Ironman Mallorca 2016 Race Report

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Ironman Mallorca 2016 Report

Last week, at 7am on Sunday the 23^rd of September 2016, I competed in IronMan Mallorca. It was my 5^th time toeing the start line of an iron-distance triathlon, which consists of a 2.4mile (3.8km) swim, 112mile (180km) cycle, then a 26.2mile (42.2km) run to finish it off.

I was doing this race to avenge a DNF (did not finish) result at IronMan Copenhagen 4 weeks previously.  The DNF was caused by dehydration and having gone too hard in the early stages of the run leg triggering a heart arrhythmia where my heart rate reached 200 beats per minute, while I was walking! Fortunately, it returned to normal after about 30 minutes of lying on the ground with the paramedics keeping an eye on me but the race referee had arrived by this point and I was withdrawn from the race, just in-case it happened again. The most devastating part of this, aside from not being able to finish my main race of the year, was that I was only 10 kilometres from the finish line! In my previous experience, it’s the last 10km that does the most damage to you, and I woke up the next day not feeling too bad. After about 1 week of light training I realised that I definitely had another Ironman in me, and that I needed to do one before the end of the season as I had been holding back all year for Copenhagen and couldn’t bare to finish the year with no successes to my name.

Left: Me, just after a practice swim the evening before the race. Upper right: my race bike with trusty llama mascot on the handlebars. Lower right: the equipment and nutrition I used for the race, later separated into bags for each discipline and stored in the transition area during the race.

The Swim

So, to the race! The swim took place in Alcudia beach – a lovely calm bay in the Northern part of the Island. The last 2 years have seen a new feature to the race start, the traditional mass-start has been exchanged for the new ‘rolling start’, wherein athletes seed themselves based on their predicted swim times and are sent off in groups of 6 at a time separated by 5 seconds. This makes for a much less violent swim, as you can imagine 3000 people all trying to be in the same place at once i.e. the shortest line around the course doesn’t make for a very civilised swim. I hadn’t swum much between Copenhagen and Mallorca, but I did manage to get a couple of handicap 200-meter swim/run races in with my girlfriend while we were on holiday in France – more than enough training to tackle 3.8 kilometres in the sea! The swim at Mallorca is a special one due to the beautiful surroundings and the inclusion of an ‘Australian exit’ about 2.4km into the swim where athletes run along a short section of the beach before starting the second part of the swim. It turned out that I was very grateful for this short run after swimming in very salty water for about 35 minutes! I finished the swim in 58 minutes 15 seconds, a good result for me considering my lack of swim training this year. There was a short 400m run to the transition area where our bikes were located and I was shortly on my way along the flat main road out of Alcudia towards Can Picafort.

The Bike

The bike is the longest section of the Ironman and it was also the part that I’d been most worried about as there had been heavy thunder and lightning the day before the race. I knew that we were due a massive thunderstorm on the day of the race which would make the roads like glass, but by the time I had started the bike leg it was still dry. The first 110km of the bike are mostly undulating and take you through the small villages of the northern part of the island before climbing the Col de Femenia at 115km, which is a 12.5km mountain climb. I managed a good average speed during the initial flatter section, while being careful to avoid getting caught in the large groups of cyclists I passed, as triathlon is non-drafting during the bike leg. There came a point though where I reached an enormous group of ~100 riders. It took me about 10 minutes of riding above my target effort to get past them, and as soon as I got to the front the rider behind me simply latched onto my wheel, then overtook me 2 minutes later. While I was abiding by the rule of dropping back after being passed and leaving a 12-meter gap, people from the huge group decided to overtake me and fill in that, gap – pushing me back even further. While I sat at the back raging at the situation I realised that I could just sit about 20 meters back from the group and still get a slipstreaming benefit, I wouldn’t be going as fast as I wanted but I remembered that my friend, Tom, had impressed the importance of arriving at the bottom of the climb feeling fresh. Tom had learned this the hard way racing the previous year, as he was caught up in the effects of unleashing 300 similarly-fit triathletes upon a bike course at the same time, and was unable to ride up the climb as well as he could have done. With this in mind, I eased off the gas and decided to ‘make my move’ during the 5 kilometre run in to the bottom of the climb where the gradient slightly increased, enough to stretch out the peloton. Another rider and I made our move up the outside of the group, it wasn’t a huge effort as I didn’t go too far above my target average power output but I did want to hit the climb hard. When we hit the climb the rest of the group were caught and passed within the first 500 metres and I just tapped out a pace that I knew I could sustain to the top of the climb from my (many) sessions on the Wattbike at CCCU SportsLab, I averaged about 290Watts for the climb. Thirty-five minutes of steady effort later I had made it to the top of the mountain and not been over taken once, while passing about 50 riders including a few female professionals. The most memorable moment of the climb for me was after reaching the summit, a young man crossed the road blowing an enormous cloud of smoke/vapour into my path. Not wanting to inhale whatever it was I swerved to the other side of the road to avoid it, his friend saw me move and immediately began to chastise the bloke in aggressive sounding Spanish, as I passed she gave me a thumbs up and ‘Vaya vaya’ while I laughed and gave my thanks. Following the climb was a glorious descent for 10km full of switch-backs down the other side of the mountain. The remainder of the ride was fairly uneventful until about 150 km, where the heavens opened and I found myself in the middle of monsoon season. To be honest, I was very lucky with the timing for this shower as a friend of mine, AJ, who was also doing the race got caught in the rain at the top of the climb, making for a very treacherous descent.

