70.3 Ironman Steelhead The Road Back To Triathlon

As for many of us, the last few years have challenged the chasing of our extracurricular activities. We are a manic bunch who have mental issues unless we have a race(s) on the calendar. For me, if I don’t have a race I am a training slacker. I need the pressure of that date coming at me like a fireball that is going to burn me and everything around me down.

My last triathlon was on November 24th, 2019 at Ironman Arizona. A slight PR rose out of the muddy man-made Tempe Town Lake that day and I kind of felt like I was starting to get comfortable with this endurance sports thing. So much so that I decided I should test my running ability at another level with an Ultra for the next race. This pattern of elevating the difficulty is a common flaw in the psyche of most endurance athletes and I was no different.

With no race on the schedule for 2020, I immediately searched for my next personal endurance entertainment event. I found it and signed up for my first Ultra 50K trail race at Old West Trails in the Anza Borrego Desert. This logic follows the inner voice conversation with myself that goes something like, “You just did a 140.6-mile Ironman. 31 miles of running in the dirt through the desert can’t be that big of a deal. Right?” Of course, I sought no additional outside counsel on this decision.

However, COVID and the State of California had other plans as the weekend of the race is when California shut down all events. It was very disappointing to train weekend after weekend with 21-mile training runs on the trails of Lake Hodges for months and get all the way to the race to have it canceled. Let’s just say….some wine may have been involved that weekend to comfort those emotional wounds.

What I discovered shortly after discontinuing those 21-mile training runs was that soreness in my feet wasn’t just from the run a few days ago. It was something more serious. Plantars fasciitis in not one, but both feet! And, as a bonus a heaping helping of burning Peroneal Tendonitis. The good news was there weren’t going to be any races for a long time anyway. Plenty of time to heal right?

I stopped running immediately but wasn’t able to seek therapy until a year later due to the high risk of getting COVID from coming into contact with others until the vaccine arrived. After that, it was another year of physical therapy to get back to even starting running again. It was very frustrating and it was like learning how to walk for the first time once I did. In fact, I had three failed starts as each time the pain came back. I stuck with it though and finally, at the beginning of 2022, I found my feet again. They were heavy stumpy feet, but a few miles of running could be accomplished.

Due to this issue, I deferred my entry to Ironman California 2021 which was a disaster anyway when it was canceled due to a bomb cyclone that ravaged Sacramento. I didn’t miss anything except a lot of wasted money if I would have gone up there with lodging and all.

I did keep active during this non-running time with some bucket list cycling including the following list:

• Giro di Hackbardt Grand Fondo – My own made-up race of 100 miles and 10,000ft of climbing.
• Leadville 100,000 Challenge – Virtual race to climb 100,000ft in 8 weeks.
• Hack-bbatical 2020 Sierra Sufferfest – 5 of the top 10 hardest cycling climbs in California. It was self-inflicted idea.
• Hack-bbatical 2021 – Finishing the top 10 hardest cycling climbs in California.
• Ride The Rockies 2021 – 5 of the top 10 hardest cycling climbs in Colorado. Again, a self-inflicted idea.

Finally, as 2022 rolled around, races were back and I was feeling like if I put a few things on the calendar it would force me to train and believe I could get there. Plus, all those 2020 race entry fees I had paid were now coming back around and the races were finally being rescheduled. My thought was that I would turn them all back on, and schedule a few more. That would lever me up for a triathlon in the first half of the year so I could knock the cobwebs off and see where I was with ample time for tweaking as my deferred Ironman California loomed and mocked me in advance for October 2022. With that strategy in mind, the schedule developed into an odd sort of grab bag of endurance races palooza leading up to the 70.3 Ironman Steelhead.

