IM Texas 2011

IRONMAN TEXAS

MAY 21, 2011

By Maggie Johnston

 

After finishing Redman in September of 2009, I knew I wanted to do the 140.6 distance again.  In the summer of 2010, I was scouting out my options for 2011, and a friend, Mary (left), told my sister Ginger and I that an Ironman Texas was in the works for 2011.  In June, the morning after The Woodlands City Council approved the IM race, Mary emailed us that registration opened in 3 days and told us she wanted to see our names on the list.  I had been thinking about doing Louisville, but the prospect of having friends to race with won out.  I signed up on opening day.  Ginger told me she probably wasn’t going to do it, and I was bummed but understood.  Two weeks later, she was in, thank God! Training started pretty much in October 2010.  I had spent much of 2010 being burned out from Redman, so I was ready to train in the fall.  The only races I did in 2010 were a March adventure race and the October club nationals.  At Mary’s suggestion, we bought a Gordo Byrn training plan on Training Peaks, and Ginger and I just started plugging away at that.  Thanksgiving, Christmas (and a 10-week-old puppy addition to the family), January, snow, snow, snow, and more snow.  I spent a lot of time in the pool, a lot of time on the CompuTrainer (yes, they are worth the money, especially in a case such as this), and a lot of time on the treadmill.  I love running outside in the winter, but this winter was just exceptionally cold and snowy, and I saw more of the treadmill than I ever wanted to see.  By April, it was still freezing cold in Missouri and I pulled out the space heater and started “acclimating” by doing my long rides with the doors to my training room shut and the heater on high.  This is fun, right?  Actually, it wasn’t so bad. So finally, the race got here.  I got hit hard with a sinus infection exactly one week before the race, no thanks to tremendous work stress.  My adventure-racing buddy prescribed me some emergency antibiotics on Saturday, but more stress at work on Monday was a setback.  By the time we left for Texas on Tuesday, I wasn’t much better.  Craig drove the whole way to Dallas, and I slept as much as possible in the back seat, clutching the box of Puffs.  On Wednesday, Ginger and I met Mary at the pool, and I did my first workout in a week:  30 minutes each of swim, bike, run.  It completely wiped me out, so an afternoon nap was in order.  Thursday, we drove about three-and-a-half hours south to The Woodlands, just north of Houston.  We picked up packets and laid around the hotel in adjoining rooms.  It was fantastic to spend so much time with my sister; I’m not sure what our husbands thought, but being Muellers, we didn’t care.  It was all about us. On Friday, we did the practice swim to test out the water.  It felt great!  Wetsuits were optional for anyone who didn’t care about qualifying for Kona (as if we had a snowball’s chance), but the water temperature was perfect without one and we didn’t want to risk overheating in the race, so we went without.  A very short swim, and a very short bike and run later, we were done with our race prep.  We dropped off our bikes and our transition bags, and spent the rest of the afternoon resting.  My infection had moved to my chest, but was improving.  There wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it at this point anyway. Race morning we were up at 4:00 for breakfast:  a Boost, a Cliff Kids Z-bar, a banana, a couple of endurolytes, and some gatorade.  We left the hotel by 5 as planned, and arrived at a dark and crowded transition area for last-minute bike adjustments:  put on bento box, put on aerobottle and fill with fluids, air tires, strap on flat kit.  I had remembered to pack my headlamp, but many around me did not, so I spent some time lighting up bike pump gauges for other people before we left for the mile-or-so walk to the swim start.  It sounds worse than it was to walk that far.  It was a nice morning and it was a good way to get the blood flowing.  Body marking was at the swim start, and then we pretty much just stood around waiting for the start. The announcer said that 2600 had registered for the race, and 2210 were racing.  1500 of those were from Texas.  The 50 pros racing started at 6:50.  For one of them, it was his 100th IM.  When it was our turn to get in the water, I wasn’t in any big hurry.  In retrospect, that might have been a mistake, but I’ll never know.  When the gun went off, Ginger and I were still on the ramp waiting to get into the lake.  We didn’t expect to see each other again till the finish; as we neared the water, we kissed each other good luck and jumped in.   I figured everyone would get right in and turn right and start swimming, so I swam straight for a few seconds to get out of what I thought would be the most crowded area.  That turned out to be another really bad idea, I think.  