So, after 30km of wet, careful riding I returned to Alcudia for the second time to end the bike course in 5hrs 5 minutes. I had a bit of a kerfuffle in transition as thanks to missing the race briefing the day before, I had no clue were to chuck my run-kit bag once I’d removed the shoes and energy gels from it. Luckily an event volunteer was there to take the bag and tell me to get running; ‘¡Ánimo!’.

The Run

The run course involved 4 and a half times a lap of 9.5km along the high street, through some of the residential part of Alcudia, and then along the beach front before looping back onto the promenade and around to the high-street. Despite the pouring rain for the entire 3 and a half hours of my run, the support from the locals, friends and family of other athletes, AJ’s partner, Josh, and random British holiday makers was immense and as encouraging as the crowds at the London Marathon. I started off at a steady pace and knew that all I wanted to do was survive the run and get a finish. My old nemesis, stomach troubles, started to give me issues after about 6km but I knew that it wouldn’t stop me from finishing (thankfully, there were toilets at every aid station, about 2km apart on the run!). When I came off the bike onto the run at Copenhagen I had less than 6 hours on the clock and potentially a Kona spot to chase down. I started off suicidally fast, running about 4:00minutes per km for the first 5km when my target was to hold 4:40 min/km. This is my usual tactic and I know that I will eventually settle to a maintainable pace, but combined with the 30-degree heat and necking 2-3 cups of Coke every 10 minutes, this lead to my DNF. My club mates and junior section coach, Bruno, had all given me a lot of advice on how to deal with this and my plan for Mallorca was to cap the first 5km of the run at 5:00min/km. I actually averaged this pace for the entire run so it definitely worked for me and next year my goal is to work on building pace throughout the IronMan marathon. I crossed the line after 9 hours 54 minutes of racing, which was good enough for 16^th in my age-group out of ~180 and 175 overall out of 2500, including professionals. In terms of my goals for triathlon, I want to qualify for the world championships at Kona, Hawaii one day. I was about 30 minutes off the pace required to qualify at Mallorca, but considering my goal was just to finish, and having done nearly a full Ironman less than 4 weeks beforehand, I don’t think that it is too much of an unrealistic goal. My swim and bike are definitely up to the required level, as I was 11^th in my age-group off the bike in Mallorca, but lost 5 places on the run (probably while in the loos!). Next year I hope to improve my run endurance off the bike and ability to maintain speed, which I can hopefully achieve through more specific training at SportsLab and with the advice from the experienced friends, club members and colleagues I’m lucky enough to know. As a race, Ironman Mallorca is up there with the best; the organisation, support and course make it one to do. Even if you're chasing a fast time you shouldn't let the hillier bike course put you off as the smooth roads more than make up for the added elevation gain. If you're good at descending (unlike myself) I think you'll be within 10 mins of a flatter course's time.

 Thanks for reading! 
James

2014 Round up Pt. 2. Outlaw & the Midnight Man

Hello again, I have returned to the blog to finish up my 2014 round up.

