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| Sunny but chilly and windy day on the IM Wisconsin course |
With 2 weeks to IM Chattanooga, this past weekend was the last long training weekend before my 2 week taper leading to the ironman. The plan was to head to up to Wisconsin and train on the IM course and then cheer on our friends and other athletes racing IM Wisconsin on Sunday. With a season of training that had more downs than ups I though that on top of being there for our friends and teammates, cheering on other athletes would help inspire me for my own race and help boost my confidence.
Saturday
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| Morning at Lake Monona |
My workout for the day was 1 hour open water swim followed by a 4 hour bike with 3*60 min at 75-80% of LT effort intervals (slightly harder than IM effort). With lake Michigan being too cold for me to swim, we woke up early and drove up to Madison, WI, planning on swimming in lake Monona, knowing that the water temp will be warmer than lake Michigan and there will be plenty of other swimmers there that day. Following the swim, I planed to immediately jump on my bike and ride the IM course, 4 hours - I assumed I would ride the "stick" section (i.e., the out and back section of the course) and the loop once. The goal was after a short warm up to pick up the pace and hit the intervals.
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| Ready to go |
We got to Madison at around 9 am and immediately headed to the lake. The water temperature was low 70s, perfect for a long swim with my full-sleeve wetsuit (my wetsuit recently got badly ripped and fixed and I was eager to try and see if the fix works). Going in to the swim I was focused on swimming the entire 1 hour that I was supposed to swim. Mentally, I need to split the swim time as 1 hour of open water swim (not during a race) seems too long for me to achieve. I decided to mentally split the swim into two 30 min loops. The water temp was perfect and immediately after getting in the water I got into a good swimming rhythm. After what seemed like forever I looked at my Garmin and saw it's only been 5 min. Ouch. Time passes so slow when swimming (at least for me). Ignoring my Garmin I kept swimming, focusing on the first 30 min. My swimming felt really good and strong. At the end of the 1 hour I swam about 1.8 miles, which is not bad for me. More importantly I was confident about my swim for the coming race.
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| Ride Selfie |
For the bike section Michelle joined me and we both headed out on the course. After the 20 min warm-up, I planned to pick up the pace, but my head and legs were not really there. Not sure why, I just couldn't keep my power high enough. On top of that it was windy and chilly, which did not help with my confidence 2 weeks before the race. While not going as fast as my prescribed workout was supposed to be, I was trying to focus on my nutrition and keeping hydrated. However, with the ride taking longer than expected (just under 5 hours) and the colder temperatures, I ended up not drinking enough or eating enough. Ouch #2! Well at least I know what I did wrong and know what to change for race day. I also believe that any ride is better than no ride, so I was happy with my pushing thorough those dark moments (and obviously there were) and finishing the ride. 70 miles complete.
Sunday
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| Freezing but Smiling |
Sunday workout was supposed to include 3 hour bike working on IM pacing followed by 30 min run. We woke up very early planning to ride part of the IM course before the racing athletes hit the course. At 6:30am, we were welcomed by a cold morning in the low 40s and were under dressed. Being very cold and the legs tired from Saturday's ride, we ended up just riding easy (yes, I run on solar power and it was just not happening) and cut it short calling it a day after 2:15 hours. Quick change and I went on my run. It took some self convincing to go on the run, and at the end I was so happy I did. Surprisingly after the first 5 min my legs got loosen and I settled into a good comfortable pace, which made me happy that at least something was going right. After a quick shower and breakfast at our favorite breakfast place in Middleton (that biscuit tasted so good still feeling hungry from not eating enough the day before), we went on the most important goal of the weekend - spectating IM Wisconsin.
Timberline Climb
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| Cowbells on the bike course |
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| When the going get tough |
We started our IM spectating and cheering on the bike course. We picked the top of the Timberline climb as the spot where we would wait for our friends and cheer. Timberline is one of the longer climbs on the course and you get to do it twice. It is about 1 mile long, then flatten and then goes back up in a rather steep, short and painful incline. I remembered from 2 years ago when I raced
IM Wisconsin (see my race report) how important was the crowd support on that section. To me when I was climbing that hill it felt like I was riding in the Tour de France with all people cheering at the side of the road and the inspirational quotes written on the pavement. So I though it would be a great place to watch the bike course and it was. We timed our arrival so we would get to see both friends that were racing this year on their first lap. Upon arrival, we see the huge crowds, music, cowbells, people wearing customs and the atmosphere was electrifying. I was getting butterflies and I wasn't even racing this year. We jumped in to the cheering crowed and joined in the cheers. Hearing the crowed cheer and remembering my race, I got all emotional. I even started to think that this may not have been the greatest idea pre my IM race, as I started to have doubts. I was going back and forth from being inspired to worrying about my race, but seeing our friends pass and high-fiving them was priceless. Once our friend passes we decided to head back to the car and drive to Madison to watch the run part.
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Fireman Rob
"Your Strength Is In Your Passion" |
The Run
We decided to position ourselves at the run start and then go to different places on the course. It was fun cheering on athletes as they start the run and motivating them to run and not walk. This year
Fireman Rob was doing the race and it is always very inspirational to see him on the run course all dressed up in his full fireman gear. I saw him for the first time in 2012 when I was volunteering at IM Wisconsin and have been following him ever since. Rob, after spending 8 days in ground zero doing search and recovery after 9/11 and as a way to honor those firefighters who were lost in 9/11, took up Ironman racing. This year, seeing him was even more special as he is trying to break the Guinness book of records for the most 70.3 distance races completed in one year.
We spend the afternoon moving from one spot to another enjoying the sunny day (quite a change from this low 40s at 6am).
Throughout this day of spectating, I had mixed feelings about what it was doing to my own race confidence, with points of ups and downs. So when athletes started to finish their race, we headed to the finish line. Once there all the doubts disappeared. Just hearing those words "YOU ARE AN IRONMAN", seeing the faces of the athletes making the left-hand turn to the finish line, picking up the pace, the suffering face changing into a smile, made all my doubts disappear. I was and still am inspired and got back my motivation. If you have never spectated an Ironman event, I highly recommend doing so, even for non-athletes, it is always amazing to see people concerning their personal challenges, and believing in themselves, pushing themselves to get to the finish line, to hear those words ...
I am happy to report that both friends that were racing finished there race!
Awesome day out there IM Wisconsin athletes
Thanks for reading
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