IM Austria 2015 Sunday 28 June 2015
Conditions – Wind speed 6kph, temperature 22 to 26 degrees, some cloud cover, no rain i.e. close to perfect
Plan A – 9hrs 45mins
Plan B – 9hrs 51mins 30 seconds (i.e. Moody’s IM Barcelona time minus 1 second)
Plan C – 9hrs 59mins 59 seconds (i.e. Sub 10 hrs)
There was no plan D!
Race choice
After Challenge Roth last year, where it was over 35 degrees for much of the race and I missed out on sub 10 hours by 11 minutes, I decided I had to have another crack at the Ironman distance. I felt with another years training and with a bit of luck, I had a decent chance to go sub 10. So the decision then was which race? I knew I wanted to do something bang in the middle of the summer somewhere warm (not Roth warm but warmer than say Bolton) and do an Ironman branded event. I also wanted to pick a course where I might have a chance of qualifying for Kona one day so after some research I decided on IM Frankfurt. It’s at the start of July, it’s the European Champs with lots of Kona slots and it is pretty quick. Alas, once I had decided on it around mid-January, I realised there was no chance of getting an entry, not even through Nirvana (and for this I will be eternally grateful as IM Frankfurt was non wetsuit and around 40 degrees for the marathon this year. I dodged a bullet!). So my plan B was Austria. It was fast, at the end of June, average temperature of 25 degrees and everyone I spoke too who had done it, recommended it highly. So after paying Nirvana €850 I was in!
I went to Roth with 28 other Piranhas but this time I was flying solo. It was going to be strange heading over for this on my own but I knew I would meet plenty of Irish over there. Now it was time to concentrate on the training.
Preparation and training
After Roth, I knew I need to work on two things. My swim and foam rolling! I swam 76 mins in Roth and felt if I was to go sub 10 hours, I needed to be swimming around 70 mins. As for the foam rolling, the reason for this was that during the bike in Roth my quads and hamstrings were tight and sore and I really felt if I worked on them my bike time would improve.
Broadly, my training week would break down as:
Swim – 3 pre-work swims in UCD averaging about 3km per session. I added one swim occasionally at the weekends when I could
Bike – 2 mid-week turbo’s (mix of length and intensity but mostly z3) and one long bike. About 3 months out I added a quality brick session on a Saturday morning in the Phoenix Park
Run – 4 runs per week. One Tuesday farlek run of about 16km (sub threshold run), one easy lunch time run, 1 Saturday interval session (1 mile to 2km intervals) which eventually got incorporated with the Saturday morning brick and one long Thursday night run which went from 90mins and peaked at 21 miles.
Anyone who follows me on Strava will see that I was putting in a large volume of training. I imagine I was averaging about 15 hours per week with some 20 hour weeks at I got closer to the race. Outside of those hours, there was foam rolling, stretching, a small bit of core and weights. So basically, Ironman prep took up a lot of my time but I loved it. I was getting fitter and I was motivated. The hardest thing about the whole preparation was getting enough sleep and eating right. This was made easier by my decision the year previous to get a coach, Kevin Keane. He set the sessions, I did them. Although I know quite a bit about how to train, having a coach makes things much easier and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone looking to maximise their potential.
In terms of keeping myself motivated, I tried to find others doing similar training. I swam with a group in UCD, some Piranha and Belpark members and some master swimmers. I biked quite a bit with Aileen. She was (and still is) building for IM Bolton so was doing similar length bikes to me which was ideal. Added to that she is a fantastic biker and very focused. This meant the long bikes were done at a decent steady pace and there wasn’t much faffing around. With my running, I did the intervals with coach Kevin, some long runs with Aileen and did my farklek around UCD on a Tuesday night while Piranha were doing their run session with Maria. Although it looked like I was being snobby I really wasn’t! I was just sticking to Kevin’s sessions and trying to keep in touch with my fellow Piranhas during my warm up or warm down.
One of the most important things in training is consistency and this where I’ve been very lucky. If I don’t injure myself falling over something hungover or sprain my foot on holidays when I’ve a bit too much drink on board, I tend not to get injured. This means I can continue to build fitness as the season progresses. So during the prep for Austria, I missed little training and was continuing to improve. I won a small duathlon early in the season, came second in another and came 9th in Athy Double Olympic. I thought on a good day I could podium in Athy but I went into it tired and didn’t get too worried with the result. I was going to Austria in pretty good shape after putting in 6 months of good training so I was giving myself the best possible chance to go sub 10 hours.
