Ironman Wisconsin 2014

December 28, 2012

On 9/7/14, I will be an Ironman!  No, I won’t be like Robert Downey Jr. in a metal suit.  I mean I will have completed my first Ironman distance triathlon.  It will be a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, then followed by a full marathon, 26.2 miles.  I will have to complete all of this in 17 hours or less.  From 7AM to midnight, all in one day.  Am I crazy for doing this?  Probably.  But you’re going to have an impossibly challenging experience trying to talk me out of it.

I bought my one and only adult bike (her name is Jessica by the way – no particular reason for that though) back in 2008 after I finished an actuarial exam.  I was living in Omaha and I even found a small biking club that I could ride with on Sunday mornings.  I put in about 1700 miles that first season.  Over the winter of 2008 / 2009 I decided that I wanted a bigger challenge.  I had been a decent swimmer as a kid.  I was on a swim team for one summer in elementary school, but my inability to dive / fear of diving kept me from doing well.  I was also on my high school cross country team, 4 year varsity runner, and always the number 1 or number 2 runner my senior year, just barely missing a chance to go to state.  So I had all three sports before and I had the desire to become a triathlete.

The more I learned about the sport the more I liked it.

• It’s an individual sport which means I am not dependent upon the actions of somebody else.  Whatever effort I put into it is what I get out of it.  
• Triathletes get a total body workout because of all of the different actions involved.  All three sports will work the heart and lungs.  Swimming focuses on the upper body primarily, but everywhere gets secondary benefits.  Biking focuses on the legs primarily, but the triceps and biceps, along with the core, are good secondary benefits.  Running helps the legs primarily, and it gets the abs as well depending on your form, but not much for the arms. 

• If you get tired of one sport for a while, you can just ignore it for a couple of days and work on the other two.

• Triathlons, unlike many other sports, can be as competitive or anticompetitive as you want them to be.  If you are one of those who are really good and can actually get near the podium, good for you, go ahead and be concerned with your placement against everyone else.  This sport can easily lead to comparing yourself to others.  There are many of us, like me, who are middle of the pack competitors.  The challenge is usually to push ourselves to our limits, to set a new personal best, to finish a lengthy course we had never done before.  Although there are other competitors out there on the course, I’ll use them for motivation, not comparison purposes.  (Staggered starts also means that the person you just passed / got passed by might not be at the same point time wise anyway)  I’ll look at my placement after the results are published just for the amusement, but usually it doesn’t mean anything to me.  I will do things like picking out somebody a ways ahead of me on the bike, and saying ooh, I want to push myself over the next mile to pass this person.  The fact that I just moved from 386th place to 385th place out of 800 really doesn’t mean much.  It’s more that I’m trying to give my best effort.

• Triathletes are some of the friendliest sports competitors out there.  Fellow triathletes are always giving you kind words or motivation as you pass them.  They are struggling with the same course and weather conditions as you are and know what you are going through.  It’s also evident when you are in the transition areas before and after the race.  I once forgot to bring my swim goggles with me to a race.  I was just saying something to myself something like, “Aw crap” and the guy who had his bike parked next to mine instantly offered to let me borrow his second pair during the race. 

• There are a number of good resources out there on the web.  I recommend beginnertriathlete.com.  There you can keep track of your workouts in many different ways and there are useful forums where you can get all of your questions answered.  

Contrary to popular belief, there is more to the sport of triathlon than just the Ironman.  Ironman is just well known by the public because of the NBC show covering the race in Hawaii.  I do watch the coverage every year.  The coverage of the pros is interesting and I watch every second of it.  As impressed as I am with the pro coverage, it doesn't hold a candle to the amateur coverage.  With the amateurs, we see their struggles and triumphs.  We see the ones who are struggling mightily but still will their way to completion.  We see the 80 year old men who fall down twice while just walking the marathon, but still refuse to quit.  We also see the ones who finish 10 minutes after the 17 hour cutoff, and therefore are officially listed as a DNF, but they don't care because they gave their all that day.  We see the party atmosphere at the finish line all the way through midnight.  Many of the athletes who had completed their race in 12 hours, in the daylight, after taking a couple hours to lie down, come back for the last few hours to cheer on their fellow triathletes.  I can almost guarantee that by the time the show is wrapping up, and we are shown the last few people, wondering if they will make the cutoff, I will have a tear in my eye.  It is the only time all year, with the possible exception of a funeral, where this will happen.  I say almost every year because this year's coverage was rather bland.  Not every year can be perfect.

Don't be afraid!  The vast majority of triathlons are much shorter than an Ironman.  Most of the races I do are at a level called a "Sprint" or "Olympic" distance.  The actual distance of a sprint triathlon varies wildly by course, but is somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1/4 mi., swim, 12 mi. bike, and a 5K run.  I only do these if they are local.  It's not worth a drive across the state for something this short.  The olympic race is fairly standard everywhere, a 1.5K swim, a 40K bike ride, and a 10K run.  It's the length I race most often.  For these I am willing to drive a ways.

I once did a half-Ironman.  Distances are exactly half that of a full Ironman: 1.2 mi. swim, 56 mi. bike, 13.1 mi. run.  The problem was that it was on a 95 degree day with 95% humidity, and on a course that offered no shade anywhere.  That was a suffer fest for me.  I am very heat sensitive.  Cold doesn't bother me nearly as much as others.  I guess I am part cold-blooded.  I'll get in two more half-Ironman races before the full Ironman.

Ironman Wisconsin is so popular that people have to register in waves and a year in advance.  The day after the race is when it all begins.  The current year competitors get first shot at entry to the next year's race.  After that, anyone who volunteered at the race gets to sign up.  Not a lot of spots remain after this step.  This small amount, maybe a couple hundred at most - out of the 3000 slots or so - become available for online registration.  It sells out in just minutes.  I will be volunteering at IMoo -- its unofficial name -- in 2013 just to guarantee myself a spot in 2014.  A high school classmate of mine did IMoo a couple years ago.  He says he'll never do an Ironman again, but at least he can say he did it once.  I want to be able to say that I did it, too.

Ironman is one of those things where once I sign up, I will dedicate a ton of time to prepare for it.  On race day, nothing will stop me from completing the race.  It might take me 15 or 16 hours out of the 17 allowed, but I will get it done.  You get 2.5 hours to get the swim done.  If I train like I need to, that shouldn't be an issue.  Worst case it should be 2 hours.  Then will be my favorite leg, the 112 mile bike ride.  Considering that you get 10.5 hours combined to get the first two legs done, I should have lots of time left.  I figure it will take me 6.5 hours or so, including stops, ensuring that I would be on to the run with about 9 hours elapsed, including two transition times.  I would then need to get the entire marathon done within the remaining 8 hours.  I could do that right?  That means I would get 18:19 per mile assuming that I don't stop.  Okay, I probably would stop a lot by this point in the race.  So, let's say I need to average 16:30 per mile.  I think I could almost walk that fast.  It wouldn't be a lazy walk, but a motivated walk.  A lot of people do end up having to walk a large portion of the marathon, there's no shame in it.  My plan will get a lot more refined as I ramp up my training more, and the time gets closer.

If you want to ask any questions go right ahead.  I'd love to get another person interested in triathlons.  I can certainly try to point you in the right direction and to some good resources.