Ironman France, Nice 2008. The race day report.

Got up early, had my usual oatmeal with fruits, hemp seeds and yogurt. Had my bucket of coffee and a liter of water. This is it, this is the day, lets go and have some fun.

My dad and my nephew went with me to the start. I already had numbers painted on me (different from NZ as well as Brazil) from the previous day so all I really needed to do was to check on the bike, fill the tires with air, put on the wetsuit and go surviving the race.

Well, not so fast. When I got to the bike I realized that I put the valve adapters in the bike bag. I tried to pump the tires without them to no avail. After moment of crippling panic followed by cold sweat, I ran to the bag area and the volunteers over there were nice enough and got the stuff out of my bag. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Back to the bike, I put the adapter on the valve but I still can't fill in the air. The little hand pump just doesn't do it. More panic, fueled by the announcer informing us that the bike area closes in 4 minutes. I borrowed a large pump from a guy on the other side of the stand and filled in the front tire in about 30 seconds. Change the valve adapter, another thirty seconds, an announcer telling us that we need to be out of here in 2 minutes, a nervous look of the guy who lent me the pump. Talking about cutting it short. I returned the pump when another guy came to me asking me whether he could borrow my valve extender. I had two so I gave him one and left with a wish of good luck.

I took my chances yet one more time this time and didn't pack a spare tire. I did take a can of Vittoria fix-a-flat and couple of CO2 cartridges. I thought that if I can't fix it, I'll just wait for the mechanic. Well, if something did happen, I would have been waiting for a very, very long time. I found out after the race that one of the pro women blew a tire, didn't have a spare and had to finish the ride on a rim.

Lessons learned: have a big pump and have a valve adapter on the bike with you. And pack a spare.

Well I managed to get to the transition area, put on the wetsuit, cram my civilian clothing into a bag with a very bad feeling about the state of my glasses (yes, they did break as I found out later - another lesson - have an eyeglass case).

So here I am, full of newly found optimism.


I managed to get down to the pebble beach but not in time to flood the wetsuit (well, not with the sea water, anyway), which kind of sucked. There was no way I could get anywhere near water coming in this late. I spat into my goggles in hope to apply the anti-fog spit agent we all generate, only to find out that if not properly flushed out with water, the spit kind of smears on the lenses and I can't see through them at all.

Oh well, ready to go, I put myself into 1 hour 14 minutes blob of lemmings, thinking I'll take it easy, I am in no rush. Eyeballing the cheerleaders behinds I started thinking Zen as well as unholy thoughts. Life is good.


And here we go, off into the warm, welcoming, milky azure waters of the Mediterranean. Go lemmings, go, I don't have a whole day (well, actually, I almost do).


I got in the water, cleaned my goggles and followed the rest of the 2262 insane men and women who apparently didn't have anything better to do for the day. So how did my strategy of "1:14 easy swim, don't get hammered" work? It sucked. I didn't have enough faith in myself to go with the faster swimmers and basically got stuck behind the crowd. There were several times I had to stop or a swim around a bottleneck. As usual, I got kicked, fondled and otherwise abused. To be on the receiving end of such atrocities wasn't a whole lot of fun and soon enough I found myself abusing others in a similar manner. In a nicest possible way, of course. With the exception of the guy who kept crossing in front of me. I finally just grabbed one of his legs and corrected his course for him.

The first leg of the 3800 meter swim sucked. It was 2400 meters of swimming in a sardine can. Occasionally I managed to find a few yards of clear path in front of me but it never lasted very long. I thought of my coach Jane quite frequently. Relax, let the fingers loose, reach and grab the water, get into the rhythm, slip through the hole .... Thanks Jane, I owe you a lot. Although I still suck as a swimmer, I suck much more efficiently now than I did half a year ago.

The second loop was a bit better, it opened up a bit and I was actually able to get into a decent rhythm, still thinking of Jane's coaching, still managing to slip through.

I was a bit surprised to get out of the water in 1:09:02 - a pleasant surprise. Well, I thought, at least one goal has been accomplished. This is the fastest swim I ever had, in the worst field I ever experienced. And I came out of the water relatively fresh, wasn't exhausted or some such.

So I ran through the showers which were kind of pointless because we still had our wetsuits on. Unlike Brazil or NZ there weren't any pretty women on beaches of Nice peeling off our neoprene. Hmmm, another difference, peel it yourself. Got my bike bag, got into the tent, peeled off the neoprene, ate some, drank some, put on my suntan lotion (my nephew called it spackle or gypsum - it's my own, homemade, the white stuff you see on the picture) and off on the bike I went. Well, I took my time, at T1 of 12:30.

My nephew managed to get a passing by picture


The bike was almost uneventful. At about kilometer 20 I got a reminder that I managed to miss the very first climb on the day I went for the training ride. Well, I knew it was there and I figured I ought to be able to manage 10-12% 500 meter climb. I did, even with the 39/23 lowest gear I had, I didn't have to get out of the saddle. It's a bad ass climb but quite manageable.

