My Road To IronMan Mallorca: The Story

The day after

Besides sore legs and some little wounds on my left foot, I am doing fine. Of course by body is a bit tiered but it could have been worse. I want to tell a (short) resume of my Iron Man. Maybe it will be a long story, but maybe I will come with more stories and pictures in a couple of days.

Getting there

Early morning with the alarm at 05.15 and a small breakfast, it is no use to put your stomach full with bread or muesli on race-day, the carbohydrates should already be stored and a full stomach will only be uncomfortable during the swim. Together with my great support crew (Elise, Masja and Evelien), we went towards the start at 06:00.

Transition zone at check in - blue covers for the night

The day before the race, everyone had to check in his/her bike and special bike and run-bags. So at race day I only needed to give it a short check in the transition zone to see if everything is ok with the bike and to remember ones more where to find my bags and bike. This was also a good moment to visit the toilet for the last time.

Then moving from transition zone to the start, where I put on my wetsuit – against all expectations, it was allowed to wear a wetsuit! The water temperature had dropped to below 24.5 degrees after one rainy day last Wednesday: It was 24.4 degrees. Athletes are allowed to choose for a wetsuit now (above 24.5 it is forbidden because of the risk of heating). For me, it is a now brainer, A wetsuit helps my legs stay a bit high in the water, making me more horizontal and thus faster. Getting out of the wetsuit might take 15 seconds extra in the transition, so not worth thinking of going without. Another feature I implemented was the powergel I took with me under the cap. So I had a quick boost already immediately after the swim during the walk towards the transition tent. Great tip from Bart, one of my swimming partners at D’elft, although he suggested to take it halfway the swim when there was a turning point at the beach.

Transition Zone (at end of race day)

Pre race picture

07:10: Up into the water, getting wet and warm. All muscles awake and loose, this was a short warm up before the race. It is still dark at this moment, which makes it quite unusual to go for a swim, but interesting as well. I was wondered about the large amount of people that did not go into the water before the race.

Sunrise

07:20: We need to move towards the start. The start is organized as a so called “rolling start”. You can choose which group you want to start in, based on the expected swim time. Groups are made on 15 minutes intervals, so <1 hour, between 1 hour and 75 minutes, between 75 minutes and 1.5 hours etc. After the start for the recreational competitors, they will first let the fastest group into the water, followed by the next immediately after. So it is not 2500 people running into the water together, but a continuous flow that takes about 15 minutes to enter the water. Time starts running when passing the start, not at the sound of the horn, so time wise it does not make any difference between where you start. During the IJ-Swim in Amsterdam, I did a 3.8km – with wetsuit – in 1 hour 3 minutes and some seconds while I was not taking the best use of others at the last kilometer back then. So a bit opportunistic maybe, but I decided to join at the back end of the fastest group that aims for a swimming time of within 1 hour.

Start of the professional men

07:30: Start of Men professionals.

About 30 pro-athletes run into the water. The fastest of them will do the swimming around 45 to 50 minutes, do the cycling at an average speed of around 40 km/h (including the ~1400 altitude difference to take) and finish with a marathon time of about 2 hours and 50 minutes. The winner had a total time of 8 hours and 17 minutes… From all professionals that finished their race, I beat 1 Russian athlete.

07:32: Start of Women professionals.

Small group of only 9 women start their race, 7 will finish. Fastest in 9 hours and 24 minutes and the slowest still over 1 hour faster than my time.

07:37: Start of the ~2.500 "age-group" athletes.

My start

Although they organized the start as a rolling start, hundreds of athletes run and dive into the water within minutes! No difficulties to find nice feet to follow – drafting in the water is very beneficial and safes a lot of energy. Swimming went very good, I could relax in the water with a nice long stroke. Of course there were some battles in the water, people that change direction for now reason, people in front of me that suddenly stop for a moment, people from behind that don’t know that and thus try to over-swim. The open water training I did around Utrecht this summer, with Zwemanalyse, together with the open water swim events, has made me confident in not getting stressed out by some struggles and even let it happen and don’t bother too much. If they get you angry you will lose focus and energy on things that won’t contribute to your own speed.

After 1.2km, we had to come back to take a so called “Australian Exit” this is a very short turning point at the beach, at which a split time is measured. It is quite a strange feeling when you stand up straight and walk/run through the water and over the beach, after being horizontal for about 40 minutes. So Don’t hurry too much here, there is not a lot to gain. Better enjoy the atmosphere and smile to the support crew! My split time was 38:34 after 2.4km.

