Ironman  - Zurich  -  25^th July, 2010

There is a character in “Waiting for Godot”  whose name I couldn’t for the life of me remember during my Ironman on July 25^th although I thought of him often.  On the off chance anyone is remotely interested,  his name is Estragon and he is the one for whom Beckett wrote the line  “I can’t go on – I’ll go on”.  There were times during the Marathon when I could relate in that while the mind was telling the body to for f… sake stop, the legs somehow ignored that and kept shuffling   and after 14 hours and 23 minutes I finally made it to the finish line.

Flashback to July of the previous year when I found myself drunk and in front of the computer,  credit card in hand.  Now in fairness that is not an entirely unusual situation but the  results are generally fairly innocuous and within a few days some books and/or CD’s arrive from my good friends at Amazon.

Instead, after this particular transaction, I found myself signed up as one of 13 (later to become 12) from ATC who had Volunteered themselves for the madness that is Ironman.     Anyone whose opinion I valued on the subject, advised me that my first step should be to sign up for the Dublin City Marathon that October, so I did that and jumped on to week 5 of an l8 week programme I printed off the internet.  I went into Marathon training as somebody who thought a 10k run was a decent outing  but the programme gradually built up the mileage and four days out of every week for the following few months, I took to the old Dublin Road with my iPod and water bottle belt.  I must have looked like a slow moving suicide bomber heading towards Kilbeggan and can only hope and assume the good people of the town figured I was unlikely to be an Islamic Fundamentalist come to

lay waste to the local Distillery.     Training for and completing the Marathon was certainly beneficial both from the physical and psychological perspective in that upping my run mileage considerably, helped build the required endurance for the Ironman and psychologically it made the Ironman event seem possible as prior                to that the run section was the one which caused me most concern.

It also served as an introduction to the left side/right side brain arguments which were to become a common feature of my months of training thereafter.   For the uninitiated among you, this involves one side of the brain convincing the other it can manage something it doesn’t fancy undertaking.   An example of this scintillating dialogue would be something along the lines of ……

Left side -  “ok fat ass, you’ve been going for a while now, so if you just get as far as the next telegraph pole,  I’ll let you walk”.

Right side – “Grand job”.

At next telegraph pole – left side – “ok just get to the next telegraph pole and I’ll let you walk”

Right side – “hang on a minute – isn’t that what you said at the last one”.

Left side – “who the hell asked you – just shut up and run, fat girl, run”

Erudite  debate  indeed.

Following the Marathon I made one of my few intelligent moves and signed up with Morgan Fox who had agreed to coach several of us through the process.

I know that without the structure and guidance he provided, I would have been running around like a headless chook taking bits and pieces from lots of different programmes and not getting anything right.   Thus began a weekly routine of 2 swims, 2 cycles and l long run.   I also had to build in some core work in an effort to relocate the abs I had spent several years (not to mention a lot of money) burying under protective layers.   While I always had company for the swims, I’m such a poor runner that the runs and many of my bike sessions were done by myself which is not to be recommended – I figured as much when I found myself talking to my bike in the course of a three and a half hour spin in January.    That at least was done outdoors but the inclement weather for the months around December, January and February meant a lot of the scheduled bike sessions had to be undertaken on the dreaded turbo trainer.  I worked my way through the complete series of “The West Wing”    “The Wire”  and  “Mad Men” and notwithstanding the fact that they are all top notch entertainment, turbo torture is never going to be an enjoyable way to pass the time.   It was at this stage of the process that the merits of having so many fellow lunatics really became apparent.   Despite my own best efforts I found myself very down about the training during those months and wondering why in hell I had committed myself to this in the first place.   Only the other 11 experiencing the same difficulties could have kept me going at that stage and their constant help and support – not to mention good humour will always be much appreciated.

From March on the weather improved a lot and training became much more enjoyable (granted  I know that’s all relative in this context).   We did a couple of half Ironman events in May and thereafter the An Post cycling tours etc. introduced a more social element to training and the solo outings were restricted only to the runs where my trusty iPod stopped me from turning into  a serial killer.

July rolled around much quicker than expected but confidence was growing all the time and as each week passed, the prospect of successfully completing the event became more realistic.   When asked by Morgan what my goals were at the outset, I was undoubtedly the least ambitious member of the camp.  I told him I would like to finish and that preferably I’d like to do so with a smile on my face and without being hospitalised.    While expected times etc. did enter my mind  at various stages, the ultimate goal remained to finish the race and in the event that I was happy with times then that would be an added bonus.   