Other than my very first open water swim at the Naperville, IL triathlon in 2002, where I hyperventilated and did the breast stroke for the first 1/3 of the race, I can honestly say that this was the worst swim I’ve ever had.  After years of practice to improve my swim and conquer pretty much all of my open-water-swim phobias, and going into this swim feeling very confident and strong, I was pummeled, gulped lake water, and was feeling pretty desperate after about ten minutes.  If there had been a boat nearby, I would have hung on and re-grouped.  That was not an option.  I was completely surrounded on all sides by a wall of solid people.  There was absolutely nowhere to go and no way to get around those in front of me.  It was probably about twenty minutes before I got out of that nightmare.  The swim is a point-to-point swim that makes a U shape before turning into a channel that is about 1/4 to 1/3 of the swim.  I had not realized that the channel was so long, so when I turned into it, I thought the end was near, which made it take that much longer to finish.  During the swim, I was slapped in the face twice, got a hamstring cramp from pulling up suddenly when someone swam directly in front of me going sideways, and a foot cramp in the channel which, luckily, was only about 4 feet deep, so I could touch squishy ground while working that out.  I also had to de-fog my goggles once and was grateful that I have practiced that enough to be able to do it without too much thought or stress.  I was so happy when I reached the swim out.  I paused for a moment at the stairs to regroup, pee, and thank God for surviving. Next I moved to my longest transition ever.  I had grass all over my feet and asked for water, waited for it, and washed off my feet before putting on the socks I’d wear for the rest of the race.  I’d do it again, but next time would put a water bottle in my T1 bag.  I also got a glob of vaseline for the huge chaff I had all across the back of my neck from my swim cap.  Because of all the swimmers crammed together, I was sighting almost every other breath to avoid running into people, and that resulted in some nice rubber-swim-cap burn to my neck that I felt from about the midway point in the swim.  As I exited the transition area, I heard the announcer, “Ginger Blazek, Coppell, Texas!”  No way!  Did that mean she’d just exited the water or the transition area?  I got on my bike, noticed my right shoe wasn’t tightened enough, pulled over to fix it, then got going again.  Within about a minute, there was my sister!  There were so many of us riding bunched up together; it was impossible to spread out in those first miles.  We both just rode comfortably, but it was clear that we were going to be riding about the same speed.  We decided to just stick together, and it was the most incredible and wonderful surprise!  During our training, one of us would occasionally say, “Wouldn’t it be great if we found each other on the run and finished together?”  But we never really even allowed ourselves to really think about that; there was no way it would ever happen.  And yet here we were!  We concluded that we had both been praying to God so fervently during the swim, that he finally decided to just turn us over to each other for the rest of the race! We agreed to a pit stop at mile 40, and then again at mile 80.  This was the best long ride I’ve ever done.  Having Ginger there with me to talk to and keep me going really kept me in a great mood the whole way.  It was relatively flat, and it was overcast for at least the first three hours of the ride, maybe four.  We went through the Sam Houston National Forest, which was my favorite part of the ride.  It was a lot of fast downhill, narrow roads, and beautiful setting.  The bike course was open to traffic, and this was one of the places where there was little traffic.  We made the 1/2-way point at about  3:15.  Around mile 70, the sun came out and it started getting brutal.  We had also been traveling north, so when we turned back south, we got hit with some headwind, and there was a very long stretch of horrible pavement with long lines of traffic in a very narrow lane that was a particularly bad part of the ride.  There were so many of us out there, we didn’t know how anyone could be penalized for drafting; it was pretty much impossible to spread out.  I never checked, but Craig said the last time he looked, it was 90% humidity and 90 degrees. When we hit the transition area off the bike, it was the first indication Rick or Craig had that we had been together.s  We were both so happy to be off the bike that we were smiling, so they thought we were both doing great, but as soon as we started running, I knew it was going to be a much harder run than at Redman.  Ginger was running better than I was; she was always just a little bit faster, and I was struggling to keep up.  