I am an Ironman!

Race: Rev3 Cedar Point Full Triathlon
Date: September 11, 2016
Location: Cedar Point, OH
Time: 13:37:57
Age Group Rank: 9 out of 11
Results: http:

I am an ironman now! When my friend Dan and I did a half-ironman (70.3 miles) in 2014, I had so much fun that I wondered if doing twice the length would be twice as much fun. Today, having finished a 140.6 mile race, I have the answer: it was just as much fun as the half-distance race with an even greater sense of accomplishment and inner strength. There is an often-used saying that you can do anything you want if you are dedicated enough. I am not sure that is always true because there are so many factors beyond your control, but I am happy to illustrate a case where the saying did come true.

Let’s do my report by time of day. I looked at my watch regularly to make sure I was on track to finish the race in 15-16 hours. Are you ready to spend the day with me? Let’s go:

5:00am. Dan and I wake up in the shared motel room. We had gone to bed around 9:30pm the night before, after having dinner with my parents and stopping at two stores for supplies. One store was a Subway where I bought a 6-inch cold-cut sandwich for me to pack in my “Special Needs Bike” bag.

5:37am. I took my time eating Corn Pops cereal so we were late for my target departure time of 5:30am.

5:50am. I entered the transition zone. I racked my bike and dropped off 4 bags at different locations, each containing the supplies and food I would need at various stages during the triathlon. I was so nervous on Saturday that I would forget to put needed items into the proper bags.

6:25am. Transition zone was closing. It was time to walk 800 yards to the boat launch where the swim would start. The swim was taking place in a marina sheltered from the bigger waves of Lake Erie. I didn’t mind swimming in the marina, but the swim was supposed to be in the open water of Lake Erie. The race director decided to change the location due to wind conditions.

6:50am. The sun was still below the horizon when they played the national anthem. Today was the 15^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, so we also paused for a moment of silence. I chose to look at the hundreds of small American flags that race organizers had placed around the boat launch. The flags were fully extended in the 14 mph wind. I was happy to be wearing my wetsuit because it kept me warm in the air as well as in the water.

7:00am. The racers lined up two-by-two and we were sent into the water every 10 seconds. The water was a perfect 75 degrees. The “time trial” start meant I didn’t have to worry about running into as many people on the swim as what would have happened if we had had a mass start.

7:05am. I immediately started swimming toward the wrong buoy. We were supposed to swim counter-clockwise around the marina, keeping the big yellow buoys on our left. I headed for the first buoy I could see. This buoy was on the far side of the looped course so eventually I would encounter it again, but not now. A kayaker intercepted me and pointed me in the right direction. I over-corrected and started swimming too close to the rock breakwater. My right arm hit rocks underneath, so I veered back into deeper water. This incident took my confidence down a notch. I had a long race ahead of me. How many more mistakes would I make today?

7:15am. I didn’t like this swim course. I was swimming right next to giant yachts (was I too close?), alongside a breakwater (would I run into more rocks?), and sometimes under branches emanating from trees growing on the breakwater (creepy, but kind of cool). Sometimes I was swimming right next to someone else (stressful), and other times the nearest swimmer seemed too far away (was I doing something wrong?). About this time, another kayaker got my attention and pointed to other swimmers a little farther off shore. He said “there is a better current over there.” Oh, I thought to myself. So that’s why they were over there and I was seemingly swimming all alone among the weeds and water snakes. I shifted into the deeper water and felt the propulsion of current. I felt like a sea turtle. It was a thrill. I just wish I had known about that earlier. At the southeastern end of the marina the water grew choppy, but I had just done the Presque Isle Sprint Triathlon a month before, and the water there was worse. This swim was going fine after all.

7:44am. I started my second loop of the swim course and felt more confident about my bearings. My arms were too warm, my calf muscles felt slightly crampy, but nothing was too bothersome. The sun was just now breaking through clouds on the horizon. The mix of patchy gray fog and a white cloud-speckled blue sky with rays of golden sun spurred a sense of thanksgiving within me.

8:20am. I saw Dan on shore with his camera. I gave him an “a-ok” signal with my hand as I took a stroke.

