My alarm was set to wake me up around 4:15am, but race anxiety beat out the alarm - so I obeyed my softly but steadily pounding heart, got out of bed, and headed down to breakfast (which was a picture-perfect bustling full-house at 4am...I love triathlons! Such a great sport in so many ways). I ate some food, got some food for Coach, and headed back to the hotel to pick up my stuff before taking the bus to transition. (Note the Breakfast Buffet hours on the sign below...)
Once we (the athletes) got to transition, we stowed our bags, got body marked, put food on our bikes, and some of us then headed towards the bathroom to get first dibs. However, as a lovely surprise, the bathrooms weren't open! So after about 10 minutes I came back again to see a long line. Thus, I thought the bathrooms were open and all occupied. But after 5 minutes of waiting and no activity from the bathroom doors, I started to get suspicious. Either everyone in the bathrooms was also having issues with Chinese food, or they still hadn't found the keys. Turns out it was the latter. So, after waiting for a few more minutes, a bunch of us decided to take care of our needs somewhere else, because it was getting close to race time and there were other preparations that needed to be done before the gun.
So, some people went off to do their business amongst the rows of palm trees and grass that lined the street, and some people (myself included) were escorted down near the river where there was more protection from onlookers (not that any of us really cared). We were directed to go onto the rocks near the water (not the ones in the water, important point here), and there I left something that, let's just say didn't trickle down into the water. Yikes. (I apologize for being so graphic so early on, I hope I don't lose any of you as a result... :) ) After coming back up to where everyone else was located, let me tell you - I saw a sight to remember. Walking back towards transition area, there was a long line of triathletes' bare-asses decorating the tree-and-grass area. Extremely interesting situation. So much for the "No Public Nudity" rule.
After the bathroom debacle, most of us just hydrated and prepared for the race. At about 6:30am, we started heading down to the water, and at 7:00am the gun went off. And then all triathlon-hell broke loose.
That swim was no doubt the hardest swim I have ever done in my whole life, and I'm sure it will be the hardest I ever have to do - at least in a triathlon. I'm not sure how strong the current is in the Alcatraz triathlon, but I'm sure this one rivaled it at least. The swim course was a somewhat-rectangle - it was changed a bit the day before the race to account for the extra swimming we would be doing with the current. So instead of 2 rectangles in the water, we would do 2 sort-of rectangles, keeping the buoys on our left, and then with 100-150 meters to go on the last side we were to run the beach and then re-enter the water for the second lap. As we were looking at the water from the beach, the current was flowing in a south-western direction - not 225 degrees exactly, but close. This meant that in order to swim straight ahead you had to really swim at an angle of less than 45 degrees, depending on how strong of a swimmer you are.
Although I went to practice the swim course the day before the race, there was thunder and lightning when I was attempting my practice, so that prevented me from venturing out too far onto the swim course, which meant that I was not aware of how strong the current was at its best. So I was swimming at a decently sharp angle until I came to the Bitch-spot (sorry for the language but it is appropriate here). I am not a weak swimmer, so I had no idea that this current could have such an effect upon me, but I was swimming in the B-spot for, no lie, at least 20 minutes. To give a little perspective, it was 350 meters from the beach to the second buoy, at which point we had to take a left and start swimming the long edge of the rectangle. I did not start swimming horizontally (I will refer to the long sides as horizontals) until 38 minutes. Normally, I can swim 350 meters in 7 minutes EASY - easy pace. In short, this course was CRAZY-RIDICULOUS-SO-AMAZINGLY-DIFFICULT. However, to be fair, as my Coach and I had talked about, I should have just started from the beach at a really shallow angle - like 10 degrees - and then let the current push me towards the buoy. Looking back on it, I feel more and more disappointed that I didn't in fact do this. I feel stupid, actually. The only reason I can accept it is because the T-storms prevented me from knowing that the current was stronger as you went further from the beach. But still.