It was almost worth signing up just to see the look on people’s faces when the distances involved were relayed to them.   Both my parents were perturbed when I finally got around to telling them I had signed up for the event – although for different reasons.  I think my father thought the time spent training would rule me out as his wine drinking buddy, while as a Doctor, my mother’s concern related to potential physical damage resulting from the regimen.   Neithers’ concerns were lessened when they arrived home one evening to find me watching the television with my prescription swimming goggles on.   I tried explaining that in a moment of exceptional clumsiness (even by my high standards) I had sat on my glasses and was only using the goggles because there was a Programme on which I was particularly interested in but they weren’t buying it.  Hopefully now that it’s all over, they can take comfort from the fact that if they hear me shuffling around the house at 6/7 a.m. I am more likely to be returning from a night out than heading out the door to cycle up the side of a mountain.  

I don’t know  if it was the extent of the training we had undertaken, or the fact that there were so many of us to keep each other company in Zurich, but in any event there was a surprising lack of nerves in the lead up to the event.   Once the administrative side of things had been looked after and we had registered, attended the Race Briefing and dropped off our bike’s etc. most of the remaining time seemed to be spent stuffing our faces with pasta.    I’m sure that there are carb deprived Atkins devotees, for whom that sounds like their idea of heaven and don’t get me wrong, I would think it obvious  I love my food but a couple days of piling it in, hungry or otherwise, wasn’t as much fun as it might sound.   Equally unfunny was the fact that I found myself in a room beside what appeared to be a battery operated screaming machine. For the three nights before the race I got little or no sleep and had I met the parents and their little darling, I would have happily chucked them all out the hotel window.   Race day arrived and I headed down for breakfast at 4 a.m.   There was a surreal atmosphere in the Hotel Dining Room which was full of people loading on as much as they could manage – including Tommy and Dave (Seery) who were tucking into pasta and pasta sauce at what seemed like the middle of the night to me.      All my system is used to at that hour is curry chips on the way home (yes,  I am ALL class ) so I restricted myself to toast and coffee together with a power bar and a few jaffa cakes.  

We took the tram down to Transition and although I generally don’t like hanging around before an event kicks off, I would like to have had a little more time in Transition to organise myself before we started.  Instead, having checked over the bike, gear etc. I went in search of the ladies bathroom and found myself in an extremely long queue which was moving so slowly that I wondered whether I’d be the first person in history to find themselves in the loo when the gun went off.

On my way to the swim start, I met Dorothy Duffy from the Midland Tri Club and  as a Veteran of these events, she was ideal, relaxed company to be in as we made our way to the water, wished each other well and waded in.    At the previous day’s Race Briefing and indeed on the morning of the event,  the indications were that we were to swim to a  buoy and wait for a hooter to sound but it seemed to me that everybody just got in the water five minutes after the elites and kept swimming.  If the hooter went off to signal the start of the event, I certainly didn’t hear it and instead kept heading for a large yellow blob in the distance.   Both our caps and the buoys were coloured yellow which made sighting quite difficult and after a while I made the decision to simply follow the swimmers in front in the hope that they knew where they were going.  I would have expected a mass start involving 2,300 swimmers to result in more kicking, shoving etc. but that only really became an issue at the two large buoys on the 1.9k route and when things got scrappy there I had my water polo days to refer back to and was able to give as good as I got.

There is a completely different atmosphere on the day of an Ironman event.  The swim was a 2 loop course and at the end of the first one we had to exit the water at an island and re-enter.    This was the only point of the swim at which the water was shallow and many of the swimmers ahead of me at that stage stopped and started to walk in the water towards the island.  Were it a Sprint or even an Olympic distance event, I expect this could have caused problems but in an Ironman most seemed relaxed in the knowledge that it was going to be a long day and a couple of minutes here or there was not going to make a huge difference.  I exited the swim in 1.25 which was about 5 minutes slower than expected but nothing disastrous.

Transition for 2,300 people is an interesting place and its amazing how  all  notions of modesty went out the window.  The changing tents provided were tiny given the number of competitors involved so nudity appeared to be the norm.  While changing into my cycling gear I wondered if every pervert in Switzerland had made their way to Zurich for the weekend’s entertainment and having changed,  I headed off onto the cycling course, which we had been assured was relatively flat.  I’d love to meet the f….er who told us that.

For the first 30 kilometers or so I was very happy with my average speed,  I was taking food on board in the required amounts and all was well with the world.  That continued until approx. the 50 km mark when I hit a climb called “The Beast” (Yet to establish whether its title is in any way related to Tommy Murray).  A few minutes into that climb I thought I felt something in my cycling helmet but because it was at quite a steep point I thought it would be best to wait until the top before sorting it out.   A few seconds later I was left in no doubt that it was an unhappy wasp as it stung me in the head.  Not realising that they could come back for seconds, I thought at that stage he had done his worst and again decided to wait until the top of the climb before removing him from the helmet.  Unfortunately, he stung for a  second time and my head began to swell inside the helmet.  At the top of the climb I removed my helmet and he made good his escape.  I adjusted it to as loose a setting as I could find and put the helmet back on but my head continued to swell and very quickly caused a bad headache and nausea.  My hands and feet were also swelling up and while the bike is supposed to be used as a fuelling station, I found myself unable to take anything other than water and the occasional mouthful of Isotonic drink for the following l00 km plus.

