Water Water Everywhere
Monday, August 20, 2007
Saturday was a big day. Not in hours logged or miles covered, but in straight-up confidence.
The swim portion of the Ironman goes by the fastest, but it is, arguably, the one most fraught with trepidation. There are just so many factors to consider, not the least of which is drowning. Then there's the possibility of getting kicked or swum over by 2,000+ people all trying to get to the same place you are, and the difficulty of not being able to breathe at will when you're in the water, unlike every other sport. And to make it even more difficult, in training sessions, you never have a great idea of how far you've swum. In open water, it's a guess at best, and perhaps I'm the worst lap-counter in the world, but for any given long-set session in the pool, I figure I'm usually either over or under by a few hundred yards.
All of this can combine for a pretty scary 1.5 to 2 hours on Ironman morning, or all those leading up to it.
I saw that first-hand on Saturday. It was an open water race (1.2 or 2.4 miles) set up to mimic the Wisconsin Ironman swim, complete with chip timing and a water start. I purposely put myself right in the middle of the pack. I wanted to get beaten up a bit. For the experience and all.
And just behind me in the water was a guy who was freaking out. "I can't do this. I don't want to do this," he kept saying. "Just look at this water. No way. I'm heading in."
He had a point. To say the water was a little rough is sort of like saying that snow is a little cold. I had to do a weird shoot-myself-straight-up-out-of-the-water move just to see the next buoy over the chop. A woman next to me told me to just sight the second footbridge, which was definitely easier.
And just like that, a whistle sounded and the race started.
I got into a good rhythm early on. None of the thrashing around and getting short of breath that defined my open water swimming earlier in the summer. As the swim progressed, I let the rollers cradle me...tried to feel with my whole body what my little section of the lake was doing, and somehow got my arms and torso to respond accordingly. And literally, before I knew it, I was at the first turn buoy. I looked up long enough to notice that it had started pouring out.
On the backside of the first lap, I had my first, real gross-out Ironman experience. I had to pee in my wetsuit. Now, before anyone starts judging, I was probably only 40 minutes into an hour-and-forty-minute ordeal, my bladder was cramping, and I was in the middle of freakin' Lake Monona. You would too. Needless to say, my wetsuit got a good washing post-race.
So, aside from the weird/totally gross feeling of being encased in something you just peed in, the entire first lap, really, went well. I was relaxed and felt good. I told myself that at the turn to start the second lap, I could flip onto my back and chill out for a few if I needed a pick-me-up, but I didn't feel as though I needed it, so I pressed on.
It wasn't until the backside of the last lap that I started to feel fatigued. It was hard to sight, as there were only four buoys marking the course, and because of that and the weirdly-strong pull to the right that I get when I breathe to that side, I was zig-zagging. I had also stopped trying to feel the water and what it was doing, and was instead trying to muscle my way through it. As a result, I kept getting slapped by some serious chop. It felt like someone was beating me in the head with a wet towel. Pleasant.
I took the opportunity to stop twice and just float. It was probably only about 20 seconds each time, but just enough to let me get my head re-centered. I made myself go back and concentrate on form -- to check in with every part of my body and see what it was doing and readjust accordingly.
At the last buoy, I could feel the burn in my arms and shoulders, but I had plenty left to swim the last leg hard, and before I knew it, my hand was touching the carpeting. I exited the water in 1:40.
Chief of Stuff was there with towel, and commented that he heard person after person who exited the water complaining about how rough it was out there (and, it was) and how their times were 10 to 20 minutes slower than last year. I asked a guy I was standing next to if it was this bad during last year's Ironman (don't ask me how I knew this guy was a) doing Ironman this year or b) did it last year, but somehow I did). He said that this was as bad, if not worse, and that he'd probably go with worse.
CoS and I did a brief bike afterward. It was supposed to be an hour, but got shortened to 30 minutes on account of the race starting more than an hour late, having to leave town that afternoon, me feeling completely fine and not needing to do a drawn-out test of my initial on-the-bike nutrition, and some serious rain coming down. Just for the record, I've biked in all sorts of conditions. I just didn't feel like doing it that particular day. So, when a street we were trying to cross refused to give our side a green light, I asked CoS if he minded just calling it a day. He didn't, and we biked back to the Terrace to load our bikes and get out of town on time.
On the road that afternoon, I was positively giddy.
"You know what I just love," I asked, and without waiting for any kind of response, answered: "That the weather today absolutely sucked!"
CoS commented that that was a truly weird thing to say. And it was. Ironman makes you say bizarre things all the time. But today, I'm still excited about how rough it was. Because that means that, come race day, barring a hurricane landing this far inland, it likely won't get any rougher. And that even in those conditions, I posted a not-speedy-but-solid 1:40 -- which leaves me an extra 40 minutes before the cutoff. On race day, worst case scenario is that that is what happens. Best case is that I knock 10 minutes or so off that time.
So, September 9th can go ahead and bring on that 2.4-mile swim. As they say in Top Gun, "Just a walk in the park."
Posted by Erin 4:52 PM
Enjoy your taper. Nothing more to do now but the doing, at last.
And yes, be glad you got the worst - I trained in rain last year at this time too. Needless to say, I was glad of it on 9/10/06.