Iron Retirement: An Ironman Boulder Race Report

I want to believe that Ironman Boulder will be my last ever Ironman but I know myself and know I should never say never when it comes to things like this.  However, I sincerely believe that if I do another Ironman it will be when I’m retired and I have my days to train.  Ultrarunning takes up a lot of time but I really love running trails and so it doesn't feel like I’m “training” it feels like I’m playing and exploring.

Ironman, or even half-iron triathlon is a different story.  You really need to train for those because of the distances covered in the bike and the swim and the money involved.  Were it possible to train for these events exclusively by trail running then I’d probably do them whenever a larger group of my friends went out to do them but you can’t, not really, which brings me to my current story.

About a year ago I somehow became aware that there would be an inaugural Ironman Boulder.  I have no idea how I became aware of it because I have gone deeply into the ultra running and marathon worlds and triathlon has become somewhat foreign to me.  However, through circumstance I discovered this event and immediately felt compelled to do it.  Not because it was an Ironman, that was actually the only drawback.  I wanted to do it because it was inaugural, because it was in Boulder, CO and because I had several friends who were talking about doing it and so I registered both myself and the GeekGrl and almost immediately regretted it.

I knew I didn’t have the motivation to actually train for an Ironman, knew it.  I knew that I think both swimming and cycling sucked and i knew that all I really cared about was running.  However, I also had been sitting at seven Ironman finishes since 2008 and that has actually bugged me it just hadn’t bugged me enough to pull the trigger on an eight Ironman, that is, until last year.

My plan then was to “train” for this Ironman almost exclusively by running.  Sure I told myself that I would get in a few long rides and get some swimming in but that never really materialized.  On race morning of Ironman Boulder I had swum a whopping 16, 060 total meters for 2014 and I had ridden my bike, get this, 169.77 miles…for all of 2014 and that included two “long rides” of 38 miles and one 40K bike split at an Oly Triathlon.  Actually, my running has been a bit sub-par because of a couple military schools that disrupted my schedule but at least that was at 1365 miles for the year.  So, that was my Ironman Training.

People kept asking me how I thought I’d do, how my training had gone and so on.  I honestly had no earthly idea.  I mean, my training was obviously crap if you think about Ironman training.  However, in the six years since my last Ironman I have completed eleven 100-mile trail races and a mix of 67 other marathons, 50Ks and 100Ks.  I have even completed the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning, in other words, I’m no stranger to serious endurance.  However, that’s all running.  Obviously I can run but what about a marathon that’s preceded by a 2.4 mile swim and a 112 mile bike.  I didn’t know how to answer that one but now I think I do, we’ll call it fast-average.

Of my now eight Ironman races my first was 14:27:18, my second 15:54:46, my third, 15:35:52, my fourth, 15:05:51, my fifth (and PR and one I trained like a demon for) 12:31:21, my sixth, 12:47:40, my seventh, 13:12:25 and now my eight at ironman Boulder, 13:15:02.

Frankly, I was shocked.  Hand to my heart I told someone I thought I might be able to hit 13 and a half hours but I thought something in the 14 to 15 hour range was more realistic.  I kept thinking back to one particularly brutal 112 mile training ride that I had developed for myself and how i had utterly fallen apart at about mile 100 and I had to pull over to a gas station, get a big bottle of Gatorade and a liter of full-sugar mountain dew and a red bull and lay in the shade while I drank it.  I kept imagining that kind of epic blow-up that would end in a 26.2 mile death march well into the night.

First off, I liked the swim start.  It began like a standard large marathon with people seeding themselves in corrals by their anticipated swim time.  I seeded myself into the 1:16 to 1:30 group and when the cannon went off we all just moved forward slowly and they released groups of maybe five to seven swimmers at a time with a few seconds between each small group.  It was not your typical Ironman washing machine start.  From the get-go you had your own little block of water to swim in though there was still the usual bunching and bumping but nothing like IMCdA or IMAZ.  I just found a comfortable groove and swam.  Occasionally I would run into a group that seemed to be fighting each other for position but I would just move out of the way and find new water.  What was more surprising is that my arms didn’t get tired.  The worst of it was getting bored and ready to be out of the water.  My swim time was 1:21:47, I think my third slowest IM swim.