Anyway, getting back to the B-spot - so once I hit about 30 meters from the 2nd buoy, I stopped moving. No forward progress. At times I was actually moving backwards. I think what happened was - everytime I stopped doing the freestyle, for whatever reason - (at times it was because I was so tired - at one point my heart rate was 195 just trying to fight the current - at other times because of the frustration of trying to think of a better way to get around the buoy, aka back stroke or breast stroke), I would get pushed back, and quickly. I was getting SO tired though and I saw many people deciding to turn back, so that got me really frustrated. I didn't see anyone who was nearby me making any significant progress either - so I was really starting to get discouraged. I definitely thought of turning back - many times - especially when my HR was so high, because I honestly did not think I was a strong enough swimmer to battle this current at the place that I was situated in the river. This was a horrible feeling, because I knew that if I didn't finish the swim, a) I wouldn't be able to finish IM China; b) my efforts, time and money related, would be almost completely in vain; c) Coach would be very disappointed in me; d) I wouldn't qualify for Kona (and all I needed to do was finish the race, but that concept was no longer something that could be regarded as easy), and worst of all, e) I would be haunted forever from the fact that I gave up. Giving up at this point I'm sure would have changed my whole mindset, and would have weakened me significantly as a person. But it doesn't change the fact that giving up was somewhat appealing at some points despite the fact that I knew the consequences.
Luckily, I soon smacked sense into myself and thought: 'Shame on you for even letting such thoughts enter your head, let alone considering them. I have 2 hours and 20 minutes until I get kicked off the swim course, and I have to try my best for 2 hours and 20 minutes. If nothing else, I can race today for that long - NOTHING SHORT OF IT.' So I kept swimming - drifting back at times. At one point I decided to start sprinting for 1 minute and resting for 10 seconds to see if that could get me there, but no luck. Finally, around 38 minutes and still trying to conquer the second buoy, a boat came by and I was touched on the back. I thought I was getting pulled out of the water! But apparently, I was being told to just advance to the next buoy. I said, "Really?!" At first, I was relieved, but then I started thinking...am I going to get disqualified? But I did what they said and tried to cut out the least amount of swim course as possible in the process (I saw fellow triathletes cutting over as well so I was really wondering what was going to happen to us). Anyway, I finally got to the horizontal, and swam that 900m portion in no time (as everyone else did), and then got to the buoy at the 3rd turn, which signified a left turn onto the 2nd vertical. This portion proved to be almost as hard as the first, for we were once again fighting a horizontal current, but we weren't fighting the vertical. Basically, the current here pushed most swimmers hundreds of meters down the horizontal in the wrong direction (even though I was sighting - oh my gosh! I need practice). What ended up happening was people swam to the shore to stand and rest and then swam / waddled to the close of the first lap. FIRST LAP. ... Just writing those words seems surreal, because the experience that I just described in so many words (much too many words for a normal swim description) does not even capture 1/2 of the overall swim experience.
As I was swimming / resting on the shore, I met up with many other athletes doing the same, and we started discussing the wonders of this oh-so-special swim course. One man had done 15 Ironmans before and said he had never seen anything comparable to this. Just unlucky, I guess. (In hindsight, not all unlucky because we had a great experience, and I for one can say that now I have a lot more knowledge on how to approach a course with a strong current.)
As I was coming out of the water from nearly finishing my first lap, I encountered one more tiny obstacle - many, many decently large rocks with edges capable of causing bloodshed. While many were in plain view, others also came up unexpectedly, and so the ascent to the beach resulted in tripping over many rocks and getting many souvenirs that would serve as fun obstacles in the run. To be fair, if I had remembered to keep the last buoy on my right coming into the beach, I probably wouldn't have had as much of an issue with the rocks, but totally serves me right for forgetting that buoy (although I would have thought that the lifeguards would have reminded us about the buoys because the race directors said that they would splash us if we were off course, but I cannot complain - it is my responsibility as an athlete to know the course).
