I don't have much to say about week 29 and 30 other than I made it a pretty large drop in volume, probably more than was needed, but I just made sure I did small workouts here and there to make sure my body remembered how to swim, bike, and run. Did a mini brick after a 40 mile bike on the weekend and was good to go.
Now, on to the actual race!
Wake up _
I set my alarm for 4am to go down to the hotel lobby and get some breakfast. During check in they mentioned that breakfast would be open early for athletes and since the breakfast previous mornings had been pretty tasty, I figured their offerings would do. I was wrong. :( They failed to mention that the hot food items would not be available.. so my desire to eat some eggs and meat was not met. I had a small packet of cereal and half a bagel. I drank a full glass of 2% milk hoping that would help satiate the need for protein and then went back up to my room to eat half a peanut butter sandwich. I'm so glad I brought that extra food with us. I wasn't sure I had enough to eat, but I went it.
I felt a little dirty, so decided on a shower even though it was not part of the morning plan. But I had plenty of time. Showered, packed some cookies in my run/bike special needs bags and a sandwich in my bike special needs bag and closed them up ready to go.
I set an alarm for 5am for the second business of the morning, the TMI business, and drank an espresso doubleshot. 30 minutes I am good. I know it's stupid, but I practiced this many mornings discretely.. ;P Drank 20 oz of water. Done.
Throw all my swim stuff (wetsuit, cap, timing chip, goggles, booties, earplugs) in the morning clothes bag and set down to the lobby at 5:45am to find my aunt and dad waiting for me and Andy. We head to the car for a 1.5 mile drive down the road and hit a ton of traffic! I had to jump out of the car and walk to the transition area, Dad came with.
Swim: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/406544854
After getting lost multiple times in the transition area, dropping off my special needs bags, filling my bike bottle with Nuun (the only non-calorie drink for the day), I walked back to my Dad and finally figured out you had to get to the swim through transition... So I quickly put on my wetsuit, grabbed everything else in hand, gave my dad a real big hug, and off I went alone.. scary.
I got in line to get into the water. I sat down and put my swim booties on, put my swim cap on, and followed the herd. To get into the water, they mentioned you'd have to jump into it. I'm no good at jumping right in and was relieved to see a dock to the side. I sat down with them yelling on the speaker phone, "Get in the water now!! Get off the dock and swim in now!" over and over at all us not in the water yet. I swished my pre-baby shampoo'd goggles in the water, put them on, and eased in. The water was nice, just like the day before! Took me no time at all to acclimate and I swam over to the rest of the swimmers.
While waiting, someone must've started panicking, people started yelling for help like crazy minutes before the cannon with off. I tried to not let it get to me, my own thoughts consumed by the infamous IMAZ mass start washing machine! I didn't have to wait long until the visible clock on the side of the water ticked to 7:00:00, and the cannon went of, mass cheering started, and I put my head down and went to work. I can only say that the washing machine was nothing to write home about. I was easily able to continue my bilateral breathing, and if I hit someone or got hit, I moved.. no big deal! There was contact basically for the first half of the swim and the very end of the swim. Got to the steps, was pulled out, and wetsuit stripped! :o , then into transition where I changed into my bike clothes.
Bike: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/406544857
Overall, the bike was pretty unremarkable. I set out to average 17 mph while keeping my heartrate around 140. I was pleased to see that after the the first half of the first lap, my heartrate went from 158ish down to 138. It must've just been taking awhile from the swim. The only unknown at this point was how to get nutrition at the aid stations. You ride up, slow down some (but not a lot), and sorta yell out what you want while you're hand is out. The volunteers do the rest and stick what you need out so you can grab it. My first aid station was "Water!" and then "Perform!", and off I went. It was so easy that I relaxed into my ride and knew I was going to be okay.
The practiced nutrition plan was as follows: 1 bottle of Perform, then 1 bottle of water with a Gu sometime after I've consumed half the water, then back to Perform. Each segment was to be consumed within 45-60 minutes. I figured out quickly that each out and back for a loop was about 2 hours.. so I just made sure I consumed at least one segment per out or back.. if that makes sense. It was easy to follow in my mind. At mile 55 I had to stop and pee so I knew I was hydrated! At mile 66 I stopped at special needs because I had a bit of a hunger pang and settled in on some cookies my mom made for me! I didn't feel the need to eat the whole lunch I packed, so just the cookies.