T-1 was smooth and took me about eight minutes fifty seconds, mostly because I really had to pee and so I stopped at a port-o-potty just before heading out on the bike.  I had imagined that I would fumble around like a novice like I did at the recent City of Lakes Oly Tri but the fast transitions in the short local races are completely different from the giant transitions in an Ironman.

Once out on the bike I felt good and had driven the course the day before so generally knew what expect.  The strangest thing about maybe the first third of the IM Boulder course is that it’s right up against the mountains and so while there really aren't any serious climbs there are a lot of shallow climbs and descents and because they are in contrast to the sharply sloping Front Range sometimes it looks like you are on flats but you are going uphill, sometimes it looks like you are going uphill but you are actually going down and sometimes you look like you are going downhill but you are going up.  It was very weird but you just have to trust the way your legs feel or your bike.  On the “flat uphills” it felt as if my tires were made pf gum and I kept looking down to see if I had a flat.

The next third or so of the course has some short climbs followed sometimes by big descents that would carry you up the next hill or long shallow descents that would peter out into equally long flats.  This is a very fast section of the bike.  The last third or so is continuous shallow rollers, which allow you to ride at a nice steady pace, that is until mile 100 where there is a monster climb that has about four distinct summits, the first is the worst.

I was pretty amazed and how well I was doing on the bike and how much of my bike handling skills I had retained.  i am more nimble on a bike than most age-group triathletes and so was able to whip by a lot of people on the curvy downhills and 90-degree turns.  However, my legs were NOT used to be clipped into one place and being forced to make exactly the same movement over and over for hours on end.  I was motley concerned with having to sit on my ass for several hours but that really wasn't much worse than it ever was.

The thing that killed me the most were the balls of my feet.  I swear to god by mile 80 I had several bouts where I just wanted to start crying.  I felt like the balls of my feet had been split open and filled with salt.  I kept trying to lift them off the pedal, I tried peddling more by pulling upward than pushing down and I got some relief but there really isn’t anything to be done, you are locked into one position and you have to use that one position.  The other thing that happened is that the tendons behind my knees started to become painful and finally, about mile 90, my left hamstring and calf cramped up really badly and I could not bring it into an upstroke otherwise it would start cramping again so I basically coasted for the next 5 miles massaging my leg and drinking everything electrolyte I had on my bike, which was fortunately quite a lot.  If you look at my race results for that segment you see I was passed by 61 people and my average pave dropped from 18.5 mph to 16.9 mph and that includes me still doing well at the beginning of the segment and making a comeback at the end.  It was pretty brutal but I credit my general experience in ultra endurance events for my being able to pull out of it without any significant or lasting damage.

I hit T-2 feeling about like I remember feeling at my last few Ironman events when I was actually trained for such a think, legs were kind of sore and stiff, butt hurt, feet hurt but I was in good spirits and clear headed.  I got through T-2 in about 10 minutes 40 seconds but I had to take extra time to find someone with some tape so I could tape my bib back onto my race belt, I had accident torn off one corner, and I had to stop for another bathroom break, which I don’t mind because it means I’ve been hydrating and the alternative costs a lot more.

I came into this race with two major concerns about the run, one, as mentioned above, I thought I might have a spectacular blow-up on the bike and have nothing left to actually run with and two, the course is 100% concrete and I have recently suffered a knee injury running a marathon on a course that’s probably about 60% concrete.  Well, worry number one never really materialized and worry number two, all i can say is that it’s a hell of a lot different running a marathon on concrete at a 3:37 pace versus a 5:17 pace.  I actually ended up really enjoying the run course.  There was lots of support, lots of shade and it was composed of three out and backs that you ran twice so you got to see everyone as they worked their way through the course.

The only problem I had with the run was due to a completely rookie mistake.  Somewhere around mile 16 at one aid station I ate a gel and some gatorade type drink, they call it Ironman Perform, I think I also downed some coke and water and I pretty much immediately became sick to my stomach and this cut my pace by two to three minutes per mile for the rest of the race.  I didn’t start feeling better until I finally threw up somewhere around mile 25.  However, I can’t even complain about this little mis-step because, once again, I knew exactly how to handle it.  I knew how to minimize the damage and how to maximize my performance given the circumstances.

