Pain is temporary, Glory is forever..
June 6, 2016 - Day after IronMan 70.3 in Kraichgau, Germany
Yesterday was one of those days that come once every decade in someone’s life. You go from basking in your highest highs to sinking to your lowest lows, completely mentally fatigued to physically wrecked to being on top of the world all within hours of each other.
Coming into my first IronMan 70.3 attempt, this last week has been the absolute worst. A stomach bug at the most inopportune time (as they usually are!) had kept me completely off my game for just over a week now. The constant cramping, pain, bloating randomly after meals or even hours after had left me wondering if I would even be able to compete in the race.
Race day.
Wakeup: 5am
Breakfast: 5:30am
Foam roll: 6am
Shower/get ready: 6:30am
Leave hotel for race venue: 7am
Get to transitions to setup nutrition on bike: 7:30am
Buy and fill sparkling water into our bikes: 7:45am
Panic and try to look for still water: 8am
Find still water: 8:15am
Get into wetsuit and test the freezing lake waters: 8:30am
Prep and wait for race to start: 9am
Race start: 9:40am
So, in nutshell, THIS happened yesterday:
IronMan 70.3 Kraichgau: CHECK IronMan 70.3 Australia World Championships qualification: CHECK
Ok, I’ll get to the qualification to the world champioships in a but first let me talk about the race itself.
Swim.
No surprises here. was going to be long, tiring and monotonous with zero currents in the lake; and it was. One big rectangular loop, and into transition. Breathing hard, head a bit loopy and hazy, but otherwise all ok. I was cramping a little in my hamstrings around 1.5km into it I feel. The problem is my body is simply not used to such cold waters, that too over such an extended period. Luckily, was able to shake it off and got on to the bike fine.
Time: 47 minutes. No where near my best.
Bike.
The weather was forecast to be thunder showers for the day, but so far it had held up by just being very cloudy. Rain was imminent.
Got off to a good solid start for the first 15kms before the hills started. Still for some reason couldn’t keep the heart rate under zone 4 (weird, I know). Then, began the hills. One after the other, unrelenting one after the other. The downhills helped a lot no doubt, but quite often there were sharp turns at the bottom of the hills. It was really hard to get into any sort of rhythm cause I basically had to use every single gear at my disposal. 3-4 of the uphills though specifically - holy crap. I don’t think I was faster than 6-7 kmph on them.
Then the one roadblock was my bike coming off it’s chain midway through such a steep uphill. I got the chain back on OK - but was unable to get enough momentum to pedal the bike. My bike and I walked the rest of the way up the hill till I was able to start pedalling again. Time lost cause of this - around 20 minutes.
Then about halfway through the 90kms, the rains came pouring! Was actually quite fun, the only hindrance they caused was with the brakes on the downhills to make the turns.
The bike ride wrecked my legs. I had to give everything I had and more to end this never ending ride through the hills. Sure, the countryside was lovely - but that wasn’t going to justify to my legs regarding what just happened.
Time: 3 hours 45 minutes. Thank God that was over and done with!
Run.
A 21 km run is never fun. And I knew I was in bad shape from the bike ride getting into this. However, I could now have imagined what was to happen once I actually started to run. In my mind it was simple - Two done, one to go.
Then I got 2 kms into the run and it all came falling down.
I started to cramp. Cramp hard. In both my legs. Everywhere.
My VMO’s, Hamstrings, inner thighs, around my knees. It started with one muscle and then compounded to all. In both legs. WTF!
This was bad. No way I was going to be able to punch out another 19kms. I tried to stop to a walk, the cramps got worse, and then I had to stop for a brief second to try and not fall to the curb. It was a simple choice, keep running, that’s when it will hurt the hurt (but it will hurt!) or stop and take my chances whether I’ll be able to get up again. I knew I was low on sodium most likely and if I downed a couple of GU gels and gave it 10-15 minutes the sodium and sugar would kick in and ease the cramps, giving me the jump start I needed.
So, I said to myself - This is the test. This, right now. This is the IronMan right here. If I can somehow get out of this rut, the finisher medal is mine.
My aim was simple. Just keep running. Small steps. Nothing fast. No walking. No stopping. 15 minutes. One foot in front of the other. The pain will be brutal till then but it WILL subside to something more bearable after. And that was my race right there. After I crossed the 5kms mark, things started getting slightly better and I was able to get some of my brain function back and think a bit more clearly. I was able to pick up some pace as well. Things suddenly looked optimistic again. This carried on till about 17-18kms when things again got really bad with the cramps and this I was forced to stop. 60 seconds I said. Deal with it. Get over it and muscle through it. We’re finishing this race. The ISO water I discovered that was being handed out was only around milestone 15kms. It was bound to kick in. I slammed back another 2 cups, thinking I’d rather have a full belly over legs that were starting to come apart at the seams. From here on, it was simple. Don’t stop no matter what.
As bad as things got, I did manage to get past that finish line where my buddy’s wife, was waiting with the India flag just short of the finish line. It was done.
Time: 2 hours 45 minutes. I’m just glad that wasn’t a DNF!
After the race, we stuck around for the awards ceremony. We were a group of 5 of us racing, 2 women, 3 guys, including myself. I finished last amongst the 5 of us.
Total time: 7 hours 14 minutes. I suppose if you consider I could have avoided the bike chain coming off, I could have completed sub 7 hours.
So, one of ladies with us came first in her age group. And she was definitely going to get a nomination for the world championships. And she did. Now the rest of us were there too, thinking what the hell - let’s try our chance as well. As the age group qualification nominations started from top to bottom, not many of the ranked triathletes were taking their spots and they started to roll down to others in the same age category till they were offered to us (can you believe it?!) and we of course, happily accepted! :)
All that has happened has NOT quite sunk in as yet, not at all. I think I need to give it a few - at least till I get back to Dubai. Or till at least the murderous pain in my legs stop.
What an amazing feeling, I don’t think I’ve done any justice to it in this post.
~ webhead