July

• I should have mentioned that in June I managed to secure an entry into the Outlaw Triathlon, an iron distance race in Nottingham. I did this race the previous year but high temperatures over 30C and possibly cycling too hard on race-day meant that I fell far short of my goal of 10 hours, I turned in splits of 59 minutes, 5:30 and then a 4:37 (!) hour run to complete the race in 11:11 hrs. Very disappointed with the result I vowed to get my revenge on the course that had ruined me that day. Unfortunately most of my training up to June had been for olympic distance triathlon so I had some work to do during my time at La Santa and in the remaining 5 weeks before the Outlaw! 
• The work involved a lot of cycling, pretty much every day and riding at least 2 hours at a time (I got through A LOT of chamois cream in those 5 weeks!). I did some swimming, luckily I don't really need to swim a lot to maintain sub 60 min fitness, and several very long brick runs (an 80 mile ride and 18 mile run being the longest of those). Which were something that I completely neglected the previous year, and probably caused my disastrous run split. After quite a relentless 5 weeks I followed this block of training up with a 1 week 'taper' and the end result was 9hrs 58, 1st in M20-24, and 18th individual overall at the Outlaw!

The Outlaw

• Swim - 57:45
• Started on the far left in the 'fast pen', still surprised how many people never fail to absolutely smash the first half and then implode after 2000m. Quite a bit of argy-bargy and leg-grabbing this year, I resolved this by turning around to simultaneously do backstroke and yell profanities at the offenders. I probably wasted a lot of energy doing this but they backed off.
• My GPS reckons I swam 4041m instead of 3800, I need to learn to swim in a straighter line!
• T1 - 4:00
• CRAMP
• Forgot my cramp curing banana
• Bike - 5:26:53
• 194W AP, 200NP, 33.3 kph, 85 rpm
• Windy as you like, the course is pancake flat though so I can't really play this up too much.
• Rode very easy, felt a bit annoyed with how easy I was going by the end but it paid off I think
• T2 - 3:07
• Nothing to report, put socks on which I noticed a few people around me didn't seem to bother with.
• Straight into the portaloos before starting the run properly.
• Run - 3:26:37
• Overall I was happy with the run, I smashed the first half in 1hr 33 to try and bank as much time as possible but inevitably faded soon after 14 miles and it was quite a struggle from there. I like this tactic though as I feel that I would never speed up if I went out at 8min/miles and probably go way slower overall.
• However, I spent about 10 minutes in the loos, I actually 'ran' a 3:18 according to my Garmin file. I need to sort out my stomach problems or even my entire diet as it was quite dire towards the end as I had to make a pit stop in the last 2 miles which required a mad dash to the line to make sure I went sub 10!

Also a bottle opener!

August

• The day after the Outlaw I felt very good indeed as I had just moved into my new pad in Wimbledon, my legs were in tatters but my spirit was high!

The south of France is beautiful, unless you're a coeliac!

• The next week I went on a family holiday with my parents and brother, it was the first family holiday in many years and I was very excited as we were all bringing our bikes and embracing the smooth tarmac and cycle-friendly drivers of Southern France. The drive down was something I think we were all silently dreading as memories of our childhood holidays came bubbling to the surface of our minds like bubbles of swamp gas in a bog. Luckily we all survived the trip and had a cracking time. I managed to put in about 550 miles of cycling during the 12 days we were there.

S'mores in the new pad

• By the time we came home from France I had barely swam at all during the 3 weeks since the Outlaw. However I decided to do another iron distance triathlon as I felt very fit still, especially after the training I did in France so I thought I should capitalise on my good form. Enter, the Midnight man, a race around a dual carriage way in Dartford with 1/4, 1/2 and Full distance races starting at 6pm with the full distance cut off being 11am the next day (in contrast with the traditional 6am and 11pm times of most ironman races).

The Midnight Man

• This race probably deserves an entire blog post of its own but this post is getting quite long now so I will summarise the race like I did for the Outlaw:
• Swim - 57:10
• Somehow, despite not swimming for 3 weeks I was 45s faster than the Outlaw. Or maybe I just managed to swim in a straight line this time!
• Bike - 5:21:29
• 215W NP, 211 AP, 33.6 kph, 88rpm
• 20 laps with 4 dead turns each lap.
• No lighting on 2/3rds of the course.
• THE single hardest thing I have ever done. It was wet, it was windy, it was dark and it was relentless. The first 10 laps were okay, the last 10 were desperately lonely and testing.
• Absolutely bonkers, some nutters were riding with no rear lights. This was annoying but coming up with a new threat or insult to yell at them each time I passed gave me something to do and kill time.
• Run - 3:22:23
• Started out in my customary fashion with 6:45/min miles for the first 10k and then faded down to about 7:45s.
• Plagued by stomach troubles again, probably lost another 10 mins in the porta-loos although after a week in France eating predominantly butter, bread and beer I was not surprised by this at all. I still reckon a sub 3:10 IM marathon is in me if I can manage to sort my stomach troubles out.
• No GPS file for this one, my Garmin decided to corrupt the file :(
• Total - 9:46:53, 1st overall (there were only about 100 people entered though)
• After finishing this event I realised a few things: 
• A sub 9:30 is definitely in me, 
• I need to work on my aerodynamics and increase my power on the bike, that I am putting out consistent sub 60 min swims and sub 3:30 IM marathons shows me that I have the fitness to produce a quicker bike split. If I could ride around 5:10 and follow with a 3:15 marathon I'd be knocking on a sub 9:30.
• And finally - swim training is unnecessary (kidding!!)

