This week's blog is coming straight out of the King Kamehameha Hotel - the race venue of the Ironman World Champs!
Fortunately, since it only becomes swamped with Ironman athletes in race week, I got a great rate for this week for a twin queen room, which I am sharing with Megan Webber, another Aussie athlete.
I'd love to write this whole blog about the past 2 days! But first about the rest of the week.
Kind of taper - but not quite
I had a pretty standard Monday-Thursday in Melbourne. Lots of loose ends for work I had to TRY to tie up (of course there will still be a bit to do while I'm here, but I got most of it done). I always find this time before a race mentally tough. You're not quite into taper (I have NO problem backing right off once taper time comes) but you know you've done all the big stuff, and now it's just keeping the tank topped up, so to speak.
That makes it hard for me - a couple of sessions this week were tough mentally, because I was so "on" for last weekend, I felt like "really? Do I have to? Can't I just chill now?"
But the highlights were Wednesday's bike/run, where I went pretty well on the bike, despite the heavy legs, and followed with my best run off the Wednesday bike for several years. A huge boost. Also on Thursday in swim squad, I managed 6x200m leaving off a 3.15 cycle time. That was swimming on feet, but I've only managed that set once before, so I was really happy.
Connecting with friends before leaving
The other real highlight before I left was catching up with 2 different sets of triathlon friends for breakfast the 2 mornings before I left. This sport has brought so many wonderful friendships into our lives, but for this prep, I haven't had many chances to hang out with those friends. It was lovely to catch up and get lots of good luck hugs from them all 😘
Getting to Kona
Some of the sights of Ironman, including the Banyan tree
Nothing could beat the nightmare journey we had in 2011, where we had to sleep at the gate in Melbourne and spend a night in Auckland! But a 3hr delay on Friday meant I missed my inter island flight to Kona and had another 4 hour wait in Honolulu. Luckily I met yet another nice triathlete, Lachlan Green and we had breakfast and waited together. I even squeezed in some compression in my boots at the airport, which I doubt I would have dared to do on my own! Strength in numbers!
At least you don't really have jet lag coming here though. The time difference is only 3 hours, even though it is a day behind. I had a great night's sleep Friday, and Megan and I had a lovely ride to Waikoloa on Saturday. My run off the bike, albeit short, felt amazing. And then we had dinner cooked for us last night by a lovely guy, Matt who will be volunteering on race day. Arriving back in Kona, and just breathing in the beautiful Hawaiian Aloha makes my heart sing! I still pinch myself that I even made it here once, let alone for a third time. I'm soaking up all the sights, just like it was my first visit.
I won't write about my run this morning, as that's part of next week's story.......and it wasn't particularly pleasant in the heat!!
....you ain't never gonna keep me down. Or so the song went (if I remember correctly from my post-rugby match drinking days)
And post-rugby match is exactly the way my body has felt since I face planted on Wednesday 😢
It's funny, what I love about writing these blogs is that I'm planning them in my mind all week (that can be a great distraction during long training sessions). But by Wednesday I was beginning to worry it would be a bit of a boring week, just a review of all the training sessions I was ticking off as planned. Until about 8am that is.
I'd ridden that morning with the Trifitness crew. A really solid ride back into strong headwind, made harder by the indoor 2hr session I'd done in a 35C tent on Tuesday as part of the sodium study I'm involved with.
I was absolutely frozen when I finished the ride - the wind had been bitterly cold. I stood by our heater for a few minutes, but decided I'd better just get my 30min run off the bike done, and then I could warm up.
The face plant
My feet were frozen, and I couldn't really feel them as I ran. I couldn't have been any more than about 4 min into the run, when a paving stone jumped up out of the ground and tripped me!!! I went down very very hard. Hit my hands and knees first, but I guess the rugby instincts kicked in and I immediately rolled on my right shoulder. I sat on the footpath, a little stunned. Checked my knee was ok, and there didn't seem to be any major damage. I walked a few steps, started jogging, and thought I must be OK. Finished the run, but felt what seemed like a little stitch in my right chest area, towards the end. I was in a bit of a daze the rest of the day, went to work, but wasn't very switched on.
I went to the pool that night, and by then the chest was quite sore. But I wanted to know if it was even feasible to turn up to swim squad the next morning. Oh at this point I should mention that Johnny, my swim coach had returned from the UK and on Tuesday we had discussed how we would fine tune my swim in the next few weeks to get every extra percent I could for race day. "Icing on the cake, so to speak".
Hmmmm - best laid plans........
