1200 training miles to finish 70.3 (Part I)

On Sunday, June 8th, 7hrs 13 minutes after I entered the water for my 1.2 mile swim, I leaped across the finish line to complete my second KS Ironman 70.3. It was an emotional day filled with many highs and lows and I will treasure the memories of the day forever.

When I started training 22 weeks ago, I was in what I considered the best fitness shape of my life. By April 1st, twelve weeks into training, I had logged more than 30 miles swimming, 551 biking miles and 162 running miles, all of which was going very well. And then Rock the Parkway 1/2 marathon happened. If you remember, that was the first time I had a very hard time running a 1/2 marathon and I began to have self doubt that I could actually complete the 70.3.  Fast forward a few more weeks and I continued swimming, biking, running and strength training. Each training session seemed to be taking it's toll on my body--I felt broken, I was in a lot of pain with my right IT band, hip and left calf . For once I knew what it felt like to be overtraining. I needed to make a change and quick. Since I needed to continue my swimming, biking and running sessions, the next logical thing was to see if I could reduce my strength training sessions. After an unfortunate miscommunication with my trainer, we parted ways and I was no longer his client. It was an incredibly tough decision to make, since I have been with him for close to two years but I knew that it was the right thing to do if I had any chance of making it to the start line of Ironman Kansas.

Two weeks before the race, I rode my last 56 mile practice ride with Jackie, my swim buddy Amber,

and other members of the Leavenworth Triathlon Club. I remember telling Jackie after 32 miles that we were riding really well, making great time and I had confidence going into the race. At mile 45, my hip started hurting and everything started going downhill.  I knew that if this was to happen on race day, there would be no way I could run after biking in this much pain. The last 11 miles were the hardest ever and I felt completely defeated. As we drove home from the training ride, I told Jackie that I think I'm going to have to DNS for the race. She reassured me that I could do it and that worst case scenario I could walk the 13.1 mile run. Yes, I had to keep reminding myself that I could walk the 13.1 mile run. That was the last time I was on my bike until race day.

The week before race day, my family went on vacation to Big Cedar in Ridgedale, MO (If you have never been to Big Cedar, I highly recommend it...you won't be disappointed).  I chose not to bring my bike so that I could spend the week working on my open water swim (Big Cedar is located on Table Rock Lake), running a bit, yoga, and tapering. 

Runs to Indian Point along Table Rock Lake were a great way to start our mornings on vacation.

My goal for the swim portion of IM KS was to swim it in about 50 minutes. I practiced three open water swims on vacation and managed to swim the 1.2 miles in 30 minutes. It was a huge accomplishment because I knew that any additional time that I could make up on the swim and the bike would offset my run time. To make my swim practices at Table Rock Lake a family affair,  my husband and son would canoe alongside of me to make sure that boaters knew I was in the water.

 

One of my favorite activities during vacation was SUP Yoga. It was a great way to stretch and work on core and stability. I did learn that tree pose on a paddle board is much harder than tree pose on the ground. The middle picture is my attempt at the tree pose right before I fell in the water.

When I returned from my much needed vacation, race week began! Boy, was it a whirlwind! I spent those last few days prepping and packing my gear, and making final adjustments on my bike. We (athletes) had received word that the race was going from a one transition area to two separate transitions. This change caused a new level of stress on my part since now I had to pack two separate bags  We also received word that the run course had changed. 2014 was going to be the first year for a new run course that had 4 inner loops. At the last minute the race director changed it back to the 2013 run course. This was actually a good thing because the new 2014 course seems a little bit difficult to navigate with all the extra loops.

Amber, Jackie, and I had planned for one last ride on Thursday but between schedule conflicts and thunderstorms, the ride never happened. By this point, I had to be at peace with the fact that my training was over and it was now race time.

Friday, June 6: Packet Pickup and Athlete Checkin at Clinton State Park.  Jackie and I drove to the race site together, checked in, got our numbers, signed our waivers, and proceeded to pick up our bibs, swim cap, and timing chip. Then we headed straight to the Ironman store to do a little (or maybe a lot) of shopping with Amber.

After we were finished at the IM village, the three of us drove over to the Oread Hotel in downtown Lawrence (the title sponsor of IM KS) and attended a pre-race mixer. We had the opportunity to meet Rachel Joyce, one of the professional athletes that would be competing on Sunday and chatted with her for a bit. I also spoke with Mike, Bob's son for the LeavenworthTriathlon Club. He is a fast, fast triathlete and I wanted to get his advice about racking my bike in Transition on Saturday (which would mean another trip out to Lawrence) or

waiting until Sunday morning. Current weather conditions called for torrential downpours and wind gusts on Saturday. I wasn't so much worried about my bike getting wet but I was more concerned about the crazy Kansas winds shifting other bikes on the rack which could cause something to get broken on my bike. Mike suggested that if my bike location was on the end of a rack then I would be good to go for racking on Saturday. I could easily secure the end of my bike to the edge of the rack with a bungee cord in case the winds picked up. 

Saturday June 7: The weather forecasters were correct. It rained Friday night into Saturday and the ground was a complete mud pit. The good news was that once the rain left there was no more rain forecasted for the rest of the weekend, just clouds and very light winds--(to me that sounded like perfect race conditions).  Because it was so hot the day before, the lake temperature was borderline wetsuit legal. Jackie and I attended the Pro-Panel question & answer session at 1:30pm. Race officials announced that they would make a final wetsuit call at 5am race morning. After the panel, we headed to T2 to rack our bikes. I couldn't have asked for a better rack location. I was on the end of a rack and I was about 6 racks away from Bike Out, this meant less time having to clickity clack through transition with my bike shoes on.

After racking my bike, I walked over to the swim area and practiced walking from the swim out to my bike location in order to have a mental picture in my mind which rack lane to go down. I noticed that the race staff had placed a yellow carpet to mimic running out of the swim on a yellow brick road. Where the "yellow brick road" ended would be my cue to turn left to run towards my bike--got it!

As we were leaving T1, Jackie and I met a really nice fellow triathlete from Arizona. We chatted briefly with her and she wished us both luck.

Sunday June 8: Race Day! Race morning started bright and early. I woke up at 3:20am (luckily I was able to get a really good nights' sleep). Jackie came to pick me up at 3:45am and we drove to Lawrence to pick up Jolene at 4:30am from the hotel in Lawrence where she was staying. Jolene was a race official for the bike course.  We arrived at the race site shortly before 5am and heard the race announcer say that the race would be wetsuit legal. I dropped off my T2 stuff-nutrition, running shoes, water, biofreeze at my rack location, went over to the club tent to say hello to everyone and then I walked down to T2 with Jackie. The entire time, all I kept thinking was everything was going so right that something was bound to go wrong. I could feel my right IT band starting to tighten up as I was walking and I thought to myself this would be what would go wrong. As Jackie and I were walking (about 1/2 mile), someone screamed hello to us from behind. It was Jessi from Oklahoma, she had recognized me from behind with my pink calf sleeves and LTC tri top. We met Jessi a few weeks ago when she drove from Oklahoma to practice the bike course with our club. Our conversation along the way to T2 was just what I needed to stop myself from psyching myself into thinking something was going to go wrong. As we reached T2, we wished each other luck and headed into T2.