So what can I say other than I had a good race, all things considered I had a really good race but I don’t chalk it up to dumb luck.  I have a deep base of endurance and the kind of strength that is needed for these types of events.  I hals have a deep reservoir of knowledge related to taking care of myself under adverse circumstances and I can pretty much always diagnose what’s going on with my body and come up with the right fix.  If those things weren’t true and I think things could have gone far worse.

All in all I had a pretty good time but the good time was really just visiting Boulder again and seeing friends and family.  The race itself was fine but it didn’t spark anything within me that rekindled my desire to do more IM events.  I was glad I finished as well as I did and i was proud to have finished but when I was done I was simply ready to collect my shirt, hat and medal and head back to our hotel room not only because I was tired but also because I didn't feel the pull of the Ironman scene.  I guess I’ve come to like my sports quieter and less flashy.  Having said that, I’m grateful there is such a thing as Ironman, I’m glad to have been a part of it and I’m not ruling out some additional events ten to 15 years down the road but for now I’ll take my eight finishes and call it good.

Next up, the Idaho Mountain Trail Ultra Festival (I.M.T.U.F.) 100 mile endurance run.

Damn the Consequences

When I'm ready to do something new I am REALLY ready to do something new.  I don't wait until the old thing is over and then start the new thing fresh I jump into the new thing and then keep up with the old thing until it is completed.

Men's Masters Physique Competition Contestants

It's a way of being that I think keeps me excited about my life and all the things there are to do but it is not without its consequences.  As stated, I've hired a professional bodybuilder to help me remake my body composition to be much more lean and more heavily muscled.  Something you would see in a men's masters physique competition like these guys.  Yes, these are older guys.

When I was much younger I was into lifting somewhat and I was a bit more muscular but age and years of running has stripped a lot of that away and I have NEVER been as lean as any of these guys.

Actually, I have found that as I have aged, despite all the running, my body fat percentage is actually creeping upward.  When I was at the peak of my running and weight loss about three years ago I was down to about 17 percent body fat measured in hydrostatic weighing.  Earlier this year I had the hydrostatic weighing done again and they had me at 23%.  I don't really believe I'm 23%, I mean I know that hydrostatic is the best you can get but I really think the people at the lab did something wrong.  I think they guy who was doing the readings in the dunk tank didn't get good readings.  However, my home scale puts me at 20% and so I know that I'm up and what's worse, I can see and feel that I'm up.

In addition to the extra body fat I feel weaker even though I've been doing the Olympic lifting.  I can't explain what is going on with my body, I ran a marathon PR in February, I've been Olympic lifting, I run an average of 200 or more miles a month but the fact remains that other measures tell me there is decline in the wind.  The strength thing isn't just a perception thing either.  During my last PT test I did fewer pushups and sit-ups though I did run my third fastest 2 mile run ever, 13:49.

Ok, enough backstory, the point is I'm making this change right now and right now I am practically immobile due to soreness from my lifting and my trainer is strictly limiting me to 30 minutes of cardio per day for now.  He says once he is able to see how the combination of diet and lifting is impacting my body and he feels like he has things dialed in for me I may get to start running more.  This all means that I'm now limited to daily 3 mile runs because I'm too sore to knock out 4 miles in 30 minutes but even if I weren't, its still only 4 miles and, hmm, lets see what I still have on my race schedule for the year.

Ironman Boulder on August 3rd (assuming my new Commander doesn't nix that)
Hartford Marathon on October 11th
Newport Marathon on October 12th
Soldier Marathon on November 8th
Pensacola Marathon on November 9th
Pilgrim Pacer Marathon on November 15th
and the Tucson Marathon on December 7th (which I may nix because the only reason I signed up for it was to try and get a faster BQ time which will not happen with this new change.

So, yeah, all these races are going to pretty much be walk-a-thons. I also want to do several marathons next season so that Misty and I can finish off the 50 states.  By any reasonable standard my plan simply doesn't make any sense.  Most would probably say it's fairly stupid but here's the thing.  I am utterly and absolutely terrified of returning to my younger, fat self.  That's just the bottom line.  I'm also not going to just toss the whole 50 state goal, I have 31 right now.  I also have other goals in life that I need to start working toward.

Actually they are more my wife's goals but they are extremely important to her so they are extremely important to me.  She has been nothing but supportive of me running the 100 milers and now she wants to transition into track and field when she hits 50 so that she can compete in the Senior Olympics, something that sound really cool to me too and time is ticking so really now is the time to transition.  My life, my rules, damn the consequences.