Well I swam about 1.5km, mostly single arm, and realised that a squad session in 12 hrs time was ridiculous. I messaged Xavier when I got home, told him the situation and he advised me to take the next day off completely and let everything settle down. This is why I need a coach. Many people follow online programs, and I'm sure they can work really well. But I would have tried to do the swim and run come what may, if it hadn't been for Xavier advising me not to. I did go for a walk, just to get some fresh air, but with deep breathing still hurting, I can't imagine that I could have run. Still, I was looking at the positives - I could easily have broken a collar bone the way I fell, or really hurt my knees. A bit of muscle soreness wasn't the end of the world.
On Friday I got up, and the pain across my chest seemed less, although all the muscles in my right arm and shoulder felt tighter. I thought an easy swim might help to loosen them, so I hopped in the pool. Er no. Very easy swimming, with limited breathing was kind of ok (still, every stroke hurt), but even single arm with the good side hurt, and breathing deeply was even worse. I realised then that I'd probably damaged an intercostal muscle (between the ribs).
Intercostal strain - hoping for a faster healing time than that!
Of course, this was a self-diagnosis, but us vets love to diagnose our own injuries! I managed one hour on the wind trainer and at least I could grip the brakes, so felt confident I'd be able to ride the next day. I loaded up on anti inflammatories on Friday night and hoped that another night would help settle it down. But I changed my ride plan just in case - I would ride out to the foot of the hills, about 90min, and Pete would drive out so there was a car in case I had to abort. Then I would do hill reps until my 5.5hrs was up.
Saturday dawned, and as forecast, it was dry in Melbourne. But the "few showers" in the east turned out to be heavy rain, and by the time I got to The Basin, I was soaked. My chest had been really painful (like nauseating pain) for 30 min, but had eased up a bit as I got going. But sitting in the cafe at the bottom of the climb, and seeing the state of the cyclists who had been up the top, I realised that with a less than 100% functional right side, descending in the wet and cold could be dangerous. Pete arrived. There were tears. I think I said "if I have to train through another shit winter like this again, I just won't do this sport". Then I pulled myself together, and came up with a plan. I'd ride home, and depending on the weather when I got back, either complete the 5.5 hrs on the windtrainer indoors, or change clothes and head north (where it seemed drier) to do laps of Kew. That's what I ended up doing. I think mentally that has to be the hardest bike session of any race prep I have done. Just being so wet and cold, but also in constant pain, and unable to get out of the saddle on climbs, or push the descents made it seem more like 11hrs. I tried to run off the bike, and managed 15 min, but every breath in AND out felt like someone was stabbing me in the chest. It didn't get any worse, but I was wondering if I could tolerate that much pain for 2h 45 min during my long run the next day.
Fortunately I had a follow up appointment with Dr Mitch Anderson (who admirably consults on Saturday afternoons). I went in with my own self-diagnosis (which he correctly asked me to keep to myself until he'd assessed me!!!! Classic!) Anyway I was right! And fortunately he was thinking along the same lines as me - there is no functional problem with my arm or shoulder, just pain when I breathe deeply. So if we can control the pain and swelling, it won't keep impacting my training.
Hallelujah.....cortisone to the rescue!!
Now I want to add that I absolutely avoid anti-inflammatories and cortisone injections like the plague usually. Because as an endurance athlete, the usual reason we may need those interventions is because we have overdone things, and have overuse injuries/ niggles. And that means the best treatment is to back off or rest.
But this isn't overuse. It's a traumatic injury. Mitch mentioned that I may have also damaged the pleura (the thin layer of tissue that separates the lung from the chest wall). Any damage to that is incredibly painful. But there were no signs of effusion, or bleeding in the pleura, so he was confident the cortisone would settle the problem enough to make me more comfortable. Wow. What a relief! I knew when I woke up today that I could breathe more easily, and there was none of the stabbing pain there had been yesterday.
I can't say it's great, I could feel pain across my chest and back throughout my 29 km hill run, and I had to walk a couple of sections, rather than get out of breath, but I am SO grateful to Mitch for giving me the opportunity to do that run.
I also managed some kind of a swim this evening - using a snorkel, so I wasn't having to take deep breaths. And 1 km of single arm - well my left arm IS the weaker one, so that has to be a bonus!
I'm also really grateful to a couple of other people:
Zoe Clark. Zoe raced Kona with me in 2015. A formidable athlete, but she has stepped away from triathlon somewhat recently. I think she realised how I'd been struggling with loneliness during a lot of my weekend sessions, and she came out to meet me today and ran my second lap with me. Zoe, if you're reading this, I can't begin to say how grateful I am for that.