My stops cost me about 10 minutes on the bike, but I really did hold a 17 mph average ultimately, so I was super happy! The wind was not really that bad, though I heard it could have been potentially worse. I felt that I had a headwind basically on laps 2 and 3, it got progressively worse and was glad to be off the bike before the wind had a chance to get real bad. Around mile 85 or so, my neck was sooo sooo sore.. and I could no longer hold aero position for very long on loop 3. I only went into aero to consume drink out of my aero bottle. I may have fallen behind on my nutrition at the end, but I wasn't too concerned since I didn't want to be slogged down when I started to run anyways.
Run: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/406544862
Coming off the bike I was able to find a friend of my aunts in the run gear bag area. She really helped me out like crazy.. I swear I had it in my mind that once I got off the bike, I was going to sit in the change tent for a bit.. but Dee had other plans and got me all changed and out the tent in under 7 minutes! I had a cookie in my bike jersey and I took that with me to start out the run.
The furthest I had ran in training was only 14.5 miles. Quite a few miles short of a marathon, I know. But what was done was done.. I could walk if I needed to. I had set my Garmin to set a pace for 13:00 min/mile pace and knew I could hold something to that for at least the first half of the run. The second half of the run was unknown. I quickly found out that is is hard to run through aid stations and manage to still get any liquid down your throat. So I had a timer to run 4 minutes, then walk 1 minute, but I also wound up walking the aid stations, so my pace was pretty slow.. much slower than 13 min miles. I really didn't care.. I was going to be an Ironman. :)
I got a good amount of time to see my family at around mile 12. My aunt's advice, "Keep eating until your stomach shuts down. Don't stop eating." I don't think I really registered that eating would be such an issue until maybe miles 17 or 18 when I was just tired of it all. I tried eating everything... pretzels, chips, perform, coke, grapes, oranges.. what tasted good? Bananas and chicken broth... I know! What a terrible combination, but for some reason, it worked. Bananas, chicken broth, some water, next station would be water, perform, and coke. This sort of action got me all the way to mile 23 and I just didn't feel like eating, so I stuck to water.
Mile 20 was probably the worse! It just took forever! I got some advice around mile 22 to remember to breathe. I was pretty sure I WAS breathing, but when he said so, I found that it helped to breathe a little bit more than what was natural, it helped with the nausea I was experiencing when I thought about food. It was a matter of sticking to the 4 min run, 1 min walk plan. I wanted to not run a lot. But I said to myself that it was not what I wanted.. I would stop running when I couldn't. It was a good mantra and I would say that I stuck with my run plan pretty much throughout the entire race.
Once I hit mile 25ish, the rest of the run was downhill, which made coming into the finishers shute pretty easy. I was pretty positive that I was going to cry so hard! I spied Andy, Mom, Dad, and I came around the corner and I hear over the PA system:
"LISA SMITH ALHAMBRA CALIFORNIA, YOU. ARE. AN. IRONMAN!"
Post Race:
Pretty freakin' awesome. And not one tear shed (at least after the race, during the race I teared up so much!) Found Dee after I crossed and she had all the exciting energy for crossing the finish line. I was treated like someone special.. water, protein fortified chocolate milk, pizza, massage... Got a medal, t-shirt, and a hat. Plus the mylar blanket. I started to get cold after about 30 minutes or so, and it was time to go to the hotel.
At the room, I took a shower.. it felt great, except standing was becoming a large chore. Filled the bath and dumped some ice into it and took that torture for about 10 minutes. Crawled into bed and passed out pretty fast. Woke up at 3am, drank a chocolate milk and 3 tylenol, passed out again. Woke up at 6am to get some finishers gear, ate breakfast, slept again til lunch. Ate lunch, slept again til dinner.. then it was time to drive home.
I'm still not sure that it's even registered with me what I did. I am only extremely happy that I did what I did!
