Well after spending a couple of hours in the medial tent after the race, and sleeping with pillows all around me to try to find a comfortable position to sleep in, I can truthfully say that I lived up to my pre race motto, “Make it HURT”
First of all I want to say Thank You to a bunch of people,
First Celine for putting up with my training, and basically all my triathlon sh*t, the sport is all consuming and to be honest doesn’t sometimes leave much time for “family life”, my mum for looking after me for the past couple of months and just letting me work and train. and to the rest of my family and Celine’s family and friends, your support ment the world to me!
*Ann Bondy - for getting up at 530 on Thursdays in NZ winter to swim with me.
*Matthew Berg - for loaning me gear and being my training punching bag out on the bike.
*Paul Harrison - for using me as his punching bag last year and showing me that I am faster than I think!
*Jeremy Hopwood – for inspiring me with his performance at CDA ironman.
*Susan – lending me training wheels for Vancouver’s potholed streets (hope they are still true!)
*KC and Dale- For great swim coaching and workouts, and helping me get under a 60 min swim.
*Tony Ting – for running with me at lunchtimes at work, you let me talk the whole run, this must help me V02 max or something! ;o)
And last to all staff at my work who have supported me whole heartedly, and for the card that I got before heading off to the worlds and Ironman Canada, it was great to know that everyone believed that I could have a great performance.
And JJ and Brian for helping me with leave to be able to pursue my dreams. Only one more to go now, really, honest, sorry..... Ironman World Championships Kona Hawaii
So Anyway Race Day.
Sunday morning started with the normal routine, for those of you not familiar with ironman, it involves waking up everyone in the house as your alarm and 4 backup alarm clocks go off, and then you tip toe to the kitchen as the other alarm clock that was your fifth backup alarm clock goes off. Then for the next half hour consuming food and praying that you will be able to go to the bathroom before the race start.
Race morning I was quite nervous which was different to Ironman New Zealand 18 months ago where I was very relaxed, as I made my way to the start and put on my wetsuit, I was meet by one of my age group team mates, who gave me a hug and told me to have a great day. This made me feel more at ease as I made my way to the start and watched the pros begin their day, noticing that 1 pro was taking off on the swim right from the start, no doubt Doe Boy from NZ I thought.
I started my swim warm up, and made my way nervously back to the Front Center of the swim start, I was shaking I was nervous, as I looked behind me there were 2900 other competitors, and people swim over you and not around you in triathlon, I had second thoughts about if this was the right place to start.
The race gun went off and I swam hard, so hard that after the first 60 seconds I was starting to feel gassed and I was still in a big pack with arms pulling down my legs and back, this was not the swim start I was after I pulled out of the pack to the left of the course, and sat out in the open not drafting, but on my own comfortable and able to get into a rhythm and let the doubts about the race disappear from my thoughts. Before I knew it I was at the far end of the swim course and about to round the second turn on the way back to shore. The wind was starting to pick up and there was a swell and a chop at the far end of the course, “Perfect I thought” as I breathed I could see that I was making progress past some swimmers who I thought probably were not enjoying the conditions like I was.
As I came to shore, I couldn’t see a race clock so was unsure of my swim time, but ran through transition. Thinking smooth transition not fast but smooth don’t forget anything, Gels check. Helmet Check. Sunglasses Check. Bike Shoes Check. Done, on my way out to the bike I noticed that the bike racks were still quite full. So I must have had a solid swim.
A few days before the race, on a ride on some of the bike section, I had meet a top 35-39 age grouper by the name of Scott Tremblay, I didn’t know who he was (which I feel pretty silly about now) but he talked to me about the bike strategy and how to successfully ride the course, as I am self coached I tend to take input from different sources and pool it together to make my own decisions, his strategy was risky but if you had a good day a great bike split was guaranteed.
