My long course experience has not gone well the past few years. My most recent half ironman was incomplete due to a run injury. Two years before, one was cancelled because of a forest fire. The next had a run in ninety degree heat, whic resulted in heat exhaustion. I celebrated the “finish” with a session in the med tent hooked up to an I.V. The longer the race, the more of a crap shoot it is. My days of having good races seemed to be over. Maybe my luck would improve.
The Ironman branded halfs didn’t appeal to me, being expensive, too hard or far away, so I chose an independent one in San Diego. It had calm sea water, which made for a faster swim and the bike and run seemed flat. Southern California races are usually well organized, scenic, have good weather and food, and usually a nice body of water to swim in.
As it turned out, this race was aptly named, with the challenge being just getting to the starting line.
Gremlins have taken over my bike this year. They made me run into a fence for no apparent reason while riding, thereby breaking the front wheel spoke. That I had a momentary brain freeze had nothing to do with it. The wheel was bent out of round, which was bad for a normally round object. I replaced it, which was not an easy task, because the manufacturer relegated a wheel more than five years old to the trash heap. Luckily E-bay had it.
Then on the Wednesday before the race, while riding my bike slowly uphill, the derailleur snapped off, lodged in the wheel and locked it up. At a fast speed, it could have been a serious crash. What the hell. I thought, I am f##ked. I stared at it in disbelief. This race might not happen. Luckily, a kind soul, who was an ultrarunner of course, drove me back to my car. Walking three miles in my bike shoes would have been unpleasant.
I considered my options. Maybe use my old road bike? But only three of the fifteen gears worked. Maybe it could be used to hobble through a shorter race, but riding it 56 miles was unfathomable.
I took the damaged bike to a shop, but they couldn’t get it repaired in time. Nor could they repair the road bike. Rental was a possibility, though the prospect of getting one right before a race seemed remote. The three speed was brought on the trip as back up. At least it had wheels.
The problem with doing a race in California is the drive there. I usually take I-10, but this trip required I-8, a more southerly route that grazed the northern border of Mexico. Both roads rival each other in sheer monotony. I don’t mind driving through the remote deserts of Arizona, but the monotonous soul sucking California deserts induce desperation to be ANYWHERE ELSE, but this desolate, heat-blasted nothingness. Why do people even live here? The 112 degree temperature didn’t help.
The sand dunes turned into flat vistas of hell. It was like Midwest landscape tedium without the corn fields. The miles rolled on, and my brain felt like it was melting. I passed turn offs to Mexico and couldn’t imagine using them. Was there more of this, only Mexico? Finally, I left the barren landscape and climbed into the mountains. The air turned blissfully cooler.
Driving south towards Chula Vista involved the gauntlet of jammed freeway traffic. This was inevitable, since no drive in southern California on a weekday could avoid the millions of cars trying to be in the same road all at once. After forever, I got to my hotel.
As soon as I got settled, I called a bike shop. They had a bike and the race was possibly saved, but I had to drive up to San Diego tomorrow. Another hoop to jump through.
As I unpacked, I discovered that I didn’t bring the filter basket for my coffee maker. This was ghastly. The room didn’t have a coffee maker and I doubted that the hotel would have coffee available race morning at O’dark thirty. Arghhh! Another problem.
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| The water in this picture looks deceptively clean.
Before I left to go to get the bike the next day, I found out that the swim was cancelled. I didn’t know if I was disappointed, because at the race site, the water looked scuzzy with some unidentifiable white foamy substance at the shore. I hate swimming, but a duathlon that length would hurt.
I drove up the spaghetti of freeways and got my bike. It kind of fit me. The seat pinched my nether region, the wheels weren’t as light as my own bike’s and it had no bottle holder. It would do, though, since I had no viable alternatives.
The bike shop guy had said that this race was more likely to have the swim be cancelled due to high bacteria count, since it wasn’t near the bay inlet. Ships also spew toxic substances into the water. This is nice to knowl. And I thought our local Tempe Town Lake was bad.
Instead of a swim, the first run would be a 5k. Previous half iron duathlon experience showed how painful they could be. Near the end my feet would scream in agony to stop. My longest training run had been nine miles and this would be sixteen total. I wasn't really trained for this.
Race morning arrived and my goal was survival, so I planned to run much slower than a stand alone 5k. When I had signed up, a wisp of faint hope was there of actually doing well. Now the goal was just finishing and that in itself seemed difficult.
We had a time trial start, with staggered start times. I positioned myself near the back. This was going to be a long day. As I ran, I chatted with someone who was moving as slowly as I was. At mile two I tripped on the uneven pavement and fell hard. My knee was scraped and bloody with throbbing pain, with seventy more miles to go. My palms, trying to break the fall were also abraded.
