and forested, I consider it to be Germany’s most beautiful
region. Cherries and hops grow where the vast pine forests have been cleared.
Pretty little villages with their strange looking hop –houses are connected by
smooth cycle tracks, and decorated with sculptures from local artists. I was
staying with a very interesting Finnish lady who lived alone in a small village
on the outskirts of Roth – and had the use of her shopping bike for my
excursions into town. It was a lovely spacious and comfortable home, providing
just the right balance of peace and privacy and her good company. As a result
of airline-induced bike transportation stresses, I’d been unable to follow my
training plan for most of race week and would be coming into this race with
about half of the training hours that I would usually do and minimal course
orientation. Having done less than usual volume in my short race preparation
phase, this seemed appropriate and I kept myself and my bike moving with the
regular commutes that was necessary to get between the split race venues of
Roth and Hilpoltstien, which are about 10 km apart. For future reference, the
logistics of this event would be a great deal easier with a car. We had a few
impressive thunder-storms during race week, but Sunday’s forecast was
optimistic with only a “chance” of storms, and I manage to avoid a soaking
whilst riding out and about. Either my luck would hold or I’d get my due on
race day!
A 3 am wake up was
required in order to feed myself ,drink coffee for the first time in 2 weeks
and get to my 4:20 transfer bus in time. Of course I was at transition with
almost 2 hours to spare, which was quite nice as I had a lot of friends racing
and once I had set my bike up it was relaxing to go around checking on
everyone, wishing them luck and taking a few photos.
The race start was at 6:30 for the Pros
and those age –groupers who expected to go “sub- 9hr” and win a portion of
their entry fee back. I really like that idea of reward good performances: I
suppose that without Kona slots on offer,
it’s the Challenge equivalent – though rather biased towards the under
40 year –old males.
This method of wave
allocation suited me great though – I reckoned that most age-groupers gunning
for a sub -9 would be likely to be looking to get most of their advantage on
the bike, and not swimming like the Pro packs. This usually equals a good draft
for me! And so it was – I seemed to be starting very near the front, but I’m
used to the drill – head down, stay calm, swim like mad and get sucked along in
the jet stream as the pack stretches out over the first 300m. I don’t tend to
even look where I’m going, just enjoy the ride, although “enjoy” is not really
a very accurate description as it’s pretty unnerving being unable to breathe
for the first 3 minutes and I’ll often loose goggles or even cap in the churn.
Once that settled I found myself to be nicely surrounded by other swimmers,
including the red (male) and white (female) caps of other pros which always
makes me feel a bit better, and got into a relaxed but focused 3 –stroke
breathing rhythm never too far from a pair of feet for the first half of the
swim. After the first turn I picked up the effort to attach myself to a small
group a little further ahead, and the occasional tap that I received on my toes
indicated that I’d brought a couple of friends along with me. There were brief
periods of 2/2/3 breathing during this 500 m effort, and again coming towards
the finish, but on the whole it was one of the most comfortable swims I’ve done
and so was fairly pleased to have passed through the change tent with only an
hour on the clock.
My bike was looking
pretty solitary in the Pro-pen racking area, which makes transition easy ;o) I
was really looking forward to this part of the race (the ride, I means, not
transition!) the most – I had been
riding really well in training, loving my Enve-Powertap wheel-set, and had not
yet seen the bike course but had heard great things about how super-fast it is.
YEEEE HAAAA!!
And that’s just how I
felt for the first 80 or 90 km. Having set out far too hard in my last Ironman
race in Florida, I was deliberately holding myself back as it seemed very
comfortable to ride above my target power. The first of the two laps there were
other riders around. One or two female pros and some of the faster male
age-groupers, riding with enough space between us that the motorcycle refs
didn’t have much work on their hands, but close enough to provide some pacing
and motivation. Roads were closed and it felt great to be bowling along in
a “pace line”. It was really quite
windy and on some of the (many) exposed sections I really had to question how
on earth this had a reputation for being a super-fast course! We reached the
famous Solar hill climb and it was as spectacular as the photos suggest – a
complete wall of noise and bodies, parting just sufficiently to allow a bike
through as we approached. I would have been more comfortable riding this short
incline much faster than the fellas that I found myself caught behind here
-they seemed to want to savor the attention, passing was impossible and I could
not make my requests for them to “get a friggin’ mve on” heard over the crowd’s
loud cheering. Perhaps my legs would be thankful later on.