• March 12 2022 Old West Trails Half-Marathon – Canceled 2020 race entry fee downgraded from 50K to half-marathon trail race through the Anza Borrego Desert. (First running race since Ironman Arizona in 2019. Lumbering, but I finished.)
• April 2 2022 Archipelago Ride – Canceled 2020 race entry fee for the 48 mile/5000ft climbing mountain bike race through San Diego open spaces. (Hadn’t mountain biked in forever, but I and my 2010 Trek EX7 26’er made it to the end. Yes, a little bloody and bruised but more cobwebs were beginning to fall off the skeleton.)
• May 22 2022 Chicago Half-Marathon – Booked this to coincide with a business trip where my hotel was next to the start/finish. (It was the first race of the year where I felt I was getting into the zone with a 2:12.)
• June 4 2022 Rock n’ Roll Half-Marathon – Canceled 2020 race entry fee where my sister showed up and whooped me. (I was hot on it in the beginning and faded miserably at the end for a 2:18 while my older sister posted a PR with 2:05.)
• June 11 2022 Giro di San Diego Century Ride – Canceled 2020 race entry fee resurrected. (Brutal heat. It was 104 degrees at one point. Bodies were strewn all over the last two miles up Palomar Mountain. I finished and much beer was consumed to re-hydrate.)
• June 18 2022 Black Mountain Half-Marathon Trail Race – 13.1 miles of rocks rolling under your feet going up and downhill with 2000ft of climbing. (Finished. Not going back for more next year. Wasn’t pleasant or motivating.)

I arrived in Michigan a week early with my wife and daughter. Some go to the mountains before a mountain race to acclimate to the elevation. I went to Michigan early to adapt to humidity and mosquitos as a fragile Californian. Fortunately, my wife and I can work remotely so we stayed with my father in the house I grew up in.

I wasn’t planning on doing much of any running while I was there and I didn’t have a bike. Sort of a forced taper. However, after a few days, I was motivated to run and found a nice loop around a lake that was 5.5 miles. I ended up running that twice during the week with the last run the Thursday before the Sunday race. It felt much better than that treacherous Black Mountain Trail race from hell the weekend before. Nice stable pavement that didn’t move was a welcome change.

Finally, it was Saturday which meant it was race check-in day. Time to go pick up my bike rental on the way to check-in. I was not interested in dropping $400+ to ship my bike to Michigan for the race. I’m too cheap for that and since I will never podium I don’t see the point, especially for a 70.3. I had called all over Western Michigan months before to find a rental. Due to the continuing shortage of bicycles, almost all bike shops had stopped renting bikes. I finally found one bike shop and the owner Brad said he would rent me one of his old bikes that would work for a race like this for $45. I liked Brad and I liked the price. Done. Forget that I never heard of a bike brand called Parkpre. Brad knew what I was looking for and at the end of the day, he was the only guy in 400 miles that had a bike to even rent. The decision was easy as my total number of choices = 1.

Check-in was seamless. The pre-race athlete talk pleasantly reported 68-degree water in Lake Michigan where it can be below 60-degrees this time of year. The only variable was a chance of thunderstorms overnight and into the morning which never materialized. This is a single transition area race so all I had to do was drop off my bike and rack it for the next day. After that, it was off to Cracker Barrel for the pre-race carb load and then check into the sketchy Super 8 which was the only room I could find when I booked this race months ago.

5AM I was at the transition to set up and get ready. I am getting better at this and there is much less nervousness. It is more routine and I have a flow. That being said, there can always be surprises and since I did not have my own bike, one raised its ugly head. There was no place to attach my bike bag/repair kit. The rails on the bike seat were jammed all the way forward to fit the bike seat. After spending aple time trying to find a way to make it work, I finally decided to stash a tube and compressed air in my food bag up front attached to the stem since I wasn’t going to pack that much in the bag (Keep reading as this is a foreshadow alert). It seemed to fit nicely which I thought might be a better solution in future races actually. At any rate, the chances of getting a flat are so low that why to worry about it. The race director the day before only about 40 people get flats each year.

Finally, it was time for the race to start. The long line of green and pink caps in their black wetsuits was beginning to enter the water. As most know, I am a slow swimmer so I line up with the 50-55 minute slow crawl crew. As we all looked out to Lake Michigan, it was clear this was not going to be an easy swim. There was a small craft warning out that day and we were looking at rough three-foot swells. As we entered the water, it was chaos from the start. We were getting pummeled by the waves and not making a lot of ground. Swimmers were quitting. Swimmers were doing everything they could to find a volunteer with a kayak or other floating device that they could hold onto. I thought of quitting myself because it seemed that this would never end. Finally, I raised my legs more to activate the 5 mil thickness of my wetsuit and try and float through these things better by making myself a larger human flotation device. It worked good enough to get farther out where the water wasn’t coming off the floor of the lake as much creating crashing waves.

