THE BIKE - IRONMAN SOUTH AFRICA 29 MARCH 2015

ALL ABOUT THE BIKE

No matter which way you look at the Ironman South Africa bike course, I truly believe what happens out on the bike course is the make or break deal for one’s race. The bike effectively sets up the run. On average the M35 – 39 spent 51% of race day on the bike (I calculated this % using the results for M35-39).

Looking back over my training log during the last six months it is the bike training where I missed most of my training sessions. No point in making excuses here but I often got discouraged going out for a bike ride due to traffic / road safety as well as the time it takes to get ready for a bike ride. It always takes me at least 40min of faffing around to head out the door and hit the road.

On average I only cycled twice a week. There were some weeks where I only cycled once. Cycling once – twice a week to try and get fit for a 180km bike ride is simply not enough. Being the longest discipline of the day one effectively needs to fit minimum 3 – 4 bike sessions in a week.

At this stage I would also like to thank my training partner over the last couple of weeks namely Lyal. Lyal managed to get me out of bed where on most of those mornings I would have just turned around and hit the snooze button for good. Lyal did very well at his first attempt in the Ironman distance finishing in a time of around 12:40.

Since moving back to South Africa and deciding to do Ironman South Africa again it was the bike course that concerned me the most. I lived in the Cayman Islands for six years and got accustomed to riding on flat and fast roads with no real technical sections. Barring hurricane force winds there were hardly ever winds blowing stronger than 40km/h whilst out cycling in the Cayman Islands. On a very windy day in Port Elizabeth the wind can blow consistently up to 70kmh whilst gusting even stronger than that. Hope and pray that one never rides a disc in such conditions.

The first months getting back on my bike after a seven month break from the sport was tough. Each time I went out for a longer ride I would more often than not get excruciatingly sore quadriceps cramps on the inside part of my quads. My understanding is that the quadriceps is made up of three distinct parts. I always thought hamstring cramps were painful but quadriceps cramps can leave one cringing with pain for a couple of minutes. I guess at this point I am digressing here and enough of the pity party for the time being.

Trying to make up for the lack of bike training over the last six months I decided with my coach to do a solo ride of the 180km bike course about a month before Ironman South Africa. The mental and physical effort on that day was not pretty. It took me 6h and 6 minutes to do the course. I took so many stops during that effort that from the time I started to the time I got back home again 7.5 hours had passed. Mentally I just thought that there is no way I will be breaking the 6h mark on race day. I felt exhausted after that effort and tried to comprehend how I will still run a decent marathon afterwards. I did not enjoy that day and mentally had second thoughts of doing Ironman as a sport in the long term. I soon moved on from that and was thankful that the solo effort provided me with much needed mental toughness on race day.

Passing by the Marine Hotel close to Hobie Beach

So after reflecting on the above and coming back to race day I headed out of T1 focused and ready to go. The first reality check after the swim was when I tried to snap the elastic I fastened my shoe to my bike with to save a couple of valuable seconds in T1. My goodness, I used a thicker elastic band than usual. When the band snapped (after pulling it hard) it wacked straight into my hand and gave me a good wake up coming out of transition.

For those of you familiar with the IMSA bike course, it starts with a section of approximately 2km of flat road. One then heads up on a 10km section of road that has a gradual incline all the way up to Builders Warehouse. From Builders Warehouse to Lovemore Heights the road gets much steeper.

Interestingly enough, it was on the second lap at the top of this hill where Frederik van Lierde eventually broke away from the rest of the pack. Good place to launch such an attack. I believe that one of the crucial ingredients that set Freddy van Lierde apart from the other pros on race day is that he came out to Port Elizabeth for about two weeks in January to specifically come and train and familiarize himself with all the intricacies of the course.

Cycling uphill from Maitland Mouth

The first lap on the bike went really well I thought. I felt good overall but also knew that I had to hold back as the second lap will get tougher due to fatigue, easterly wind will pick up and I would also be riding the second lap during lunch time which means the day was going to get hotter.

The only slight issue I had to deal with during the first lap was my front hydration bottle. I used the “pump” water bottles to squeeze water into my aero bottle. The cap on my aero bottle has a mid-section of plastic that came undone whilst squeezing water to mix with my premade cytomax concentrate. This resulted in most of my cytomax splashing out even whilst cycling over the slightest of bumps in the road. To deal with this I luckily had my rear bottle cage holder (X-lab) which I could make use of. At every aid station I alternated between getting a bottle of GU electrolyte and/or a bottle of “pump” water.

