Race morning
I am finally getting a chance to wrap up my race report 3 week after my second Ironman race in Zurich on the 10th of July 2011. Most of my race report I was able to write during my flight from Zurich to Johannesburg and the flight from Johannesburg to New York.
Race day started as usual with my alarm clock going off at 4am in the morning. Jana and I got out of bed and started getting ready for breakfast which was being served downstairs from 4:30am especially for all the triathletes staying in the hostel.
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| Shortly after waking up on race morning |
We stayed in the Youth hostel about a 10min walk from the race start. Luckily 90% of the people staying at the youth hostel were triathletes and the other 10% were other random guests which meant that it was rather quiet the night before the race and there were not too many party animals around. I managed to sleep about 4.5 hours which I considered to be sufficient for the night before a triathlon. It is usually on the Friday night before a Sunday race when it matters most to get a decent night of sleep.
I usually have cooked oats made with water on race morning but we did not have a microwave in the room so I had Weetabix with water instead together with a slice of brown bread, a banana and a 350cal bottle of Ensure. I usually avoid dairy products on race morning and go vegetarian the day before the race to try and reduce any possibilities of stomach problems during the day. I had suffered from very painful stomach cramps during the marathon of my first Ironman I did during 2009 and therefore I was super careful of my nutrition on race morning and during the race this time round as I knew that I could do all the training in the world but if I messed around with my nutrition plan it could have very disastrous consequences on my race plan.
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| My bike covered in plastic (Plastic covers sponsored by Scott) |
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| Meeting up with fellow Cayman triathletes just before the race start. |
At about 6:40am I zipped up my wetsuit with the help of Jana, took a dip in beautiful Lake Zurich to get my body used to the water temperature and swam about 50m out and 50m back. I got out of the water, had a banana and a GU gel with water to make sure I get my pre-race nutrition in.
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| Posing for a pic with Jana minutes before the race start |
At about 6:50am I greeted Jana for the last time and took my spot on the starting line on the shores of the beautiful Lake Zurich or Zurichsee as the locals seem to call it. The Swiss anthem started playing and one could just sense and feel the energy in the air. The gun went off at 6:55am for the Pro’s to start.
Race start 7am and the swim leg
At 7am the gun went off for the official start of Ironman Switzerland. I started more to the right of the mass group start to avoid most of the usual kicking and bashing. As swimming is my strongest discipline in a triathlon I am usually able to finish in the top 60 out a field of 2000 triathletes which helps to keep out of the mass chaos which usually unfolds when 2000 hyped up and tapered triathletes unleash their energy at the sound of the race gun going off.
I kept the first buoy in focus and did a fairly steady sprint the first 200m of the race to try and get to a strong group of swimmers which I could draft for the remainder of the swim. This plan did not work all to well. As the swim course was rather wide, I found that most of the swimmers were fairly spread out up to the first buoy which was about 600m out. From the first buoy onwards I managed to draft one or two swimmers but found that they were changing direction too much and tried to overtake them. The swim course consisted of two laps of 1.9km.
I found that most of the triathletes started the swim too fast as I kept on overtaking swimmers throughout the duration of the swim leg. I remember looking to the left and right while I was breathing during my swim and thinking, wow this is such a beautiful lake in the middle of Zurich. The sun was still sitting fairly low in the sky and I could see all the beautiful houses built close to the shores of the Lake. It crossed my mind once or twice to stop and admire the view but I had business to take care of.
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| Jana spotting me with the Nikon 300mm zoom lens during the first lap of the swim |
The competitors start the second lap of the swim by crossing over a small island in the lake which has a timing mat placed in the middle of the island. I dived into the water again after crossing over the timing mat not wanting to loose the swimmers right in front of me. I aimed for the orange buoy in the distance but found it tricky to swim straight as the swim course was very wide. I managed to keep a steady pace on the second lap and focused on using my arms more and conserving my legs. In the back of my mind I was just thinking, don’t overcook it as I still have a long day ahead of me. I swam 55:58 at Ironman South Africa 2 years before and knew that time was too fast as I went anaerobic during that swim and could actually feel my legs cramping a bit during the 2nd lap of that swim two years ago. I thus held back slightly during my swim in Lake Zurich and aimed for a 58min minute swim. I eventually exited the 3.8km swim in 59:11 and was happy with the time as it was within seconds of the time I aimed for. My age group and overall placing for the swim leg can be summarised as follows:
Swim results
Swim split 59:11
Age group position M30-34: 10th out of 227 [Seeding index = 4.4%]
Overall position: 63rd out of 1600 [Seeding index = 3.9%]
All in all I was happy with the swim portion of my race. It was not a PB for me but planned on not swimming as fast as I did in South Africa in order to conserve more energy for the bike and run disciplines of the race.
