Ironman Mont Tremblant: Over at Last

 

An Ironman doesn’t really start when you hop into the water to swim 2.4 miles before biking 112 miles and running a marathon. It starts long before, during the training leading up to it, with the planning involved in attacking the training and racing, and with the decision to start the process altogether, which is often a year in advance of race day, thanks to quick sell-outs of Ironman races in North America.

I signed up for IM Mont Tremblant 2013 a few days after getting home from IM Louisville 2012, partially determined to take another stab at the Ironman run, and partially because I just plain loved Ironman training all summer. Literally two weeks later, I got some not-awesome news from my doctor, and it included orders for a very restrictive diet that left me wondering how on earth I was going to train for this thing that I’d just laid out $700+ for. I threw a few tantrums about this over the fall, kind of adjusted, set a half marathon PR and figured all would be well. I maintained about half of the weight loss that my doctor dictated through marathon training, and then took 47 minutes off my marathon time.

I was bulletproof. I was going to make myself healthy, lose the weight my doctor told me to lose, and keep setting PR after PR. I would annihilate IM Mont Tremblant come August.

Or so I thought.

Some combination of accumulated fatigue/stress/my diet left me barely functional this spring, and it was the first time that I really thought about dropping out of IM Mont Tremblant. I bounced back from that to break 5:30 in a half ironman, and was back on the “let’s crush this thing” train. Once focused ironman training started up in mid-May, my body rebelled in a serious way, and I gained an absurd amount of weight in a short period of time despite no change in diet. That left me discouraged about ever addressing my health, and again doubting whether or not I should go ahead with IM Mont Tremblant. I kept going back and forth all summer, concerned about how I wasn’t losing the weight I needed to lose to get healthy, and that the extra weight would leave me injured while I trained for the race. By the time I was two weeks out from race day, all I could think about was getting this race done and attacking the weight issue with everything I had.

I even told Jason on Friday afternoon before the race that I wanted to go home and never think about this again.

Clearly, I didn’t go into this thing with the best outlook, but every time I doubted the wisdom in continuing, I reminded myself how much I enjoyed the journey, the training, and the challenge, and tried to stay positive. I mean, at this point, we were 800 miles from home with all my gear. There really wasn’t anything to do but race.

So there I found myself, by the shore of Lac Tremblant, at 6:30 am on August 18. Time to get this thing done.

Swim: 1:04:09 (1:31/100 yards)

Ironman initiated a few new swim start formats at their North American races this summer, including a wave start at IM Mont Tremblant. This put the 34&under women behind ALL the men – and three minutes behind the 45&over men.

I think you can see where this is going.

While a traditional mass start with 2000-some participants involves a lot of congestion at the start, folks tend to spread out and swim with others the same speed as them for most of the race. Just like in a road race. In a wave start, however, faster swimmers from later waves wind up running into those slower swimmers in earlier waves. While this happens at shorter races that use wave starts, the effect is far more drastic in the 2.4 mile ironman swim, as we have more time to catch up to more folks, and spend even more energy navigating around slower swimmers.

While we had clear water for a few minutes, the fastest pack of women ran into some very slow-moving men before we even hit the first buoy. Though Lac Tremblant is beautiful and clear, which makes it easy to see that these slower swimmers are ahead of you, we had so many slower men to swim through that our pack broke apart almost immediately. The congestion got so bad around the halfway point that I stopped, stuck my head up, and realized that I was blocked off by a Wall of Dudes.

 

There was nowhere to go in any direction. Not forward, not right, not left, not even backwards. Eventually, the congestion broke up a little bit, but I continued to run into the Wall of Dudes for the rest of the swim, and spent the last mile or so of the swim wanting nothing more than for it to be over.

When I’m waiting for a swim to be over, you know it’s bad. I mean, after swimming across the Chesapeake Bay, I asked to swim 4.4 miles back to the other side.

I wound up coming out of the water under 1:05, which I promised myself I would be happy with, and started the half mile run to transition when I heard the cheering crowd suddenly start cheering EVEN LOUDER. Then I realized they were yelling “ALLEZ MADAME!!!! ALLEZ!!!”

Awww, those crazy French Canadians were all excited because I was one of the first women out of the water. How sweet of them. I’d have stopped to thank them, but I was on a mission to get in and out of the change tent as quickly as possible. I had a few other things to do, like ride my bike.

