IronMan Florida 2005 Race Report
By: BH

I was looking forward to this race quite a bit.  Did not compete much this year, and this was my goal race.  Training went well for the most part, but those two hurricanes sucked.  I was affected less than some, more than others.  Overall, I was very fortunate.  I had had enough hurricanes for my lifetime before this year, and now I am completely sick of them.

All the pre-race stuff, the commotion of registering, visiting with friends, shopping at the expo and Wal-Mart went well. Stayed in a great condo at Gulfcrest.  Slept well, ate well, rested my legs, got two massages (the legitimate kind.  Please!).

Dropping off the bike in transition Saturday, I came across a rear wheel rub issue.  Mark showed me that I could shove the brake cable where it's crimped back down in its slot to make the calipers open all the way.  I was worried that I might forget and ride half the race with it rubbing.  Still, very lucky to catch it at the last minute like I did.

Woke up race morning feeling good.  Mark, Smitty, and I got to transition early.  The Gulf was the noisiest it had been since our arrival, definitely not as calm as it was last year.  And warmer too - there was a beautiful sun rising in the east, and it felt better than last year, when the sand was almost too cold to walk barefoot on.  Before I knew it, it was 7:00 am, 2000+ wetsuit-clad triathletes are massed all along the beach, Coldplay is blasting, the cannon is fired, and away we go.

I went into this swim confident, more confident that in any previous race.  I am not lying when I say that was the first race when the possibility of drowning did not occur to me.  I was swimming much better than ever, which is not to say I am within a mile of being a good swimmer, but just that I have made a lot of improvement in the pool.  Repeat, in the pool.  I was hoping to improve on last year's bottom 10 percent time of 1:32, or perhaps duplicate that time with much less effort.  I went off easy and relaxed and really felt good.  The swim out to the turnaround went well, even with the slight chop, and the swim back went okay, but not quite as smooth.  I was surprised to see the clock read 51:xx after the first of two laps.  I was figuring 44 or some such.  Oh well, grab a quick drink of water and head back in.  I saw 1:5x:xx when I came out of the water the second time, and my official time was 1:55:xx - 23 minutes slower than last year.  In fact when I got out, a few of the volunteers, trying to be encouraging, said, "Way to go - you beat the cutoff!"  How I could be 23 minutes slower than a year ago is hard to figure.  Looks like I was 2035/2056 which puts me at the top of the bottom 1%.  Shit, maybe I should go back to the breaststroke!

I did not panic or anything, but this was discouraging, to be 20+ minutes off the pace from the get-go.  But hey, no sweat, happy to still be in the game.  Got my bike stuff together, grabbed my bike from one of the handlers and headed out on the bike course.  My 8 minute transition was faster than usual, for me.

Started out easy, in the small chainring per the plan.  Began to pass some of the other bad swimmers.  It was a tougher ride than last year, though I produced a slightly better time.  Of course I had more stops last year and also some digestive tract issues, so this year probably wasn't a better ride.  It was my weakest long ride of the year, no question about that.  In the end, I passed almost 600 on the bike, which merely makes me a faster-than-average biker in the subset of really bad swimmers.  At one point on this ride I noted that all the people I passed seemed to be women.  My fragile ego had already taken a bit of a beating with that swim, and now I am thinking Gee - it would be nice to pass a man every once in a while!

I rode with one eye on my heart rate monitor, staying in my aerobic zone for pretty much all of the bike, with just a few excursions above.  My legs never felt bad, but they never felt “strong” either, as I had hoped they might.  There were certainly some positives out there, though.  My nutritional plan of 4 bottles of Perpetuem/Hammer Gel supplemented with water and Powerbars from the aid stations was great.  No gastrointestinal issues on the bike or run.  No bladder issues either, which is always a real possibility for me.  You see, when you’re an old man, with an old man’s bladder and an old man’s enlarged prostate pushing on it, you have to go to the bathroom at an alarming frequency, some days.  However that was not a problem on this year’s ride, as I only had to dismount the bike once.  Amazing.