That was all in the first 700 yards because the beginning of the swim was straight out against the incoming waves. Finally, at the first turn, the next section was a little more manageable and we got a little current actually. I found a rhythm and settled in. Fortunately, it was a cloudy morning so there was no sun to deal with low and reflecting off the water. As I turned for the beach I thought it would get better, however, the path was at an angle so the incoming waves actually slammed you on your right side. I was also not prepared for the up and down motion of the big waves and I felt I was actually getting seasick at one point. Hurling in the water would not have been fun for me or my Ironman friends near me for sure.

The shallows arrived and I ran through the water and up the beach to my bike which was a conveniently short distance from the entrance to the transition area. This netted me my slowest 1.2-mile swim ever at 1:06:13. Dangerously close to the 1:10:00 cut-off! Normally, I am mid to high 50’s.

Typically slow in the first transition, I planned this time to re-apply sunscreen mostly with a quick spray and only hand application to my face and neck which seemed to save about 2 minutes which helped as there was an exceptionally long run with my bike to get out of transition. It was easily a quarter-mile from where my bike was racked.

Once mounted on my $45 rental, I was feeling in control again. The Parkpre was rolling nicely and I was making quick ground passing a sizeable number of competitors. Until mile 3 that is. Yup, flatted. I was one of the 40 in this race. A statistic that you don’t want to part of. Time to get into my food bag and fix this thing! My impromptu planning was one big fail though. I did not put a tire lever in there though so I could get the tire off. I had the wrong size tube even if I did. The only thing I did right was that I brought compressed air and a pair of tweezers that I used to extraced the 3/8″ metal chard that had penetrated through the tire and tube. Fortunately, after a few minutes, one of the roving bike tech trucks stopped to help me. He had tire levers. He had the right size tube. I had compressed air. We got the $45 Parkpre rental back in the game.

I had lost 16 minutes with this flat. Because I came out of the water so late, all the other competitors had rode their bikes past me. I was officially in last place! Last place! And, there are cut-off times in the bike and run as well. I was not interested in a DNF so I started hammering it. Fortunately, this was a pretty flat course. Where there was a hill, I told myself there was no other option than to stand up out of the saddle and push it hard up every one of them. I was never in the saddle on any hill the entire race.

It took a long time before I saw another competitor ahead of me. One, by one I hunted them down which was very motivating for me. They were sparse though until I had about 11 miles left where I came into contact with a pack and then another pack and another pack. They were good rabbits to chase especially at the end when you need a little more motivation to keep pushing. My time was 3:44:53. If you subtracted the 16 minutes for the flat, it would have been my second-best half Ironman bike to date in six races. That tells me my training effort was pretty good. I had pushed hard though and lit a lot of energy matches. Would I survive the run with only a few months back running after over two years without any running?

I would survive and I would survive well. Over the past two months, I had hired my first true running coaches. We had been working on form and a little speed, but mostly form. The form that would help me last the distance and not get injured again. Less impact to the ground and a more relaxed style. It paid off. The first 5 miles were a bit tight, but then I got into a groove. It was an old man’s slow groove, but still a groove. One that was sustainable and that I could push here and there. And then, it happened. I turned to head for the finish line and I realized that one thing was different than the last five half-Ironman races. I didn’t cramp at the end. I had changed my running style to be more efficient, and less of an impact and I think I dialed in my nutrition better as well. For the first time in my previous five 70.3 and two 140.6 Ironman races, I crossed the finish line and never cramped. It was a miracle!

And, with a 2:26:42 time, it was my third fastest! A win considering all I had gone through over the past 2 plus years to get here and very confidence-boosting for the remainder of the year as I now turn my attention to Ironman California!