Arriving in Austria and pre-race build up
Wednesday – I flew from Dublin to Vienna with Aer Lingus and got the train down from there to Klagenfurt. I had shipped by bike the previous week with the excellent ShipMyTriBike so the train worked perfect. They are bang on time and it gave me a chance to do some last minute planning and relaxing on the train. Journey time from Vienna to Klagenfurt is c. 4hrs 30 mins if anyone if planning on doing this again. I had booked a guesthouse about 8km from the IM race site and on the train line. It was perfect. It was about 300m to the lake so I could do practice swims, was quiet and clean. I didn’t do any training on Wednesday as it was a long day travelling. I focused on stretching and relaxing in the evening. Worryingly my quads seemed tight that evening. Sh1t. Need to get that sorted over the coming days but I had time I felt.
Thursday – woke at 7am, had breakfast, got the train to the race site, registered in 2 mins and proceeded to the official swim site on the Worthersee Lake. The lake is absolutely pristine. So calm, visibility is great and the scenery is spectacular. I did a 2.3km swim with some efforts and checked out the entrance to the canal which apparently can be tricky to sight during the race as the sun rises over it. I also checked the water temperature – it was 21.5 degrees meaning it was looking like a wetsuit swim. If it got over 24.5 is was going to be non-wetsuit but I couldn’t see the water temperature rising by 3 degrees in a few days so was delighted. After the swim, I collected my bike off the ShipMyTriBike guys and cycled the 8km back to the guesthouse with my registration bag, wetsuit/swim gear, 12kg bag of tri gear I shipped with my bike and a bike pump. This was possibly the hardest thing I had to do all weekend. Mark Sheridan from ShipMyTriBike was a little worried for me as I cycled off in the direction of my guesthouse with bags hanging off me and struggling to stay upright. When I eventually made it back without incident, I unpacked, ate and chilled for the evening.
Friday – woke again at 7am, had breadfast, did a 90 minute easy bike and did a short 8km run. My quads were still tight and I had managed to strain my hamstrings on the run as I had run down a steep hill from my guesthouse. Besides this, I was feeling good and tapered. The rest of the day I just relaxed and read.
Saturday – woke again at 7am, had breakfast, got the train into the IM Expo and swam 1.3km with Mark. I went to the race briefing then at 9am. Although I skipped the race briefing in Roth, I found this one useful . A huge cheer went up when it was announced as a wetsuit legal race. After the briefing, I headed back to the guesthouse before heading out for an hour on the bike just to spin the legs and make sure the bike was running smoothly. Once I’d done that, I packed my T1, T2 and post race bag and headed back to the race site to rack my bike. Once this was done, it was off to a pizzeria for my last supper and back to the guesthouse to stretch and foam roll. I got to bed around 10:30pm meaning I would get about 5 hours sleep.
Race day
I woke at 3:45am and made my way downstairs for breakfast at 4am. I was picked up at 4:30am outside my guesthouse then by an Israeli guy called Udi who I had met on the train. He was also doing the race and had kindly offered to give me a lift that morning. We parked up and made our way to T1 to check our bikes (i.e. pump wheels, put water bottles on them, put nutrition on them, make sure Moody hadn’t paid someone to sabotage them). Once all that was done and we made our way to the swim site. I had about 45 minutes until my wave was off at 6:50am which I used to go to the bathroom one last time and to do a short swim warm up.
3.8km swim – Target time: 70 minutes Actual time: 69 minutes
I had registered a few months previous to get into the sub 60 minute swimmer wave (i.e. the fast swimmers). I obviously was never going to swim that fast but I was assured by someone who had done the race before that I would be able to find feet and get dragged along.
The atmosphere just before the start as I stood at the edge of the lake was electric. The sun was shining, it was warm, the lake looked calm and beautiful. I was repeating in my head “Relax” but surprisingly I didn’t feel that nervous, I felt ready. Boom! The gun went off and 400 of us “fast swimmers” were running into the lake to start our race. After a few minutes of some bumping and bashing it settled down and I had found myself drafting off another swimmer. Result! I was slightly worried these fasts swimmers would disappear into the distance but it was becoming apparent that there were quite a few spoofers in my wave who were closer to 70 minute swimmers. We rounded the first buoy at 1300m and I had found a good rhythm. The water was really clear and it was very easy to draft. I felt I was going at a decent pace without pushing myself too much. Everything was going well until we rounded the second buoy at about 1700m to face back to shore. I had been warned that it could be difficult to sight on the return to shore as the sun rises in that direction. Well there weren’t wrong. I couldn’t even see land, let along the canal, the sun was so blinding. So I just continued the same swimmers feet and hoped they knew where they were going. There was a bit of zig zagging for the next while as we made our way towards the entrance of the canal. We eventually got to it which indicated there was about 800m to go. The canal can get crowded and some people end up getting kicked and bashed but as I was in the first wave it was fine. I cruised without incident to the finish of the swim reminding myself what I needed to do in T1. As I exited the water I could see I had swam 69 minutes. Sweet. I was on target. Getting out of the swim in Roth I was already 6 minutes down on my target time and it played on my mind a bit. This time getting out slightly ahead of target gave me confidence and I reminded myself my strongest two disciplines were to come.