From reading various race reports written by pro triathletes, age groupers and articles written by triathlon coaches there is common theme that emerges. On race day one cannot keep thinking what I could have done better or what I still have to do later on in the day. All that one can and should do is to stay in the moment and focus on making the best decisions during each moment on race day.

I thus decided to focus on my level of perceived exertion during the bike and every now and then looked at my average heart rate. I was surprised to see that I had completed the first lap of the bike course in a time of 2h50min. Wow, I thought to myself “It is a full 13min faster than the lap I did about a month earlier”. My first thought after seeing my lap 1 split was “Darn, did I go too fast and as result I am going to suffer on lap 2 of the bike course or what about my marathon effort”?

Cycling along Marine drive where the road surface is a bit rougher.

I recall going up the gradual 10km hill on the second lap (up to Lovemore Heights) and seeing very few cyclists behind me or ahead of me. I found it very odd. I guess by that stage cyclists were starting to get more spread out on the 90km route. That is the good thing about having a 90km bike course lap versus the old 60km course lap. Cyclists are spread out more over the course. It thus reduces the chance of cyclists drafting.

This brings me to the next point. Like with most people there are couple of things that ticks me off:

• ·        One of them being seeing people litter in general and especially flicking their cigarette butts out of their vehicles whilst driving. Even more so are people who throw their beer bottles in the streets resulting in shattered glass and eventually resulting in unnecessary punctures for cyclists. For those reading my race report and who have influence at Nelson Mandela Municipality, I truly believe something needs to be done about the “braai areas” that are situated on the opposite side of the Humewood golf course. Over Christmas time and New Year partygoers here did just what they wanted and broke so much glass from beer bottles that the shards of glass remained on that section of road for weeks. The area needs to be better enforced by policing services such as Humewood police. I saw Freddy van Lierde running on that section of road in January and felt embarrassed (being based in PE) that he had to see the amount of littering and raucous behaviour going on there.
• ·         Another type of situation that tends to work me up the wrong way is seeing groups of three to ten cyclists coming past in packs out on the bike course. These cyclists have conveniently decided “to work together” blatantly cheating trying to get a faster bike split and conserving energy for the run.

I must say kudos to the race marshalls for doing their best on race day to keep the race fair. When I did see groups of cyclists the race marshalls did give them warnings and issued those with the time penalties where required.

Coming back from Maitland mouth (around the 130km mark) I started feeling the fatigue and usual muscle and joint pains associated with riding a bike for 5 – 6hours. Usually neck pain or lower back pain gives me the most discomfort but on race day it was “dead spots” in my feet. I am in the market for new bike shoes and can honestly do with some advice regarding cycling shoes that has the best support in order to avoid dead spots as well as pins and needles.

Ironman South Africa (Africa Champs) has such a scenic bike course

When I saw the University on the final lap of the bike course I got excited and knew that the end of the bike was in sight. I thought to myself, the marathon is up next and just need to get off this bike. I remember being worried at this point as I could not feel the front part of my left foot as it had been so numb from the pedalling. A joint in my left foot was also really sore which concerned me as it felt that it could even have a slight dislocation.

Doing a rough calculation it appears that I was about 8min slower on my second lap of the bike course. About half of that time loss was due to fatigue and the other 4min I would ascribe to the easterly wind picking up.

Herewith my bike stats:

My bike split time – 5:47:43

Average speed – 31km/h

Men 35-39 age group bike placing: 31^st / 237

Average bike split for the M35-39 age group: 6:46:13

Average bike split of M35 – 29 Kona qualifiers: 5:26:20

Onto T2 next. Was just so excited to part my way with bike after close to a 6h journey. I must honestly that my bike rode like a dream and would like to thank Kenneth from Triangle Sports for doing such a great job servicing my bike on two occasions during the month leading up to IMSA.

THE SWIM - IRONMAN SOUTH AFRICA 29 MARCH 2015

I always equate the feeling one has the couple of minutes before the start whistle goes off to the same nervous feeling one has before writing an important theoretical exam during High School or University.

When the start cannon was fired at 6:45am a number of guys did a full on sprint to the first wave and soon I found myself with about 50 swimmers ahead of me. It was approximately 300m out to the first buoy and the swim was as per usual a tumultuous one. Some of the top age groupers were being rather aggressive defending their line to the buoy and would not hesitate dunking someone had swimmers get in their way.

En route to the first buoy. The craziness of a swim start unfolds.

