Ironman Switzerland - Race report 10 July 2011

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.

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.



My bike covered in plastic (Plastic covers sponsored by Scott)

After breakfast, I proceeded up to the room again, double checked my transition bags and headed down to transition just after 5am. It rained fairly heavily during the night before the race. Luckily most of the triathletes were able to obtain free plastic covers for their bikes from “Scott bicycles” at the Expo area the day before so we were able to cover our bikes with these. I proceeded to unpack all my hydration, nutrition, biking and running stuff next to my bike and double checked my tyre pressure again.


Meeting up with fellow Cayman triathletes just before the race start.

At about 5:50am I headed out of transition, met up with Jana and saw Michael, Dave and Tony briefly (3 of the Cayman triathletes) about 30min before the race start. I slowly but surely put my wetsuit and heart rate monitor on, went to the bathroom again and checked in my “finisher’s bag” containing the clothes I was going to wear once I got to the finishers tent after the race.

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.

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.

Jana spotting me with the Nikon 300mm zoom
 lens during the first lap of the swim

I completed the first lap in 28min which I was pleased with and calculated that I was on target for a swim split of about 57 minutes which was right on track for me. At the race briefing on the Friday before the race the officials said that the first lap would be slightly longer, say 2km and the second slightly shorter +-1.8km but this did not seem to be the case as my second lap was about 2min slower. This finding re the swim course route seems consistent with what other IMCH triathletes experienced on race day.


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.

IMCH bike course profile

I had a look at the bike course profile beforehand and noticed that the first 30km was fairly flat. After T1, I was happy to get on my bike and start cycling especially because I got my 2011 Felt B2 pro frame only 3 days before the race so it felt like I was pretty much was riding a brand new bike.

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”!

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.


Pam out on the run course.

I got to about 35km’s into the marathon and remember seeing Pam who was another triathlete competing in IMCH from the Cayman Islands. Pam told me that she had a bad experience on the bike which was sad as to hear as Pam trained very hard for the event.



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.

Ironman Switzerland race week report (Week leading up to the race in Zurich)

I am finally getting a chance to write my race week report at 1:15am (Plane time, if there such a thing) on the flight from Zurich to Johannesburg after an awesome 12 day holiday in Switzerland and Italy.

Our holiday started off on the 2nd of July flying in from the Cayman Islands to Miami and then Miami to Zurich with Swiss Air. Jana and I arrived at Zurich airport approx. 11am on the 3rd of July and were really glad to have arrived one week out from the race as we were jetlagged as hell and had a stressful time behind us moving apartments in Cayman the couple of days before due to unforeseen issues with the landlord.

Jana and I then proceeded to take the inter-region train from Zurich Airport to Unterterzen close to Walenstadt in Switzerland (Pic on the left of the train ride to Unterterzen and pic below of Lake Walensee where we stayed for 5 days)). Wow, what a gem of a place in the heart of Switzerland about a 1.5h train ride South East from Zurich. Steve and Pam came to meet us at the train station to help us with our luggage which we were grateful for. We really enjoyed our time with Steve and Pam for the 5 days we spent at Resort Walensee as we shared a 2 bedroom apartment. Thanks to Steve and Pam for finding this great spot. We chilled for the remainder of the Sunday and did our best not take an afternoon nap in order to adjust to the new time zone as quickly as possible.

Monday morning came and we all managed to sleep very well during the night. Everything was going great until I assembled my bike on the Monday morning. I especially bought a torque wrench to assemble my bike as some of the screws such as those located on the seat post and handle bar can only be tightened to certain newton meter torque limits. The seat post clamp had a max torque limit of 5-7nm and I tightened it till 6nm. Not that I heard a popping sound or anything but the next moment I thought that my heart was going to stand still as I noticed the seat post clamp section which is integrated into the frame had split right down in the middle and into a section of the frame. Once I saw this I knew it was going to be a big issue for my upcoming race. For some reason I felt fairly calm about the situation as it was a good enough reason to get stressed out.

