There were strippers on the beach. Yes, "strippers" who were there to peel off your wetsuit. As you exit the water, if you can get your wetsuit down to your waist, you simply lie on your back, and the strippers yank off your wetsuit for you. It saves about a minute of struggling to get a wet neoprene suit off your legs.
The adrenaline was still high after the swim, so I ran past a dozen people on the way to transition. A volunteer handed me my bike bag, and I ran into the changing room. The "changing room" is a hotel ballroom that seemed big the night before. 80 minutes into the race, it was completely full of bodies. People were frantically getting into their bike clothes, stuffing their pockets with nutrition, and running out the door. A thousand of them, in a space probably designed for 300. It was just as chaotic as the swim! Outside the door, volunteers smeared sunscreen on my arms and neck, and I ran into the bike racks.
As I have mentioned before on this blog, the bike is by far my strongest discipline. It's how I salvage a decent time, even with my bad swimming. And at Ironman I rode the bike like I stole it. 112 miles is a long time to ride, and I tend to get a song or two stuck in my head for the whole ride. Lucky for me, Too Close by Alex Clare was playing before the race, and it lodged itself into my brain. You might recognize it from the Internet Explorer commercial. Fast-forward to 1:15 in the video for the bass riff. (Ignore the strange characters fighting each other in the music video and imagine flying down the road on The Assassin while this song goes through your head.)
Is it in your head yet? You're welcome!
The Iron distance is not conducive to running a "perfect" race. Something is always going to go wrong, and the race is in large part how you deal with that challenge. If I had to put my finger on the biggest thing that went wrong for me, it was my heart rate monitor. It didn't work. I have spent many hours in training, pinponting the sweet spot for my 100-mile heart rate. My goal was to maintain 125-140 beats per minute. No more, no less. Instead, my monitor did not show my heart rate, and I was left guessing.
Because of my competitive nature and my preference for the bike, I tend to go harder than I should (unless I watch my heart rate like a hawk). Of the 692 people I passed after the swim, 652 of them were during the bike. I felt like I had wings. I maintained a solid speed on the flats, and I powered up the few rollers on the course. I only broke aero position to get water and gatorade at the aid stations.
When I rolled past the halfway marker, I had a bit of a shocker. My Garmin showed that I had covered 56 miles in 2:35. My fastest 56 miles EVER was 2:33 at the 2012 Kinetic Half-Ironman. And I still had another 56 miles to go! Whoopsie-daisy. I deliberately tried to slack off on the pace for the remainder, but my bike time was still about 30 minutes faster than it probably should have been, and I paid for it for the first few hours after the bike.
Here is my Garmin data for the ride. Apparently I burned about 6,500 calories over 5 hours and 28 minutes. My speed remained relatively constant throughout (the dark blue line), even though I felt like I was easing off the throttle.
The bike course was nowhere near as crazy as the swim, but I must say that triathletes are terrible bike handlers. At every aid station, I took my life into my hands by rolling close enough to the volunteers to get water and Ironman Perform (super-sweet drink like Gatorade, only very gross), I had to avoid weaving, swerving idiots trying to grab bottles without losing speed. There were empty bottles, gels, and all sorts of debris on the road. At the few 180-degree turns on the course, triathletes routinely took an inside bead on the corner and ended up rolling off into the grass. I wanted to ask, "Is this your first time riding a bike?!"
One section of road was particularly bumpy for about 8 miles. You could tell when a big bump was coming because of all the debris strewn across the road. Bottles, CO2 canisters, even spare tubeless tires. I considered myself lucky that nothing flew off my bike when I went through that section.
One final comment about the bike. I had heard from many sources that this race featured a lot of shameless, illegal drafting. It was even worse than I had imagined. Whole packs of 20 or 30 riders powered through the ride like a pro peloton. This is highly illegal in triathlon, but the penalty for drafting is a 4-minute break under the shade of the penalty tent, where you can use the restroom, get more nutrition, and rest for a while. I think everyone did the math and decided that the 30% reduction in effort was worth the risk of a 4 minute penalty. I admit that at times it was difficult to avoid getting inside the 30-foot "draft zone" around other riders, but I never deliberately drafted on this course. And when people snuck up behind, I sat up and shook my head, forcing them to go around me. It's irritating, but I was only interested in running my own race. And I passed whole packs of cheaters on the run.
Here I am finishing my ride.
Here is Rob starting and finishing his ride.
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