Our plan was to run to the aid stations, walk a minute, then run to the next one, etc.  Our aid station stops were taking a long time to do together, and we were walking longer than a minute.  The run was three 8.5-mile loops.  The first lap was super hot, and it didn’t seem like there was any shade.  Somewhere around mile 6, I told Ginger that I couldn’t keep up and she should go ahead.  She really resisted the idea and I had to really convince her to go on.  She finally did, but it didn’t last long.  I think it was the next aid station that she turned around and walked back to meet me.  We went a little longer, and I was feeling even worse.  I started to have the chills and was thinking inside that I was going to end up walking the rest of the race.  It was all I could do not to just sob as I told her that she really needed to just go on ahead.  More urging  from me, more resisting by her.  I couldn’t look her in the eye.  I really wanted to do the race together, but I also did not want to keep her from doing great when I was feeling like dirt.  I told her it would be easier for me if she would just go, and she finally agreed, and when she ran ahead, it took a lot of determination to not just stop, sit down, and have a huge cry-fest.  I felt so crappy and so defeated at that point.  But I knew that she did not want to leave me behind and I was not going to let her see me cry or she would not keep going, so I yelled to her, “Do it for both of us!” and that about did me in, but she waved back to me.  At that point, I felt like I was going to have to walk most of the rest of the way.I gave myself two minutes to walk and regroup, then started jogging again.  It was slow and painful, but when I went my own, slow pace, it didn’t hurt so bad.  I could still see Ginger; she wasn’t that far ahead.  When I walked at the aid stations, I was able to hold it to one minute, and so even though I was running slower, I was still able to keep her in my sight.  And I started feeling better and started feeling like I was going to be able to keep running.  I’m not sure how long we ran separately–maybe five miles–but somewhere around mile 16, I saw Craig, and not long afterward, I heard someone call out my name.  People were generally being great about cheering the women on because there weren’t too many of us, so I just figured it was a spectator, but then I heard it again and recognized the voice.  I turned around, and it was Ginger!  Turns out she had stopped twice for the port-a-potty, and I had passed her up!  She caught up and said we were sticking together from then on, and I was very happy to hear it.  She was getting tired, and although she was still running a little faster, I was able to get enough ahead at the aid stations that it evened out and we were pretty much together the rest of the way.  Which is good, because then it got really brutally hard, and it was awesome to have my sister there with me.The sun had started to go down about half-way through the second lap, and then a breeze (that was a little too strong at times) moved in that really helped with the heat.  On our final lap, we were so grateful to be on the last one; there were people out there just starting the second one.  It grew dark about mid-way through the final lap, and we just hung in there, giving each other encouraging words such as, “We are so stupid for doing this,” and “What in the hell were we thinking,” and “I am never doing this again.”  The adrenaline kicked in as we heard the race finish getting louder and louder.  It didn’t help my legs go any faster, but did put a smile on my face, and I’ll never forget running down that chute with all of those screaming people and turning to see my sister looking at me with a huge smile on her face.  It was simply the best race finish ever.  And since it will never be surpassed, I feel no desire to attempt it.  Any time soon. On a boring, technical note, my nutrition plan worked perfectly this time.  I did the same thing as I did in Redman, where I got a little sick to my stomach about 1/3 of the way through the run.  Except this time, I ate a little less on the run, so that probably did the trick.  I used water and Ironman Perform on the bike (provided by the race), and brought my own e-gel (great product), and two endurolytes per hour.  For the run, I continued the endurolytes, Perform, water, and added in cola every third aid station or so, with more cola near the end when I just couldn’t stomach any more gel.  I probably had one gel per hour or less, and also had my trusty, swear-by-them Jolly Ranchers.  I didn’t use special needs bags.  My swim was 15 minutes slower than Redman, transitions slower than Redman, bike 35 min faster and no flat tire here, and my run about 25 min slower.  Overall, my IM TX time was about 22 min slower than Redman, which is a bummer, but I’ll get over it.

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