To make a long story short, Jana started googling and got hold of the main Felt dealer's contact details in Switzerland. I proceeded to call Peter from Felt. After explaining what happened and explaining where in Switzerland I was situated Peter informed me that they would replace my Felt B12 2009 frame with the Felt B2 Pro 2011 frame.

As the B2 Pro frame was a far superior frame with the Bayonet 2 fork I had to pay in a fair amount but knew it was my only option to get my bike sorted for the race. I was rather ecstatic when I received my new bike. We just happened to be situated about 5km from Suso bike shop which was a Felt dealer. As Felt is an American brand, dealers cannot be found in abundance in Switzerland and therefore felt very blessed to have located a Felt dealer so close by. After various phone calls and exchange of emails with Peter from Felt it was arranged for the components and groupset to be rebuild on to the new bike the Thursday before the race. The bike mechanic from Suso bike (Roland) end up being very talented and did an excellent job of rebuilding my new bike as I had no mechanical issues on race day and the braking and gear transition was very smooth. (Pic above is of me and the bike mechanic Roland just after I picked up my new bike from Suso Bike).

I jumped a few days ahead explaining the whole frame issue above. From the Monday to the Thursday before the race we spent some quality sightseeing time in Walenstadt, Lucerne and Zurich. Michael Stomps, came to pick Pam, myself and Jana up on the Wednesday to go and explore the bike course which was a very valuable exercise as we heard there were a couple of climbs and technical descends. Michael made a good call in that he recommended we ignore the first flat 30km's and proceed to ride the climbs starting from the 30th kilometer.

Michael, Pam and I got out of the car in Feldbach, got on our bikes and started with the first ascent. At this stage Jana was thrown into the deep end as it was the first time Jana had to drive on the other side of the road using a GPS in a foreign country. Thanks Jana, you did a great job of driving behind us most of the time and meeting us safely in the town called "Egg" on the northern side of Lake Zurich.

After completing the first ascent after Feltbach we end up getting lost for a bit until we found ourselves at the start of the steepest and longest climb of the bike course called "The Beast"!!! It soon became apparent why this climb was called "The Beast". I end up spinning up the beast at a fairly high cadence to see how I would fare taking a more efficient approach climbing up the hills as opposed to adopting a lower cadence and killing my legs more than I should for the run. While I climbed up "The Beast" I was rather happy that I fitted the 12-27 cassette to my rear race wheel a couple days before leaving Cayman as I managed to spin up the hill more easily and efficient.

After completing the climb up "The Beast" we descended down to the town called "Egg" where we met Jana and decided to get lunch. Wow, what can I say about eating out in Switzerland, ridiculously expensive and the portions are small. We ordered some sandwiches but the portions end up being too small and expensive that we had to eat bananas afterwards to reach ample sufficiency.

To make a long story short, we proceeded to race registration in Zurich where we managed to register rather quickly and avoided the masses of competitors usually encountered on the Friday and Saturday before the race. I think we all became a bit more nervous after registering, seeing the finish line and transition area set up. We all bought a couple race memorabilia items at the expo area and guess we put some more pressure on ourselves to finish the race as it would not help much buying "Ironman Zurich" kit and not finishing the race. After registering we checked out "Heartbreak hill" quickly which was a rather short but nasty climb which would be repeated twice on race day due to the bike course consisting of 2 x 90km laps.

The exploration of the bike course above took place on the Wednesday. As explained a bit earlier, my bike was rebuilt on the Thursday in Walenstadt by Suso bike which I was immensely happy about. During the day we decided to chill out, do a couple of short taper workouts and enjoy Resort Walensee and Flumserberg for the last day before relocating to Zurich for 3 nights.

Friday morning was spent taking care of the usual admin tasks that goes part and parcel with travel. We checked out at Resort Walensee and took the train to Zurich - Wollishofen station but because of all the triathlon equipment I had to travel with it always makes travel harder.

