Surviving my first Hurricane and Iron distance race (part 2)
“I can’t sit-up and ride” she said “because my handlebar tape has come undone and I can’t ride in the aero-position because my crotch is on fire,” she added and poured some water down her pants.
We were parked some 90 miles into the bike ride at the last water stop before the Buck Hills (three large rolling hills that challenged both body and spirit just before the very steep Sugerloaf ascent.) Clermont must be the only God forsaken place in Florida with Colorado sized foothills, I thought as my thighs seized-up like vise grips. And the Great Floridian must be one of the only Iron distance triathlons that puts the biggest hills last.
Eight flats had sent me from the tip of the spear to the butt of the spear. We were a rather motley bunch consisting of big girls on bikes, the long-ago retired and yet still very driven, the old school types with shin length red-stripped socks, the unlucky, the unprepared, the unwise, and two guys on vintage bikes with strap-on-pedals instead of clips. These boys were drafting each other like Lance and Hincapie, however at the butt of the spear no one monitors or cares.
We all had that deer caught in the headlights look as we sat in the shade at one of the last the water stops and contemplated the up-coming hills and bike cut-off time. Except that there was no water. The race organizers somehow had assumed that since it was 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity we would be drinking our own sweat. All they had left for us was warm lime Gatorade. Have you tried to chase a warm Gu with straight warm Gatorade about 9 hours into a very hot race? It is sort of like gulping green battery acid.
We did have one last advantage. The heat, humidity, lack of water, and common goal had forged a deep bond between us. It was this bond that had saved my sore ass. Long ago I had run out of both inter tubes and air. It was through the kindness of this motley band of racers that I was able to even contemplate finishing the bike.
Except that I didn’t care anymore. I had fixed my last flat and I knew it. You see in my current dazed state of mind I had forgotten to repack my tools. I had left them in field number eight somewhere about 20 miles back and that was that. I was sick of fixing flats, and I was sick of the bike. I just wanted to be done with this ride from hell.
It’s funny how fast you go from training all year, to wanting to really compete, to just wanting to finish. Now a new thought crept into to my mind. I had to finish because of the eight flats. I had worked too hard and survived too much to not finish. It was this thought that propelled me up the Buck Hills and up Sugerloaf. It was this idea that got me back to the transition area, this thought and a hell of a lot of luck.
May the air stay in your tires, and may the wind be at your back and not in your butt, I knew had be my new race motto.
I finished the bike in just under 9 hours and squeezed in under the bike cut-off time.
Don’t ever run a marathon before your first Iron distance triathlon. Why? Because if you do, you’ll know exactly how far and how difficult the 26.2 miles will be on you. It is indeed a very strange and daunting feeling starting a marathon at 6:00p.m. at night after a 112 mile bike ride. The mind says you must be crazy and legs whole-heartedly agree.
The sun was going down and I was mentally fried. It seemed that in a distant life I once lived, I had imaged myself crossing the finishing line before sunset. Now I was hoping to come in before midnight.
I quickly gave up the notion of hammering the marathon. The difference between a 16 hour race and 15 hours race was pretty meaningless. Besides, my legs would seize-up like a stray cat at a dog shelter every time I broke into the slowest of jogs. I just wanted to finish and perhaps start to enjoy the race a bit.
I met my wife on the first part of the run, which was an out and back 10K before 3 loops around Lake Minneola. She was running back and I was sort of walking (if you consider Frankenstein’s gate a walk). She looked great with two sponges tucked into her shirt. This was when she earned the nickname Sponge Barb.
We stopped and chatted. She told me that she had lost her Blackberry cell phone on the ride when she hit a big bump. I tried to express my concern as I was pounding on my thighs to keep them from locking-up. We had decided to bring our cell phones so that we could encourage each other during the race. She was really depressed, but more importantly she was way ahead and really doing great.
I on the other hand was at the wrong end of my marathon. The first 13 miles I did my best impression of the Frankenstein monster growling and terrifying the local villagers. In my case it was the other competitors and aid station helpers. I seemed to have done a proper job because by my second loop many of the aid station helpers had cleared out.
Somehow, by mile fourteen I was feeling good. I was (to my never-ending surprise) the only one running at this point and perhaps the only one on the course. Hurricane Wilma had scared many of the racers so there were only several hundred in the race to begin with…and most of them were finished.
There was just a small handful of us left running in total darkness, into on-coming traffic (the state law in Florida) on a road with no shoulder. Every so often I would spot the bouncing glow of a green light stick ahead in the pitch-dark Florida night. I’d run up to them and we’d start chatting. It was nice to have company, especially on the far side of the lake loop, which was now pitch black and very spooky in the gathering glum of hurricane Wilma.
I caught up to a friend I had made the night before at pre-race dinner. We almost hugged in the starless night and started chatting. He told me that he had found the strangest thing on the bike ride: an almost new Blackberry. And yes it did turn out to be my wife’s Blackberry.
She was there waiting for me when I crossed the finish line just before midnight. My beautiful Sponge Barb was there and about 30 other folks who stuck it out in the starless night. It was nothing like the Ironman finish you see on television. Nobody said, “You are an Ironman” except for my wife who had done terrific by overcoming her fear of the swim. She swam a blazing fast 2.4 miles and set the fastest Mica family record for an Iron distance race.
And while technically I’m not an Ironman, I am a finisher. I was hoping to check of this goal off my list and move on to others. But now, with so many flats, I have to race again just to see what time I can really do. Besides, I’ve set the bar so low that I can’t help but surpass my goal the next time. Ironman here I come.
May the air stay in your tires, and may the wind be at your back and not in your butt.
*Post Note 11/2/05: Yesterday, I took the Shimano wheels to the bike shop where I had purchased my new Giant and had long serious chat with the manager and boys in the repair department. They examined the wheels and pronounced the plastic rim strip that lines the inside of the wheels to be cheap, misarranged, and the most likely the cause of my trouble. They replaced it, at no charge, with a higher quality Italian brand. We’ll see.