Anyway, I got out of the water from the first loop at 67 minutes - which is a pace of 114 minutes for the full course, 6 minutes short of the cut off - feeling proud to have survived making it one time around. I saw Coach as I got out of the water, and he seemed - I can't really say how he seemed, becasue I can't pinpoint it exactly. If I had to choose one emotion, I would say it was probably 'worried' (I came to later find out that he was also mad (not at me necessarily) but I will discuss that more later). I ran the beach run and as I was about to enter the water again, Coach was giving me some advice, just praying I'm sure that I finshed on time. He kept telling me that I don't have much time and I said "no problem, I'll be fine!" I think I was high on hallucinogens or something.
I successfully made it out of the water the second time, with time to spare - 1:59 minutes - holy madness. Apparently I was 9th or 10th-to-last out of the water - go me. But what that tells me is one of three things: a) I was much less intelligent than other swimmers about how much of an angle to swim into the current; b) I spent more time actually trying to pass every original buoy than other swimmers (considering I am not a poor swimmer and thus my time cannot be allotted to my physical deficiencies) who apparently (as I heard) cut more than just a few buoys, although I'm not judging because I don't know what they were told by the race directors on how to proceed); and c) I did not give up. So overall, I think, other than my lack of good current-strategy, I had a pretty good swim. :)
BIKE TIME! Oh, but before then I had to visit the medical tent to get my swim wounds tended to (although I found out on Monday that one large one was unattended to, which caused some confusion as to what was on the bottom of my foot during the marathon...but no problem!) and input some nutrition. I did all of that, fastened my helmet, put on sunglasses and bike shoes, got smacked with sunscreen (by 'smacked' I mean had lots put on me - they didn't actually 'smack' it on, although that would have been interesting) and off I went at around 9:06am. It seemed pretty hot already, and I was under the impression that it was going to be a relatively mild day for southern China. X! WRONG. Couldn't have been more wrong, because it was the exact opposite at extremely extraordinarily hot (it was written in a report on ironman.com that the temperature hit a high of 45 degrees Celcius, or 113 degrees Fahrenheit). But, like I said, I thought it would be much milder, and since I am living in the mild climate of Busan, anything over 75 would have seemed hot to me at this point in the year, so I didn't think anything of it.
However, around 30 km or so, I started to wonder a bit about the temperature. I can't remember the exact breakdowns of my activity at the bike aid-stations, but I know that at the latest the 60 km aid-station (4th station, for there was one at about every 15 km), I had to stop and get off my bike and sit in the tent (also let me add that I stopped at every single aid-station to fill up water and gatorade, and in doing so, I had to stop my bike because the water bottles were screw-off-tops so I had to transfer those to my water bottle. The Gatorades were pop-tops though, so I had one water bottle and one Gatorade at all times). Also, I got additional sunscreen at at least every 30 km, a piece of information which I will refer to later. Also at km 60 was a nice surprise-visit from Coach. At this point I had to sit down in the tent for some much needed shade, during which time he and I talked strategy. I told him it was so hot that I am now just concentrating on finishing the race - that I can't shoot for a fast time on the bike or I might not make it the whole way. He was also worried because my first average 60km was very slow, and I explained to him that it was not only hot but pretty windy too (which he knew, because he himself biked to the aid-station...!!! :) ), so I really was just concentrating on making the cut-off (which we both agreed was a suitable goal given the conditions).
The bike course was 2 90km-laps, with the first 12 or 13 km as scenic roads with some sub-urban roads mixed in, and then from there until 43 or so km it was all highway. At about km 45, we turned into a Chinese village, which was very nice, interesting and scenic, but very hot, for while the wind was a bitch, it also provided some much-valued cooler temperatures (at least most of the time, because I did experience some hot wind, which was amazingly unpleasant). The village lasted for about 10km and then we were back on the highway with an oh-so-lovely-and-much-needed (-in-my-case) tailwind.