We checked in at the Zurich youth hostel on recommendation of Johann Prinsloo whom had done Ironman Zurich a couple of years earlier. Thanks Johann for this recommendation as the rooms were clean, the hostel had a great location as it was only about a 10min walk to the race start and we were able to sleep fairly well the Friday and Saturday night as the hostel was occupied by approx. 90% triathletes doing the race so not too many late night partygoers out and about that kept us awake. On the Friday before a triathlon I usually take the day off completely so had no race workouts to do.

At 2pm on the Friday there was a compulsory race briefing to attend which was in English. The German and French race briefings were at 1pm and 3pm I think. It was great to bump in to the triathletes from Cayman for the first time in Switzerland at the race briefing. We had a fairly large contingent of triathletes from Cayman competing in Ironman Switzerland, 8 altogether. The triathletes from Cayman were as follows:

• Dave Bennett

• David Dinner

• Caroline Cahill

• Johan Heath

• Justin Plenkewicz

• Pam Travers

• Michael Stomps

• Tony Watts

After the race briefing I was rather hungry and had to get something to eat. I knew I was going to consume rather large portions of pasta on the Saturday so a "Bratwurst" sausage seemed rather appealing which Michael found hilarious as it is definitely not the best pre-race nutrition. I think it will have to become part of my pre-race nutrition eating plan from now on as I had no stomach problems on the Sunday.

After the race briefing Jana and headed back to the hotel, chilled for a bit and started getting ready for the "Welcome/pasta" party which was held at a small castle like looking structure at a location called Albisgutli. The welcome party was very enjoyable; we were welcomed with Erdinger alcohol free beer (Boring triathletes). We then proceeded inside the venue where a four course meal was served. While we waited for the welcome party to start, the flags of the various countries represented by the triathletes were rolling by on a PowerPoint presentation. Michael and I managed to get a quick photo with the Cayman Islands in the background. We left the party at about 9:15pm and Michael and Vera were kind enough to drop Jana and I off back at the hostel before Michael and Vera headed back to Lucerne.

On Saturday morning I woke up with some definite signs of pre-race jitters. Jana and I proceeded down to the ground floor of the hostel where they served fairly decent breakfast, much better than the American processed breakfasts. My good friend Rudolf from South Africa (A 2x Ironman SA finisher) tried to call me while we had breakfast. I just missed his call due to some network issues and called Rudolf back. It was great to hear Rudolf's voice as Rudolf specially called to wish me good luck for the race. After the chat with Rudolf I felt more chilled out again and finished my breakfast. Jana and I then proceeded up to the hostel room where I had to some final packing and preparations to do for race day.

One of the things I usually do on the Saturday before the race is to put brand new tires on my race wheels to do all I can to avoid punctures. I proceeded to do so which took a while and then packed all my race gear to test out all my equipment during my final pre-race day workouts. Wow, what a mission it was to do a total of an hour's training the day before the race. What was meant to take 1.5 hours end up taking about 3.5 hours as I forgot that they had an Olympic distance race and junior triathlon events on the Saturday which made it rather impossible to do a swim on the race course, not to even talk about riding on the bike course or running on the run course. I end up feeling guilty taking so long to do the pre-race workouts as Jana end up waiting for me all that time as she had to keep a watchful eye over my equipment while I was out doing the short sessions. Down at the transition I managed to see "Macca" a.k.a Chris McCormack who is the current Ironman World Champion. It would have been great to get a photo with him but there were so many people trying to do the same.

Jana and I went back to the hostel at about 2:30pm or so. We chilled for a bit and then I did some final equipment checks on my bike before checking in my bike in transition between 4:30 and 5:30pm. To relax a bit and avoid pre-race jitters Jana and I took the tram to "Old Town" section of Zurich to wonder around and take a couple of photos. We headed back to the Wollishofen area close to our hostel about 7pm. It was great to have a quaint little Italian restaurant situated diagonally across the road from our hostel. I usually go vegetarian the day before the race so I had pasta with sage filled with spinach and some cheese. It was great to receive good luck and well wishes call from my brother Eric and Natalie just after I finished supper. Jana and I went back to the hostel after which my parents called on Skype to wish me all the best for the race which was great as my Mom said that "she just had a good feeling about this race" which was a really good sign for me and it put any pre-race jitters I had at ease. I end up sleeping for 4.5h on the Saturday night which is pretty good for the night before a race.