I could feel that the first half of my swim did not go as planned. I got blocked by swimmers who had outsprinted me to the first buoy. I also made one or two navigation errors trusting the guys ahead of me to swim straight (rookie error) as I know the landmarks pretty well in PE. I was also struggling to find rhythm as the sea was choppy on race morning. During the first half of the swim course I found myself swimming alone during various sections whilst every now and then finding a pair of feet to draft on the homeward bound section.

Going round the first buoy 300m out. This is where I lost some time.

I managed to recover from my less than perfect swim start. I could see that I was overtaking a number of swimmers on the way back to the pier. I made another navigation mistake when I got closer to the pier at Hobie Beach. With the Ocean racing series (local open water swimming series held in PE over the summer) the red buoy is usually placed closer to the pier. With the Ironman swim the final red buoy was more left of the pier than I was used to and had to swim skew to navigate around it keeping the buoy the right of me as I passed it.

The home stretch of the swim was in sight and it was encouraging to see hundreds of spectators on the pier cheering everyone on. I finally planted my feet on the sand and could feel my left calf muscle cramping up for a moment.

Exiting the swim (Jana capturing the photo from the pier)

Dazed and confused (as is usual after a swim of such distance and intensity) I worked my way up to T1 into the transition tent. I was relieved to check my Suunto Ambit 3 and saw that I managed to slip in just under an hour.

Heading into T1 after the swim

Before analysing my age group results below, I determined from checking www.ironman.com I noticed that 237 individuals in the M35-39 finished within the cut-off of 17hours. Interesting to note that the newspaper issued at race registration listed approx. 300 individuals entered in the M35-39 age group. Looking at the results on Ironman.com I can conclude that there were 296 individuals registerd for the M35-39 age group of which 39 did not start (DNS) and 20 individuals did not finish (DNF).

What I also need to mention here is that I attended the Kona slot allocation function on the Monday. There were 10 slots available for the Ironman World Champs in my age group M35-39. From what I recall a maximum of two guys declined their slots to Kona meaning that the 10 slots rolled down two positions. 

The 12^th finisher in my age group was thus the last individual to qualify for Kona. As part of my results analysis I included the average split for each discipline that was attained by the Kona Qualifiers. Being an accountant I love analysing race results in Microsoft Excel making use of pivot tables and the works.

Herewith my swim stats:

My swim split time – 58:23

Average pace – 1:32 per 100m (My gps indicated 1:26 per 100m which is more of my usual pace. Clearly I swam skew during the swim leg which is rather frustrating).

Men 35-39 age group placing: 6^th / 237

Average swim split for the M35-39 age group: 1:16:31

Average swim split of M35 – 29 Kona qualifiers – 1:00:22

Onto T1 next to put my bike kit on and 4min later I was out of there setting off for the strenuous bike course.

IRONMAN SOUTH AFRICA HELD ON 29 MARCH 2015 – GETTING TO THE STARTLINE OF #IMSA

Every athlete that makes it to the starting line of an endurance event has made many sacrifices and commitments to get there. More often than not it is the support of our family and friends that enable us to experience this sport in the way we do.

There are always obstacles and challenges involved in training for an Iron distance triathlon. Injuries or sickness can get in the way of consistent training weeks. Situations at work can lead to excessive travel or overtime being worked. I thus salute each and every participant who I took part with on Sunday.

Just finishing a short swim 3 days prior to IMSA

The last time I did a full Ironman event was on the 10^th of July 2011 being Ironman Switzerland held in Zurich. It would thus nearly be four years since I did my last long distance triathlon event.

From a triathlon perspective 2012 saw me focusing on completing two 70.3 races in Florida, U.S.A (Haines City and Miami). Early 2013 my son Jordan was born. I thus decided to focus on the Olympic distance during that year and competed in both Island Games (held in Bermuda) and USAT Age Group Champs (Milwaukee, Wisconsin). During December 2013 my wife, son and I relocated back to South Africa after spending six amazing years in the Cayman Islands (Caribbean).

My son Jordan born on my birthday in 2013

I totally underestimated (from various perspectives) how demanding the move back to South Africa would be. From a work perspective I found myself working long hours from Jan – Aug 2014. Logistically I was travelling a great deal which meant little time for quality training.

Whilst watching the streaming broadcast of the Ironman World Champs (4 October 2014) I decided that I needed to make a concerted effort to get fit again. I was borderline sedentary (at least from my perspective) and 7kg overweight. By end of day 4 October 2014 I had signed up for what would be my second attempt at Ironman South Africa. I knew the journey would be an exciting one as I had something to prove. I completed my first full Ironman in South Africa during 2009. That day in 2009 did not go quite as expected as it was extremely hot during the run leg (afternoon) and I suffered from severe GI distress issues. I hobbled over the finish line in a time of 11:37 after doing a 4h40min run/walk effort in the marathon. I always knew after that day that I would come back to do the course again and run the marathon under four hours.

