Busselton Ironman

I was reliably informed yesterday by a loud guy with a microphone that I am now an Ironman.

It is still sinking in, but on the whole I think that is pretty cool.

I got back from Busselton today and so this post is just going to be some of my impressions from the day. I will get a race report up in the next couple of days.

All up, wow, that is a long time to be doing exercise.

My time was 9hrs 24 or so. I was 11th in my age group and 59th overall. It is a result that I am happyish with. I am stoked because it is done and I finished. I have now done an Ironman, something that a few years ago I would have told you was impossible. However, I say only happyish because the day was far from perfect. I know it could have been better. It was a quick day with near perfect conditions and so a fast time was there for the doing. My swim and ride were pretty close to where I wanted them to be, but I really fell in a hole on the run, with a 3 hours 37 marathon. On the upside, I have now run a marathon.

I still have some digesting to do, but on first impressions I think my pacing on the bike could have done with some work and I need to have a long hard look at nutrition. All that will need some reflection time this week, but one thing is for certain that run needs more work.

In a way, learning was sort of the point of this race. There has to be a first time for everything, and unless you are very lucky, chances are that first time won't always go well. This was my first Ironman and one of my big aims was to get some experience to make the next one better. Sure I really would have like to finish further up the field, but given that I didn't, I will take the experience I now have as a consolation prize.

So what did I think of Ironman? I am not sure how well I am able to answer. It was very hard, that bit is probably fairly obvious. However, it isn't the burning pain that people often associate with exercise, but rather the pure exhaustion of I simply can't do this any more.

The swim went surprisingly quickly, it didn't seem like we had been swimming very long and we were at the turn around. The ride was a very long way, but the 180km passed surprisingly easily. Except for a flat patch between 90km and 100km, I felt pretty good until about 150km. After 150km I really started to question how on earth I  was going to be able to run. Once out of transition I was honestly surprised to find that I could run and that it felt alright. For about 16km. After that I went through varying degrees of struggle, culminating at an Everest of suffering for the period between 20 and 30km. By that stage I was down to walking 100m out of every 1000m, at one stage walking for several hundred metres. Once I got onto the last lap I picked up a bit, even managing to conjure up some continuous running for the last 4km or so.

But without a doubt I was on my limit. I spent most of the afternoon after the race with shivers and shakes and throwing up, which I gather isn't that all that unusual for an Ironman (???). In hindsight, my last 4km or so of this race had a lot of similarities with the last 5km of my first half Ironman in Singapore, where I then collapsed on the line. Pretty much on empty and just running on a desire to get to the line. I didn't feel like I was that borderline yesterday, but the state I was in for the rest of the afternoon makes me think I was closer to my limit than I had thought. The throwing up also makes me think that I really can't have been digesting my nutrition all that well for at least some of the race, hence my earlier point about rethinking my nutrition.

Anyway, so that was an Ironman. I am not sure I am a convert yet. However, I finished it yesterday and I haven't withdrawn from Ironman Melbourne yet. So maybe it wasn't all that bad afterall...