For my full race day report please check the separate report/blog entry to be posted in the next day or two.

Ironman 70.3 Augusta race report

Ironman 70.3 Augusta race report

This is my first attempt at writing a detailed triathlon race report. Hope you enjoy the report.

5 Athletes from the Cayman Islands entered for the Augusta 70.3 race that took place in Augusta, Georgia on the 26th of September. Myself, Bill, Celine and Ray all flew up to Tampa, Florida on the Thursday afternoon before the race while Justine took the less exhausting travel option of flying directly up to Charlotte, Carolina and then on to Augusta.

We stayed over in Tampa on Thursday night and headed out on the road trip up to Augusta on Friday morning at about 8am. Myself and Ray rented a Dodge minivan while Celine, Bill and Jon (Bill's friend from St. Pete Florida) drove up in Jon's car. For those of you that don't know, Augusta is about an 8 hour drive from Tampa. The drive on Friday took us about 10 hours in total with all the stops for brunch and late lunch included.

We eventually arrived safely in Augusta late Friday afternoon, think it was about 6pm. I specifically asked the hotel staff when I made the reservation that I would not like to stay on the side of the hotel where McDonald's was situated (Read complaints about this on Trip advisor). Guess what, when I checked on Friday they gave me the room closest to McDonald's. The last thing I wanted was to wake up at 2am on Friday morning from people making a noise after returning from a night out at the clubs. To make a long story short, I managed to change rooms and was fortunate to get a room on the quieter side of the hotel.

Before heading out for supper I decided to change the tyres on my race wheels. I always put on brand new tyres for a race. Having never used CO2 cartridges before I decided to experiment with the cartridges and used 1 cartridge to pump up both my wheels. After I felt comfortable inflating the tyres I deflated them again and pump up my tyres with the hand pump (Thanks Jasper, this was good advice).

After sorting out my race wheels on Friday evening Ray and I were pretty hungry so we headed over to T-bonz (Yes, the restaurant name is spelt correctly)  where they offered a $10 "Ironman - all you can eat" pasta deal. The pasta was pretty bland but did the job of loading up with some carbohydrates.

I managed to sleep pretty well on Friday night after not sleeping too well the night before. Saturday morning first thing I spent about an hour assembling my bike and was glad that my bike did not get damaged during the Tampa flight. Ray and I both had a 25min bike followed by 15min run brick on the menu but could not cycle on the roads close to the hotel as there were way too many cars. We decided to drive to the start of thee bike course and navigated our way out to about 20 miles into the bike course to a town called Jackson, South Carolina. Never thought I would do a brick session there but it was pretty cool little town as we stood out completely from the local residents with our tri-suits on.

 The bike course took place predominantly on the roads of South Carolina which was very scenic. A video of the bike course is available here as well as some race footage: http://www.wfxg.com/global/category.asp?c=195223

After Ray and I were done with our brick session and driving the rest of the bike course we inevitably ended up at the transition zone. We got out of the car and saw a couple of swimmers doing short swims in the Savanna river. I saw two triathletes standing at the exit of the swim course and asked them what they thought of the current after their warm up swim. Well after I asked them the question it only took me a couple of seconds to realize that it was two of the pro triathletes namely Philip Graves from the UK and Desiree Ficker. Think they might have something on as I saw them together most of the weekend.

Picture of swim finish area.



Ray and I decided to rather do our 15min swim at the start of the swim course so we drove 1.2 miles south. The Augusta swim is not in the usual triangle format which meant that the swim start and finish was 1.2 miles apart which explains the ridiculously fast swim times because of swimming downstream in the Savanna river.

Platform for the official swim start.

