During the almost 6 hour ride, I did not obsess over my swim time, just tried to have as good a bike ride as possible while not frying my legs for the run.  The bike ran great, no issues with either wheel rubbing.  At some point on the ride, I decided to focus on nobody passing me, making that my new goal.  The time seemed to pass a little more slowly than on previous IM’s.  I looked forward to the aid stations at 10 mile intervals, as much for the milestones that they represented as for the water and Powerbars I would grab.  And despite what the IronMan live correspondents reported, wind was a factor on the course.  The wind was out of the north last year, and out of the southeast this year, making the last twelve miles after the overpass a pain in the ass.  It was good to climb off the bike, having taken a little under 6:00 to finish.  Slower than expectations to be sure, but grateful to have finished with no issues, flats, etc.

On my two previous IM’s, I was fortunate to start the run with legs that felt great.  Mostly dumb luck, perhaps.  When I started the run for this race, my legs felt “okay” only.  I pushed this aside, and just tried to settle into a good rhythm, with an eye on my HRM, though not as keenly as on the bike.  My pace deteriorated pretty quickly, going from 9:20 to 10:00 in only about 5 miles.  Last year I ran the first 5 miles at 8:30 before slowing down to 9:15. Toward the end of the first loop, I ran with Mark for 3 or 4 miles, a big help, as I was starting to want to walk.  I made it to just before the mile 17 marker before I walked for the first time.  From that point I mixed it up.  My hip flexors were screaming at me from mile 9 or so on.  Weird, because they never had before, I mean ever.  It was too dark along the course in spots, and I almost fell on my ass a few times, stumbling over cones in the road.

As I saw that my time would not be nearly what I had hoped, I did a decent job of revising my goals downward to still have a target to shoot for.  Going into the race, I felt that I was a cinch to go sub 12 under decent conditions.  My training had gone significantly better than last year when I did a 12:11 with late pacing mistakes on the run.  I was, in an honest assessment, stronger on the bike, a better swimmer (in a pool!), and about the same on the run.  By the time the run started it was obvious that sub 12 would not happen.  Any hope of a low 4:00 run, say 4:10 or better, vanished early on the run as well.  Next goal was sub 13:00, which looked reasonable for quite a while as I kept doing the math in my head.  The backup goal for that was a sub 5:00 run, about a 13:10 near as I could tell.  As I got down to 4, 3, then 2 miles to go, it looked like it would be very close as far as 13:00.  And obviously I was getting progressively more tired.  I didn’t want to cross the line in 13 hours and a few seconds, but if I had to, so be it.

Smitty had been consistently ahead of me by 3 to 4 minutes at the turnarounds.  Not a big deal, as we certainly weren’t racing each other, but more of a reference point, with all the training we did together this summer.  I kept seeing guys in their Team IronMan/Community Fund get ups, but none of them were Smitty.  To my surprise, I came upon Smitty with about ¾ of a mile to go, looking stunning in the outfit, very metrosexual.  It was great to see him, and we immediately agreed to a joint finish (so to speak).  We picked it up at a faster clip than I would have thought we could, and crossed the line simultaneously.  Smitty’s first IM finish, my third, and a great moment.  Unquestionably the highlight of a tough day.

I am not sure what to make of the EPO issue.  That would be my EPO level, possibly compromised by giving a pint of blood 26 days before the race.  See, the bloodmobile came to work, and they always beat on you about signing up to give.  So I acquiesced, like I usually do.  It wasn’t until after the fact that I thought Shit! I have a big race in less than 4 weeks.  So I searched the web, and polled friends with a solid knowledge of human physiology.  The web did not help much – I read that there would be no problem doing an IronMan 4 weeks after giving, and I also read where Rich Strauss, a well-regarded on-line coach, said that giving 18 days prior blew up his IronMan a few years back.  Friends' opinions had about the same range, from “no problem at all” to “what are  you - insane?”  I really don’t know if the donation had any negative impact.  I didn’t feel as sharp on the bike or run as I would have liked or was anticipating, but that could be any of a number of things.  For my next IM, I will try to remember not to donate within 8 weeks.

Acknowledgments:  Thanks to all my training partners throughout the year.  The training and camaraderie is the part that I enjoy most.  Also: Carl and Ross at Precision Bikes, Ashley, Sarah, Katie and Will for making the long drive to give us all much-needed on-course race day support, the Smith and Miller families for the same, and my sponsors: Cleco and Bobozone.