Surviving my first Hurricane and Iron distance race

The sweat dripping down forehead, over my nose and onto my lips had the rank taste of defeat. If I was the crying type, I would have been balling my eyes out. My stomach felt sick, the kind of sick you feel when the phone rings in the middle of the night. Because you know nobody ever calls with good news in the middle of the night.

I was just over 6 miles into the bike part of my first iron distance race and I just flatted for the third time. Worse still, I had already used both of my spares. I couldn’t believe I was finished. It was small miracle that I was even in Orlando. Hurricane Wilma had been forecasted to ravage this part of the state just a few days ago. The strongest Hurricane ever measured was still heading straight for us but she had dallied over Mexico a few days longer than expected. I suppose she liked Cancun. I don’t suppose Cancun liked her.

To make matter worse I had great swim, just over 1 hour and 12 minutes for the 2.4 miles and was feeling really strong. I had spent the last 12 months getting ready for this one day. Getting up at 5:00a.m. to go for long cold bike rides with the bears. Countless early morning laps in the pool, not to mention the endless runs and a long bout with planter fasciitis plus the latest nerve jarring game of hide and seek with Wilma.

“This really sucks!� I thought as I sat in the hot and muggy field feeling sorry for myself as one racer after another passed me by. Except not all of them passed by. To my complete surprise one guy stopped and asked me if I needed anything. “Sure� I said with a bit of sarcasm, “how about an inner tube and a CO2 cartridge.� “No problem,� he said and handed me both. I was too shocked to thank him so dude, “Thanks!�

And a huge thanks to all of you 2005 Great Floridian Triathletes who helped me on the bike course. I didn’t know it yet, but that was only the beginning of a very long day. Before the end of the bike I would flat 5 more times. Four flats on the front and four flats in the back wheel. I would sit in five other fields waiting and begging for help. This gave me a lot of time to think about why I race and how I got here.

Setting the bar really low, that’s my new triathlon strategy. Without knowing it, that’s also been the strategy that I’ve used over the past five years to get to this point and distance in my triathlon life.

Here’s the strategy in a nutshell. When you set a goal make it really easy and doable. In other words, your goal should be something very simple like; I want to finish a sprint triathlon this year. That way when you meet your goal you’ll have the hunger and determination and willingness to surpass the goal next time. If you set the bar really high, like I want to finish an iron distance race in under 12 hours, chances are you’ll blow up, miss the goal, and become discouraged with yourself and the sport.

It really comes down to why many of us do this crazy sport, I thought as I got back on my bike after fixing the flat. We do it do challenge ourselves and prove that we can finish something that most folks would never even contemplate beginning.

Back on the bike after three flats I know that there was something seriously wrong with my back wheel. I was starting to suspect a problem with the spokes poking through the rim tape on the inside of the wheel and puncturing the inner tube. You just don’t flat three times in seven miles on the same wheel.

I rode on slowly with the bitter taste of defeat still fresh in my mouth. I had no spare tires, no spare air and 50 miles to go before getting back to the transition area for my special needs bag which contained two additional spares and air. Every time the road surface changed I suspected a fresh flat. I was being passed by the middle of the pack. My expectations had gone from finishing in 13 hours to just finishing.

I suppose that Iron distance race is 30 percent physical (if you’ve done the training), 30 percent race-day nutrition, 30 percent mental and 10 percent luck. My luck had run out at mile 6. My mental condition was unstable at best and that meant that my nutrition plan was quickly falling apart. I rode on too terrified to lean the wrong way, too terrified to speed down the hills, too terrified to hit the brakes hard and too terrified to flat.

Somehow I made it around the first loop. I was ecstatic again. The roller coaster of emotions had just crested the top. I was going to finish the race. My special needs bag had two spares and two CO2 canisters and besides I had made it 50 miles without a flat. The wheel must have sorted itself out, I said to my wife. She had caught up to me at end of the first loop.

