"Surprised"

I think surprise was truly the strongest emotion I experienced over the first few hours of my race.  I am sure that I was fitter than I've ever been.  The last 3 months of training went very well, and I had an excellent 4 week taper.  I felt good all of race week, and despite very little sleep the night before I felt ready.  My morning went totally according to plan as far as the last minute bike check, wetsuit donning, walk to the swim entry, etc.  As a matter of fact I experienced a small miracle when I got to that point.

You have to understand the scene at the start.  There are 2600 athletes, hundreds of volunteers and officials, and literally thousands of spectators, crammed into an area about the size of my kitchen!  It is pure bedlam!  One of the special bags they give participants is what's called a 'morning gear bag'.  Into that bag you stuff everything that you were wearing, and anything you were carrying on the way to the start.  In my case that meant, shoes, socks, shirt, jacket, pants, hat, body lubricant, watch , and my bicycle pump.  Believe it or not you then had to heave that bag into the back of a huge dump truck with the other 2600, not to be seen again until the end of the day....hopefully...

I packed mine up tight, just hoping that I would get everything back, as I was a bit worried that my pump would split the bag open.  I even had the good sense to put a hard case for my glasses in the bag.....but whoops....my glasses were still on my face, and my bag was gone!!!

What was I gonna do?  I wandered around for a bit hoping for some inspiration, and in the end realized that the only hope I had was to hand them to a volunteer, and pray to the gods that he/she would be able to remember my number, and that they had the wherewithal to get them back to me somehow.  Realize that these were the one and only pair of glasses I had with me, that weren't sunglasses.  You would think an experienced traveller like me would know better, and indeed I never went to India, China, Brazil, etc, without a spare pair.

Regardless, I had created this situation and so it was time to give them away, and move on.  I picked a random, red shirted volunteer, and tapped him on the shoulder.  When he turned around it took me a full second to recognize the beautiful face of Odd John!!!!!  I never even knew he was gonna be at the swim start, as I thought he was supposed to work the finish. You can just imagine my glee as he stuffed my glasses in his pocket.  And you know what's funny?  I realized just at this very moment, that even if I hadn't know this guy, somehow I had picked a volunteer who had the ability to remember my number, and the wherewithal to get the glasses back to me!!!  How cool is that??

Anyway, I digress.  I do that sometimes.

At exactly 6:54 am I slipped into the shockingly cold water with the rest of the orange capped, over fifty, men.  That's always pretty chaotic but the big moment comes when you run out of bottom to walk on, and you have no choice but to start swimming.  Not because of the swimming itself, but because at that moment every person who was taking up about a square foot of space, is suddenly taking up more like 6 square feet.  You know that it is at that moment that the kicking and gouging and biting begins!

I survived the first 5 minutes with only one displaced google incident, and a few other elbows and feet to the head.  No big deal.

But I was cold!  Damn cold!  And no matter how many times I do this, I am still amazed at how far 4 kms looks over the water.  I could actually track my progress since my GPS watch works  well even in the lake, so I knew fairly soon that I was even slower than I feared.  Not to worry though, cause how much does 5 minutes really matter over a whole day?  If only I could warm up!

Alas, that was not meant to be, and over the last couple of hundred meters I compounded my troubles by continually veering off course.  In the end I finished the swim in a horrific 1:38, and the watch said that instead of 3.86 kms, I had mis-navigated it to 4.11 kms....an extra 250 metres!

I dragged my sorry butt out of that cold lake, and although I felt a bit sluggish, I still figured I was gonna get it in gear on the bike.  I managed to get some high fives and some kisses from the spectators on the way to the change tent, where I took way longer than usual to get my bike stuff on.  Of course part of that was because I chose to add a long sleeve shirt, and a pair of gloves, but beyond that I couldn't get anything to work properly, particularly my feet and hands.

Despite my struggles to this point I still felt confident when I headed out on my bike, because this is always the element when I pass all of those people that are better swimmers than me.  Along with feeling confident, I also still felt cold.