For those of you not familiar with the Ironman South Africa course, changes were made to the swim course and more significant changes made to bike course during 2013 (for the 10^th anniversary of the event). It meant that the swim now became one large 3.8km lap instead of a two lap swim as it was in the past. The most significant change was to the bike course changing it from a 3 x 60km course to a 2 x 90km course. That change to the bike course meant that there were many more hills introduced taking the total ascent of the bike course to +- 1,650m over the 180km course. For those of you thus taking a look at bike splits and thinking they are on average slower than other Ironman courses, well then you are right.

Hanging the bike and run bags prior to race day

The bike course (more on that later) is a challenging one due to three factors:

·        1.  Port Elizabeth is known as the friendly city but also the windy city. If the easterly wind blows it means that one faces a head-on wind for 50% of the bike course (all the way from Maitland mouth and back to Hobie beach).

·       2.   Most of the roads that make up the 90km lap needs to be resurfaced. The road surface is very rough and uneven in places making for a bumpy ride. To further move IMSA forward I truly believe that Standard Bank as the main sponsor of the event, the race organizing committee and Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality would need to work together to improve the road for future races in order to continue drawing the international triathlon community to the event. Cities like Cape Town and Durban would give their front teeth to host a race like Ironman South Africa.

·       3.   As mentioned above, the bike course has many hills (some being rather steep) resulting in total ascent of +-1,650m.

These three factors makes the bike course tough. As usual, some of the male pros went well under 5 hours for the bike course whilst other just managed to break the 5h mark. All in all only 19 male pros were able to break the 5h barrier for the bike course.

Ok, one thing that counts in one’s favour is that the bike course is actually 177km and not 180km.

RACE MORNING

Moments before the start of Ironman South Africa 2015

Race day started at around 3:50am. I had a fairly good night of sleep except for waking up around 2am, soon to realize that the start of race day is fast approaching. It was great to have my Mom flying down from Pretoria for a couple of days to support me for the race. It meant that Jana could walk down to the race start with Jordan a bit later whilst my Mom could assist me with my usual race morning routine.

Race morning is always a bit of a rush. 4 – 5am was spent eating breakfast, attaching timing chip and getting race day hydration and nutrition together. I got to the transition zone at 5:15am. I could hand a couple of items to my Mom to hold onto whilst I entered transition. I topped up my tyre pressure and did final checks on my swim, bike and run equipment.

Around 5:45am I headed over to the swim bag area and handed in my post race gear.

Around 6am I was ready to zip up my tri-suit. Nothing ever goes perfect on race day and was about to experience my first issue of the day. My zip got totally stuck at the bottom of the suit as it had done a couple of times before. I desperately tried fixing the zip and pulled it so hard that I cut both my index fingers. Like any other part of race day, one has to focus whilst in that moment. My Mom tried to help me as well but eventually I was just like “Oh well, I can zip up my wetsuit and luckily had a bike jersey which I could zip up on the bike”. It meant that I would be running with an open chest during the run which help cooling down anyway.

Around 6:15am I quickly entered the water to get my body use to the sea temperature which was around 19 – 20 degrees Celsius.

6:20am we all had to enter the start chute as the PRO Men set off at 6:30am whilst the PRO Women started at 6:33am.

One of the most glorious and magnificent parts of Ironman South Africa (and being South African) is singing and hearing the anthem whilst standing on Hobie beach. There are usually two choppers in the sky, the sun is rising over the sea and thousands of people standing jam packed on the pier. All of these factors contribute to an incredible atmosphere.

Around 6:35am I found myself lined up right in front on the start line with at least a thousand people behind me. Being a strong swimmer I always try and take the best line to the first buoy. This also means that I surround myself with generally quite aggressive guys gunning for Kona slots.  

At 6:45am the start gun goes off. Ready steady GO!!!

The gun goes off at 6:45am for my start wave

Couple of my best photos taken at Ironman South Africa 2014

USA Triathlon olympic distance national age group championships - race report 2013

RACE REPORT

The swim

At about 9:30am my M30-34 age group wave proceeded down the ramp and I was able to warm up for 5min after stretching for 20min close to the transition zone. The water was chilly and it took me a couple of minutes to acclimate to the water again. With approximately 200 triathletes in my wave the swim would be “interesting” and fast for sure. Reason being that technically the fastest Olympic distance age group triathletes from across the United States were competing after qualifying by placing in the top 10% in their age group at various races across the United States during the 2012-2013 year leading up to USAT Nationals.