I cursed my clumsiness and hobbled on, embarrassed. I finished, and in transition wiped my knee off with a tiny alcohol swab useless to handle the large wound. It didn’t look like it needed stitches, at least. The blood continued to drip down my leg.
How the bike portion on a rental bike would be was unknown. The route was a fourteen mile loop done four times with fifteen turn-arounds. This sounded tedious. The race website’s “Map My Ride” graph lied that the first seven miles had a gain of 197 feet. On this basis, I thought it would be flat.
For such a compact bike course, it wasn’t too crowded, and a USAT official actually monitored illegal drafting. My time on each loop was consistently an hour which was good enough to avoid cut offs. The ride was steady and not particularly fast.
For a state that worships freeways, this city had some truly awful roads. One section was so rough that race organizers had put pads over it, with a guy stationed at the spot to tell riders to be careful. As if a rider wouldn’t notice the asphalt moguls. It wouldn’t do if a rider was violently thrown off their bike. Between the bumpy road jarring my scraped hands on the handlebars and my uncomfortable seat jabbing into me, this section was excruciating.
In contrast, the section with three turn-arounds had blissfully smooth pavement. Normally, all the turning would be annoying. The hills were work, but better than being jolted around on a rough road.
Since, the bike didn’t quite fit me, my right knee, without the wound, hurt while climbing. The other knee throbbed a little and dripped blood, but was otherwise fine. The only way to finish this ride and end the discomfort was to keep moving forward.
After three hours, I had to stop for some more water before the last lap. The riders were mostly gone and the loops seemed to last forever. The familiar “last rider” anxiety crept in with few people to follow. Was I ever going to finish? Was I lost? The route was well marked, but I slowly got nowhere and felt off course. Finally, a bunch of kids passed me in their race, which indicated that the end was near.
The bike was much hillier than the website suggested. My three speed would have been inadequate. My Garmin came out with a total gain of 1542 feet. This isn’t terrible for a half, with nice rolling hills, but it was unexpected climbing. Map My Ride lied.
Pulling off this leg seemed like a miracle with all the bike issues. I had survived without crashing, a mechanical problem or injury. It was a relief to finish.
I changed into my running shoes and ignored my knee with the dried red stripes of blood running down my leg. The start of the first loop felt like hell because of lack of energy and dead muscles that didn’t want to move. I paid to do this, right?
The weather was a bit warm, even with low seventies, but nothing like Arizona, where the heat would have melted me into a smoking puddle of flesh. I poured water on myself. A refreshing cool sea breeze blew. My legs were leaden and I dreaded the thought of 13.1 mile run. Then I told my mind to shut up in order to keep my sanity At previous long races, my mental state at this point in a long race was a black hole of fatigue and despair. My old friend self-doubt had come to visit. Would I ever finish? Would I make the cut offs? Would this ever end?
The remedy to stifle the mental demons was stuffing gels and salt tablets down my mouth, though I wasn’t hungry, in hopes that they would revive me. Luckily, the aid stations had coke and ice, which are magical elixirs. The sugar in coke is an energy boost. Ice water is the only thing that helps with dehydration in a long, hard race. One aid station was out, which made me cranky, a dangerous mood for anyone that gets in my way.
A fast run was unlikely on the three loop half marathon death march. The route went through the park and followed the edge of the marina. The bike path portion out and back had an industrial feel and closed in space, even though the adjoining cement walls were graced with murals. Missing the proper turn around was a worry, since more than one race had different ones, but I managed not to screw up the directions. The last two loops felt a little better than the first. The last loop had a 2:00 p.m. cut off for starting it, so it was motivation to push through. Time was the enemy.
My bloody knee probably attracted attention because people kept asking me if I was alright. One volunteer asked about needing medical attention and I said “later.” She said “of course”, probably thinking what a crazy person. Random strangers would cheer me, maybe out of sympathy. I never get this much attention at Arizona races with an intact knee. My new friend asked “no more falls?" The back of the pack has a camaraderie. It can get lonely when most people have finished, so friendly words of encouragement from anybody helps.
Finally after almost eight hours, I finished in 7:49. Not quite dead last, but an actual official finish, which had eluded me last year. On a rental bike with a bloody knee. Overcoming fatigue, pain, dehydration, despair, anxiety and equipment failure is rewarding in its own strange way. It’s a way of shaking my fist at the universe that insists on throwing obstacles in my way.
I had escaped failure, despite the bike gremlins and lack of coffee. Maybe my luck had changed. Now if my bike would only stop falling apart.
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