Looking back at my Garmin file it suggests I swam 3.9km averaging 1:45 per 100m. I was in 757 position out of roughly 3,000 athletes.
I rushed through transition, grabbed my T1 bag (marked with black tape to make it stand out from the others), put on my helmet and socks and headed for my bike. T1 time 4:22.
180.2km bike – Target time: 5 hrs 15 minutes Actual time: 5 hrs 8 minutes
At the start of the bike I managed to press the lap button twice on my Garmin by mistake so it now thought I was in T2 doing 35kph. I quickly stopped recording my activity and switched the Garmin to bike mode. Although I now wouldn’t know what my overall time would be mid race, at least I would know if I was sticking to my planned power and HR on the bike.
The bike is roughly two 90km laps with 2 climbs on each lap. You don’t hit the first hill until about 30km so the start of the bike is pretty flat and fast. I was trying to stick to a Normalised Power of 230w but I noticed I was slowly creeping towards 240w. I also noticed my quads and hamstrings were feeling a little tight on the bike and cursed my luck. Although they didn’t feel as bad as they did in Roth I still was hoping I wouldn’t have any issue at all with them. Nevertheless, I was managing to stick to or go above my planned power and my heart rate was hovering around the top of zone 2 which was perfect. I ploughed on zipping by many of the fast swimmers who had gotten out ahead of me.
My nutrition plan on the bike was to have one Clif Bar every hour and about 1.5 bottles of ISO. So every 15 minutes an alarm went off on my Garmin reminding me to eat and drink. Although at times I didn’t feel like drinking I knew I needed to do to ensure I got enough calories on board to get me through the marathon.
The main climb on the course comes at 60km and you do it again at 150km. Its called Rupertiberg. Its about 3km long and averages 5% gradient and 10% in parts. My plan for this hill was to go up it fairly easy (no more than 300w’s) so as not to burn any “matches”. As a result I seemed to be one of the slowest going up the hill with most trying to get up the hill as quick as they could. They were being egged on by groups of supporters all shouting “hop hop hop hop”. I felt they would regret this and time made up here would be lost on the second loop. After Rupertiberg, the next 25km is either a gradual downhill or flat so it’s very fast – I was hitting speeds of 70kph in places. At one point I had to cross the white line to overtake a couple of other cyclists and as I did I got a good dressing down from one of the motorcycle officials. I had no idea what he was saying but I apologised and prayed he wouldn’t give me a penalty. Thankfully he didn’t and I continued on. Near the end of the first lap my stem mount for my water bottle had come loose and was twirling around in front of me when I came out of my aero position. It was annoying me so I eventually decided to jump off my bike to try and fix it. I spent 2 minutes trying to fix it before giving up and deciding to jettison my second bottle and relying on just having one bottle on the bike (on the downtube) for the rest of the race. Looking back, I should have made this decision while on the bike and not stopped as it was 2 minutes wasted. I eventually made it to half way / 90km at which stage my Garmin gave me my lap split. I had done 2:36 at an average pace of 34.6kph, av HR of 130 and Normalised Power of 240w. This all seemed fine albeit my power seemed a little high and I knew I was on for roughly a 5:12 bike split if I could manage to maintain that power.
As I started off on the second lap, I noticed the tightness in my quads was gone but my hamstrings were feeling a little weird. I wasn’t sure if a cramp was about to come on or if they were still just tight. I decided to pop a salt tab just to be sure. The second loop was fairly uneventful. One thing I did notice is that there was a small number of individual’s intent on drafting. Although some may have got away with it, I did see some get carded and incur stop and go penalties. I hate drafting but there was no point in getting annoyed with it here. I had to race my own race. I was cruising now on the second lap and feeling good. My NP for this lap was up around 240w again but my HR had dropped to about 127. I had decided to ease off ever so slightly on this lap just to be sure I wouldn’t mess up the marathon that was to come. I was pretty relaxed on this loop as I knew I was still on course for a sub 10hr IM and I had got through the first lap without a puncture or mechanical.
As I jumped off the bike at T2 I looked at my Garmin and it said I had done 177km in 5hrs 8 mins. Result! The course seemed to be 3km short and I was ahead of schedule. I was nearly giddy at this stage but reminded myself that an Ironman really only starts on the run.
Looking back at my Garmin it says my moving time was 5:05:47, elevation gain of 1,652m, average speed of 34.6kph, average HR of 128, NP of 238w and average power of 216w. Bascially what I took from this is that I had paced the bike pretty much perfectly but I left a couple of minutes out on the course by stopping to fix my stem mount. Not to worry I was ahead of schedule anyway. I had moved up to 280 place so had overtaken over 450 cyclists.