Winds of Change Come Again

As the 2014 season continues to roll on I have accumulated a few more races and a few more experiences.  My new job with the Army has brought me a total of five weeks of schooling away from home.  Three weeks was spent at Ft. Rucker Alabama in the Aeromedical Psychology training program, which means I am now officially a flight psychologist.  That school was very cool but I'm not going to go into detail here.  The other school was Captains Career Course; two weeks in my "home town" of San Antonio Texas.  Another great school but this time focused on military officer stuff.  The only problem with the schools is they put somewhat of a crimp in my training.  Not so much the first school but definitely the second.  However, they were well worth it.

As far as races go I did the Albuquerque Half-Marathon on April 19th pleasantly surprising myself with a 1:45:31.  While not my fastest half it is one of my faster ones and I think my fastest at altitude.  While I was at Ft. Rucker I also got up near Birmingham to do the Run for Kids Challenge 50K.  This was a trail run consisting of 10 loops of single track trail through the Oak Mountain State Park.  It was a great little low-key race but one in which I had some troubles.  I have a hard time running on wooded courses because I'm not used to the roots or the dappled sunlight and so I end up tripping and falling a lot.

The trails aren't technical by any means but there was just enough to where I tripped and fell hard once per lap for the first four laps and then I just had to slow down because the falls were starting to take their toll.  I finished the race in 5:39 and then headed back to Ft. Rucker for two more weeks of Army Training Sir!

Finally, on a whim, Misty and I traveled to South Bend Indiana to run the Sunburst Marathon.  We had been apart for three weeks and i thought this would be a nice reunion and a way to pick up Indiana.  The race was very well done and it was a nice urban course.  My only problem with the course itself was that it had too much concrete.  I think there were several opportunities where there could have been less.  It was also pretty hot out but that's not something a race director really has control over.  As I said, it was a good race.  It started in the downtown area and finish at the Notre Dame football stadium.  Normally the race finishes on the field but that was being refurbished zoo we finished up at the foot of "Touchdown Jesus."

After that race I haven't done any others and training has been very difficult because I have suddenly developed chronic left knee pain.  I took a full week off and it has gotten significantly better but not completely better.  So far I have seen a family doc, a physical therapist and a chiropractor.  I have gotten that I have osteoarthritis, tight IT band and hip flexors and basically "what those guys said."  However, I've also been told by the same three people that I don't have any internal damage and that my knees are strong so we are collectively hoping that better hydration and some glucosamine will clear it up.

In the mean time I'm feeling a bit like the writing is on the wall for the demise of at least some aspects of my running.  I think that in order to preserve as much as possible as long as possible I'm going to try and stick exclusively to trails, limit myself to 50Ks and shorter and not worry as much about my time so I can do my races on lower weekly miles.  However, I think I'm going to invest the extra time into some serious weight training and dieting under the supervision of a professional bodybuilder who lives here in Albuquerque.  I know a body building approach isn't exactly compatible with distance running but it is more compatible with my body type and it won't prevent me from running, it will just slow me down, which I am cool with.

So, I still have lots of running left to do this season as well as another three week Army school (hopefully) but its also on to new and different things and hopefully a new and different body.

My new coach Korbie Ntiforo

Have you ever wondered?

From time to time I've looked for race reports as a way of deciding if I wanted to do a race or not and sometimes to just try and estimate what kind of finish time I should shoot for.  I've come across several blogs that just ended as I'm sure they all do at some point but I've always wondered what happened to the people who wrote them.  I have known one person who's blog ended because they died but I suspect most people either just get tired of blogging or they stop doing whatever it is they were blogging about but I still wonder.

As for me, I've mostly just gotten tired of blogging.   I think about it from time to time but I've actually been a lot busier at work than is usual because I've changed jobs and the startup in the new job has been pretty time consuming.

However, I have not stopped running or Olympic lifting.  In fact I've even set a new marathon PR this year and I think the extra few minutes I was able to cut off my old PR is due to the lifting.