She offered me her spare tubes but I declined. I was all set to finish I thought as the emotional roller coaster sped down hill. A mile later my front tire went flat. By now I had gotten pretty fast at changing tires. After less than five minutes I was back on the rode thinking that I had had real flat.

A mile later the back tire blew flat again (number 4 on the back) and my world collapsed with it. The emotional roller coaster came flying off the tracks and crashed and burned.

It’s funny how high you get in a race and how fast you slam into the ground. Mentally I had just belly-flopped onto hot pavement. I knew there was no chance what-so-ever in finishing the race now. I just had one last spare. It was at his point that I mentally reset the bar to zero.

It’s like that with expectations. The second you lower the bar that’s the moment you can truly race. Have you ever noticed that some athletes who were really good at say swimming when they were young have a hard time with the sport as they enter the “masters� years of their lives? They’ll never meet and certainly never exceed the best meet times from their youth. Their expectations have been forever set beyond their waning abilities, and thus they are always swimming uphill. Unlike for us non-swimmers when every new milestone is a triumph.

I had no expectations anymore and thus nothing really mattered any more. My time didn’t matter, the blazing heat and humidity didn’t matter, and the other racers who kept passing me didn’t matter. There was simply nothing I could do but change the tire and see how far I could go before the inevitable next flat. This stark realization is completely freeing and completely wonderful. To my surprise it brought with it a powerful sense of purpose and clarity.

I knew what I had to do and what I need. I needed duck tape and I had to fix the wheel.

I was able to accomplish both. I had flatted just in front of water station for the run part of the race. I asked around and two of the volunteers actually had duct tape in their cars. Best of all the cars were just parked across the street. I tore the tape and created my own rim tape, put in on the back wheel and fixed the flat. I couldn’t fix the front wheel, as I had no air to re-inflate the tire. But I was sure the back wheel would now hold for the rest of the second loop. Little did I suspect that the front wheel would decide it missed all the attention I had lavished on the back and flat another thee times.

“I can’t sit-up and ride� she said “because my handlebar tape has come undone and I can’t ride in the aero-position because my crotch is on fire,� she added and poured some water down her pants.

We were parked some 90 miles into the bike ride at the last water stop before the Buck Hills (three large rolling hills that challenged both body and spirit just before the very steep Sugerloaf ascent.) Clermont must be the only God forsaken place in Florida with Colorado sized foothills, I thought as my thighs seized-up like vise grips. And the Great Floridian must be one of the only Iron distance triathlons that puts the biggest hills last.

Eight flats had sent me from the tip of the spear to the butt of the spear. We were a rather motley bunch consisting of big girls on bikes, the long-ago retired and yet still very driven, the old school types with shin length red-stripped socks, the unlucky, the unprepared, the unwise, and two guys on vintage bikes with strap-on-pedals instead of clips. These boys were drafting each other like Lance and Hincapie, however at the butt of the spear no one monitors or cares.

We all had that deer caught in the headlights look as we sat in the shade at one of the last the water stops and contemplated the up-coming hills and bike cut-off time. Except that there was no water. The race organizers somehow had assumed that since it was 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity we would be drinking our own sweat. All they had left for us was warm lime Gatorade. Have you tried to chase a warm Gu with straight warm Gatorade about 9 hours into a very hot race? It is sort of like gulping green battery acid.

We did have one last advantage. The heat, humidity, lack of water, and common goal had forged a deep bond between us. It was this bond that had saved my sore ass. Long ago I had run out of both inter tubes and air. It was through the kindness of this motley band of racers that I was able to even contemplate finishing the bike.

Except that I didn’t care anymore. I had fixed my last flat and I knew it. You see in my current dazed state of mind I had forgotten to repack my tools. I had left them in field number eight somewhere about 20 miles back and that was that. I was sick of fixing flats, and I was sick of the bike. I just wanted to be done with this ride from hell.