So after I met Coach at km 60, got (what I thought to be) sufficiently sunscreened, and bathed with cold water (I know those two things sound contradictory, but a) the water came first and b) the sunscreen was so packed on that it literally looked like I had white clothing on), I took off for the rest of the 120 km. Riding back towards transition area the first time increased my confidence a bit because it was so fast with the tailwind and so much easier as well. So at the least, I was looking forward to riding the tailwind on the second loop. But the 2nd loop proved to be quite challenging on the body and mind, such that I wasn't about to concentrate on the bliss that lay ahead, but rather on the survival tactics of the current moment.
After the 90km mark, I really started to feel the heat, and at this point every aid station wasn't coming soon enough. I would be counting down the km to when I could sit in the shade provided from the aid tents (for honestly, the only shade on this course, other than some shade provided by palm trees in the scenic, pre-suburban areas before the highway and a few trees in the village, was the highway overpasses - NO LIE - and most of the course was highway), and when I could get water poured over me to cool me down for at least 3 or 5 km (and also, of course, to get re-sunscreened).
There was one point, at about 7 hours into the race, where I found myself about 10 km from an aid-station - I think it was around km 110 (and I think I didn't seek shade at the previous aid station) - yearning for shade. My heart rate was getting somewhat abnormally high, and I really felt that I should rest and get it down to normal. (Keep in mind that I really wanted to just finish this race now - I hate giving up - but also I knew I had school on Tuesday and a 7:30am flight the next morning in order to get back in time, so I also had to worry about finishing in a condition that wouldn't require me to have to stay at a medical tent.) However, resting in the sun probably wouldn't do me much good. I really, really was not looking forward to 10km more in the shade-less heat, so I eagerly (I almost use the word 'desperately' here) started searching for any trace of shade. I won't lie - I was even looking for ditches or highway signs spanning across a rail with a width great enough and a distance from the ground to the sign large enough to fit a human to perhaps provide enough of a respite from the sun's wrath (now I'm wondering, with that accurate description, whether I should have used the word 'desperately'?!). But despite my best detective efforts, they were futile. So I started hoping that I would be blessed with a highway overpass before the next aid-station, because my heart rate, while riding at a very slow pace (partly because of the wind but mostly all because of the heat) was, well - let's just say it was not a pretty sight upon looking down at my heart rate monitor.
Three km post desperation-outbreak, I spotted a source of respite - and let me tell you, I have never seen a more beautiful highway overpass. It was practically sparkling in the sun. So once I hit the pass, I stopped, had something to drink, and just leaned on my aerobars, sucking in the shade's nutrients. My standing heart rate was around 140 for a while, and if that means nothing to you, I assure you that 140 is WAY too high (at least for an active person). I was VERY surprised by this though, because I did not feel out-of-breath, and that's the point when I realized that a whole new battle had begun - a battle of surviving the heat without incurring any problems that would require serious medical attention.
*Let me interrupt this paragraph to say that if there are any of you denoucing the sport of Ironman at this point, I would have to ask you to not judge the sport based on this race alone, because these conditions were so extraordinary that a typical Ironman race does not fall into the same what-the-crap category ('crap' substituted for lack of a more appropriate but blog-inappropriate word).*
(paragraph continuted from above) That may not sound like material appropriate for the usage of the word 'battle', but the real concerning point for me was that I had had absolutely no previous experience dealing with something like this before (elevated heart rate but feeling like actual heart rate was 30 to 50 beats per minute lower). So I resolved to just take the rest of the bike very relaxed, focus on maintaining my heart rate around 150, and trying to not let it get over 165 max. I hadn't even reached the 120 km yet, so I still had 1/3 of the race to go.