T1 (Transition 1)
I entered into transition with my wetsuit down to my waist, sat down and managed to get my legs out of the wetsuit with little difficulty as I applied Vaseline around my ankles before the race start. I clearly recall that I was feeling rather drunk in my head for a brief moment while I was sitting down trying to get the wetsuit off. I guess it must have been due to my body being in a horizontal position for an hour during the swim and then all of a sudden I was sitting in a vertical position.
At Ironman South Africa my T1 split was 4:03 and I was looking at doing a slightly faster T1 time this time round. One of the things that took a bit long during my T1 transition was trying to get my arm coolers on. I decided to wear arm coolers during the bike leg as it was a fairly technical bike course with some fast descents. I therefore thought to myself if I had the unfortunate event of falling on the bike course at least I would have some protection on my arms and hands as I was only wearing a tri-suit which offers limited protection during a fall. I exited T1 in a time of 3:39 which was 24 seconds faster than at IMSA and overall happy with how T1 went.
Bike leg
Wow, what can I say about the Ironman Switzerland bike course. In short, I found the bike course to be challenging, very scenic and technical in nature.
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| IMCH bike course profile |
I used the first 15min of the bike course to settle in to the new horizontal position on the bike to make sure that my stomach adjusts going from a vertical to horizontal position after the hour long swim. After 15min into the bike course I started my nutrition plan and made sure I stick to it fairly religiously. I averaged about 35km/h for the first hour and then the fun and games started once I got to Feldbach where I encountered the first climb. Luckily I was already familiar with the climbs that unfolded during the next 30km’s as Pam, Michael and I rode the hilly section of the bike course on the Wednesday before the race.
My nutrition plan during the 180km bike leg was to drink one GU gel per hour with water for the last four hours of the bike ride. For the first two hours of the bike ride I used two bottles of 350cal Ensure I diluted with water and drank the liquid food in small sips about every 15min or so (Thanks to Dean Gaffigan for providing me with some valuable nutrition advice). For hours 3 - 5.75 into the bike course I ate small portions of bananas which I obtained from the aid stations and I had one powerbar I think about 4 hours into the bike course as I recall that I started to feel slightly hungry by then.
From a hydration point of view I stuck with water and orange Gatorade that was offered at the aid stations. I have been reading a couple of articles on hydrating appropriately recently and it comes down to the fact that thirst is still an excellent indicator of how much fluid to drink. Trying to drink based on a formula gets to complex and can be severely affected by weather conditions on the day.
From a pacing point of view I kept on telling myself to hold back during the first 90km of the bike course. As I usually find myself in a top 70 position after the swim I am always amazed as to how many “uber-bikers” there are out there. Looking at the results online about 250 uber-bikers must have overtaken me during the bike course. The depth of cycling talent in Europe was evident on race day. I guess it makes a huge difference to regularly be able to incorporate climbs and rolling hills into one’s bike training.
As I did all my training in preparation for IMCH in the Cayman Islands I did not have the advantage of doing hill training. To try and simulate the hills I did a couple of hill interval sets on my Schwinn spinning bike by turning up the resistance as much as I could during training for interval periods ranging between 4 and 8 minutes.
The bike course consistent of 2 x 90km laps. I definitely found the climb called “The Beast” to be the most challenging section of the bike course. The beast was a climb that took me about 15min to climb. I end up setting up a heart rate limit alarm on my Garmin for the bike course as I kept on thinking what Deano said “Don’t try and be king of the mountains on race day”. It was not as easy as I thought keeping my heart rate below 150bpm on the climbs as my heart rate alarm sounded a couple of times on the climbs.
It was one thing climbing up the hills but another thing descending. It was unfortunate to hear after the race that there were a couple of crashes out on the bike course and that a couple of triathletes had to be taken to hospital to get treated for their injuries they sustained.