It’s funny how fast you go from training all year, to wanting to really compete, to just wanting to finish. Now a new thought crept into to my mind. I had to finish because of the eight flats. I had worked too hard and survived too much to not finish. It was this thought that propelled me up the Buck Hills and up Sugerloaf. It was this idea that got me back to the transition area, this thought and a hell of a lot of luck.

May the air stay in your tires, and may the wind be at your back and not in your butt, I knew had be my new race motto.

I finished the bike in just under 9 hours and squeezed in under the bike cut-off time.

Don’t ever run a marathon before your first Iron distance triathlon. Why? Because if you do, you’ll know exactly how far and how difficult the 26.2 miles will be on you. It is indeed a very strange and daunting feeling starting a marathon at 6:00p.m. at night after a 112 mile bike ride. The mind says you must be crazy and legs whole-heartedly agree.

The sun was going down and I was mentally fried. It seemed that in a distant life I once lived, I had imaged myself crossing the finishing line before sunset. Now I was hoping to come in before midnight.

I quickly gave up the notion of hammering the marathon. The difference between a 16 hour race and 15 hours race was pretty meaningless. Besides, my legs would seize-up like a stray cat at a dog shelter every time I broke into the slowest of jogs. I just wanted to finish and perhaps start to enjoy the race a bit.

I met my wife on the first part of the run, which was an out and back 10K before 3 loops around Lake Minneola. She was running back and I was sort of walking (if you consider Frankenstein’s gate a walk). She looked great with two sponges tucked into her shirt. This was when she earned the nickname Sponge Barb.

We stopped and chatted. She told me that she had lost her Blackberry cell phone on the ride when she hit a big bump. I tried to express my concern as I was pounding on my thighs to keep them from locking-up. We had decided to bring our cell phones so that we could encourage each other during the race. She was really depressed, but more importantly she was way ahead and really doing great.

I on the other hand was at the wrong end of my marathon. The first 13 miles I did my best impression of the Frankenstein monster growling and terrifying the local villagers. In my case it was the other competitors and aid station helpers. I seemed to have done a proper job because by my second loop many of the aid station helpers had cleared out.

Somehow, by mile fourteen I was feeling good. I was (to my never-ending surprise) the only one running at this point and perhaps the only one on the course. Hurricane Wilma had scared many of the racers so there were only several hundred in the race to begin with…and most of them were finished.

There was just a small handful of us left running in total darkness, into on-coming traffic (the state law in Florida) on a road with no shoulder. Every so often I would spot the bouncing glow of a green light stick ahead in the pitch-dark Florida night. I’d run up to them and we’d start chatting. It was nice to have company, especially on the far side of the lake loop, which was now pitch black and very spooky in the gathering glum of hurricane Wilma.

I caught up to a friend I had made the night before at pre-race dinner. We almost hugged in the starless night and started chatting. He told me that he had found the strangest thing on the bike ride: an almost new Blackberry. And yes it did turn out to be my wife’s Blackberry.

She was there waiting for me when I crossed the finish line just before midnight. My beautiful Sponge Barb was there and about 30 other folks who stuck it out in the starless night. It was nothing like the Ironman finish you see on television. Nobody said, “You are an Ironman� except for my wife who had done terrific by overcoming her fear of the swim. She swam a blazing fast 2.4 miles and set the fastest family record for an Iron distance race.

And while technically I’m not an Ironman, I am a finisher. I was hoping to check of this goal off my list and move on to others. But now, with so many flats, I have to race again just to see what time I can really do. Besides, I’ve set the bar so low that I can’t help but surpass my goal the next time. Ironman here I come.

May the air stay in your tires, and may the wind be at your back and not in your butt.

*Post Note: I took the Shimano wheels to the bike shop where I had purchased my new Giant and had long serious chat with the manager and boys in the repair department. They examined the wheels and pronounced the plastic rim strip that lines the inside of the wheels to be cheap, misarranged, and the most likely the cause of my trouble. They replaced it, at no charge, with a higher quality Italian brand. We’ll see.

Read more at Everyman Triathlon