Anyway, we wrapped up the 2013 season by doing the Hawaii marathon and initially I thought I was going to try and PR there but it soon became apparent that it was way too hot and humid to do anything but survive.  To make matters worse there wasn't a single bit of breeze and practically no shade so it was SLOW, I think I ended up with something in the 4:20 to 4:30 range.  However, we stayed in Hawaii for a week and had an awesome time.  We snorkeled, surfed, kayaked, ran trails and did a lot of general sight seeing.

This year my biggest race is going to be the Run Rabbit Run 100 miler in Steamboat Springs, CO in September in an attempt to keep my Hardrock eligibility alive another year so before that I've been working my endurance back up and doing a lot of strength work.

So far my 2014 race schedule has included:
January 1st Foothills Fatass 50K, always a good way to start the new year and the weather was perfect.  We didn't get much snow over this winter, which I know is bad in drought stricken New Mexico, but it meant that the trails were largely mud and ice free though not totally.  It just happened that this race was my 80th marathon or longer race and I took 3rd overall in a time of 5:56:36.  Coincidentally, being a fatass race on New yYear day I think that also put me somewhere near the middle of the pack but it was fun anyway.

January 18^th The Duel Trail Marathon in one of my old home towns , Wichita Falls, TX, where I spent most of my high school years.  I had not idea there were even any trails in Wichita Falls but they have at least one that was built for mountain bikes and it has all kinds of triply mountain bike obstacles on it, swinging bridges, ranks, narrow raised bridges, a big metal half-pipe and lots of twists and turns.  The marathon is two loops and it is easily the craziest run I've ever done.  I ran it in a time of 3:49:20 and was second overall and, strictly speaking, first masters.  The guy who won was actually 44 but since he took top overall honors I got first masters.

February 2^nd I ran Rock-n-Roll New Orleans and all I can say is that the weather was as close to perfect as I think it's possible to be.  Well, that and New Orleans does have some awesome food but there could hardly be a bigger contrast between the people there to do the marathon and the vase majority of the people who were just there to eat, drink and smoke as much as they possibly could.  Anyway, it is a flat fast race and a pretty nice course overall but I was so focused on running hard and using so much energy to run that hard that I really have very little recollection of the course as a whole, more like an impression.  I ran a new PR of 3:24:31 and promptly got sick as hell the next day and that cold hung on like grim death...which is also how I felt.   The reason I am so sure that it's the Olympic lifting that has allowed me to run a new marathon PR is because it's the only thing that is different about my training since I started running.  My old marathon PR was 3:28:13 and I ran it almost four years and just over 40 marathon or longer races ago and I was maybe five to seven pounds lighter.

February 15^th was the Black Canyon Trail 100K.  It was to be my return to really long distance running after taking a year away following the Grand Slam but it was not to be.  Both my wife and I had the same thought prior to driving out to Arizona, that I should not be doing this race.  I had been too sick too recently.  The day started out well enough but somewhere around mile 26 things started going badly.  I was slower and slower and getting weaker plus it was about 90 degrees out and I wasn't warm at all.  By the time I got to the 50K aid station I was shivering and coughing and I knew it was time to stop and so that's what I did, I DNFd at 50k.  My cold had come roaring back and while I might have been able to finish it would have been horrible and taken a huge toll; stopping was the better choice.

March 29^th Forest Gump Challenge, MO - 4:41:59
March 30^th Hogeye Marathon, AR - 4:09:46This weekend was just meant to be a state getting weekend in the quest to get 50 states and a good endurance training weekend.  The Forest Gump Challenge is a tinny little race that I'm not even sure how I found because every time I went to look for it to get more information it always took a while.  The race takes place in a very small town called Reeds Spring, which is maybe 20 miles or so from Branson.  When I registered for the race I couldn't find any information other than it was at least a marathon and possibly a 50K as well and it was in Missouri.  I registered for the 50K even though I wasn't 100% certain there was one, which I know seems weird because I registered for it but the actual registration pace was the only place that a 50K was mentioned, everything else I could find advertised their marathon and shorter distances.   The race ended up being a 3.1 mile loop on roads, a mix or state highway, "main street" in the middle of town and some residential road.  After the first loop I really thought it would be a dangerous race because about half was on the narrow to nonexistent shoulder of what was obviously the major street running through town and it crossed a state highway at two locations.  However, I actually never felt unsafe and didn't hear anyone say they felt unsafe.  The drivers were all very friendly and as far as I could tell always gave the runners right of way and a wide berth.   Also, despite the fact that it was 10 loops for the 50k I didn't find myself getting bored.  There was a fair amount of variety in the course and it was made up of about three distinct sections that made it easy to break down in your mind.  I ended up taking second overall three minutes behind a guy who was 27 years younger than me.  I was pretty happy with the result.

