It’s been 1 week and 1 day since I raced Ironman Cairns on 6 June. In the last 7 days I have reflected on what I did, how I went and how I feel about it. This is my account as best as I can put it down, how I went.
Firstly my build to this race was very different to all my other races. I had only been working part time for the last 6 months as I slowly try to build my remedial massage business from ground up. It is taking a while but the process is worth it. For this race it was also the first time I had employed a coach to write my programming for me. Previously I had either bought generic programs from the net or written my own programs.
When Wendy and I moved up to Peregian Beach in December 2020, I was unfit and quite over weight. As many that may read this know I had just closed the gymnasium that I had built in Newcastle in December after 7 years of working and being defined as such it was a very different feel to my life not being attached to a Gym and not being relied upon by people for fitness training and advice 6 days a week. I had moved from the town that I had lived in for 22 years through out my life. To say that I was carrying too much weight and left over stress from closing the business I built from scratch and selling our house would be a gross understatement.
So I started this build from a quite a low fitness point. However, I quickly settled in to Sunshine Coast life though and for the first month or so, Train, Eat, Sleep and Repeat was my life. I shed nearly 6 kg in weight in 4 weeks I believe from the regular eating and training and stress reduction. I was starting to feel better than I had in years.
A nasty case of Gastro over my 50th birthday weekend was a bit of a bugger to say the least but for the first 4 months of training I was generally hitting all of my training targets and feeling really good about my life in general. I literally said to myself, “ man my life is perfect now I don’t think I’ve ever been happier”.
Then I got the phone call. Mum’s had a heart attack. It’s like you stick your head up for a second just to acknowledge you have a good life and you need to be smacked down and told stop enjoying yourself so much. Within 24 hours I was on a plane to Melbourne to see my mum as at that stage the prognosis was not good. I got to Melbourne and mum had stabilised and was actually sitting up and alert which was great. Due to COVID restrictions we were only allowed to have a maximum of 2 visitors for a maximum of 2 hours over the 24 hour period. A rule I basically ignored so I could visit mum as much as possible while I was in Melbourne.
In reality though, while in Melbourne I had a lot of hours in the day when I wasn’t allowed to be with mum. So Over the 3 days I was there I managed to get a couple of runs in. Partly to keep my momentum up, partly for the consistency that is required form Ironman training and partly just to get out and clear my head and work though the shit I was feeling about the fact my nearly 93 year old mother had had a heart attack and her mortality was staring me in my face.
While not running I also caught up with my family and got to see many of my extended family for the first time since mum’s 90th birthday. That was nice.
Once I returned home it was on with life again. It was funny how my mental state shifted in stages after my trip to Melbourne. When I first resumed training I felt guilty for not being down in Melbourne. But after a couple of weeks I began to feel in a better head space again and knew that my life up here in the Sunshine Coast was where I was meant to be and that if I needed to get there I could get to Melbourne when I had to. That was a good thing because in only 6 weeks after I got back from Melbourne the Race was on.
During that time in between then I also completed a Course toward my continuing education for remedial massage and helped out with pacing for Ultraman. (You can read about that on my previous blog). In the previous 4 months my training had little distraction but from 7 weeks out a little bit of life got thrown at me and while some was not positive obviously. It was a lesson learnt in accepting that nothing ever goes perfectly for long and that you need to be adaptable and not give up when perfect goes out the window.
We go to Cairns on the Wednesday before the race on Sunday and Wendy and I were in a great place. Mentally I knew I was well prepared and although Wendy wasn’t confident about some aspects of her training. I knew that she was ready and I was confident she would achieve something special on the day.
It was quite strange though, because in previous Ironmans I have felt nervous and on edge the entire week leading in to the race. This time I had a sense of calm and confidence I had not experienced previously. It was not until the day before the race when we were on our way to drop of our bikes in to the transition area so they could be transported to the bike start did I feel the nerves kick in at all. But even then it was not anxiety as much as excitement to get out and start.
I think the calmness I felt about the race had many facets to it. In large part due to the training I had done and with my coach Greg McDermott from Koa Sports had in black and white showing me how much fitter I was than in all my previous attempts at Ironmans. I also had a pacing strategy for the bike and the run that I felt was workable. Previously I had gone on to the bike with a rough idea of how hard I should push. But with a rough guide comes a lack lustre attempt to follow it and thus in every previous Ironman I had gone out too hard. With the run we also had a pacing goal in mind on how to approach the run where as all my previous races where go out what I felt easyish and hang on for grim death for as long as I could. Also I felt I actually had a nutrition plan that was practiced and workable. I had worked with Jason Cheshire at INFINIT Nutrition and come up with a good structured nutrition plan on how many calories I was going to have per hour on the bike and then on the run and when I was going to be taking them on board. Over the previous 4 weeks I had dialled this in and was confident that it would work well.
After we dropped our bikes off the day before the race, it was off to the supermarket to get our treats for post race and then back to our apartment to get off our feet and rest as much as possible. I had a couple of naps through out the day and basically just chilled out and read all day. Trying to be as fresh as possible for the day that was to follow.
I’ll end part a here as this was actually more than I originally planned to write. But I think the journey to race day is as important as race day itself.
Part B will follow very shortly.