BlogJune 27, 2008 IMCDA: It's been a crazy week Now I'm back in Arizona from Ironman Idaho and it's 10:15 PM, it has been a pretty crazy week. After not having an awesome day at Ironman Arizona a few friends talked me into competing in Ironman Coeur d'Alene about eight weeks ago. At the start of this season, it was my ambition to get back to Hawaii as soon as possible and I felt this would probably be my only other chance in 2008 as professionals aren't able to qualify at half ironmans. To go race Ironman Lake Placid or Canada later in the summer would be a mistake, as it's probably too close to Kona to expect to recover and re-prepare in time. Coeur d'Alene is also near where I spent a lot of my childhood growing up in Missoula, Montana. My dad and older brother also still live in Montana so they would be bringing a big group of Ironman fans to come watch the day unfold. I may never get a chance to do an Ironman so close to my original home! Michelle and I decided we would head up for the race and Denise and Jeff Bassett were kind enough to let us take over the whole lower level in this amazing house they had rented on the lake in Idaho. The overall prep for Idaho was less than ideal for me. Except for a few decent races I've been having a hard time. A little trouble with summer heat exhaustion (seriously!) and IT band tendonitis left me quite under prepared. Having not done any run training in five weeks I wasn't overly confident in my ability to do well in an Ironman. I also know that my swimming has also fallen off a tiny bit as I just haven't been motivated to get in the hot water that sits in all the swimming pools around Scottsdale. I had done some good bike racing though, wich left me only very confident on the cycling leg of the coming event. I was to leave Wednesday afternoon so Wednesday morning I hopped on the treadmill to "test" my leg and see if I could run for half an hour easy. I made it fifteen minutes and it was too painful to continue. I questioned weather it was even worth the effort to go to the event. My IT band injured leg was so sore on the flight that afternoon it was painful to sit, so I spent much of it standing in the back of the jet trying to loosen it up. This helped a little. This injury isn't too bad and I should recover from it, but it does need REST, something that I haven't been able to do as it's the middle of triathlon season. Needless to say, I decided I was just going to enjoy my week in Idaho. I spent the time doing LOTS of COLD water swims down at the swim start. Travis, Shawn, Marc Rubin, Jeff, John Poisson, and others I'm forgetting, all met every morning and we swam usually a half Ironman swim in around fifty degree water. This was AWESOME! After recently having heat exhuastion I was enjoying this very cold water and actually laughing at the thought of the current weather down in the valley. I did a couple of easy spins and tried to spend some time with my dad and brother which was a lot of fun. As far as the race was concerned, the reality wasn't pretty so I tried not to think about it. As far as going for a jog, it wasn't an option. I meant to pre-ride or at the very least pre-drive the bike course but I was having too much fun to ever get around to it. This proved to be a mistake, but now I've done the 56 mile loop twice so perhaps I have it nailed down for next year! The day prior to the race I decided it was time to "get serious". I cleaned my bike up and realized that my headset was quite loose. It was important to me to at least do well on the bike so I talked to my friend about getting it fixed. This Felt DA is a specialty bike and it's not an easy headset to tighten. It requires lots of precision and unfortunately we were not precise enough and broke the thing. This was a serious disaster as it was now T-minus 18 hours from race time and there was no way to replace this piece in time. This event had gone from bad to worse and whether I would start or not was questionable. Everyone commented that I didn't seem freaked out or upset, honestly it was hard to feel that way when the idea of watching the race didn't sound too bad with my injury. Also, having my family there and the sheer beauty of the area just seemed too nice for me to get angry about it. After feeling sorry for myself for a few minutes I talked to Ed and Lawrence over at In and Out Sports and they loaned me one of their demo bikes. This was very generous of them and I was happy to be back in the event. Anyone who knows me though, knows how much I LOVE my FELT DA Trisports bike and how I have it tweaked from top to bottom. I really didn't want to ride any other bike and this demo although good, had a different fit and feel from my bike. Thankfully it was a Cervelo, which are great bikes. It didn't have the most "trick" parts that I swear by, but again, I was getting to race! I ended up spending the whole afternoon on my feet trying to get this new bike to fit properly, and then I went out for a 90 minute ride. Normally this wouldn't be IM protocol but no way was I going to hammer 112 miles on something I've never ridden! Raceday was warmer than expected and the water had heated up to a balmy 58 degrees. This was nice, two swim caps on, and we were off! I got off to a good start and was at the front for a few hundred yards. The water was very choppy, I fell back. Around halfway through the first loop I got gapped from the front six swimmers and found myself alone. This was so frustrating as fighting that chop and being alone was no way to start an Ironman. As I exited the water at the end of the first lap I was roughly 20 seconds behind Lovato and Vance in front of me. This gap I wouldn't be able to close. My closest pursuers were probably 45 seconds back and I didn't want to wait. I jumped back in for lap two and within fifty meters of fighting the chop I sat up, backstroked, and decided to wait and draft swimming in the pack. The kayak-life-guard-dude asked me if I was ok, I told him,"pretty much". The truth was that I was incedibly frustrated backstroking along waiting for the pack while being on the clock. After a few seconds of this I got frustrated and took off swimming again, this time deciding not to wait. By the halfway point of the second lap I had now been swimming alone for about a half hour and decided I couldn't handle it anymore. I swam slowly for about five minutes until two swimmers finally caught me. I swam