So it started straight out of the blocks I was passing cyclists, my Heart rate monitor kept beeping as I was well over my 165 Max bike heart rate that I had set myself before the race. Every 60 seconds I would hear that annoying beep telling me that I should be slowing down, after the first 15 minutes of a slight up hill out of Penticton I reached the first turn off to Mcleans road,the first small hill of the race, this was the first time I sat up and let my heart rate fall.
I knew that I was moving up the field but I also knew that I was pushing hard, this was part of the strategy that Scott had talked about, so I continued to push and the competitors and towns zoomed by, first was Oliver, as I passed a female pro I said, (they get a 15 min head start) “looks like a bunch ride up ahead”, there were 30 – 40 age groupers 1-2 meters apart drafting on the way to Osoyoos.
When I reached Osoyoos, I sat up as this was the first real climb of the day Richtors Pass, just over 8kms, I sat up and thought about pulling up using my hamstrings as much as possible, and just keeping a steady 17-19kms per hour, I was still passing more people than were passing me and I noticed that there were some familiar faces around me. The Down hill out of Richtors was great but straight away we were into a head wind, the wind that had got up early in the day, had continued to get stronger and had really pushed us down to Osoyoos. But now was the time to pay as the second half of the course there would be a head wind, and it was building all the time.
http://www.ironman.ca/bike.html
As the bike continued I continued to feel strong, I still had no idea where I sat in the field and even on the out and back part of the course I still could not gauge exactly where I was ok I thought I knew my bike split if I could maintain my pace would be a good one, on the climb up to yellow lake, which is a 30km gradual climb of about 8-900 meters I notice that the faces that had been around me for the majority of the bike were starting to fade, I concentrated now on not spiking my heart rate and consuming as much energy as I could before the run, there was still a constant head wind and staying aero was a challenge with the wind buffeting the front deep dish wheel. As I reached the top of yellow lake the rain and then hail started and the wind increased, I was passing quite a few competitors on the downhill as they were all sitting up where I was staying in my aero bars, and pushing the biggest gear on the bike (53-11). As I came past the turn off back to Penticton, I saw Celine friends and family and the cheer that I got was great, it really lifted me when you race the everyone cheers but when you know the people that are cheering it really lifts you more this is what I needed, just after I passed my supporters, there my chain started to slip on the big gear I changed up to the next gear and noticed that the rear cassette was coming loose, I changed up a couple more gears now I had to keep a really high cadence to keep my speed, although it was now downhill into town the headwind ment that you still had to push to keep above 50kms per hour.
As I hit town I remembered what Jeremy had told me about coming into town, “Make sure you keep working as you can lose a lot of time through town” this is true as it is 8kms from the edge of town to transition so I kept pushing and I consumed the last of the gels that I had on the bike, 180kms and 19 gels and 2 power bars.
As I was getting close to town I started thinking about transition and the run course, smooth not fast don’t forget anything, I went to grab my Speedo as this becomes my watch for the run portion of the course, and as I handed off my bike looked at my bike split, 5:03 and though ‘oh my god what have I done.’ I headed into transition and grabbed my gear bag, and started to change, socks Done, shoes Done visor Done, race belt Done. I had not pee’d on the bike like I had planned, I just could not do it, plenty of other people managed to but I again had to head to the bathrooms in transition to pee.
I was hoping to go under 10 hours for the ironman, and 5:20 was my best end of the expected bike split, so 5:04 I knew that I could either have a good day or a bad day, I also noticed a race clock as I headed into transition and realised that I swam well and was having a good day.
As I headed out onto the run course I was a little shaky in my run style and started to get leg cramps, these are pretty normal after you come of the bike, I kept my pace and shortened my stride and took a couple of salt tabs and the Cramps were gone. As I passed the 3km mark of the run I caught another age grouper who I ran with until the 3rd placed pro woman came past us, I decided that I should try to stay with her, she was running about 4:20 kms which was faster than I had planed but I put my motto firmly in my mind and yep it was starting to hurt!