8:27am. I finished my swim in 1:27, about 18 minutes faster than I had anticipated. This put me in 31^st place overall, out of 90 racers. The calmer waters of the marina (versus the open lake) and the reduced need for sighting probably helped me keep to a straighter line and finish sooner. Upon exiting the water, volunteers helped me strip out of the wetsuit. Then I put the wetsuit, swim cap, and goggles into a mesh bag with backpack straps, put it on, and retrieved a pair of running shoes I had left in the designated location. After a few wobbly strides, I ran stiffly the half-mile distance to the transition zone.

8:32am. In transition, I was directed into the changing tent to prepare for the bike segment. The changing tent was a surreal and dreamy experience. There were plastic folding chairs for athletes to sit in as we changed our shoes.  A volunteer visited each athlete, asking if we needed water, Gatorade, or energy bars. I asked for water, and he returned in an instant with a cup of ice water. I think maybe if I had asked him for a hot towel and a glass of wine, he would have gotten that for me, too. It was like I was flying first class in an airplane. We spoke in muted tones, honoring the performance in which we all played a role.

8:39am. I left the changing tent with food stuffed in one pocket of my tri suit and the Quarq GPS tracking device in the other pocket. The Quark would transmit my position every minute to a website where my friends and family could watch my progress in real time. It was the size of a bar of soap and besides taking up valuable space in my pocket where more food would have gone, it was a great thing to have.

9:30am. The bike route coursed along a narrow strip of land with a beach on one side and homes on the other. As soon after it reached the mainland the course weaved through a neighborhood near a school. It was at this spot where I saw an ambulance crew loading an athlete onto a stretcher. I was moving at an average speed of 20mph so I didn’t have the chance to gawk, but it didn’t look good. I remember my first thought was “that’s so disappointing that she had an accident at the start of the race.” This reasoning isn’t quite logical, as it shouldn’t make any difference whether the crash was at the start or the finish. It would still be a bad day for the athlete. But what my thought process suggested was that I was having a good time, and I wouldn’t want to crash so early in what I hoped would be a very fun day.

10:00am. I had been following another guy on a bike for maybe an hour. Drafting was illegal for this race so I maintained a following distance of at least three bike lengths. He knew I was there because at every intersection controlled by police, he would thank them for being there, and then a second later, I would do the same. I really wanted to keep following him because it takes less mental energy to follow than to lead. However, we encountered a small hill and he slowed down. Having trained on the hills of Pittsburgh, I am a really good climber. I just couldn’t slow down for the hills, so I passed him.

11:00am. I passed through an aid station with a bottle exchange. I had been taking sips of Gatorade every 15-20 minutes so by this time, one of my bike’s bottles was empty. I slowed down a little, discarded the empty bottle, and grabbed another from a volunteer. It was effortless, like a pro. I had an emotional moment after passing through that aid station. I had tears. Was I grieving the loss of the water bottle? No, that couldn’t be it. I had planned to discard the bottle during this race. So maybe it was just a moment of reflection on how well this race was going for me.

11:15am. For food, I had been eating some Stinger Waffles I had stuffed in my pocket. I like the Waffles a lot better, but I wanted something different so at another aid station I stuck my hand out and grabbed a pre-opened portion of a PowerBar from a volunteer.  No one was stopping to eat, so I didn’t either. The PowerBar was so dry, I almost choked. It’s hard to eat and exercise at the same time.

11:30am. I came upon the half-way point on the bike route where our “Special Needs Bike” bags were distributed by volunteers. One person stood along the road well out ahead of the aid station and read our numbers. By the time we pedaled to the aid station, some Boy Scouts had found my numbered bag and handed it to me. I pulled over and took out my Subway sandwich. I stood there eating it for about 15 minutes as numerous cyclists grabbed their bags and went on. If they happened to see me, they looked at my sandwich with great envy. The volunteers were laughing at what I was doing; here I was, stopped, and eating a sandwich. I was joking with them and asking about their day. I was so relaxed and in good humor that they couldn’t believe I was doing a race. “I like this guy!” the Boy Scout leader kept saying. I am a slow eater. I finally finished, retrieved a few more Waffles and Clif bars from my special needs bag and put them into my pocket, and started on my way. Then I turned back and asked the volunteers where the porta-john was. They laughed some more and pointed me to a nearby intersection. After a few more minutes, I was on my way.