Bike: 7:12:08 (15.6 mph)

The volunteers got me out of the change tent quickly, which was one of the best parts of being one of the first women – I was one of the only people for them to help. Score. I hopped onto my bike and made my way out of the village and towards highway 117, where I was greeted with even more “ALLEZ LES FILLES!!!” because so few women had passed through. And maybe because I was in my slick SMASH kit.

 

Once we were out on 117, all those people I swam past were hammering to make up for lost time…and I once again ran into Wall of Dudes several times – this time, though, in the form of draft packs passing me.

 

I had to let up on my effort several times to make sure that Wall of Dudes didn’t take me out OR leave me in the draft zone, but I figured I was just saving my legs for the run. It was discouraging to be passed by so many people, yet I knew I had to bike my own race and ignore them, so I focused on staying in control of my race by repeating a little poem.

Drink your drink.

Eat your snacks.

Watch your watts.

And watch my watts I did.

 

My power was somewhat low for the first 40 miles, thanks to all the (legal) draft advantage I got when being passed by Wall of Dudes over and over, but I didn’t worry. More power for the run, and more time to get hydrated. Unfortunately, eating the snacks was a little difficult, because I had no interest in letting go of my bike for one second while careless folks dodged around me on the shoulder (where we were explicitly told NOT to ride), and I wound up taking in very little for the first hour or so. I started taking any chance I could to take in a combination of UCAN and homemade sweet potato bites once we headed back towards town, but the opportunities were few and far between.

Finally, the climb up to Lac Superior, the hardest portion of each loop, nicely broke up all the packs before we started the second loop of the bike. My legs didn’t feel fatigued, even after the climbs, and I was ready to take this on again. The course was more deserted this time around, and I needed to pull up some prime entertainment to keep my spirits up, especially when fighting the wind gusts on 117.

(Think it's ridiculous? Try it.)

Around mile 80, I started passing people back – folks had taken this ride out way too hard, the temperature was climbing, and they were fading. I wasn’t pushing – there was, after all, still a marathon to do – but a normal effort level with my power and heart rate in check had me leaving folks behind. This is why keeping yourself in check the first half of the bike, regardless of what is going on around you, is so important.

Just as I started passing people, I started getting really hungry, possibly because I was behind on nutrition following my failure to take in calories while maintaining a death grip on my bike while being swallowed up by pelotons. That was fine – I just took in some extra Gu for an hour or so and hoped I’d be able to catch up. Meanwhile, my legs felt great, and I didn’t feel the foot pain, or frustration, I felt at the mile 90 point on at IM Louisville. I was SO ready to run a marathon.

Run: 5:08:17 (11:41/mile)

My feet hit the ground at the dismount line, and I felt OK running – even in bike shoes. I tore through transition after changing shorts and shoes, and was off to RUN THIS MARATHON and redeem my miserable performance at IM Louisville the year before. The first 10k had me at a solid sub-10 pace, and I was taking in Nuun and salt and Gu just as I’d planned, with a short walk break every 3 miles to address nutritional needs.

In other words, this was happening. My sub-4:30 ironman marathon WAS HAPPENING RIGHT THEN AND THERE.

 

Until the first little bit of Gu I tried to take after the 10k point wouldn’t go down. I let up on that, and decided I’d take it when it would do some good. Then I realized that even Nuun, which I’ve NEVER had difficulty with in over two years of training, was making me sick, too.

Hmmmm.

I tried a little plain water around mile 8, and it stayed down, so I dumped the Nuun and filled my water bottle with that. Only the tiniest sips of water were palatable, so I avoided overdoing that. I kept moving, but started to worry that I wasn’t getting in sufficient hydration and nutrition to finish this thing safely.

And that was the end of it.

I got angry. Really angry. Angry about how I worked so hard for a year to address the weight issue, to follow the diet my doctor handed me, and now it was leaving me unable to reach my goals because I can’t practice race nutrition in training because I can’t afford that in my meager calorie budget, and now I was getting sick in the middle of my biggest race of the season.

Rather than continue to be vague about this, let’s just get this out there: I was diagnosed with Polycistic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) shortly after IM Louisville. My doctor explained that I developed it because I was too fat, even though I wasn’t technically overweight by BMI metrics, etc, and that I NEEDED to lose about 20-25 lbs or I was looking at cancer and diabetes down the road. She told me to eat 800-1000 calories/day, regardless of how much I was training, and to limit my carbohydrate consumption to 100 grams/day.

