Ironman Coeur D'Alene Race Report

Ironman Coeur D'Alene race report: an unexpected and welcome surprise.
Despite all the hype about ironman CDA's weather, we have done this twice now and each time it has been 108F and 95F temp with abundant sunshine.
The swim started early this year at 6am, so we were up and at them by 4am. I slept surprisingly well and have worked hard on pre-race and race day chimp brain for the last 6 months and it seems to have paid off.
Got in the water to the promise of no wind, thus no chop. Complete tosh. Despite no wind, there was plenty of chop. Fortunately, the swim is my stronger discipline and it doesn't bother me. It is the clearest of lakes (30ft vis at least) and with a temp of 70F at beachside, the swim was brilliant for me. Came out in 1hr 07min which is slower than I would have ideally liked, but for the effort, quite pleased.

My least favourite part: The Bike. With 1,553m of climbing, this course is a challenge. Long climbs, but equally long descents and with some good enough areas to time trial, does make it a fun course. However, my chimp brain hates the long bike and convinces itself that death will be imminent and why oh why would anyone want to bike this long. 3/4s of the way round I had a sobering experience. No more than a few hundred yards ahead me, at the bottom of the descent, another racer of cleaned out by a car. Bike and him, sadly thrown high in to the air. As we all hit the brakes, I was thankful to see him awake, despite in pain, and I hear he is okay. However, with that experience, I quickly righted the brain shipwreck and got a hold of myself. Gave myself a proverbial slap in the face and started to bike. I would have liked to come in under 7hrs, but knocking off 45mins from the last time I biked this course, I was amazed to see 7hr04mins on the clock. However, as I entered transition, I wondered whether a run was even possible.

With the promise of no more biking and some great race support, the legs began to move and move they did. The run is 3 loops and reasonably flat, with some rolling. The town really embraces this race and every corner provides an opportunity to cool down. My nutrition was being absorbed well. They say never trust a fart in an ironman. Well, I did and was fortunate ;). Upon the realization that hammer was not going to work today, I switched to my emergency gels which did the trick. Combined with coke and normal on course food, the energy levels were kept up.

I awaited the bonk that never came and then outbound on the final lap my wonderful wife stated "I would need to burn some matches to take it under 13". I couldn't imagine what she was talking about, as I felt that was long since forgotten. (I wasn't looking at my watch, that much). Then Vincent mumbled something to me when I stopped to chat and with him sending me off running, I thought "hmmm".

As the wheels hadn't fallen off for some reason, I pushed on, raising the pace, when I heard someone shout out the time to another racer. 6:37pm. I thought he must be wrong, but he wasn't. That was all I needed to really grab the last 3 miles by the scruff of the neck. I ended up running the last 10k faster than my first and was elated to cross the line in 12:48. To be this is perspective for coach Rob's fine efforts with us, my previous best finish was 13hr55. The last time I ran this course, my finish was 14hr34. That's a 1hr 45min improvement. Massive!

I learned that biking well, so that you can run even better is the key. I learned that I am still not mentally there for biking, but can now see that I can bike better than I think I can. I learned that I really can run off the bike, despite my self doubt. Additionally, I learned that you should never promise to not do an ironman again during the bike leg :)

This was an amazing experience for me personally and there was plenty of emotion across the finish line. I am still in disbelief today. Thank you to the group and coach for such great support. I better start to work on convincing my wife to do another.

Good luck to us all

 ALL PHOTOS CREDIT TO MITCH BOWERS OF IMAGEWERX PHOTOGRAPHY