Respect the distance, I keep reminding myself.

In my first Ironman in Lanzarote (IML), I completed the race in 11.48 fuelled on fear alone. My second in South Africa (IMSA) saw me clawing my way to the finish line in 11.42 after seeing the darker shades of my soul. It was thus that I arrived at the start line in Zurich with much trepidation, aware that another race in the 11-hour zone would mean that I hadn’t learnt anything from my 2 previous races.

I made a note to myself:

1. I had paid my training dues
2. Be patient
3. Respect the Distance

Picture: Bruno, me, The Blur & Duccio sun ourselves the day before the race on the island part of the run course.

Shaking it Up
For IMSA, I absorbed a number of training and preparation secrets that, I was told, would help me tackle my goals for Port Elizabeth. It took me a long hard day of suffering to differentiate between what was arbitrary and what was really important.

Peter Reid, Ironman Hawaii champion, spoke of decreasing caffeine a few weeks prior to race day to heighten his sensitivity to caffeine and its associated boost-benefits. After struggling mentally prior to IMSA without caffeine, I ignored the caffeine-free protocol and drank as much coffee as I could handle. I’m a non-believer that coffee is the miracle wonder drug that will boost you through any race lasting longer than 2 hours. It may work for Peter, it won’t work for the rest of us.

Another sage recommended carbo-depletion one week prior to the race, followed by an increase in carbs 3 days before the event. This, they tell me, increases the body’s glycogen stores. I tried this in SA and found that I was just miserable and unbalanced a week out from race day. The dodgy pasta I ate two days prior to the race ensured that my system was effectively void of any race fuel. On race day when my muscles reached out for the glycogen, all they got were cramps. So out the window went the curse of carbo-depletion.

Lance’s coach, Chris Carmichael, spoke of decreasing the athlete’s weight prior to race day thereby increasing the power-to-weight ratio. This means less to carry, which translates into more speed. The problem with this is that since IMSA my weight had increased from my 66kgs to a whopping 74kgs for IMS. Doubling my bike mileage had lead to an insatiable appetite for anything and everything. I ate everything I wanted and at the dinner table didn’t hold back on seconds. In doing so my body changed shape (bigger legs and arms) and my muscle mass increased considerably. Lance may kick my butt going up Alp d’Huez, I’d kick his in a bar room brawl (just kidding Lance). It took me many miles on the bike to realise that these tips, were mere placebos disguised as wisdom. So out of the window they all went. Instead I decided to focus on the wise words of the legendary cyclist, Eddie Mercx, who imparted with the gem to the sporting community - “Ride lots.”

Zurich – Water temperature 21 degrees
The beauty about racing with friends and having the services of a formidable support crew is not only the camaraderie and fun times, but also the knowledge that if something big happens you have the resources to solve any problem. Having incidents like Natalie & Marian gunning it in the hire-car to pick up John’s misplaced wetsuit and goggles, which he had forgotten in the hotel on race morning, was a godsend.

Shortly after receiving John’s wetsuit, we struggled to make our way through the crowds to the swim start and decided to swim around a pier to reach the start. We found ourselves facing a line of a thousand athletes clad in black wetsuits looking like a mixture between penguin playtime in the Arctic and Braveheart. We swam into the throng of competitors on lakeside and ducked under the starting tape. Brett, Keith, Duncan, Dave, Paolo, Steve, John, Evan, Tracy & I gathered our wits and stared out over the lake.

I recalled my race plan:

1. Enjoy the swim
2. Heart Rate under 145 on the bike
3. Heart Rate under 150 on the run and finally
4. No racing

And with the blast of a fog-horn, and without hitting my watch start button (doh!), we were off. To describe it as carnage would have been an understatement as thrashing arms and flashes of water created a violent ballet in the lake. I allowed myself 200 meters to go hard and then settle into a rhythm. After about 5 minutes of being pummelled on the head by Popeye forearms, I took evasive action and swam to the side of the swimmers. I lost my draft but gained an open space which I enjoyed for the rest of the swim.