Let’s just say that this doesn’t mesh well with training for long-distance races. I wasn’t, however, about to give up on doing what I love, so I tried that diet for a few weeks while training for the Richmond Half Marathon. Almost passed out a bunch of times, was totally miserable, and upped my calories to about 1200-1300/day for the rest of the fall. I had a successful PR effort in Richmond, and lost about 12 lbs over the fall. Even though it was hard – VERY HARD – I was doing it. I was racing well and moving towards resolving my PCOS issues. I thought I could handle this, but my body totally broke down in March, and this spring, I started gaining back some of the weight I’d lost no matter how hard I trained or how carefully I watched my diet. I felt powerless and trapped – no matter what I cut out of my diet, the weight crept on unless I left myself so hungry that I couldn’t sleep for weeks at a time.

I really did try to stay positive about all of this for the past year. Honestly. I told myself that a low carbohydrate diet would make me a more efficient fat burner, which would be key during long races. I told myself that the careful attention to my diet would improve the quality of what I ate, and support my training better. I told myself that being this committed to the process of fixing my body would reinforce my commitment to training hard.

And it still sucked. It sucks to not be able to sleep because your stomach is begging to be fed, but you can’t do anything because you’re over your meager calorie limit for the day. It sucks to go to a post-race bagel-fest with your friends and drink water. It sucks to skip all the pie at Thanksgiving. It sucks to know that with every day I fail to lose the rest of the weight, I increase my risk of endometrial and ovarian cancer just that much more. It sucks to know that this is what my life is going to be like for good, and that there is no end in sight aside from (eventual) death. There is NOTHING positive about it, and come mile 9 of that run, I ran out of mental energy to deny that any longer.

From there, I completely mentally fell apart. I wallowed in the anger of my inability to train and practice race nutrition like others, and lost the will to make myself run. I walked, walked more, tried to run, but always soon gave up with the futility of it all given how much of a failure I’ve been at doing something as simple as losing another 15 lbs.

Eventually, I was walking large sections of the course, knowing that I was missing my goal for no good reason, as my run pace was still right around 10 minutes/mile when I DID run. I just had no will to make myself run when thinking about how my life is such a pathetic, hopeless disaster with no prospect for improvement.

The one pick-me-up that hit me on lap 2 was the realization that I was actually walking faster than some folks who were running. I can, after all, power walk with the best of them.

 

Around mile 19 or so, I figured things couldn’t get any worse, so I tried to see if some Coke from the aid stations would stay down.

Holy smokes, it did, in very small sips with an extended walk break. A few calories, a little hydration, and I was trotting along at 10 minute/mile pace here and there, until my brain went back to that dark place of despair. Averaged together, I wound up around 12 minutes/mile with sporadic running and power walking for the back half of the second loop. If only I’d been able to gather the mental strength to run it, I’d have been done much earlier.

The whole second lap was truly pathetic. I even walked most of the last mile, which was just stupid – I could hear the crowd at the finish line, I was so close to being done with this damn thing already, and I was STILL too mentally weak to make myself run. Thankfully, the last half mile or so is straight downhill, and I was able to jog down that hill into the finish.

Until I ran into Wall of Dudes again.

You didn’t think they were done making an appearance in this race, did you? Once we were entering the chute, several of them started stopping, showboating, and generally getting in the way.

I just wanted to be done, so I squeezed past them, and passed over the timing mat for a 13:36:59 finish overall.

It was a PR by about 36 minutes over last year, which means I met my B goal. Great. I still severely underperformed given my fitness level and other race performances this season. The finish line volunteers forced me to take a medal, which I tried to decline by explaining that I didn’t earn it because I mentally gave up during the run. Then I burst into tears, partially because I was finally letting out all the misery from the past year, and partially because I was so relieved that this was all over.

Several weeks later, I’m still disappointed in how the run went. Not because of the time, but because I was mentally weak and couldn’t push my body to perform. It’s extra discouraging because I’m fairly certain this is the last Ironman I will be attempting for a long time. I love training for the Ironman, and I love the challenge, but it is clear that my body cannot handle it. I don’t have any choice but to focus on losing the weight for good, and Ironman training doesn’t work with that. As for what I can do? It’s hard to say. I think I can handle marathon training and half ironman training and keep the weight loss going, but I’m not sure. I’ll only find out by trying, and being willing to adjust my race schedule with my health being the focus.

In the end, I cannot discount how fortunate I was to even be able to do this race, regardless of what the clock said at the finish line. I have a well-paying job that I like, wonderful friends and training partners to keep my spirits up, and an astounding ability to avoid injury under high training volumes. Few can say the same thing.

Which is why I, and others, sometimes need this reminder: Never take the ability to cover 140.6 miles under your own power, no matter how it goes or how long it takes, for granted. Ever.