Ironman Western Australia on December 4th was the last ironman of 2011 and, for most, the season finale. For me, this race was something different: it was the first race in a new season, after a fresh start. After two disastrous iron-distance races in Louisville and Cedar Point at the end of a disappointing couple years of racing, it was clear that change was in order. Searching, I went back and opened my training log from the summer of 2008, when I had my best season to date and was stringing together three consecutive successful seasons.
I was shocked.
I couldn´t even remember what it was like to train that much, or that hard. I thought I remembered those days, but when I really looked back at the details in that book, in my own handwriting—plain as day—I realized that three years later, the training I was doing no longer really even resembled that which made me successful at ironman.
No wonder I was going backwards.
I had read enough of Coach Joel Filliol´s ideas and seen enough of what he had done to get Big Sexy back on track that I knew that I needed to speak with him. In our discussion, I heard things like, “Less is almost never more when it comes to training for endurance sports . . .” This was my guy. At the risk of being overly dramatic, I almost felt like Joel was my last hope.
He agreed to take me on, the mental and physical mess that I was. Ironman Western Australia was to fall 2.5 months into our work together and to serve as our first progress check. Joel and I knew we wouldn´t revolutionize my racing in this time frame, but we were looking for a step forward. After all, it took me three years of this kind of work with Brett Sutton to achieve my best form to date.
I arrived on the start line in Busselton feeling like a different athlete. I was strangely calm and confident knowing that all I needed to do to have a good performance on the day was, essentially, nothing more than what I had been doing in training, day in and day out for the past couple of months.
But after three years in which the disappointing races far outnumbered the successful ones, there is a trajectory that, on some level, I had come to expect once the gun went off. And it went something like this: I may or may not have a good swim, and after that, I will go backwards through the field. Most times I was “participating,” as opposed to “racing.”
It took me a good two hours in Busselton to break myself of this old routine. My swim was terrible; I made the mistake of not starting aggressively, and instead built into my pace and lost the main front pack. As a consequence, I swam pretty much the entire 2.4 miles alone, scared out of my mind. It was one of the most choppy swims I´ve had in years, which meant that most times when I looked up to sight, not only could I not see where I was going, but I could not see anyone else. And then there was this recent issue with sharks in the area . . . I could not get out of that water fast enough, yet it seemed to take forever. I got out and saw a 54 on the clock which confirmed that, in terms of my ironman swims, it did, in fact, take forever. I came out of the water in second and the first hour or so of the bike didn´t feel so great; I was unable to go with either of the two girls who passed me. It was like my body was on auto-pilot to just repeat my backwards-traveling pattern of the past couple years.
Then I got angry with myself. A light bulb went on in my head which reminded me that all those times in the past when I had good races, they still hurt like heck. Just because I had worked so hard in training did not mean that I shouldn´t be suffering on race day.
I knew Kate (Bevilaqua, defending champion) and Carrie (Lester, Ironman Australia 2010 Champ and super cyclist) were coming and I decided that when they did, I was going to follow them and match their pace for as long as I possibly could, regardless of how silly-hard it might feel. I had to. They were my last option for people to pace off of and still come off of the bike in decent position. So that´s what I did. And at times it was ridiculously hard. I just talked myself through it one leg of the out-and-back bike course at a time, knowing that the longer I could hang on, the less miles the girls would have to build a time gap on me. The ride this year was very windy, and each time we headed out on another loop, it was a bit like riding into a wall. Following Kate and Carrie through this section, my effort level was to the point that I was nearly vomiting. By the end of the outbound portion of this loop, I was yo-yo-ing off the back of them, going from the legal-limit of 12-meters back to 20 meters or more back, then clawing my way back to 12. It was brutal.
When I really started struggling, I told myself that I must hang onto their pace for a full loop, or 60 kilometers. Not sure where I got this idea, since when I have raced these girls in the past couple years, I could hang with their pace on the bike for no more than 90 seconds or so….
But in sticking with them, I flipped a switch and took myself off the familiar road on which I had just been “participating” in events over the past couple of years. I managed to hang with the girls for about 65 kilometers and pass the lead swimmer in the process, so although I was on my own for about the last 75-80 kilometers of the ride, I was on my own having a good race.
I could not wait to run; I had done countless transition runs dialing in 4:45/kilometer pace off the bike. Sure enough, I started running and 4:45/kilometer pace was automatic and relatively effortless. My Garmin beeped at me every kilometer and the splits looked just like they did nearly every time I had rehearsed this transition in training. Amazing how that works.
The run course in Busselton is awesome, with four t-shaped loops that took us back and forth in front of the crowds; I fed off of this energy and felt little pain the first two run loops. BFF Amanda Balding and Luke McKenzie´s families were spread all over the run course, and I came to look forward to the places where I knew I would see them each loop. The pain set in during the back half of the marathon, and all these people kept me going as I found myself fighting to hang onto 5-minute kilometers. It was a race against my Garmin.
I talked myself through the last 19 kilometers in segments of just a couple each: “Just hang onto this pace until the next turnaround.” And the next. And so on. In doing so, I realized that while I was struggling, I was making up time on the girls ahead of me. It was an ironman marathon after all; “struggle” becomes a relative term in those final miles.
So although super-runner Michelle Mitchell had re-passed me to put me back running in sixth during the first half of the marathon, I was able to pass defending champ Kate to move into fifth with just about five kilometers to go. I ran scared all the way to the finish, and crossed the line with a 3:26 marathon split in fifth place.