/*** Many Thanks to Arturo for this race report ***/
Ironman South Africa, 6 April 2014
I was not planning on doing a race report this time, since there were so many of us there, so many outstanding performances, including some Tri Dubai Kona qualifications and some Tri Dubai will power machines finishing even if being sick or injured. I did not see the point.
What made me change my mind? Well, it was all of you that were kind enough to congratulate me on finishing my first Ironman and that added that one day you wish to do it too or that you wish you could do it!
To all of you goes this report, so you see that becoming an IM is achievable, come race day it will be hard, don’t get me wrong, but if you wish to finish you most likely will.
14 month journey
Since my early twenties I knew I wanted to do an Ironman, even if I had not done any cycling before then and I only swam a bit in summertime. But I used to run often. I stopped running because of injuries and I started gaining weight, by my 35th birthday I was around 115kg. Then I decided that I needed to change my life style, so I started swimming with TriDubai, later cycling and by the end of January I did my first sprint triathlon. 3-4 months later I registered for IMSA. In September I raced a 70.3 in Aix (race report also available) as preparation for the big one.
What did I do during these 14 months?
I lost nearly 24kg to get closer to target weight, which helped me a lot in the running and for the cycling a bit as well. Target was to lose 34-38kg. Even I did not manage I am very happy with the results.
I will share with you the numbers of hours that I trained
|
Swim |
Cycle |
Run |
Gym |
Races |
Total Hours |
|
|
Feb.13 |
3.00 |
20.00 |
0.50 |
15.00 |
3.00 |
41.50 |
|
Mar.13 |
6.00 |
31.00 |
1.00 |
8.00 |
6.00 |
52.00 |
|
Apr.13 |
3.00 |
12.50 |
0.00 |
2.00 |
4.00 |
21.50 |
|
May.13 |
4.00 |
20.00 |
1.00 |
6.00 |
0.00 |
31.00 |
|
Jun.13 |
4.00 |
20.00 |
1.00 |
2.00 |
0.00 |
27.00 |
|
Jul.13 |
8.00 |
22.00 |
2.00 |
2.00 |
0.00 |
34.00 |
|
Aug.13 |
17.00 |
28.00 |
4.00 |
2.00 |
0.00 |
51.00 |
|
Sep.13 |
9.00 |
11.00 |
3.00 |
0.00 |
6.50 |
29.50 |
|
Oct.13 |
8.00 |
28.00 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
1.00 |
37.00 |
|
Nov.13 |
10.00 |
30.00 |
2.00 |
7.00 |
3.00 |
52.00 |
|
Dec.13 |
4.00 |
34.00 |
4.50 |
0.00 |
1.50 |
44.00 |
|
Jan.14 |
3.00 |
31.50 |
10.50 |
1.00 |
0.50 |
46.50 |
|
Feb.14 |
8.00 |
18.25 |
0.00 |
4.50 |
5.75 |
36.50 |
|
Mar.14 |
5.00 |
21.00 |
6.00 |
2.00 |
5.00 |
39.00 |
|
Total |
92.00 |
327.25 |
35.50 |
51.50 |
36.25 |
542.50 |
|
Average |
6.6 |
23.4 |
2.5 |
3.7 |
2.6 |
38.8 |
I wish I could have trained more and as you can see I was not very consistent or organized on my training, I would recommend you to be more organized than I was, it would really help.
My average weekly training was around 9 hours of which 70-80% was low heart rate and the rest intervals.
As IM was getting closer I reduced the number of sessions and increased the distances of the weekend sessions, some of the long session were used to experiment nutrition. I felt I was getting slower but my endurance was really improving.
In January and February I did my first 200km bike session and my first Marathon in order to know how it feels and to confirm that I can do it. It is not really necessary as physical training but I think it helped me on race day mentally to know that I had done it before and that it is achievable.
Pre-race days in South Africa
I had learnt a lesson or two from the 70.3 I did back in September and I organized the trip accordingly, we arrived on Tuesday to Cape Town and I drove to Port Elizabeth, arriving there Wednesday night, 9h driving in 2 days plus all the hours in the plain, probably not a good option, to be improved next time, the weather was miserable and I was really panicking.
This time I just took my better half and my daughter to minimize the amount of distractions and I had made an activity plan for each day in order to keep them happy and entertained, which worked very well (thanks for the pointers Andre).
Every morning I was going to sleep as soon as possible and setting the alarm at 5am, most days I woke up earlier without the alarm clock, which was a good sign, I thought. Plus the weather was slowly improving. Thursday morning I put the bike together while the family enjoyed a lay in, Friday morning I drove the course and I joined one of the official swimming sessions and Saturday morning I went for a 25min bike -25min run around the course. Then after the early morning race oriented program, we would have the family activities and before and after that there would be time to register, race briefing, transition preparation and socializing with fellow UAE triathletes.
For a week or so before the race I ate more of what I felt like eating than the usual healthy diet I had got used to, I felt bloated for a couple of days but then I stabilized.
The night before the race I had a big, complex dinner, and then at 3:30am I had breakfast. Then I went to the transition area to prepare the nutrition and check the tire pressure and the content of the transition bags. In the morning it was a bit cloudy but the wind was ok.
For nutrition I had prepared:
For the bike, 15 gels – one every 30 minutes (Viper Active seems to work the best for me) and 1.5 liters of energetic drink + electrolytes, in 2 of the bottles I mixed 4 gels in each in order to minimize the amount of gels to carry and to ease intake, after that I would have to replace my bottles for new ones and take the gels ‘manually’.
In the special needs bag I had 2 sandwiches.
For the run, I had 5 gels and 5 chomps servings.
TriDubai 