Day two of the weekend double was the Hogeye marathon in Fayetteville, AR.  In addition to running  the 50K the day before I had also run one additional lap of the course with Misty as she finished up her marathon so I had a little over 34 road miles in my legs at the beginning of the race.  Whenever we do these double weekends we are basically just in and out very quickly and we don't get to do much other than run and eat but it's a good way to see each location where we are running.  Most of the time this is fine with us because neither of us are very big on staying in one place and doing a lot of sightseeing.  We find that running 26.2 miles through a city gets us pretty much a lll the sightseeing we want but Fayetteville seemed like the kind of town that it would have been nice to spend an extra day in.  The course was a good one as city based marathons go.  A pretty large portion of it, maybe as much as half, was on nice paved bike paths and it included a trip around a lake set in a large city park.  I ran maybe the first half of the race pretty well, on pace for a sub-4 marathon but during the later half of the race the running from the day before really started to take it's toll and I began to fade back.  I figured that if I had only run a marathon the day before rather than 34 miles I probably would have gotten that day two sub 4 but I didn't so no big deal.  It ended up being a great training weekend and I actually still got 3rd in my age group.


April 13^th Cedro Peak 45k is a reach that I had actually told myself I would never run because of how rocky I thought it was.  The race is put on by local friend of mine and the first year Misty and I ran an aid station and had a great time, the second year we were out of town as Misty and I were running a double in Washington and Oregon and this year we had it on our schedule to run the aid station again but it happened that we weren't called to do that so at the last minute I decided to sign up because I had missed several miles of training earlier in the week and felt like I really needed a good, long training run.  It turned out that the course wasn't nearly as rocky as I thought it would be.  I had just happened to run the very hardest sections of it in prior runs.  However, it is a rocky course and there are some pretty evil sections so it's nothing to be taken lightly.  Anyway, I projected that since I was training through the race and spent the evening before it doing a lot of squats at lifting that I would probably finish in about six hours.

My time ended up being 5:54:11, which was close to what I thought I'd do but the way I did it was not what I had imagined.  The first 20 miles or so wen't by better than expected and I think I was pretty far forward in the pack, maybe the leading edge of the mid-pack or somewhere thereabout.  However, right about mile 20 you start this long rocky climb that lasts maybe two and a half miles and that climb ground me down pretty badly.  By the time I got to the final aid station, which is 4.5 miles from the finish, I had recovered from the climb somewhat and was running pretty well on the mostly easy trails in that section but then the course turned upward again and I was seized by a serious cramp in my right adductor, the inner thigh.  It hurt like hell and I was in a position where I couldn't really bend my leg because when I did it would start to cramp again.  As I hobbled along the trail I was favoring my right leg so my left calf started to cramp too and it was pretty nasty, both legs cramping and the trail still climbing.  A few people asked if I was ok as they passed me and one person gave me so electrolyte capulets but the dam mange was pretty well done and I had to move really slowly on the uphill and rocky sections, basically anywhere that required I lift my legs.  If the trail sloped down or was smooth I was able to run with a gait that barely lifted my feet off the ground but that kind of trail was not particularly abundant in the last couple miles of the race.  In the last 4 miles my average pace for the entire race dropped by a minute a mile and i was passed by several people but I finished and once I started to get rehydrated and got some food I actually felt pretty good.  I had never cramped that badly or that persistently in a race before so I'm not sure if it was all the squats from the night before or the fact that this race has Heed as its electrolyte drink and I do not drink Heed because it makes me sick.  It was probably a combination of the two.  Anyway, I actually felt like I had a good race, I got what I came for and now that I've run the course i think I'd pretty happily run it again.  Not only is it always fun to run with friends but it's also nice to run a race that is actually run by friends.  Albuquerque has an awesome ultra community.

So, if you have ever wondered what happened to a certain blogger that suddenly seems to have fallen off the face of the earth it may just be that they needed a break from blogging and they are still as active as ever.