For the first time in a race I had the luxury of a power meter, and based on my training experience I considered that somewhere between 150 and 160 watts would be reasonable on race day.  What that would equate to in speed would be reflective of the course itself, and in the end irrelevant.  That's the purpose of a power meter of course. 

I think it was at about 20 kms before I managed to get my average up to 140, and it was also at this point that I started to have some worries.  To reinforce the power meter induced worry, people were passing me....consistently!  My power soon started to drop off, and by the time I neared the end of the first lap it had deteriorated to 130!  I stopped and got a quick hug from Colb and Ky, and told Roo that I expected to be walking the marathon.  I was very discouraged.  The second lap of the bike was the loneliest of my life, and in the end I finished it at 119 watts, for an average speed of 24 kms/hr, and a time of 7:16.  To put that in perspective, I never had one long training ride under 130 watts, or under 28 kms/hr, and that was always with unrested legs.  

But I survived, and simply decided that if I had to walk the entire marathon, so be it.  I was not gonna set a world record anyway, and the plan all along was to have fun, and finish.  After another slow transition, but this time taking clothes off, I headed out walking.  I developed a strategy of walk 3 mins, run 1 minute, and this seemed to work reasonably well.  It put me on a pace to complete the marathon in under 6 hours, and at this point I was gonna be satisfied with that.  But.....after about 5 kms even that was no longer working.  Before I would finish my 1 minute run, I would start to get light headed, and I was forced to stop and bend over to get some blood to my brain.   Either that or fall down and bang my head off the pavement, and believe me I know from experience that that's not a good idea. What was somewhat alarming was that despite my exhausted condition, I could not get my heart rate up.  It would barely go over 100 at that point I felt faint.  Of course I know those things are connected.  With my heart rate low, and my legs using up all the volume it was pumping, there was simply not enough left to keep my head functioning.  

So I gradually reduced the run portions to the point that I was only walking and I was very relieved to get to the flat part of the run on the old rail bed.  At this point, to add insult to injury, it started pouring rain.  For the first time all day I was no longer freezing, but the rain put an end to that....back to shivering.  As well for the first time, I seriously considered quitting.  I told you that the end of the bike ride was the loneliest point of my life, but that was before this.  If I could have seen Roo at this time I would have broke down and cried in her arms...

The mental battle continued until about 15 kms when I was again faced with the hills that were typical of the first 5 kms.  That's when I discovered that I couldn't walk the hills without resorting to the bending over routine.  I'm pretty sure that this was when I lost the battle.

Somehow I struggled back downtown where there was one last insult awaiting me.  The way they have the 2 loop run set up is such that, even if you are only finishing your first lap you are forced to run (or walk in my case) through the finish chute with all the finishers, while hundreds of spectators in their innocence want to cheer you on and give you high fives.  You have to pass within 50 metres of the finish line, and listen to the announcer calling out names.  I won't pretend that this wasn't  very demoralizing.

Anyway, my hope in even forcing myself through this last bit of hell was that I would find Roo.  No such luck!  I actually started out on the second loop, and went about 200 metres before I stepped off the course, and took my number off. RIP 2607!

Of course I still had one small problem.  I was more than 2 kms form the RV, and I could not find Claudette.  Did I mention that the walk to the parking lot where the motorhome was parked was all uphill! That meant for quite a few stops on the way. And my worst fear was that I would get there and it would be all locked up.  I did still have the presence of mind though to remember that I had a spare key stashed under the frame.  

So back to the RV, a phone call to Roo, and the day was done.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it!!

Two days later and I'm still feeling pretty sluggish, but my determination is already back.  I will give myself at least 2 weeks to rest my body, but then I'm gonna start building the plan.  It's gonna cover every possible eventuality, and although Roo doesn't like me to say it, next year I will cross the finish line or die trying!!  

All I still need is an appropriate name for the adventure.  Try Not! Game on! Encore! Face First!....and ???

"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise."---Alice Walker

Love

Peter