2005 Ironman Wisconsin Race Report
The days leading up to Ironman Wisconsin (also known as IM Moo) were nice. High 70s to low 80s with some humidity, but nothing that was of any great concern. What did concern me was that the forecasted high temperature for race day kept creeping upwards. It finally stabilized at 91. I tried to tell myself that I would be fine because the entire month of July was blazing hot out in Davis. However, I also knew in the back of my head that I hadn't trained in the heat either because I was recovering from IM CDA or training early in the morning.
I rode the first and last 10 miles of the bike course Friday morning and thought how fun this course would be! Constantly rolling hills, but nothing that bad. I drove the rest of the bike course later on Friday and was surprised by how hilly it was. I had heard it was hilly, and had seen the course profile, but didn't expect this many hills in Wisconsin. I knew it would be very important to hold back on the first loop and save it for the second loop.
Saturday came and I checked my bike in and then spent the better part of the day on State Street in downtown Madison. This is the major pedestrian thoroughfare that connects the UW campus with the State Capitol. It has your typical college town shops and restaurants, and since there was a home football game on Saturday, there were a lot of people there. The campus also is directly on the shores of Lake Mendota, which is one of the two big lakes right in Madison. There were kayaking and sailing classes going on, as well as a lot of people swimming and enjoying the water. It seems like a great atmosphere, although in the back of my head I kept wondering how cold the wind was coming off these lakes in the middle of winter!
I actually slept really well Saturday night and got up Sunday at 4 am to face my second Ironman of the year and 5 th overall. I put on my Mad Cow uniform and then loose pullover pants and a long sleeve shirt for the walk over to the transition. By the time I got there, I was already warm and it was only 5 am! I quickly was just waiting around for the start with about 2100 other people with no need to try and stay warm. It was going to be a hot day.
I entered the water and tried to position myself so that I could get some good feet, but not necessarily get pummeled. The start area was the widest I had ever been in, but by the time of the start, it still seemed crowded to me. Once the cannon went off, though, I couldn't believe how much space I had in the water. I'm used to getting beaten and kicked for the majority of the swim, but this one seemed to have a lot of space. I felt like I was swimming well, and since there were not a lot of people around me, I convinced myself that I must be swimming well and would probably beat my goal of breaking one hour again. Imagine my surprise when I finished the swim to look up at the clock ticking over to 1:04. My second slowest swim ever and more than 5 minutes slower than my fastest. I don't really know what happened, but I was glad to finish the swim without any problems. I shrugged it off and told myself that everyone must have swam slow (turns out that wasn't true, but I wouldn't know it until I saw the results later that night).
At IM Moo, the transition area is in a convention center and you have to run up a parking structure helix entry ramp and then ride down a helix on the other side to start the bike course. The first 14 miles of the course you ride out to the small town of Verona, where you start a 42 mile loop. The way out to Verona was nice (I had ridden this before) and I was consistently passing people and feeling good. I started the first loop, and noticed that there was a decent head wind. Having ridden in Davis, it wasn't that bad, but it would definitely slow things down some and it was still early, and I knew the wind would pick up. Trying to think positively, I told myself that at least there would be a tail wind on the way back.
This bike course was a blast! While driving the course I thought the hills were pretty big, but because of the rolling nature of the course they didn't seem too bad while riding and you could use your momentum to get a good way up the next climb before you had to increase your effort. Also a couple of the climbs had people lining them a la the Tour (although not quite that many people), which certainly helped and was pretty cool to ride through. I started to pass the pro women (which I always use as a gauge in IM races) and was glad that I had caught some since I had given them so much time in the swim. The first loop went well except when I had just passed an aid station and went over some railroad tracks and lost my extra Gatorade bottle. I had fifteen miles to the next aid station and half a bottle left, so I had to conserve, which I knew I would need to make up for at the next couple aid stations. Halfway through the first loop, someone told me I was 116th overall, so then I started to count people as I passed, but started to notice that I wasn't gaining as quickly on the people ahead of me, so the numbers weren't dropping as quickly as I had hoped, so I lost interest in that pretty quickly. The last stretch of the loop was directly into the headwind and on an exposed ridge where you could definitely feel that the wind had picked up. Luckily, this stretch was a net downhill, but I could start to feel the wind catching my disc wheel in some spots.
As the second loop began, it was obvious that the wind was really strong now. What I had ridden at over 20 mph on the first loop, I was doing 17 on the second time around. I was still gaining on people and felt good, but it definitely was slower. As the second lap continued, I noticed I wasn't passing people anymore, and was starting to feel little twinges in my legs. I took more salt and Gatorade to keep these from getting any worse, and that seemed to help. However, about mile 85 (after the last major climb) I was really starting to tire, I could feel the disc catching more wind, and people that I had passed were now passing me. Not too many, but enough that it concerned me because I typically don't fade this drastically. Luckily, the last 10 miles back into town are downhill and we had a tailwind, or else I would have been out there a lot longer. I pulled into transition in 96 th place overall, and around 15 th in my age group. I sure didn't feel like running a marathon, but that's what I had to do.
Despite the 90 degree heat, I actually felt pretty good starting the marathon, but that didn't last very long. I felt worse until about mile 5 when I started to feel better. It was too hot to take any solid food, so I was continually having Gatorade and coke at the aid stations as well as taking sponges with me. I finished the first loop of the run feeling decent, but every time I tried to speed up, I would get little cramps in my adductors, so I resigned myself to my 11 minute/mile pace (2 minutes/mile slower than I had hoped).
The second loop was more of the same except I traded the Gatorade for chicken broth. It was amazing to feel the effects of the broth even if they didn't last until the next aid station. As Cary Craig likes to say, an IM run is just perpetual forward motion, and that's all I wanted to maintain. I felt really good running through campus especially when my family got the whole crowd to cheer for me, but those feelings were starting to fade once I hit mile 20. My IT bands, upper hamstrings, and glutes were all really sore, but I knew that I couldn't stop. What helped me continue was noticing that I was catching people that had passed me on the first loop and hadn't paced themselves that well. I hit the final turnaround and could see the Capitol building only four miles in the distance. I had noticed this on the first lap, but it looked so far away! I couldn't believe it was only four miles. I continued my slow trudge to the finish line and finally broke the tape at 11:45:06 in 188 th place overall and 25 th in my age group. It was my slowest finish (and more than an hour slower than IM CDA twelve weeks before), but my highest age group placing ever. It was definitely an extremely tough day as more than 400 people DNF'd (about 20% of the field!). The winning times were also slower than usual and I heard reports that 3 out of every 4 finishers were heading to the medical tent (I fortunately was able to bypass it). Despite my slow time, I think I am most proud of this finish because the conditions were so difficult.
That being said, I would definitely recommend this race to any Mad Cows. After all, it is IM Moo! Madison is a great town, the course is a lot of fun, and one of these years, the weather will cooperate!