11:36am. I saw Dan and my parents along the roadside with signs, cheering for me. My mom’s voice carried more than anyone’s. She was so proud of me.  I am 41 years old, and the love and support of my parents still means a lot. I was heading downhill and couldn’t stop to say hello. I felt bad that they must have been sitting there for an hour waiting for me, and within 5 seconds I was gone.

1:00pm. I finally found another cyclist to follow and this helped pass the time. After a few minutes, though, we came upon an athlete who had pulled her bike to the shoulder. She had a flat. Proper etiquette required we pull over and assist her. Fortunately, though, the guy I was following encountered her first, so he was more responsible for helping than I was. The woman had a patch kit but no pump. That’s poor planning, you know? I don’t want to sound too critical, but you can certainly fix a flat with a patch, but that does little good without some way to re-inflate the tube. I’m not sure whether or not the guy in front of me stayed with her and used his pump to assist her, but since he was there, I felt I could move on without violating my ethical code.

1:28pm. By this time I was well into my second loop of the bike course. The field of competitors had really spread out and there was no one within view ahead of me or behind me. There had not been a lot of people passing me during the day, but I spent almost 18 minutes off the bike at lunch, so I guess a lot of folks passed me then (race data show about 20 people doing the full length race passed me between miles 22 and 60). My lower back was sore. The wind was no fun. I had maintained an average speed of 17.0 mph for 80 miles. I tried to think about how few miles I had before I could stop, but 112-80=32 miles and that still equated to two hours more to go. That wasn’t really a comfort so I stopped doing math.

1:32pm. I wasn’t feeling right. My leg muscles felt fine but my thought process didn’t feel sharp anymore. My speed had slowed to 13-14 mph. I also realized that my performance’s soundtrack had gone quiet. You see, I sing silently to myself when I exercise. I make up random tunes in my head and sing them over and over, coordinating my limb movements with the song in my head. Sometimes I sing tunes from church, or Christmas carols. But now on my bike ride, my mind had stopped singing. This was a clue that I was bonking; that is, running out of fuel and/or electrolytes. I pulled over and ate several handfuls of the pretzels I had stuffed in my seat bag. Another cyclist pulled over to see if I was ok. I explained that I was bonking, and he said he was too, and that we would do so together. I’m not sure he was all that ill—he might have just been caring for me. I recovered within a couple minutes and we started up again. He followed me until we encountered a hill, and since I am good on hills, I slowly left him behind.

3:20pm. I was finally done with the bike. I had seen my parents a couple more times, I had drunken another gallon of Gatorade (approximately), I had choked down another terrible PowerBar, and I had pushed through the back pain so that I was no longer feeling it anymore. I had also taken several salt tablets from aid stations, and that really seemed to help. As I approached the transition zone at Cedar Point, I yelled out the number of miles I had left: “10 miles!” then “9 miles!” then “8 miles!” and so on. I verbally congratulated myself for riding my bike farther in one day than ever before, and I reminded myself that I had never swam 2.4 miles in one day before, either. My official time on the bike was 6:41:42, averaging 16.7 mph, but that included lunch and several quick stops. My bike computer tells me my bike was in motion for 6:18:53, averaging 17.8 mph.

3:40pm. I racked my bike in transition and headed into the changing tent to change my socks and shoes. The tent experience was a lot less special the second time around. There were only a couple other athletes in the tent and they seemed spent. The volunteer was tired and nonverbal. In contrast, my legs felt amazingly fresh. I felt I could start running with no difficulty, but first, I wanted to thank my cheering squad. I left the tent and walked to greet Dan and my parents who were waiting at the fence. We hugged and chatted and it helped me relax. I wanted them to know I appreciated their presence on the course. I spent almost 16 minutes in transition.

3:47pm. I was running an 8:07 min/mile pace after the first mile of the run. I had 25 miles to go, so I decided to slow down. I had trouble thinking about the fact that I still had 5-6 hours to go before the end of the race. At every mile marker, I would do the math, and it was never good: “Great! I’ve run 5 miles. Just…um…21 miles to go.” Yeah, I stopped saying that to myself. I stopped thinking ahead and just concentrated on the present moment. I looked at the architecture of buildings. I greeted the athletes going the opposite way on this out-and-back course. I whooped and hollered with the volunteers at every aid station.