on their feet into transition and exited the water with a "lucky" 56 minute swim considering how bad my tactics were. I also knew swimming alone for all those yards was not ideal, and I'd left a lot of energy in the water. I ran into transtion with Blake Becker and Mike Neill kicking myself for not doing daily masters the last couple months, my lack of swimming was truly contributing to my lack of success. Onto the bike and out to the first turn around at six miles the damages weren't too bad. Rhodes and Evans were about six minutes ahead but I was only a couple behind Lovato, Vance, and Zemestev. I quickly rode away from Neill and Becker and went to work on catching Lovato. I could see dudes in front of me for a while and was rolling in sixth for quite some time until I hit the wooded "technical" section and had no idea how to ride it having never seen it. This was totally my fault, lack of preparation again paying off. The roads were wet and Mike Neill rode back up to me obviously knowing the course I followed him and trusted he knew when to brake and when to let it roll... We caught and passed Vance and Rhodes and got a split of 3:00 minutes to the leaders. AWESOME!!! We'd closed three minutes. I couldn't help but think it could probably have been 2 minutes at this point had I not been braking so much for blind turns which didn't require slowing, again, my fault for not pre-riding. At the far turnaround at mile 35 I could see everybody well and Neill and I were truly "in the event". At this point unfortunately I started to notice that I had the seat too high and the bars a little narrow on my borrowed bike and around the 90 minute mark these positional mistakes started to bother the heck out of me. Also, I chose a 1080 super deep front wheel on this hilly and windy day, stupid choice, one of my my many mistakes on the day. Nearing the end of the first of two laps Neill rode away from me and I was no longer comfortable on my ride. Things began to get negative in my head as I hadn't even ridden 56 miles and was uncomfortable and being dropped, and was pretty sure I couldn't run after this anway. I rode back into town now probably back to 6-7 minutes behind the lead and knew this would grow! All the amazing spectators in town motivated me briefly but as I left town starting the second lap I sort of just backed down and decided to not race for a while. I hit special needs and pounded lots of food, I had a picnic. Steve Larsen flew by me around here, I didn't care at all. Normally I would try to stay with him no matter what. In this instance, my face was so full of food that my priorities weren't inline with chasing Steve Larsen. Instead I just cruised the next 25 miles and tried to not get more injured and just finish the bike. At this point my back was getting sore and my hamstrings were screaming as this is what happens when the bike fit is off. With twenty miles to go in the ride, having not been passed by anyone else I decided it was time to hammer it in as there was no more food to eat and the harder I rode the sooner I could get off this ride! My philosophy had changed! Anyway, I made it off the bike losing about 15 minutes to the big players in the race. This was ok, big thanks to In and Out Sports for allowing me to borrow their bike. Onto the run I popped lots of anti-inflammatories hoping to keep my knee from becoming too inflamed. I knew this gives people stomach trouble but I wasn't worried about that at this moment. The first mile was incedibly painful and it was pretty clear I wasn't going to be able to run the distance. The funny part was that even if my knee hadn't hurt, the rest of my body was kind of messed up from riding a different bike. Also, I hadn't done any running for a month, the cards were truly stacked against me. Around mile three I noticed the pain go away a little bit and I began to have hope. Perhaps I could get through the first half marathon I thought. At this point two pieces of advice came into my salt-tablet sized cranium. The first, was my friend Brad Stalker, he always says,"don't think, just do". So I quit thinking. The second was Michael Lovato, running the other way a few spots ahead of me at Vineman half ironman in 2006 he said to me,"come on Lewis, try and get something out of it!" So beyond those two thoughts, I didn't think again just tried to keep running. To my surprise, at the end of the 13.1 mile first half I hadn't lost barely any time to the leaders but I know all too well what the second half of an Ironman run does to people. My friend Coach Jay (everyone calls him Coach Jay) yelled at me,"come on dude, you gotta learn to finish these things". Of course he knew that I'd finished every Ironman I'd started but I've had a bit of a hard time finishing strong. This day would hopefully be different. I kept running and running and miles 13-15 felt great. Around mile 16 or 17 the inevitable grand piano landed on my back and I went into survival mode. I just tried to keep running and stay focused on the nearing finish. One dude from Canada ran by but he also ran by Jim Vance just in front of me so I didn't feel too bad. The last four or five miles were not only incredibly painful in the knee but also physically, and only when I made the final left turn with about 800 meters to go did I realize I would make it. Finishing ninth in 9:22 wouldn't normally be cause for great celebration but on this day I was pretty happy. I had overcome lots of things and I know that it should only get better from here. The following day I was rewarded a spot to Kona and so after this knee swelling goes down I'll begin to train for the big one. Seeing that as I write this three days post-event still not able to barely walk, I'm shooting for the first of August. Congratulations to Marc Rubin, Jeff Bassett, Dan Beaver, and Eric Chebi. These four dudes all had a great shot at getting a slot to Kona and they laid it out there on the day. I'm pretty proud of them and know they will all get there one day soon, I'm hoping to somehow be an integral part of their success. Anyone else I'm forgetting, congratulations to you too! Also, my boys Preston Miller and Eric Page rolled all over the South of France on Sunday in Ironman France. These two guys both had great races and I can't wait to see them back in Arizona. Thanks for reading, see you in Kona! Lewis « Back to Blogs |
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