There was a battle forming in the woman’s pro race for 3rd to fifth, and I was in the middle of it, it was quite a nice distraction to have the woman pros B*tching to me about each other, one complaining “She was drafting on the bike”, and how she was just playing mind games, and the TV cameras coming past to complete interviews was pretty cool also, also we were getting spits to the top woman pros from the coaches of the pros so this started my curiosity into where I was actually placed in the race, as a age grouper caught our group, one of the pro woman asked, “are you guys the top age groupers”, I replied “ah no”, the other age grouper replied “we are fourth and fifth” I had assumed that I was in the top 100 but WTF, in the top 5 age groupers no way. As we headed to the run turn around the hills on the run course were starting to take a toll and I could feel the injuries in my quads from my bike crash 6 weeks ago, my pace was still good but it really was getting painful now, I noticed that some of the people I was passing now were male pros, this felt good and really gave me a boost, at the turn around I grabbed my special needs bag, a bike bottle with flat red bull, only 21kms to go...
In the 3 years I have been doing triathlon and especially after going to watch last year “Kona” qualification has always been in my thoughts, I knew at this stage that if I could hold it together for another 1:30- 1:45 that there was a chance that I could qualify. Before the race I thought I had a very slim chance of qualifying, as I would have to beat 229 of the 234 competitors in my age group to qualify, now I thought to myself, if I am in 5th place age grouper, how many of the others are in my age group, I new 4th was in the 35-39 age group. But what about the others?
http://www.runtri.com/2007/05/how-to-qualify-for-kona-road-to-ironman.html
As I ran back to town I was really starting to struggle to hold it together everything was starting to hurt hamstrings quads, calfs. I consumed the last of the gel bottles from my belt that were a mix of water and 5 gels, and discarded the belt to one of the aid station volunteers, “Merry Christmas” I said. It felt good to now be running without a belt bouncing up and down, I continued to consume gels, now from the aid stations, the caffeine was keeping me in the game, but I was starting to slow down, and age grouper passed me, I looked at his calf, he was not in my age group I tried to stay with him but he was flying, I was now running 4:40kms and he was run 4:20kms,
The support as I started the run back into town was great, I had forgotten to bring my tri top from NZ so I was wearing my race uniform from the worlds, in the end this worked to my advantage as the support I got from the Canadian crowd was Fantastic.
As I got closer to town I could hear the music playing at the finish, it was great, I felt pride and was happy that my day would soon be over, I let myself have my first look over my shoulder since the start of the run, and there was day light behind me no one for 400m, time to relax and enjoy. As I ran the last 2kms where you run past the finish then come back to finish I saw Celine’s father I could see that he was as excited as I was. I was soon in the finishing shoot, I shook my fist as I saw the clock and saw 9:26 a few high fives on the way to the Tape, a fist pump and 9:26:12 as I write this I still cannot believe it, I am still in shock with my time, how does a goal of 10 hours -10 hours 20 turn into sub 9:30.
I crossed the line feeling great, and then quickly crumpled, 2 “catchers” helped me to the medical tent where after lying down feeling sick and dizzy I was given a IV and after 2 hours was released.
I found Celine and she gave me the news “You are first in your age group” No Way I thought No Way!
Goal Actual Position Overall Position Age Group
Swim 3.4km Sub60 58:56 208 35
T1 2:30
Bike 180km 5:25 5:03:21 29 1
T2 3:39
Run 42km 3:30 3:17:48 27 1
Total 9:26:13
* 34 Power bar Gels, 2 power bars, 4 bananas, 1 large can of red bull
27th Overall /3000
6th Age Grouper
So I am all packed up sitting in Vancouver, I didn’t manage to get back to Vancouver in time to make my flight back to New Zealand, Celine had a bike Crash and broke her arm so has been unable to drive, I had to pull over and sleep otherwise I was going to sleep while driving. Sorry JJ, Brian, Sharron.
Thanks again for everyone for their support; this was for me the perfect race. #1 Age Group 30-34 Ironman Canada.
Antother Race report for kona will be comming
Cheers, and thanks for reading
Tony Buckingham
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