Return into the water - halfway swimming

Thumbs up for the support crew - halfway swimming

Swimming Result

The second part went good as well. There was a bit more free space around me, although still some little touching and struggling, especially near buoys when people get closer to take the buoy around the correct side. I came out the water with a time of 1:01:34, which is fast for me and I am pretty certain that if we had fought less and I has pushed a little more, a sub one hour time had been possible. But one o one, was great for me especially with the effort I put in.

Find the blue bag

Walking out of the water, taking out the top half of my wetsuit, grabbing the energygel from underneath my cap and have a gentle run towards the transition zone. Find the blue bag with my bike gear, move to the tent, get rid of the rest of my wetsuit and take on my shoes and glasses. Have a small drink from the bottle I put in the bag, and start moving again. At the bike, first put the helmet on, then the number belt around the waist, grab the bike and walk to the end of the transition zone. With 2500 competitors, this was quite a long zone, so I better put in a fast walk.

Cycling:

Thumbs up for the support

Cycling at Mallorca is awesome; the scenery is changing all the time and the roads are going up and down most of the times. So a great 180km course, consisting of a first “flat” (450hm) southern loop followed by the second northern loop with the large climb (7.7km – 500hm). The wind was north east, almost zero at the start, but getting quite strong during the morning. This means tail wind in the first part, head winds when getting back towards Port d’Alcudia, tail wind again at the road towards the climb that by itself is already inclining very slightly (vals plat) and finishing with a head wind the last 25kms or so.

When getting onto the bike, you are very excited to get cycling and go fast, but the heartrate has won already and is at a rate of 180 without having done one single thing. This is again due to the body’s physics of swimming for a long time and then continues with vertical efforts, even when the swimming part and the transition part where taken relatively easy. There is one thing that you can do to get your heart rate under control: Slowdown in the first 5 kms. Luckily I’d learned this the hard way during the half distance triathlon I did in August in Klazienaveen, so I knew that I really had to start slow and had put my gearing at the small ring. This means that a lot of people passed me at the first part, not so fun!

Cornering

For me, the cycling went pretty good. I had a nice rhythm a good speed and my effort wasn’t even at the limit I had decided for myself (heart rate of 165). In the second loop, my legs started to hurt a little bit, like I was moving on too large gears. My cadence here at Mallorca is about 5-10 revolutions per minute lower compared to dead flat and steady environment, i.e.: home. I decided that I wouldn’t force my effort because the speeds was already very good and I rather safe some energy and legs for the running instead of going through the pain in the legs, something I usually should do during single cycling events. Analyzing the heartrate of the second loop, one can see that, except for the climb, my heartrate went down to around 140-150 instead of 150-160 I was on during the first loop.

Cycling result

There are a couple of funny things I noticed during the bike part. First of all, there are lots of people on very expensive time trial bikes. This doesn’t mean that they go very fast or that they are good cyclists at all. A few examples: Quite a lot of those people ride very big gearing and low cadence. Some maybe around 65 or 70 revolutions per minute. Maybe they watched Tony Martin too many times. They do have very big legs which they need to ride it like this, but when the road goes up slightly (>1%) they slow down a lot, the just cannot change rhythm or they are too heavily build to get uphill properly. This leads to a lot of overtaking uphill, and when it gets flat again or goes down slightly (<2%), they overpassed me again. Steeper downhill, they just stop pedaling, Maybe afraid or tired, but most of the real downhill parts it is not difficult to go faster than those real big legged guys.

Another thing is that those pancakes have a hard time at corners, especially in downhill sections. They move slowly across roundabouts, and at the large descent in the second loop, they are just damn slow. One example is shown at the photo, in this case not such a bad ass time trailer, but it tells the story. He keeps his knee to the inside – which is nowhere needed or good to do – while his bike is practically straight up.

The last thing I need to tell about is the non-drafting rules during triathlon. One has to keep at least 10m distance measured from the front wheel of the rider in front of him. Otherwise he has to go to the left, speed up and overpass him within 20 seconds. Drafting is simply not allowed. At flat roads, and wind from aside, the 10m. is enough space to have almost no advantage of the rider in front of you. But with a tail wind and/or slightly downhill parts, the speeds are around 45-50 km/h. If you are around that 10m mark you definitely take advantage of the rider in front of you. This leads to quite some overtaking, and counter overtaking – or the so called sling shot movement. Of course you see sometimes small groups or individuals that are too close to each other and not taking any effort to make the distance again or to overpass in 2 minutes instead of 20 seconds, which is blocking other faster riders. It is not fear, and some get caught and will go to the penalty box (5 minutes) or even get disqualified. For the rest, just keep telling yourself that you are doing your own race, so don’t get irritated when you see that kind of things.

