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_speedjunkie
Thanks guys.
I was crapping myself all week as the lake temp was hovering at 24.5C until Saturday. They decided on Saturday evening it would be wetsuit legal, thank ****.
Here's my mini race report:
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I raced Ironman Switzerland today in a hot and humid Zurich. The weather was supposed to be thunderstormy so I'm glad it ended up being perfect, if maybe a little too hot. This was my first full Ironman and I'd been training hard for it since about a year ago. Before 2015, I was a pure cyclist. 5km was the furthest I'd run and couldn't even swim 25m without gasping for breath.
I'm happy to say the training paid off and I smashed my target time of 12 hours! My total race time was 11:02:53.
Swim - 1:31:16
T1 - 00:06:21
Bike - 5:36:08
T2 - 00:07:36
Run - 3:41:33
I hate swimming and I'm terrible at it, especially without a wetsuit. It was decided last minute that wetsuits were legal as the water temp had been hovering around the limit of 24.5C for most of the week! Thank God. The swim was long and arduous (for me), the water was choppy and people kept swimming into my line. I completed the swim not far from my estimated 90mins so I'm happy enough with that considering I actually swam the wrong way for a bit following others who got lost. The buoys clearly weren't big and orange enough! Ideally I'd have prescription goggles to prevent this. I was relieved to get out of the water.
I wasn't rushing my transitions and allowed for that in my 12h projection. I hopped on the bike and set off on an epic 180km (2x90km laps) with 1300m of ascent. This was a fast course for sure but despite this, it wasn't easy. Coming off the back of a 3.8km swim I wasn't feeling great! I took the first lap relatively easy with the intention of upping the effort in the second. That worked well enough until I felt the onset of leg cramps in the final 40km whenever I tried to put power down. I kept having to stop pedalling and stretch until it subsided which hampered my progress. No amount of coke or electrolyte drink seemed to help but I made it to the end, nearly averaging 20mph but not quite. I did beat my projected 6h time though.
I was relieved to get off my bike and now had to run a marathon! The run course was 4-laps of a flat loop through the city and by the lake. At this point it was survival mode. I projected a 4h marathon at plodding pace which is all I could muster at this stage. The first two laps weren't too bad, slowish but I felt okay. I didn't have any GI issues from all the sugary energy I'd been consuming and I did under 1 hour for both laps. Then it started to get really hard on the last two laps! My body was just shutting down and it became a series of runs between aid stations. I walked through every one to take time to drink and eat stuff and this worked well. However, by the last lap the dreaded cramps re-appeared, this time in my running leg muscles. I tried licking table salt from sachets they gave out, drinking lots of water and eating salty snacks but nothing helped. I just had to make it to the finish no matter what! When I saw I had 5km left I just imagined myself doing my normal loop around Clapham Common, only 20mins to go. Not that I could run a 20min 5k at this point!
Crossing the line was glorious and I have to admit I cried a tiny bit. I had dedicated this race to the memory of my brother, raising money for charity in the process, and I beat my target time by nearly an hour so it was quite emotional. It was 11 hours of hell and frankly, I can't recommend it to anyone. :D
I have even more respect now for Pro Ironman athletes!
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A few pics... :D