Then the road is a bit up, bit down, nothing to write home about. One has to watch out for potholes, sewer lids and an occasional speed bump. I got reminded once by not registering a speed bump and hitting it too fast - it almost took the handlebars out of my hands. The road is well marked, people cheering along the road, I rode through picturesque villages on narrow roads. Occasionally I got to talk to someone, I remember I was making fun of an Italian guy riding a Specialized equipped with Shimano. That's just wrong. Heresy. But I passed him and he was in my age group so I felt pretty good.

An older guy, 55+, passed me. His name was Jean-Yves. Looking at his calves, it was quite obvious he is at home in the mountains. I picked up the pace and kept up with him (nope, no drafting), he occasionally got away but I always caught up with him, passed him on an occasion or two and he then passed me back. He is one of those I have respect for. He is the guy who passes you near the top of the hill. Steady, consistent, it was a pleasure just to watch him working the bike. I remember passing him for the last time about 10 km before the end but I am quite sure he wasn't very far behind me at the finish line.

Here I am at the end of the bike. I did have enough at the time, the bridge of my left foot hurt as usual on a long ride and I was actually looking forward to running. Well, not really, I just wanted to get off the bike. The stuff you see on my face is my homemade suntan lotion. The stuff lasts through 112 miles of Ironman bike, I think I'll start selling it.


And yes, you can see my Orca whale lurking behind my water container. Paying respect to the people I used to work with. You know who you are.

The week before

We made it to Nice in about 18 hours of driving, mostly overnight. It wasn't too bad. I found out along the way that smoking alleviates my coughing, so I figured what the hell, I might as well. So lets take the inventory. It's a week before race, I have a cold, runny nose, cough, the bike frame has potential for dumping me at 40 mph zipping down the mountain and I started smoking. Perhaps I should start drinking, too. So yeah, we had a bottle of wine or two. To my credit I extinguished the smoking habit pretty quickly and didn't touch any alcohol for at least 4 days before the race.

What I did instead was to go and check out the run course and did a nice, easy 9 mile run on Monday, just to get a feel for it. It actually felt good, I kept 8'40" pace and clocked the heart at 162 average. A bit faster on both counts but I figured I should be able to do 9'09" at about 155 beats. Which, of course never happens after you ride 112 miles on a devil's instrument.

I figured I need to do something with the bike gears. Either take the chance and keep on the nice, light, Titanium 11/23 and hope I can make the hills or put on the hefty, solid steel 13/26 and bitch and moan later on. Decisions, decisions.

So on Tuesday I glued on my training tubulars, kept on the 11/23 and went to test the bike route on Wednesday late morning (getting up early was not one of my habits at the time).

The countryside and the views are just phenomenal, it was worth the trip just to see this stuff because I sure as hell won't have time during the race. My Motorola phone isn't exactly the perfect picture taking tool but it did relatively decent job here.





Somewhere down there is Nice


And here is the holy grail I came to see. I just climbed 1120 meters.




I felt good enough so I came to a conclusion that the hills aren't anything I haven't seen before and decided that I'll just keep the 11/23 for the race. I do have the legs to push through this and this year I trained a bit more than 70 miles total.

So I rode back, this time mostly downhill, listening for the carbon croaking sound. It didn't happen, the frame held well and at the end of the day I found out that I rode for about 6 hours and put in 140k. Probably not very smart, considering the race is on Sunday. Oh well, I am still not 100% so it really doesn't matter. At this time I adjusted my goals to survive the swim and just do better time than before, on the bike front I wanted to pass at least one French and one Italian in my age group and it would be really nice to run the whole marathon if I make it that far.

Nothing exciting happened since then, I got my usual chocolate craving but this time it didn't last a whole week before the race, it kicked in sometime on Thursday. With 3 days left, I went to swim part of the course a couple of times and in general spent time with my family. We went to the beach just about every day and interestingly enough, myself and the little kid were the only ones spared sunburn.

I packed my bike and run bags, nothing unusual, although I did change my nutrition a little bit. Some time ago I ran across Ruth's Hemp Bars (search Amazon) and realized they are about as good of a nutrition as I can lay my hands on. Small, tasty, about 200 calories, mostly from fat. It doesn't get much better.

I also bought a huge Profile Design aerobars mounted bottle - this one has 2 compartments, one for water, the other for the sports drinks. I am done with frame or seat mounted bottles, this stuff is really nice.

I checked in my bags and the bike on Saturday afternoon, let the air out of tires since it was quite hot. I had nice diner (I was eating a lot of carbohydrates this time, not as much meat as in previous races, it just felt right for some reason. Listen to your body is still my guiding principle), drank adequately but not too much and went to bed early.