The start gun went off at 9:45am with 200 swimmers frantically blasting away to the first turn buoy. The first 500m out of the 1500m swim was just mayhem. With so many fast swimmers around it was difficult to get the best line and we end up swimming into and over each other constantly fighting to draft a faster swimmer or trying to get the best line to the next turn buoy. I settled into a steady pace after 500m and manage to draft a couple of swimmers for brief periods of time. Some of the swimmers I tried to draft were swimming skew so took my own line and swam by myself for long sections. I quickly checked my stop watch close to the end and saw I had been swimming for approximately 18min. I knew that my target swim split of 21:30 was doable. I exited the water in 22^nd place and was right on target with a swim split of 21:29. I entered transition and had a slightly slower T1 time than anticipated due to struggling to get the bottom section of my wetsuit off.

The swim start area (Photo taken after race day)

The bike

Out of T1 I went and onto the bike leg. With my slow bike split of 1:08 in Bermuda just less than a month ago I knew I could bike faster on the fairly flat Milwaukee bike course due to getting the proper retul bike fit done and specifically working on my bike fitness over the last 3.5 weeks. I end up averaging 37.5km/h for the 40km bike and posted a bike split of 1:03 which was the bike split I was aiming for on the day.

Reviewing my heart rate data afterwards and speaking to my coach I realized my average HR was approximately 10 bpm lower than what it should have been. I was biking at half iron distance HR and not Olympic distance HR. The positive side of this was that I felt fresh coming off the bike and heading into the run. It is also encouraging to me that a bike split of 1:01 on similar bike course is certainly achievable for me in the new future.

 The run

I was hoping to capture my run data but thankfully (being sarcastic) to one of the worst GPS devices I have ever used the garmin 405 disappointed with only picking up the satellites 5km into the 10km run. At least I could capture my HR data and can use this data to set training zones going forward. I felt really strong heading into the run and was running close to 4min/km for the first 5km. Typically, I start fading 5km into the run during an Olympic distance triathlon but having discussed this issue with my coach he gave me more targeted run sets to try and fix this problem.

I got to 3miles into the run and felt that I still had energy in the tank with no immediate need to stop and walk. I kept on pushing and could start feeling the pain setting in with my HR creeping up to 95% of my max HR. I just kept on pushing through the exhaustion levels and thought of my son Jordan to keep my going. I looked at my watch and was hoping to do a new PB which would mean a time of less than 2:12. With about 2 miles to go I realized I could go sub 2:10. I kept pushing and thought to myself of all the training sessions I had done to this point and that 2 miles is nothing in the big picture. I saw the US Bank building in the distance (downtown Milwaukee) and knew the finish line was right in front of there.  Eventually I had 1 mile to go and pushed to dig deep with what I had left to reach the finish line in a new PB of 2:09:50.  I was elated especially after having a breaking through run performance of 41min flat. Afterwards I had learned that my wife (in the Cayman Islands) and my Mom (in South Africa) were able to see me finish live thankfully to the online streaming from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

My son Jordan watching the live stream from the Cayman Islands

In the end I finished 46^th out of 183 triathletes in my age group representing all 50 States in the United States with top 25 Americans eligible for qualifying for the World Age Group Nationals. If I was an American National I would have been 21 spots away from qualifying for the World Age Group Championships to be held in Edmonton, Canada in 2014. This means that as an American citizen the qualifying time for the M30-34 World Age Group championship would be a 2:04 or faster. Interesting to note that the guy who won the M30-34 age group did a freakishly fast time of 1:54 which is very close to times professionals do on the ITU circuit. Another standout achievement I noted for the day was that Bob Scott who is 83 years young won his age group in a time of 3:07. The winning time in the M70-74 age group was 2:34. Amazing indeed!

Finally I would like to thank my wife Jana for letting me continue to train during the last couple of months with my son Jordan only being 6 months old now. I would also like to thank my parents for their encouragement and support which has played such a big part in getting me to this point of realizing milestones of my triathlon dream. Last, but not least I would like to thank my coach Guilherme Campos who I met through the inaugural www.mercurymantri.com  event held during January in the Cayman Islands. Guilherme has gone the extra distance for me as a coach. For further details on his coaching services please see gui-coaching.com