Ironman Austria

It’s been two weeks since the race and I’ve just about recovered enough to write about my race experience. The last few weeks of training leading up to the race went well and I was hoping for a reasonable race despite having only trained for 12 weeks leading up to the race.
We arrived in Klagenfurt on Friday late afternoon after a flight to Vienna and a 3 hour drive. Klagenfurt turned out to be a very pleasant town located on a beautiful lake in the hilly Kärnten area of Austria. The Ironman seems to be quite an event for the small town and everyone who we talked to knew about the race.
This time in the last couple of days before the race we were unusually well organised and managed to sort out all the gear in a space of a couple of hours, thanks to Alex’s help with the race bag, which has left us with some time to relax on the nearby beach on the lake. On Saturday, the day before the race, I’ve done my usual short run and a short swim and Alex and I rode the bikes to the next town for lunch and back.
When we got up at 4:30 am on the race day it was clear that the weather has changed, the last few days were hot and sunny, but on Sunday the temperature has suddenly dropped and the sky was overcast. Nevertheless we were in good spirit and after a big breakfast (the hotel had a full breakfast for athletes at 4am!) we walked down to the start.
When we got there the transition area was a chaos – the surrounding area was not designed to accommodate 2800 athletes. It took about 10 minutes to enter the transition area and the queues for the portaloos were at least 30 minutes long.
After the experience at Wimbleball I was a bit paranoid about punctures and I must have checked my tires at least 4 times in addition to loading the bike up with 3 spare inner tubes, 3 CO2 cartridges and a Vittoria PitStop canister. After all the fussing around in transition and a toilet stop I finally deposited my bags and walked down to the swim start.

At the beach you could really appreciated the effect of increasing the field size to 2800 – there were athletes everywhere and any warm up was out of the question, so I just lined up in the second row on the beach and waited for the gun to go off, but … it never did. At some point all of a sudden everyone started walking into the water and then started swimming towards the pro’s who were about 100m in front. I expected us all to stop behind the pros and wait for the gun, but it never happened – everyone just kept going, so I followed. It was certainly the strangest swim start I’ve ever done.
After another 100 meters I swam onto somebody’s feet and was rewarded for my efforts with a prompt kick in the face which knocked off my goggles. I stopped to put them back on, but as there were already full of water they never stuck on properly and I resigned to swimming with goggles full of water and not being able to see very much for the rest of the swim. Luckily the swim course was fairly straightforward and I was able to follow people in front hoping that they are moving more or less in the right direction, although on the way back the course enters a narrow canal and I’ve almost missed the entry and swam straight onto the shore. The last 800 m in the canal were quite fast, but not very pleasant as it was shallow and not exactly very clean, but at least no chance for me to go the wrong way. Out of the water I looked at my stopwatch and was quite happy seeing 1:04 – a new swim PB and a job well done.

With so many athletes out of the water around the 1 hour mark the transition area was in a state of chaos and it took me a while to find my bike bag – not being able to see clearly having spent the entire swim with water in my goggles didn’t help. The change tent was very crowded, so I didn’t even bother entering and just took my wetsuit off outside, helmet and the number belt on and onto the bike.
Once on the bike I felt reasonably good and was moving well through the field on the flat section around the lake. The bike course has about 800m of climbing on each lap with 2 fairly sharp hills followed by long steady descents, which makes it quite fast. I’ve decided to back off a little bit on the climbs and leave something in the tank for the flat sections on the second lap, so I just enjoyed the climbing and the crowd’s support. As we got into the hills the weather deteriorated and it was raining heavily and it got quite cold. I got worried about punctures again, but luckily I didn’t get any and managed to warm up after we descended back into town. The special needs station was just in front of our hotel and I was looking forward to getting my second bottle of Infinit drink, but the volunteer had other ideas and was looking in a completely different direction as I went past and only just realised he forgot to hand me the bag after I’ve gone past him cursing. I considered for a second going back for it, but decided not to and carried on without it. I always knew that I was going to suffer on the bike, having not done the mileage and sure enough I started suffering on the second lap and wasn’t able to eat or keep the fluids down. All I could do was to concentrate on keeping a good rhythm and trying to at least drink water at the feed stations. Once I got over the climbs I knew the descent into town will be easy and I was hoping to be able to recover a little before the run. As I rolled into transition I saw 5:04 on my stopwatch as the bike split and was satisfied with it. Ave power 192W, NP 211.

I took my time in transition putting my run gear on, but unfortunately still wasn’t able to take any nutrition on. Onto the run course feeling bloated and low on calories I knew I was going to have to take it relatively easily just to get to the finish line. I tried drinking some coke at the aid station, but it came back pretty quickly and I was running on empty. To add insult to injury the heavens opened and it was pouring down, but I had bigger worries to occupy me. After the half way mark I was forced to make a toilet stop and eventually it looked like my stomach was working again. The wall usually comes around the 30km mark in the marathon, but this time I was actually just starting to feel better at this point and able to take on some coke and some gets. My splits started to improve and eventually I’ve managed to finish with a 3:18 run split, which is not too bad.

Overall time 9:36:01 – 4 minutes outside my PB, but way down in general classification and in my age group. In the end I’m quite happy with the result and if someone told me before the race that I was going to do 9:36 on 12 weeks of training I wouldn’t have believed it. Deep down, however, I know I could have executed the race better – maybe next time. On the positive note I’ve really enjoyed the last 12 weeks of training and getting back into fitness after a break. I’ll be back stronger for the next race.