Reading the athletes guide the race organisers made it clear that they do not accept responsibility for swimmers wanting to swim the day before as there were no lifeguards and the could not guarantee that "underwater marine life" was not present. We were all thus a bit conscious of possible alligators in the waters but none of us saw any. The water temperature was 74 degrees fahrenheit (23 celcius) on race morning which meant that the swim was wetsuit legal. Combine a downstream river swim with wetsuit and you get pro's doing sub 20min for a 1.2 mile swim.

Before this blog gets too long I will shorten the events of the afternoon and the evening before race day. After our 15min swim Ray and I headed over to the race registration. Bad idea, the line was ridiculously long at about 1pm. We decided to rather get something to eat and guess what, had some more pasta. I decided to have no meat the day before race day and this seems to have paid off on race day as I had no stomach issues which has been the case in the past.

After lunch we headed back to registration but the line was still ridiculously long. We decided to attend the race briefing instead which was pretty informative. Guess what, after race briefing, registration line still long so we headed back to the hotel to chill out for a bit and get our bikes. After getting back to the hotel I decided to check my bike gears once more as two of the gears were not shifting properly when I did my 25min bike ride earlier in the morning. I felt a bit cautious of messing with the gears with only about 3 hours left of bike check in. I end up adjusting the rear derailleur slightly and manage to get the gears to shift perfectly. By this time it was about 4pm so we headed back to race registration and it took us a painful 1 hour and 15 minutes to register. After registration we headed over to the transition zone to check in our bikes which luckily only took about 2 minutes as most of the people had checked in their bikes.

Bike racked, yip that's me number 118.

At the transition zone just after check in in the bike.













After bike check-in Ray and I decided to get some supper. Wanted to eat by 6:30pm. The first Italian restaurant we tried was ridiculously full, luckily we got a spot at the 2nd restaurant we went to and had some more pasta (No meat).

I end up heading to bed at about 10pm on the Saturday evening but struggled to sleep. I kept on waking up and slept for maybe an hour at a time before waking up again. I was not too worried as usually it is the Friday night's sleep that is most important if one is racing on the Sunday.

Race morning, the alarm went off at 4:05am. Jana specially set her alarm in Cayman at about 3:20am to wake up so that she could call me to wish me the best for the race which was really special to me. Jana could not come along on the trip so she was tracking me online on race day from Cayman.

Ray and I left the hotel at 4:45am and parked the car at about 5:10am at the Marriott hotel as this is where we got the shuttle from to transition. I only spent about 5 minutes in transition to get my stuff ready where as Ray spent about 15min. I could see that Ray was worried about something, Ray end up leaving his Garmin forerunner at the hotel. Long story short, Ray managed to catch a cab back to the hotel and was back with time to spare before his wave went off.

I end up catching the bus back to the car and chilled at the car for a bit. At about 6:30am I started walking over to the swim start area (Only about 600m away). After walking around for about 3 minutes at the swim start area looking totally lost I heard Justine calling my name. It was nice to see a familiar face so chatted to Justine for a couple of minutes before walking over to my age group area to get ready for the start of the race.

I was really lucky, I started in the 4th wave of the morning (Started at 7:42am). Only the men and women pro's as well as the challenged athletes started before my wave. I felt confident going into the swim as I have done a significant amount of open water swimming in Cayman this year. As mentioned earlier, when looking at the results the swim times are so fast due to a downstream river swim and we were allowed to wear wetsuits. I started to the left of the platform (closer to the middle of the river as opposed to starting closer to the embankment/shoreline)

The siren went off and boom, my race had started. I started off being in the front bunch of the swimmers and just started catching more and more guys. The swim felt fairly effortless for me and felt like I could push harder but held back as I did not want to go anaerobic so early in the race. The swim felt really long so doubt it that the swim course was short, was more the current that carried us.