Aside from the congestion on the first loop of the swim going under the bridge to the island, the swim was uneventful, and therefore pleasant. I was relaxed throughout and avoided expending too much energy, daydreaming of the Jacuzzis that bubbled on the other side of the finish line.

I exited the water in 1 hour on the dot. A new PB.

Bike – the hills are alive
By the time I reached the foot of the Beast, an aptly named hill-mountain, on the bike I had succumbed to several facts:

1. This would be a draft-fest of note
2. There are people out there who can generate speeds in excess of 40kph on flats and
3. What the Swiss call a hill, the rest of the world refers to as the Alps

I settled into a slow rhythm and passed my time by watching the views of the lake and reading various names on the back of European athletes who clearly savoured the opportunity to attack anything with an incline. My heart rate monitor wasn’t working so I ditched my sub-145 heart rate game plan and rode on what I thought would be a reasonable pace.

Confucius say, “If Plan A fails and you don’t have Plan B to fall back on, that’s good, because it means you don’t have anyone to listen to.”

Reaching the top of the hill brought warmth to my heart as the road dropped away swiftly beneath me and people started getting into their aero positions. Before I started to push, I watched my speedometer edge up to 75kph and whizzed my way passed the competition. A red Ford Cobra pulled up alongside us at great speed and tried to gently force its way around the riders – an extremely crazy and dangerous move. Many of the riders who were concentrating on the downhill moved out of the way to let him by. I was having none of it. No crazy Swiss Cobra-boy comes to my race and messes with my competitors. I took it quite personally that he’d risk our lives and his own, and accelerated in front of him to ensure that he couldn’t get past. Fortunately for him I don’t speak much Swiss because I had a few phrases I wanted to try out on him. It was after the race that I checked my top end on my speedometer that revealed that I had clocked 86.3kph.

After settling back onto the flats that curved around the lake, I spurted suntan cream on my face, arms and legs and tried to put as much nutrition as I could into my system. Throughout the bike I drank about 4 bottles of Powerade and 3 bottles of water. I ate about 5 banana halves, 5 gels, 2 pieces of banana loaf, 3 breakfast bars, a roll of Smarties and a Snickers.

Heading alongside the pristine lake I passed the start line and headed out to the climb of Heartbreak Hill. This was an awesome climb which revealed an awesome site of spectators, strung out from the base of the hill to its summit, with their swinging cow bells and chants of “hop hop hop.” I immediately got out my saddle and slowly bobbed my way to the top of the hill. The steepness of the hill and the lactic acid in the legs was easily counterbalanced by the shouts of the spectators and the frenzy of fluttering South African flags. Having the first name of Roberto also ensured that I had cornered the Italian partisan support and that the occasional “Forza Roberto” would give me a spurt of adrenaline to keep going.

My restraint on the 1st lap paid dividends on my 3rd and I managed to knock 27 minutes off my PB with a 5.48 on the bike. This was staggering news for me as I found the Swiss Ironman course technically more difficult than the South African course. Upping the bike mileage ensured - not that I’d be able to go as fast as the Euro-cyclists - but that I’d be able to maintain my relatively pedestrian 31kph for the duration of the bike. The extra training may have helped but in the end I attribute the secret to my speed as being a combination of the Gummy-Berry-juice ingredients Natalie was baking into her banana loaf, my new Lance-helmet and my new Cosmic Carbones wheels (think Terminator 4).

Run – get your motor runnin’
The Vaseline I had left next to my running shoes had turned to liquid. I poured it liberally over my feet to prevent the blisters (for which my feet are renowned) forming at the first sign of friction. It was then that I went Swiss for a moment, took off my saturated bike shorts and Speedo, and fumbled my naked legs into my new crisp shorts. I shuddered at the thought of finding pictures of me in my sunburnt birthday suit spread across the front page of Zurich’s edition of News Of The World with the headline “Ze Swiss Ironman. Zis is not all so super, ya!”