I remember looking at my watch when I stopped under the overpass (where, by the way, a few Chinese onlookers were situated - I wanted to say something to them, but a) my mental capacity was just about full at this point so small talk (aka 'ni hao' and a smile) seemed like something that would require too much of an effort, and b) I felt like they were probably wondering why an athlete in close-to-last place and racing the clock was wasting precious minutes off the bike), and it was about 7 hours and 8 minutes into the race. In keeping with my decision to stay in the shade until my heart rate went sub-130, I stayed there until my stopwatch said 7:14. I couldn't believe it took that long - but, like I said - completely unfamiliar territory.
Now, I had 3 hours and 15 minutes to finish the bike portion, and over 65 km to go. Normally, this would be absolutely no issue, but with the current circumstances I was actually getting a bit worried. Once I hit the 120km aid-station, I had to stop again and sit in the shade for a few minutes after having water poured over me. Coach had ventured over from the other side of the road at the nearly-opposite aid station to meet me here, so he gave me a little pep-talk as well as the rest of his water, because apparently the aid-stations had run out (!!!) (although they had Gatorade). After resting a bit and force-feeding myself a banana and a Gatorade, I got sunscreened again and, just before taking off, was given some cold water from a van that had just driven up to replenish water supplies.
I knew I only had 25 km more until I hit the section with a tail wind, where I could relax more and start booting (going much faster, not vomiting.. :) ). But these 25 km were not going to come easy. If I kept my current pace (affected by the cross wind) for the rest of the race, I would not finish on time, and I was also worried about a 'hill' in the village which, normally would be nothing, but considering the heat and my body's response to it, I was not looking forward to the climb.
After riding 25 more km in a decent amount of agony, I happily made it out of the village and onto the really enjoyable fast ride (and race against the clock) back to transition. At the aid-station at 150 km, I once again saw the comforting, supportive face of Coach (he had apparently spent the whole time since my last visit there between aid stations, helping out the volunteers and the ambulance people! :) ) He was warning me about the clock, but I assured him that the wind was in my favor, and I would be fine. So he had some volunteers take our picture (haha), and after a brief fueling, I took off.
I only encountered one more minor problem before the finish of the bike course - a lightning storm in the distance which, never came too close to comfort but, was accompanied by a change in wind direction, thus cutting off my additional source of power. This wind alteration came at about 15 km before the finish, but I had plenty of time now to make it back before the cut off, so I sucked it up and headed back to transition, crossing the bike finish at about 10 hours and 10 minutes, or 5:10pm - with 20 minutes to spare.
Run transition was decently quick, but I think I had some issues, because I ended up losing my bike bag (thus leaving it at the race due to my early departure and no extra time to search for it) so I think something happened such that the volunteers had to redirect me somewhere. Nothing big, though, I'm sure. I got sunscreened again, got my visor and longsleeved shirt, and started the marathon.
You might ask - why in heck did you grab a long sleeved shirt? Yes, it was still very hot, but my burns were starting to really bother me, and it was still sunny out, so despite the sunscreen, I draped the shirt over my shoulders as I walked the first maybe half-hour of the marathon. Now this didn't make me particularly happy, to be walking, because the run should have been my easiest conquest in this course - but it was still very hot, and more concerning, my legs were really starting to hurt from the burns that I was just discovering I had acquired on the bike course.
So I walked for a bit, and then started up intervals of running about 2 minutes and walking 4. That's all I could mentally muster for the moment. The running portions were at a good pace so I was making some decent ground for 2 minutes at a time, and I decided that once the sun went down that I would start to make the run portions longer. The first 17km (a little over a third of the marathon) went decently smooth in this way, but as the sun went down, the agony of my skin increased, and I was not able to completely subscribe to that plan (in addition to the pain from the burns, I had a few decent cuts on my foot, as I mentioned before, from the swim, which were definitely uncomfortable (especially the one under the arch of my foot spanning about 2.5cm), but I just thought they were blister-like injuries so I gave them no heed). So, around km 20, just about half way, I was thrust into my third mode of survival-mentality of the day, as I was continuously trying to figure out just how much I would have to run and at what pace in order to finish on time.