I finished my ride after 5:25.19. But it seems to be a little less then 180km. My computer measured 177.6 km. And also the average speed over the last 15km, as mentioned in the results, is not the speed that I had in that part. For details, please check my strava recordings: Strava IronMan Cycling. For the people who'd seen the nice strip of powergels attached to the toptube of my bike (facebook), I ended up having used 10 out of the 11 gels.

Very pretty scenery for cycling!

Find the red bag

Transition 2:

Get off the bike, bike back at his place, to the red bags for my running gear. It was hot, already 25 degrees in the shade, so I put on a cap and used the sunscreen the organization had provided. I also changes socks, so I would have nice, dry, socks that usually are my preferred running socks. This might have been a mistake…

Running:

Running with ice cubs under my cap

The running course was dead flat, 4 loops of 9km’s and 6km more in the fifth loop to finish the 42 kms. It was hot, over 30 degrees in the sun. This is challenging of course, keep drinking and keep cooling with sponges and ice. I had saved some energy in the second half of the cycling part and I knew my challenges. I started running easy, just above 5 min/km and decided that going under de 5 min/km would be stupid to aim for because of the situation. But going round with 5.20 per km on average would give me a good pace for a very nice overall end time.

Support!

Unfortunately, already after 4km, my left foot hurt as hell. It was warm and swollen and thus squeezed within my shoe. This caused me to run with short steps and not in a nice and loos manner as I am used to do, hurting my muscles more than needed. Anyhow, from km 4 I was struggling and after km 12 I decided to remove the sock from my left foot. This helped a lot but still every round I needed to stop, take my shoe off and cool my left foot with a cold sponge. The first loop of 9km went more or less ok, besides from the left foot. But from that point onwards I was running from aid station to aid station, allowing me to walk along each aid station. There were four of them at the 9km course, and my main goal was to make sure I wouldn’t get caught by the heat.

Last Kilometer

Second loop was the one that I removed the sock. And although I had been fighting to get through I got back a bit of moral and was thinking (or hoping) that if the third round would go the same, I would manage and even within the 11 hours finish time. But during the third loop the struggle got worse, I drank too much, which causes little stomach problems. The moral went down again and I had to really push myself to the end of the third loop.

At that point it was still possible to do within the 11 hours, even when I should become a little slower during the last 1,5 loops to go. But 3kms later the moral was down a lot, I had to walk a bit, started running again, and decided to walk again. The stomach was hurting (in Dutch: zijsteken), and instead of running from aid station to aid station, I went from km to km, with a minute walk at the beginning of each km. End time was not important anymore, it was just surviving and getting to the finish line without stupid things (like collapsing as I saw a few others..). Temperature went down a few degrees, I took another energygel, which I had forgotten to take in the middle part of the marathon, and only used water at the aid stations.

Slowly I progressed to the finish, and after 11:18:27: I can call myself an Iron Man!!

I was relieved, glad, proud and a bit tired. Nine months of endurance training, learning proper swimming and train the running to not get injured by it, all resulted in this achievement. I am very happy with my overall result, there might be a very slightly disappointment about the running, but how I felt during the marathon I am just happy to have finished the race.

Overall Results

After finish photo with the goodies I got from the Elise, Masja and Evelien

This was a challenge that is different from previous long distance things I did. That where bike events and I can put everything out of my body to finish as fast as possible and being exhausted in the end. Now it was more a moderate output for a very long time, which I couldn’t put to the limit during the running because of the problems I had. So it turned out a very mentally game, both moral to continue as well as keeping smart and taking good care of myself.

After the finish I got the medal and the finisher shirt. Looked for the support. Got a massage and free beer (got half a beer), and coke.

After finish foto

Support Crew:

Elise, Masja and Evelien have followed me during the day and made the pictures. They cheered for me at the beginning, half way and in the final stages. And I am so glad that they were with me. Also I was very surprised and pleased by the very large amount of people who followed from the Netherlands (and Australia/New Zealand/Kazakhstan), that is really great! Thanks everyone for all the good luck wishes and the cheers afterwards at watts app, facebook, sms or other means!

The day after:

My legs hurt and are stiff. My left food has a few abrasions because of the running without sock. No blisters at all! And I feel a bit tired. I had a short night, my body was still very active so it was hard to catch the sleep (is this nice dutch-english or not..?). Overall I’m not feeling that bad at all. Today we went to the fan shop to do some shopping and get the medal graved.

Sorry, this day after story became very long, but it tells more or less my Iron Man racing day. Hopefully I can cheer for one of my friends, colleagues or family members sometime in the future for their sporting achievements. This doesn’t mean that everyone should do an iron man! That would make it less special ;-), and sporting achievements can be made on any level or distance that suits the athlete!