I put on my Swiss Ironman peak cap, which I was almost ready to earn, and headed out onto the run course. The sun was blistering hot (34 degrees centigrade I heard some say, although it felt closer to 54) and I could feel my insides burning up.

I ran easily to the first aid station and doused my head with water, which thankfully was ice cold. My tongue would remain dry for the rest of the race in between the aid stations, no matter how much fluid I tried to get down my throat.

After my first lap I was lucky enough to see a guy on a mountain bike with a sign saying “2nd Male Athlete” whiz by me followed swiftly by Olivier Bernhard who was a good 20k’s ahead of me. Olivier didn’t appear to be running too fast so I decided to stick to his heels and see how long I could hang for. I convinced myself that it wasn’t really racing, just good pacing. I was surprised by his fluidity and the fact that he made it look so easy. In comparison to my huffing and puffing, he didn’t even look as though he was breathing. I held on for about 5 minutes before leaving him go on to win silver. He went on to finish his run in 2h59m. Machine!

It was after the half way mark that the wheels began to fall off. I had toyed with upping the pace as I wasn’t going too fast at this stage. But every spurt would send my head spinning and I’d feel my Achilles tendons tightening up. I concentrated on the task at hand (the sub-11) and decided that I had ample time to make it in the allotted time without having to risk going too fast. I always feared the story of athletes who felt great on the run and went for it, only to wake up and find themselves in a hospital bed, oblivious as to how they got there.

It’s in these dark moments that you drink woefully warm Coca-Cola and you think of the people you love and the people who love you, and you suck it all in and channel it into your body for the last stretch. I found in the last 10k’s that my friends, who were about to become Ironmen and who were going through just as much pain as I was (if not more), would be the ones to shout the loudest encouragement. I blame my tunnel vision state for not being able to reciprocate the support. I looked at my watch to see how close I was to my goal. As I pressed the start button on my watch at the start of the bike and not the swim, I couldn’t figure out how long my swim had taken me and whether I was close to the sub-11 or not. I stopped thinking too much about time and pace and kilometre markers and focused on staying upright and leaning forward as much as I could without falling over.

The emotions welled up in the last 3 kilometres of the run and I could feel tears brimming from my eyes as I ignored the signals my body was sending to my brain and picked up the pace. Definitely a Hollywood-mixed-with-Chariots-of-Fire moment as I ran as fast as I could overtaking all and sundry in an effort to get to the line. It wasn’t so much of a slow-mo moment, but rather like watching the TV on mute.

The pain and fatigue disappeared and for a moment I was weightless as I tore down the finish straight. My final run time was 3.59 and the time on my spreadsheet they printed out for me at the finish line read 10.52. I would have been happy with a time of 10-anything.

It was only after a dizzy shower, Jacuzzi and massage, and meeting up with all my friends that it began to sink in that I had achieved what I had set out to do. Not in the way I had envisaged with a fast run time, but rather with a fast bike time.

In my previous 2 Ironman races I had been exactly 1h42m behind the last athlete to take the Hawaii Slot in my age group. In this race I was only 1h08m behind the last Hawaii slot. I need to tweak a lot more, but the light seems to shine brighter from the end of the tunnel.

Here’s a breakdown of my training hours for the 12-weeks preceding my 3 Ironman races.

Here’s my comparative results:

It was only later in the week after the race that I saw the perfect photo which reflected exactly what it felt like to finish the Big Race. It had nothing to do with time or distance or anything. Just a promise you make to yourself late one night and do as much as you can to make it come true.

And that was the photo of our domestique-superior from Bournemouth and the youngest man in our group. His finish line photo represented exactly what it felt like when you get to the line.

In the early evening of Zurich on July 17th 2005, Steve Small, competitor number 1389, leapt across the finish line. After 13h45m46s out there in the sweltering heat, Steve Small became an Ironman.

Yu-meino shikata “The Power of Dreams”

Happy hunting,
RobbyRicc