4am, just finished an ironman yo

Recommended

The rest of the year

• In September I started my MSc in sport, health and exercise sciences, my dissertation will be on the mechanistic basis for the decline in stroke volume during whole body exercise and extravascular dehydration (fancy eh?).
• I ate a lot of cake, chocolate and booze over Xmas, I am very fat now. However I'm working it off during my preparation for the London Marathon this year!

Perseverance

Hello everyone, I haven't written a post in quite some time but there's a pretty good reason for that- WORK. I knew that it would be harder this year but I didn't realise in what way. The last 2 weeks  have been some of the busiest of my school-career to date with what seemed like a never ending barrage of mid terms and group assignments.
I think it was on Sunday night,  before the first mid-term that week, that I really felt for the first time like packing it in and going home, there seemed to be so much to do and so little time to do it. I managed to snap myself out of it when I realised going home wasn't an option as there wouldn't be a place in class for me at Brunel if I went back and I'd probably get in a fair bit of trouble with student finance as well.
What I think really helped me get over the sudden despair I felt though was picturing myself at the end of the week, assignments handed in, tests completed and presentations presented. Sometimes it's the easiest thing to let yourself become overwhelmed by the situation and want to call it quits, but if you can realise that 'worrying about it never did any good' and look at the bigger picture in life you can pull through and just get on with it. I think it was a combination of homesickness, feeling unprepared and feeling sorry for myself because I still can't run yet (DAMN!).
Mum and Dad have booked my flights home for Christmas and that has definitely helped with the homesick side of things as I didn't think I would be coming home until the second semester was finished in June! I'm focusing a lot more on enjoying my time while I am here now and trying to make the most of it where I can (although the workload is still high).

The Blue Angels, (not as good as our RA's but still) very impressive.

Navy parade about to pass under the GGB (which I'm standing on)

 

So anyway, that's a good enough description of how I've felt these past couple weeks, I bet most of you reading this are thinking 'Pfft what a whingey git, I'd love to be out there in California instead of slowly freezing to death over here!' and I know that you're right but this is my blog and I can be a selfish crybaby for at least half a post if I want to :) Things are much better now and I promise to enjoy every minute on your behalves.

So, what else have I been up to? I'm making more friends and getting on well with them all, things in the house with my fellow Brunelians are going smoothly and I think we are all on the same wave-length now.


Training has been very bike/swim focused, I spent 3 weeks just noodling about on the bike and in the pool with no real structure, it was very nice not having a plan to follow and has got my Mojo fired up for some serious training again.. Which I started this week- I will focus on a periodised approach to this years training starting with a lot of long slow stuff on the bike and (when can I start) running but am doing one balls-out session a week in each so I don't get bored and unfit at the same time. And gradually add intensity and race-pace training throughout the year as my target races draw closer, target races? I hear you say, yes I plan to at least attempt to qualify for the ITU worlds in London next year for sprint distance and also give iron-distance a crack sometime between August and September.

 
I have always said I wont even attempt that distance unless I know can finish in under 10 hours (I imagined splits of 55mins/5:25hrs/3:25hrs for swim, bike and run) and this year I think it can be done- providing I can start running again! Doing regular 80-90 mile rides every week in the lovely sunshine has made me really enjoy the long hours in the saddle and that was really the only thing preventing me from training for iron distance (112 mile bike leg)- I knew that if I trained on the bike through the winter for 5-6 hours at a time I would slowly grow to hate the training and also freeze my arse off.
So those are my goals, they seem quite impossible and very contrasting right now but what's the point in making things easy for yourself eh?

View from Tiburon during a bike ride

I'm including a few photos I've taken while San Franciscoing that are helping remind me why I love it out here and to not focus on what I might be missing out on back at home.
I titled this post perseverance because I think it sums up how I should behave right now in all aspects of my life especially school work, training and making the most of it.
Thanks for reading, I will try to make this a more regular blog!
Take care,
James