My swim results: (Half IM new swim split PB - does not really count due to the strong current)

Swim time for downstream 1.2 mile swim -   22:14
Age group position M30 -34    5th / 278              Seeding index 1.8%
Overall swim position               49 / 2536             Seeding index  1.9%

The bike portion of the race: (Garmin file for my bike split data http://connect.garmin.com/activity/50951200)


I got out of the swim feeling good, entered transition and got my bike. By this time it was raining pretty hard and the roads were wet. I decided to hold back slightly during the first half of the bike course due to most of the rolling hills being in the first 37 miles of the race. Of the 3 disciplines I was a bit disappointed with my bike time. I thought I would feel stronger on the bike as I put in a lot of focused long rides over the last couple of months but my legs were feeling pretty tired at stages. Looking at my Garmin data afterwards I can see that I put in a solid effort as my average heart rate was 157bpm which was close to my average heart rate of 165bpm during a 30km time all out time trial earlier in the year when I did the Reefathlon and averaged 40km/h.

I must say, I was disgusted with about 20 of the guys coming past me in my age group. They were clearly violating the "drafting rules" and justarly violating the "drafting rules" and just did not seem to care at all that they were working together and taking turns in front. Anyway, that is their business and for their conscience to deal with.

It rained a fair amount during the bike leg of the race which made the downhills and sharp corners pretty risky. After falling off my bike two years ago and sliding about 20m across the road at 35km/h during a rainy day here in Cayman I have been very cautious when the roads are wet. I was not taking any risks and guess I lost about two minutes just taking it slower on the downhills and corners

My bike results:  (Half IM new bike split PB)

56 miles / 90km bike time    2:33:40
Age group position             58 / 279               Seeding index 20.86%
Overall bike position       350 / 2536              Seeding index 13.80%

Run leg ( Garmin data http://connect.garmin.com/activity/50951205)

After about mile 50 of the bike leg there were some downhills which was good for some easy spinning to get the legs ready for the half marathon. I really tried to focus on my running the last couple of months and it took a number of early morning wednesday long runs and tuesday speed sessions to improve.

I felt great getting off the bike and during the first 10km of the run. My run split after 10km was 48:13 which is pretty fast for me not coming from a running background. I started getting pretty tired after the 11th km which is evident in my run splits from there onwards. Overall I was really happy with my run split of 1:46. Thinking about it afterwards I definitely think I could have pushed it slighly harder and possibly have done 1:44 on the run. Well guess there will always be a next race I can try and improve on.

The crowd support was great as a fair number of people came out to watch the race. Even though I did not have anyone supporting me on the side of the road I knew friends and family were tracking me online which enabled me to remain focused and try and do as well as I could.

My run results:

13.1 mile /21.1 run time   1:46:34 (Half IM new run pb)

Age group position        77 / 278          Seeding index    27.7%

Overall run position      428 / 2536        Seeding index   16.9%


Overall results:

Overall time: 4:49:01            (New PB)

Overall age group position: 54 / 278      Seeding index  19.42%

Overall position:             260 / 2536 Seeding index   10.25%                 


Overall I am really happy with my race time and overall result. I achieved new personal bests in each 3 of the disciplines which is encouraging and a good enough reason for me to carry doing triathlon as I don't feel that I have reached a plateau yet and still incredibly passionate about the sport. I still have a good 10 -12 years ahead of me before I think my times will start slowing down and will thus be focusing on the Cayman Turtle triathlon next and then Ironman Switzerland next year July.

I totally under estimated as to how competitive my age group was going to be. This is my first year in the M30 -34 age group and will be working at moving up in the seeding index over the next couple of years.

I will also not be doing another half IM or full IM where non-swimmers benefit so much from current and being able to use wetsuits as it is during the swim leg where I usually make up most time. Even though I placed well in the swim leg I only gained about 2-3 minutes on most competitors whereas I would usually gain about 6 - 8 minutes.

After the race all the Cayman athletes got together at Outback steakhouse and enjoyed some great steaks. I must say, the 16 ounch prime rib went down well after such a long day.

Over and out, looking at the blog now I am thinking it is way too long.  Until next time.

Some of my best pics to date.

I have realized over the last couple of years that I am getting more passionate about photography. These couple of pictures I have uploaded here represent some my favourite pictures I have taken to date:







Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, May 2006

 Lake Tahoe, California April 2006

 Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, May 2006

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