After getting through the hilly section of the bike course on the first lap I followed the route along Lake Zurich to heart break hill. Wow, what a great experience heart break hill was on the first lap. It was the closest experience I have had to what I have seen in the Tour de France where spectators line the street on both sides and closing in on the cyclists shouting words of encouragement “hop, hop, hop”! All throughout the bike course I did not know what the words “hop, hop, hop” meant but apparently it means “Go, go, go”!
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| Pic of me climbing up Heartbreak hill on Lap 1 |
I saw Jana my wife for the first time at about the 80km mark of the bike course which was great and very motivating. I can always hear Jana’s voice stand out between dozens of other voices when Jana shouts words of encouragement.
After the first 90km lap I checked my lap time and it was about 2:48. I was slightly despondent after the first lap of the bike course as I could see that my average was slower than I was hoping for but under-estimated how tough the hills were going to be.
Since Ironman South Africa in April 2009 I set a goal for myself to complete an Ironman in a time of sub 11 hours. During my long bike rides during the weeks leading up to the race I was always on target to do a bike split of about 5:25 but end up doing a bike split of 5:38 on race day which is was happy with as it end up being a 12 minute improvement over my bike split of 5:50 at Ironman South Africa in 2009 and on a bike course I consider tougher than IMSA’s bike course. At this stage I was however slightly doubtful that I could finish in a time of sub 11 hours as my slower bike split meant that I would need to run a sub 4:15 marathon which represents a time 25min faster than what I ran for the marathon at IMSA in 2009.
After my slower than expected bike split after 90km I decided to just stick to the pacing plan and that was to complete the bike leg still feeling that I can run afterwards. I just kept on thinking to myself that the section where I could gain or lose most time would be during the marathon.
The highlight of the 2nd lap out on the bike course was seeing Jana at Heartbreak hill which was about 174km into the bike course and close to the end. She was there to encourage and motivate me a couple of km’s before heading into T2. There were far fewer people supporting at heartbreak hill on the second lap. I guess the reason for this was because weather conditions were busy deteriorating. The weather forecast predicted rain showers during the afternoon on race day.
One unforeseen change was made to the bike course about a week before the race which resulted in the bike course distance changing from about 178km in 2010 to 181.3km in 2011 which added a good 5min to most triathletes bike split.
Bike results
Bike split: 5:38:54 (New personal best)
Age group (M30-34): 67th out of 227th [Seeding index 29.5%]
Overall: 382nd out of 1600 [ Seeding index 23.8%]
T2 (Transition 2)
I was really happy with how my second transition [T2] went. I had a fast transition of 2:09 which was about 4min faster than my T2 transition at IMSA 2 years ago.
The marathon
In training, I did a couple of 5km runs after my long bike rides which paid off on race day. I knew that I would feel strong during the first 5km of the marathon based on what I experienced in training but I also knew that from past experience that I would need to hold back considerably during the first 30min of the marathon in order to give my stomach a chance to settle in again after being in a horizontal position for the entire bike course.
I needed to make a quick pit stop for a No.1 in the first couple of km’s of the marathon. I thus decided to wait until about 25min had past which would force me to bring down my pace to a halt as I always feel strong during the first 5km. This strategy worked well as I can easily run 30sec per km faster than what intended during the first couple of km’s. After the quick stop, it forced me to reset my pace to the intended race pace of about 5:45min/km.
The marathon section of the course consisted of 4 x 10.55km laps. In my mind, I was thinking and calculating that if I could do each lap in an hour it would put me on target for a 4h marathon which would be more than sufficient for a finishing time of sub 11hours.
I saw Jana at about the 15km mark for the first time during the marathon. At that stage I told Jana that I was feeling strong. My longest run in training in Cayman was 27km and 2.5hours in duration. I knew I had endurance up to that point but was not sure of what would happen afterwards.
I read a very helpful article Caroline Cahill posted a week or two before the race which dealt with how to approach the pacing in an Ironman marathon. In the article it went on to explain that one should divide the marathon in two parts. Part 1 being km’s 1-26 and part 2 being km’s 27- 42.2 which comes down to dividing the marathon in exactly half from a “perceived exertion” point of view. The article explained that one should run the first section of the marathon at a pace you feel you could build on during the 2nd part of the marathon.