While I had been happy with my average speed earlier on,  it continued to drop and it quickly became apparent that my hoped for cycle time of 6 ½ hours wasn’t going to happen .  I continued doing the maths at various stages thereafter and a possible 6 ½ quickly became 6.45,  7 and beyond.  The mind plays funny tricks at times like that and the cut-off point of  l6 hours became a genuine concern because I knew I was going to have a very slow bike time.  I was also going to have to face into the Marathon with little or no fuel on board and if I had to walk most or all of it, I was cutting it fine in trying to get in under the l6 hour limit.  

You would have to be an idiot to go into an event of this kind without expecting low points and preparing accordingly.   In advance of the race, I had decided that if it got to the stage where things weren’t looking good, I would remind myself of what I put myself through to get there  - 4 hour cycles in January/February when the temperatures were so low, I couldn’t feel my hands or feet and had icicles  forming on my eyebrows,   7 a.m. swim starts in the Lake, landing on my backside several times in the course of a 10 mile run over frozen snow on Christmas Day while children in passing cars (quite sensibly) pointed at me and laughed.    The list goes on.  I tried to concentrate on the positives.  At  Heart  Break  Hill, a short but steep climb at about the 86k mark, there was a huge and very vocal Athlone contingent,  a Tour de France style atmosphere and no wasps, so I enjoyed that. The sun was shining, the Swiss countryside was gorgeous and I hadn’t been born there which meant my idea of a fun day out extended beyond standing at my gate, ringing a cow bell and indiscriminately shouting “hup hup”at  2,300  passing strangers.  I also noted the fact that even when coming to the end of my cycle and in a very poor time, I was only at that stage being passed by some serious looking cyclists on very expensive machinery and thought to myself that they must have been some really shitty swimmers.

The bike took me all of 7.20 but as soon as I got into Transition and removed my helmet, there was immediate relief from the throbbing headache.    Aileen, my  on-site Motivation Coach and drug dealer had given me some pain killers the evening before the race and I took two of them while taking my time to change into running gear.   Conscious of the l6 hour time limit, my intention was to keep jogging for as long as possible but also to get  fuel on board as soon as possible, so I decided to make my way to the first aid-station along the route and see how things were at that stage.   I didn’t realise that it would be within 1 km of the start and I didn’t want to risk stopping there and being unable to restart, so instead I grabbed an isotonic drink and chugged that while continuing to plod.  The headache was disappearing quickly and surprisingly my legs weren’t mush.  I zombie shuffled for a couple of kilometers before the first sighting of our amazing support group (which included Marc Butler – I have said it before and will say  it again, it takes an exceptional person to have such a bad day from a personal perspective but still come back out on the Course to support the rest of us.  I know I would have thrown the toys out of the pram and headed back for my Hotel where I would have been found hours later still crying like a little girl).  Their huge cheer was a major boost.   I continued shuffling until I got to an aid station at approximately the 5 km mark, where I took a gel and some water on board and continued on.  I decided at that stage to try and restrict the breaks to two every loop which meant I would only have to zombie shuffle for 5ish  kms before getting a break.  It is said that the best way to eat an elephant is  ‘one bite at a time’  and I thought I should treat the Marathon  similarly – all I had to do was get to my chosen aid stations at 5 odd km intervals and as long as I restricted myself to a brief walk at that point before restarting, I might be able to finish in the allotted time.

Crowd support was an enormous help, as was the brief exchange of words with other Athlone and indeed Mullingar competitors.  I am still amazed by Charlie, who took time out of his seriously impressive run to slow down and shuffle beside me for a while on loop one to wish me all the best.      It  will no doubt sound awful for me to admit that there was also huge comfort to be derived from the obvious difficulties others were experiencing  - you know things are getting serious when you are congratulating yourself for remaining continent while several around you are struggling  in that department.

I’d be lying if I said the run section wasn’t tough – more particularly given that the sadist who designed it, brought us past the finishing line not once, not twice but three times before being allowed to enter the finishing chute  but to be honest, I had actually expected it to be worse.    Once I broke it down to manageable portions of 5 k’s at a time, surrounding athletes, musicians and supporters were a great distraction.  In the middle of each loop a different colour bracelet was provided so competitors and supporters alike knew what progress was being made.  At the start of the run section, I was enviously looking at those sporting enough to suggest that their day was nearly complete but equally, towards the end of my run, I had huge sympathy for others around me who had none, or so few on their wrist that they quite obviously weren’t going to make the l6 hour cut-off point.    How they convinced themselves to continue is beyond me and I can but marvel at the mental strength that must have taken.  You will have read it in previous Race Reports but it is most certainly the case that the Ironman Marathon is an extremely odd experience.   As someone who generally spends the run section of triathlons distracting myself  by checking out the backsides of the countless people who pass me out, I found myself in the unusual position of being the one doing the overtaking.  There were numerous extremely fit, impressive looking athletes whose walk was even slower than my shuffle and equally, there were times when I was left for dead by an ungainly looking competitor who was flying along.

