The 112 mile bike ride

The 112 mile bike ride

Predicted time..5hrs 30 mins

Transition 1 was very slow, discarding the wet-suit and slipping on my cycling shirt whilst wet was no easy feat, packing my towel in the bag would have helped! Socks, number belt, Vaseline for the saddle area, helmet, sunglasses and a quick application of sun cream!!!! Yes sun cream…I was in a race for Pete’s sake not a day at the beach!!!! Needless to say this pampering added up to 8 minutes. The race winner took less than 3.5 minutes for both his transitions, I bet his missus didn’t make him apply sun cream? This was a big loss of time and I’ve got to sort this out for any future events.
Being an Ironman rookie I erred on the side of comfort. I listened to everybody’s personal problems during their Ironman rides and took the appropriate action, serum, antidote to prevent me suffering the same fate. I went way overboard with my nutrition. You hear so many stories about getting stomach cramps, salt depletion, needing the toilet and the worst case to me would be blowing up/bonking as your body starts to deplete. My nutrition was more suited for an expedition to the South Pole as I armed myself with 15 energy gels, 2 flapjacks, 2 energy bars, a pack of mini cheddars, 2 bananas, a big packet of jelly beans, a ham and cheese bun and some peanuts. 3 bottles of energy drink and water to wash it down. Done! I ended up bringing most of this back with me frustrated that I’ve bought an expensive bike that weighs about 8 kg but added about 3 kg to my cycling shirt in food and water that I didn’t use!
The course was proper ‘Sound of music’ country. The alpine mountains surrounding the lakes were breathtaking; I should have taken my camera. The roads were very smooth with some long descents where you can hit 45 mph quite easily. Even on the flat I was pushing 28-30mph with no big problems. There were of course some up-hills to follow the descents but seeing as the bus didn’t take us up them the previous day I didn’t know when to expect them or how long they’d go on for. I was pleasantly surprised on the first lap to realize I’d got up the major hill without really realizing it. The Tour-de France type crowd choking the roads in their thousands helped you ignore the suffering and put on a brave face or at least until you got out of their sight. At the top of the major climb, the Rupertberg was a DJ mimicking your ‘Out of the saddle’ pedal strokes to the beat of the music.
Aid stations were a plenty around the course and I grabbed a bottle at every opportunity to squeeze into and replenish my front water bottle. This is why the 1.5 kgs of water in my back water bottles were just there for a jolly around the Alps and not there for a purpose. I’m still miffed at this! If I’d have jettisoned the extra weight it could have saved me valuable minutes over the 112 miles.
I went through the halfway stage at just under 2.5 hours so my immediate thoughts were, am I going too fast, will I meltdown on the last lap? I didn’t want to slow the pace and conserve energy though as I felt pretty good and after all my run pace is hardly record breaking so would it make any difference!?! I managed to sustain the pace and went up the same hills yet again albeit a little slower as now I knew what to expect. The fast descent from the Rupertberg couldn’t be fully utilized as my chain fell off and needed a stop to put back on.
One observation I took from this Ironman was the drafting laws weren’t being fully adhered to. Groups of riders would ride close together, not as obvious as sitting directly on your back wheel but certainly enough to get a benefit, possibly a couple of metres back when it’s meant to be no less than 9 metres! I’d noticed, unless it was just coincidence that at least 3 of the strong female riders (probably pros or potential Hawaii qualifiers) riding near me seemed to be chaperoned by a couple of blokes riding with them. The same blokes were running with them also. I witnessed two of these girls in floods of tears around the run course with these chaps consoling them as their dreams of an Hawaii slot would have to wait for another day, probably blown up in the heat.
A freak storm from nowhere slowed me down a little towards the end. The wind was strong enough to catch my deep rimmed wheels and blow me a couple of feet sideward. Thank goodness I can’t afford a rear carbon disc or I’d have had even more heart in the mouth moments. I was now drenched and the brakes on the carbon wheels were not stopping me so I had to take it a little gingerly for the last mile or so. I knew by this time I was going to be well within my predicted time of 5hrs 30 mins so the sub 11 hour time was most definitely on.
My finishing time for the bike was 5 hrs and 2 minutes something. I then obviously got thinking why didn’t I try that little bit harder for the sub 5 hr time? I’ve got to be pleased with that really, it now gave me a lot more time to play with for the marathon if things suddenly went disastrously wrong. News had spread through the camp that despite the closed roads some woman had driven onto the course and knocked people over, I witnessed a few ambulances but didn’t see the incident.
I stuck my bike in transition and headed toward the changing tent, I just hoped my legs would remember to start running and forget that they’ve been biking for the last 5 hours………

Predicted time 5:30…actual time 5:02 ish
Position at this time of race....41st out of 554 males in my age group...284th overall