5:39pm. By this time I had run 11.4 miles and was maintaining a 9 to 10min/mile pace. The course consisted of a complicated 4-loop system around a marina, through a city park, through downtown Sandusky, through neighborhoods, and along the causeway back to Cedar Point. The looped nature meant that I would visit the same aid stations over and over, and I got to know the volunteers. Each station was fully stocked with water, Gatorade, Coke, salt tablets, energy gels, and PowerBars (none for me, thanks). Two of them had bananas in the beginning but they stopped offering these late in the run. As I would approach, I would call out what I wanted, and the volunteers would get it. As the miles went by, I really didn’t know what I wanted so the volunteers started listing what they had. One offered chicken broth. I turned it down the first time, but for the next 11 miles I looked forward to encountering that station again and having some.

5:53pm. I got to the halfway point of the run where I was given my “Special Needs Run” bag to rummage through for treats I had prepared for myself. I added a few fruit snacks to my pocket and changed my left sock because I was developing a hot spot and thought that would help. Dan was there and I talked to him as I changed my sock and examined my foot. I was fairly tired at this point and walked about 50 yards until I got the motivation to start running again. My pace had slowed to a 14:15 min/mile during this section because of my temporary pause in running.

6:33pm. In 2015 when I ran my first marathon, I ran continuously for 16.5 miles and then started to run/walk (i.e., run for 3 minutes and walk for 1 minute). I wanted to do better than that this year, so my goal was to keep running for at least the first 17 miles. Except for the pause at the midway point, I met this goal. In fact, the only time I walked was at the aid stations, but this was sometimes a necessity; the chicken broth was too hot to chug! My parents had joined with a few other spectators at a city fountain. I would stop to talk to them for about a minute each time I passed by that point. Then I would cross a city street and drunk people would cheer for me as I ran past a restaurant with outdoor seating.

7:11pm. I was maintaining a running pace of 12 min/mile at milepost 19. I wasn’t in any pain. My legs were certainly tired, but they didn’t feel stiff and debilitated like they felt in 2015 at this point in my marathon. I was still joking with volunteers and city residents who were always happy to cheer. There was a house with lots of spectators holding signs and being rowdy. On my last loop past them, I ran into their yard and exchanged high-fives. There was a street corner where another spectator had been sitting, and I told her I was happy to never see her again. She had a puzzled, somewhat offended look on her face until she figured out this was my last loop. “No offense,” I said. There was a grandmotherly whisper of a woman who had been sitting on her front porch all afternoon, ringing a bell as runners passed. On my last loop I ran up onto her porch and shook her hand. I hope I made her day. I had a great amount of endorphins and my body was still whole, so I wanted to take time to thank everyone for contributing to this experience.

7:50pm. With about 4 miles to go I hooked up with another runner who had a similar pace. That is, until he stopped to walk. When I passed him, I encouraged him to keep going. He started up again, and together we started running faster. He was more tired than me, so I took responsibility for keeping the conversation going. Shannan was watching my GPS tracker all day long, and she tells me my pace had quickened to around 10 min/mile. Eventually, my companion told me to go on. He stopped to walk; I kept running, and I was running faster and faster because I knew the end was near. I even had the concern that I would beat my parents to the finish line because they had to get into their car and drive across the causeway on their way from downtown Sandusky where I saw them last to Cedar Point. As I was thinking of this, several police cars followed by fire trucks raced past at an extraordinary rate of speed.

8:10pm. It was dusk now, and I had just passed the second-to-last aid station. A worker ran up to me and told me that I would have to stop running at the next intersection. There had been a car accident on the causeway and police had shut down the road. She said they were stopping the race clock, and she wrote down my number so they would know how far I had gotten. I had 1.83 miles left before the finish line. More runners came to the intersection, and eventually we backtracked to the aid station. No one knew when we would be allowed to start up again, so we kept walking around and stretching in order to stay loose and ready for our final push to the finish line. Constant movement was also a necessity in order to avoid an ambush of hungry mosquitoes. I am not exaggerating when I say I got two dozen bites. It was a fitting, miserable end to our run. However, the volunteers at the aid station more than made up for it. One man ran to his home and got some bug repellent for us. Another volunteer heated more chicken broth. Someone else retrieved a bunch of extra shirts for us to wear so we wouldn’t get too cold.