The hardest past of the marathon was probably around 15 hours and 30 minutes (10:30pm), where the pain was probably at its worst, and pretty must sustained there for the rest of the race. In addition to the pain, there were race-helpers on bikes riding next to us (there were a bunch of triathletes around me, maybe within 1 km there were about 10 of us or so) somewhat pushing us to go faster. Haha. HAHAHA. Sorry. I wrote that and burst out laughing at my computer a bit because although I know they just wanted us to finish, I'm sure they couldn't imagine what was going on inside of our bodies and our minds.
Amidst my obsessive pace-calculating, I think in my delirium I was sometimes substituting the concept of minutes per kilometer with minutes per mile, because towards the end of the race I started to get overly nervous (when in reality I should only have been decently nervous about the status of the probability of finishing). My mind was telling me: 'Here is where we will find out what you are made of. Your body is being extremely stubborn, and I am trying my best to talk reason into it - that we have come all this way and it has to put in its two cents and carry us through just for another 75 minutes. It must do some running or else we will not make it, and the sooner it starts, the better. I cannot carry us alone! ' And eventually my mind prevailed, and convinced my body to get a move on - although I couldn't even manage to do a set interval of running-walking. I had to just find a few occassions where my mind was at its strongest and close my eyes, cease thinking, and just lunge into a run until the momentum wore out.
When I finally got to about .5 km to go, there was a woman in front of me who was jogging, and so I decided to initiate my last 'explosive' movement (that energy needed to go from walking to running) and suck it out til the end. My muscles were surprisingly fresh (actually not surprisingly because I had hardly been exhausting them in the race), and I glided through to the finish line, trying to ignore all cries from my legs and feet. Once I crossed the finish line, I let out a "faaaaaaack. That was the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life" - as Coach video-taped me. :). And from there, I went to get my clothes to change into (a task with which I needed assistance from Chinese volunteers...women, of course), visited the medical tent for my burns, grabbed something to eat, and headed off onto our next journey to retrieve my bike from transition (which was difficult because the buses to transition for the evening had stopped running about 15 minutes earlier), go back to the hotel and disassemble the bikes, pack, tend to my wounds, sleep as much as possible before 4:30am, and then wake up to catch our 7:30am plane (all-in-all we ended up sleeping less than 2 hours...ohhh dear).
Lessons learned:
1) If you are taking medicine which makes you even a little sensitive to the sun, you must either discontinue this medicine before the race or invest in a very cool (temperature related term :) ) long-sleeved and long pant-legged outfit (which a few triathletes were wearing, and at first I was a bit disconcerted by this but then realized their genius) - unless you want to have to go to the doctor every day for one week and counting and get de-bandaged, cleaned, burn-creamed, and re-bandaged up for an hour, as well as the other fun things that go along with largely-restricted movement (although the silver lining there is that I get to reap the benefits of the amazing Korean health care system).
2) You must always practice the swim course (and if possible the bike and the run as well) before the race unless there are ceaseless lightning storms or a ceaseless storm with very strong winds which run the risk of a tornado (aka I should have gone back later that day to practice when the storm had subsided).
While I agree with the professional triathlete Chris McCormack, who won the Ironman World Championships in 2007, when he made the following comment about Ironman (70.3) China 2009: "That was the hardest thing I've ever done," I can tell you that the experience and completion of this race has made me a stronger and more determined person, in the sense that I actually will be able to apply the new mentalities that I discovered inside of me to my everyday life and its challenges. To anyone out there who is at all interested in the sport, I would 100% recommend giving it a shot. It has the power to open up your eyes to all of life's possibilities.
Oh - and I qualified for the World Championships in Kona, effectively giving me the opportunity to realize my dream of 8 years - a task which all of my friends and family have abundantly contributed to. Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart. With love and support such as yours and a passionate will, anything is possible.
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