Peter. He worries about me. He knows how determined I can be to achieve my goals (whatever they actually are for this race - I'm not sure yet!!!). But also, he knows how self-destructive following those goals can be for me. I'm selfish a lot of the time. He, without question has compromised his own training recently, just to make sure I am supported and OK. Yesterday, he was up at 5am, making me coffee, driving out 40km, only to pack up and drive back again.
Peter - my rock
For my "one way epic" he rode INTO the wind, to meet me, while I was yelling "yeehaa" on my glory run with the wind. It is emotionally exhausting supporting someone like that. There have been times where the last thing he wants to talk about is triathlon. So all I can say is that I am utterly grateful for all of it.
Next year Pete wants to race the Ironman 70.3 World Champs in South Africa. I've qualified already (in Cebu), so after Kona, it's Pete's turn. Yes, I'll race next year, but not a full Ironman. It's Pete's turn to focus on his goals.
I dared to think that for my swim, the next few weeks would be the "icing on the cake". As I said earlier today, I'm confident I will be able to swim, and swim well in Hawaii, but maybe the icing will now be a little thinner (or lumpier!) than I might like. But that's Ironman. Goal number one HAS to be to make the start line healthy and in one piece. At the moment I feel a little broken, but 5 weeks is still plenty of time to heal. And when I played rugby, I always got up again, no matter how many times I was knocked down.
This week's blog needs to be fairly short and sweet, as I have some champagne to drink tonight!
I got to race in a little bit of paradise today. I call it paradise, not because of the crystal clear waters (a diving Mecca), nor because of the spectacular Shangri La hotel, where the race is held. Not even because of the amazing WARMTH we escaped from Melbourne winter to enjoy. No, it is paradise because of the people. The Filipinos are some of the friendliest, helpful and accomodating people we have ever met, and this just absolutely made the race. Tens of thousands of screaming school kids lining the bike course was just a sight to behold, and made me smile for a large portion of the race.
I managed to win my age group, was 14th female overall and bagged a slot for the 70.3 WC in S. Africa next year. My time was nothing special, but that's lesson #1: you can't define your performance by times when you choose to race in tough conditions. Kona is the same- one year can be vastly different from another. My real definition of my performance there will have to be based on the question: Did I execute the race to the best of my ability, and give it everything I had?
A few other lessons came up from the race
Swim: I always thought I could never really produce a good swim result unless I was drafting on feet. But today, I had no feet the whole way round, and still came away with a good result. There was a massive current, so all the times including the pros were slow, but to be around 4 min behind Pete, without being on feet was a big step forward. I think I could improve my sighting though, and be a bit more savvy about reading the current (I got tangled in ropes a few times!)
Bike: In the heat, it is so vital that you are on top of your hydration on the bike. I also find that as the time goes on in the hot conditions, I can't take in as much nutrition, so front-loading a bit seems to work. I think that having a regime of drinking to a set time is invaluable. I usually set an alarm on my bike computer for this - I didn't today, but I'll make sure I do for Kona. I also got through a LOT of salt today (half a tube of the BASE salt). That seemed to help a lot with the hydration status - I got none of the dizziness I often experience in the heat. I'll make sure I'm on top of that for Kona too.
Run: Wow, such a frustrating, yet eventually satisfying run. I set off at a pace my legs told me I was able to do; somewhere between 4.55 and 5.10 per km. But within the first 3km, my heart rate was creeping up, and I was really beginning to feel overwhelmed by the heat. I didn't even question pulling back (which mainly happened as I started walking through aid stations, taking my time to get ice on board and hydrate). I tried not to get despondent as I saw my splits getting slower. Really I had been hoping for somewhere around a 1.50 run, but I knew that if I tried to push, it might blow out completely. So in the end, I ran a 1.56, and my last 3kms were 5.27, 5.22 and 5.18. So muscularly, I felt there would have been more, if I hadn't been in damage limitation with the heat. I took a few lessons away from this for Kona
1. I need to manage my body temperature in the final stages of the bike.
2. The extra weight I am carrying may have contributed to me overheating BUT
3. Some of the extra weight I am carrying seems to be giving me good strength
The upshot is, I will try to go into Kona a little leaner, but I'm not going to chase the kind of weight I have raced at there before. I refuse to make myself miserable by restricting what I eat, and I think there are other measures I can implement to help me deal with the heat.
For now, I'm going to enjoy a few drinks, make sure I get another couple of open water swims in, and prepare myself to freeze when I head up to N. Victoria for work for the next couple of weeks