8:30pm. We runners had given up now. Many of us sat on the ground. Most, including me, were accepting of the situation and took this in stride. We couldn’t change the course of events, and look how far we had gotten! The race official at the aid station informed us that the race was now canceled; we would not be allowed to run the last couple miles.  A shuttle van would arrive in about 30 minutes and take us to the finish line where we would be given our finisher’s medals.

9:00pm. The shuttle arrived and we drove the run course in reverse for several miles, looking for any other runners we could pick up. There were still some people running their last remaining loop who would need transportation to the finish line. One athlete refused to get on our bus. She wanted to keep going. Fellow racer Christopher Jarc got off our bus to try to convince her to stop. When that strategy failed, he came back to our bus and told us to leave them both. He would run with her for as long as she could go on. Christopher was a 30-something bearded character who ran his race in jeans shorts and sandals. There are reports that he stuffed chicken fingers in his shirt pockets and offered them to fellow racers. It was an honor to be in his presence. He comforted people as they boarded the bus. Several were in tears because they couldn’t finish the race. I understand their tears. They would always feel like their race was incomplete, that because they didn’t do all 140.6 miles, they didn’t reach their goal, and all the training they did over the past year was a wasted effort that might never be repeated. I didn’t feel this way.  I accepted that my race would be 139.2 miles (I am including the 0.45 mile run between the swim and the bike transition), and it doesn’t bother me that I couldn’t finish. The race length of 140.6 miles seems really arbitrary. I still achieved my goal by doing something I had never done before, and because I was still having a good run at the end, I knew I could have gone another couple miles with no difficulty.

10:00pm. The shuttle bus took a 10-mile detour to get us back to Cedar Point. The president of the Rev3 company greeted us as we got off the bus and reiterated how our race would end. We would be given an estimated finish time based on our running pace when the race was stopped. We would be allowed to run through the finish line chute, one at a time, to receive cheers from the remaining spectators, and to be given our medals. I hadn’t noticed Dan or my parents at this point, but as soon as it was my turn to run across the finish line, my mother joined me in the run. The Rev3 company brands itself as family-friendly and they encourage family members to enter the finish chute with their athlete because this recognizes the fact that training for such a race takes a family-wide commitment. Mom had brought a couple little multi-colored spinning flashlights from home and spun them around as we ran. I was so amused by this that I never heard the announcer say my name and state that I was an official finisher of the Rev3 Full Distance Triathlon. It was official.  I was an ironman!

So what’s next for me? I would consider doing another ironman, but I’m not sure when. What I do know is that it will be very strange to get back on my bike and go for a ride. It’s been a long time since I have ridden it without a training plan telling my how long or how far.

I’ll end with some numbers:

Total Race Time (estimated)= 13:37:57. This is much faster than the 15-16 hours I had predicted.

Age Group Ranking = 9 out of 11.

Total swim time = 1:27:54

Total bike time = 6:41:43

Average bike speed = 17.8 mph

Maximum bike speed = 31.3 mph

Elevation gain on bike route = 1,637 feet

Total run time = 5:00:40. This is only six minutes slower than my marathon finish time in 2015, and back in 2015 I hadn’t just swam and biked beforehand!

Today’s high temperature = 73 degrees

This morning’s low temperature = 56 degrees

Today’s peak hourly wind speed = 14 mph

Number of blisters: 2, but these didn’t really bother me on race day.

Number of Tylenol tablets I had placed in my special needs bags = 6.

Number of Tylenol tablets I used today = 0.

Miles of training in 2016 before this race = 2,428.

Hours of training in 2016 = 223. I log my hours when I log each workout’s mileage.

Financial cost of doing this race = A lot. But I am really proud to have done it without buying anything beyond the basics. Most triathletes at this level have $3,500+ bikes, GPS watches, and professional coaches. I did buy a new jacket at the finisher’s brunch the day following the race. It was $75. Shrug. Nobody’s perfect.