Around about the end
of the first lap, things started to feel a lot tougher, as they always do. I
deployed a Viper Boost gel and picked up a bar from an aid station. By this
point the course had been joined by the relay cyclists, which provided some
fresh legs to help pace off. The roads had become significantly more busy with
cyclists and we were passing one another almost constantly. This certainly
gives an advantage in both keeping the effort up as required for these “moves”,
and an undeniable benefit of shelter from the wind as I was passing groups
at time. The fact that frequently
those who I’d passed would come back by me a short while later seems to
demonstrate this. Oddly there was very little sign of the motor cycle refs
during this second lap. Not that I saw anything which I felt was obvious
cheating, and perhaps they felt that with this many competitors on the roads,
crowding could hardly be helped.
I have to say that after two laps and what seemed like constant headwinds, I
felt pretty beaten up and glad to be off the bike after 5hr and 17minutes. It
was a little longer than I’d hoped to be riding , but I think many people felt
the same way and the windy conditions had a lot to do with that. I was 6hr20
into the race, but a 3:20 marathon would still bring me a PB- and I was hoping to
run a little quicker than that.
The atmosphere that
the supporting crowds in the centre of Roth created certainly helped me to
forget the stiffness in my legs and glutes, the run course then took us on a
lovely shaded trial through a small forest which was lined with large paintings
by local kids and artists draped from trees on either side. It was wonderful
and I felt great. I was pretty confident that the km markers would be reliable at
this superbly organized race, I had decided against wearing a HR monitor or GPS
and would be running on “feel” and checking splits on my stopwatch. The splits
looked reasonable for the first 8 or so, I knew that sometime soon I’d see
Rachel coming back towards town ahead of the race and she’d be followed by
Steven and Mat leading their age-groups….my sister and other friends would be
some way behind them, so that occupied me and kept me focused on running well
and looking sharp.
I had only covered
about 8km when I started to find it very hard to maintain even my sensible
starting pace of 4:45/km on a dead flat path. “Looking sharp” already felt like
more of a pretense than it should, and once Steven and I had crossed for the
first time, I let go of that and allowed my pace to drop even further. About a
week has passed between the race an my finally sitting down to finish this race
report, and it’s now hard to recall exactly where the problem was – I did not
feel it was nutrition, I had no pains in my legs – just nothing in there to
‘give’. I think that I simply ran out of training, the lack of long runs in my
brief race build-up period was becoming apparent. It was really an ideal run
course – a single lap of a T-shaped course ,most of it was on the canal path –
plenty wide enough for the amount of traffic that was out there at that time
and constant company from people running the opposite way. This really helps
when you have so many friends doing the race. Each end of the T was a little loop in a small village who’s
population had come out to bang drums and pans in the sun! So we never had to
run the same stretch twice, but had plenty of significant markers in the race
to aim for. But, for me – the perfect course and great conditions couldn’t do
anything to disguise the fact that I was having really quite a lousy day of it,
and tried not to think about those target times just slipping away as I walked
the aid stations ...barely jogged between for a 3:40-something marathon time.
Although painful, the
final 2km loop around the town square of Roth, in front of a “mile” of trestle
beer tables and jolly Bavarians in the sunshine was an absolute joy. Certainly
a highlight of the day and perhaps my racing career given that I was not going
to come away from this race feeling very proud of my performance. But whatever I now feel when reflecting
back on that race, at the moment of crossing the finish line, I really did feel
extremely happy and proud as I do each time I get myself over the line at the
end of an “iron-distance” race.
If it were easy, I don’t
think I’d be as interested!!
Here's how my race broke down, with a little analysis -
Swim – 1:00:23 About average for me, based on what the 5 fastest female swimmers of the day swam)
Bike – 5:17:54 About average for me based on the fastest 5 female bike splits, but I did record a new best average power for an IM distance race thanks to the winds!
Run – 3:42:53 One of my worst ever
run performances, over 18 minutes slower than an “average” run time for me
would have (woulda, coulda, shoulda!) been based on the fastest female runs on the day, and of course the element of my race that I am most
disappointed, but in fairness least surprised, with.
A marginally better
than average time in each of these splits, or a better than average result in
any one along with just average times in each of the others would have resulted
in a new PB. So, despite the windy conditions on the day, it’s still a fast
course, and one that I’m pretty keen to return to with some “proper” fitness!