For the last 2 km or so of the run, I felt absolutely no pain and could think of nothing other than the finish line.  It felt like I picked up to a sprint but I am sure it was no more than snails pace and for some inexplicable reason, I couldn’t get the Black Eyed Peas out of my head.  I must have looked like the one who flew over the cuckoo’s nest, waddling along and singing to myself “I’ve got a feeling, that tonights gonna be a good night” etc. (and it would have been if the Swiss hadn’t made the decision to shut up shop at a ridiculously early hour – no room at their Inns for Ironmen with a lip on)   I entered the finishing chute  which stretched for a couple of hundred metres, high fived everyone in sight and crossed the line with the Irish flag  over my head (corny I know – it seemed like an obvious thing to do at the time)  and a broad smile on my face.  After l4 hours 23 minutes it was done.   Yes, it was  slow time and yes I was buckled   but it was done.

Was it all worth it?       Abso bloody lutely -  I have never felt anything to compare to the feeling of crossing that finish line.    Perhaps if I met the man of my dreams  and won the Lotto  (a sizeable Jackpot needless to say) on the same day ,  it might come close to replicating it, but I couldn’t be sure.

Would I do it again?        I try not to use the word   never  so will instead say that if any of you ever hear even the slightest suggestion that I am contemplating it, you have my permission – no  scrap that,  you have my specific instruction to beat some sense into me using whatever implements are to hand.  

While I am delighted to have done it, I am ashamed to say that training for it resulted in my stooping to low standards I would never have thought myself capable of.    I have turned down invitations to parties, I have left good parties early to go home and get some sleep in time for a long cycle the following morning and perhaps worst of all, I have gone to a party and drank nothing but non-alcoholic beer.   On that subject, word from the wise, you should absolutely steer clear of that stuff – I have no idea what they put into it  but the morning after several hours consuming it, I had what was without doubt the worst hangover of my life.   In fact, it took a couple of beers to cure me from the ill effects caused by the non-alcoholic variety.   All the fear and none of the fun – down with that sort of thing.

There are so many people to thank I don’t know where to start – my family for their support – notwithstanding the fact that they thought this was a ridiculous undertaking.    They also treated me to a welcome home scene scarily reminiscent of the Curleys in “The Snapper”.   Until the Champagne was produced, I thought M.T. had taken a wrong turn and dropped me off at a Pikey Camp Site.  Clubmates who were such an encouragement in the months leading up to the event and sent countless messages while we were all in Zurich.  The extraordinary team who supported us while we were there – Morgan, Maria, Conor, Marie-Therese, Aileen, Eimear, Tracey, Andrew, Aisling, Mary, Martina, Stacey and her three and of course Conor’s mother Anne who went to huge efforts to make sure there were flags, road-markings, vocal support and any means necessary to help spur us on.  It was greatly appreciated.

Lastly, words fail me when I try to express my level of indebtedness to the ll guys with whom I had the privilege of training, traveling and competing.  They are an exceptional bunch of guys without whom I most certainly wouldn’t have got through this adventure.  If asked, they will tell  you that they didn’t differentiate because I was the only female on the team but don’t believe them.  I was minded, humoured, entertained, encouraged and when necessary (but only then) told to shut up and get on with it.    Lads I owe you all so much more than the sincerest of thanks and the same has to be said when it comes to Morgan Fox – Coach,   I wish I could say I had the good sense never to doubt you but we both know that’s not true.  I am sure there were numerous occasions on which you wished you had a fiver for every e-mail of mine which started with the words  “I don’t mean to question you but......”   I couldn’t have done it without you.   

As for what happens now, I think I’ll use my time to maximise potential in areas where I have much more natural ability.  Unlike triathlon where I’ll never be anything other than mediocre at best, I hope I don’t sound immodest when I express the view that I could become a top class booze hound.  It will of course require some caution on my part in that the amount of exercise being taken over the last couple of months meant I could essentially eat as much as I wanted and still loose weight, whereas commitment to boozing could well result in my becoming the subject of a TV3 special entitled “the 30 stone woman who can’t get out of bed without a JCB”.    On the other hand, I might clear significant royalties when Oprah comes to interview me before the roof is taken off the house to lift me out to have my stomach stapled –  now there’s a thought!