I end up adopting this marathon pacing strategy explained above on race day and it worked well for me. I held back during the first half marathon and ran a time of 1:57 which I was very happy with. I figured that if I could keep up this pace and build on it I could possibly run a sub 3:50 marathon which would be incredible for me.
It was from about 18km mark into the marathon that the weather conditions started taking a turn for the worst. It started raining heavily and spectators started looking for cover. The temperature must have been about 23 degrees Celsius at that stage which was great for me as I run much much better in cooler weather conditions. During the marathon section of Ironman South Africa it was reported that it got as hot as 35-36 degrees Celsius which really messed me up.
I was fine with the rain but it was when the lightning storm broke out that I started to get worried. I could hear the delay between the lightning and subsequent thunder decreasing as the rain clouds moved over the city of Zurich. I got really freaked out about the 25km mark into the marathon when I saw a lightning bolt and only counted 1.5 seconds until I heard the thunder which meant that the lightning strike was only about 400-500m away from me. I thought to myself, this is great. I am on my way to a personal best Ironman time and now the race director is most probably going to close the course due the athlete’s being in danger as a large part of the marathon course meanders through parks next to Lake Zurich with plenty of tree’s around.
I just kept on praying that the lightning storm would pass and clear up before it gets even worse as two people were killed by lightning in Zurich earlier in the week when they took refuge under a tree when a lightning storm broke out over the city.
My hydration strategy during the marathon was to drink coke and water to quench my thirst and my nutrition strategy was to eat a combination of pretzels, slices of orange and that was about it. I remember Dean Gaffigan saying to me that he races best when he is slightly hungry. This approach during the marathon end up working well for me too as I never felt bloated. I had very slight stomach pains every now and then during the marathon but they disappeared it never really turned out to be a problem.
I think one of the main changes I made to my nutrition strategy that worked very well was to limit my total intake of GU gels for the day to 5 gels of which none of these gels had caffeine in them. I thought to myself if one cup of coffee affects my stomach, how much sense does it make to consume eg. 10 caffeinated gels on race day.
I recall seeing my training partner from the Cayman Islands namely Michael Stomps during the marathon. I was not sure if Michael was ahead or behind me as I thought that Michael must have nailed the bike course. It turns out that Michael could not find his rhythm during the bike leg and at that stage of the marathon Michael was behind me on the course. I eventually hit the 30km mark and I thought to myself, wow if I can keep this going I am heading for a sub 4 hour marathon which I would be super happy with as I consider running to be my weakest discipline.
I end up keeping up the pace during the last half marathon and tried picking up the pace considerably during the last 8km’s which I did to a certain extent but could feel that exhaustion was slowly but surely setting in.
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| Pam out on the run course. |
At about the 40km mark I realised I was aiming for a sub 10:40 finishing time. I crossed the finish line in 10:36 experiencing pure elation for the last 50m before crossing the finish line. Weeks of hard training had paid off which I was so thankful for as so many things can go wrong during an Ironman.
I was also so happy with the end result as I had a very rocky start training wise to the 2011 season and seriously thought of withdrawing from IMCH a stage earlier in the year.
Analysis of my marathon result
Marathon split: 3:52:19 (New personal best by 48 minutes)
Age group result: 77 out of 227 (Seeding index 33.9%)
Overall result: 428 out of 1600 (Seeding index 26.75%)
Overall Ironman Switzerland result
Total race time: 10:36:15 (New personal best, improved my time by an hour compared to IMSA in 2009)
Age group result: 49 out of 227 (Seeding index 21.59%)
Overall result: 286 out of 1600 (Seeding index 17.88%)
Overall approx 1600 triathletes finished the race, my understanding is that about 1900 triathletes started the race.
Finally, I would just like to say a huge thanks to my wife Jana Heath for supporting me so much over the 15 weeks before the race by cooking such healthy meals and always picking me up or dropping me off somewhere for training sessions.
I would also like to thank my parents Ernie and Elize for always supporting me in whichever passions I pursue in life. I especially want to thank my Mom for all her prayers during the day of the race and for always taking such an interest in my triathlon training.
Great Sport! Interesting website.
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