T2 was pretty quick too. I did a lot of faffing around in transitions in Athy Double Olympic and I planned not to make the same mistake here. I grabbed my runners, cap and gels and off I went. T2 times was 3:06.
42.2km run – Target time: 3 hrs 20 minutes Actual time: 3 hrs 10 minutes
My plan for the run was to start off conservatively for the first 5km and run below what I expected would be my average race pace. I think time given up here is easily made up in the second half of the marathon. So I looked down at my Garmin after 1km and I was running about 4:10 per km. Sugar. I needed to slow down. I felt I was running slow but needed to trust the watch. After 3km my average pace had dropped to about 4:20 but I still was running faster than I planned. I was hoping to average 4:45 or so for the first 5km. Just about then I had a sudden call of nature. My stomach was grumbling and I needed to find a portaloo quick. These are at every 2.5km on the course (at the aid stations) so I quickly found one. Once I got going again I noticed my average pace at dropped down to about 5 mins per km. I didn’t really mind this as it gave me a chance to run at a slower steadier pace. I had set my watch to lap at each 5km and was my way of breaking the marathon down into manageable chunks. I ended up going through the first 5km in an average pace of 4:39 which included a toilet break. I knew I had probably run a little too fast here and prayed I wouldn’t pay for it later. At the same time I kept an eye on my HR was it was hovering around 142 which is well below threshold so I knew I was running within myself.
The run course is two laps that heads out by the lake before you reach a turnaround and head back into Klagenfurt and run through an old square, turn around and back to the lake to begin the second loop. The support on the course was amazing. There are plenty of people out cheering, spraying you with water and shouting “hop hop hop hop”. One of the highlights was getting sprayed by two pretty girls in bikinis with supersoakers. Unfortunately I couldn’t hang around to chat, I had my sights on Moodys club record!
After about 15km I had another call of nature. I felt the gels and water taken up to that point was sloshing around in my stomach and was getting slightly worried I wasn’t absorbing the fuel. This could come back to bite me in the last 10 or 12km of the run. After a brief stop I got going again and back to my average run time of about 4:30. Shortly after I felt I needed to go again. At that point I made the decision that I wasn’t going to stop. A quick time was more important than finishing with a clean trisuit! I summoned by internal honey badger and soldiered on. Thankfully the cramps came and went quickly and I didn’t have to stop for the rest of the run.
By and large for the run I jogged the aid stations even if it was very slowly. Some I walked where I felt I needed to get more water in me as it was pretty hot but I realised jogging through was possible. My nutrition strategy was to rely on the gels I was carrying (8 in total taking one roughly every 4 or 5 km) and wash them down with water I grabbed at the aid stations. I also grabbed sponges and squeezed them over my head, back and arms to keep cool. Occasionally there was ice available which I threw some under my hat and held a few cubes in either hand to try and cool myself down.
The rest of the run was pretty uneventful. As I got closer to the finish, ticking off the 5km’s, I knew I was on for a decent IM time. I was trying to figure out what time I was going to finish in but I couldn’t as I was mentally drained from racing for 8 or 9 hours at that stage. It was only when I got to about 39km that I realised I wasn’t going to screw up the marathon. At this stage I picked up my pace a little as I felt I was holding back a little until then. As I ran down the finishing shoot, I pointed towards my number to indicate I was a first time Ironman finisher. If they see you do this, they will say those immortal words “William Owens, you are an Ironman!”. I was so looking forward to hearing it. But unfortunately it didn’t really register with me. I am still not sure if they said it. I didn’t even notice the young pretty cheerleaders dancing on either side of the finishing shoot. All I was fixated on was the time that was showing on the board above the finish line. It read “Daniel Kirby 9:34:25”. I was confused. Why wasn’t it showing my time? Was I coming in close to that time? Was Daniel the last athlete over the line and if so was he in my wave? So instead of throwing my arms up in the air celebrating my finish time of 9:34:43, I sheepishly held my arms half aloft with a slightly confused look on my face. I wasn’t quite sure what I was celebrating. I hoped I had gone under 9:50 but I wasn’t even sure if I had gone under 10 hours. I proceeded to head into the finishers tent where beers, food, massage and showers were offered. I grabbed a beer first, as you do, and then headed for a massage. Once that was over I tried to find a place to get my finishing time. No volunteers could tell me how I could check this so I grabbed my finish line bag which had my phone in it. I figured I could check the athlete tracker but once I turned it on my phone I quickly realised I was probably going to find out via whatsapp. I must have had 50 messages from multiple conversations. I eventually found one that confirmed my time of 9:34. I was in shock and it didn’t really sink in at first. I headed for a shower then with a big smile on my face and grabbed some food and another beer (the previous one was non-alcoholic!). I got talking to a couple of Irish lads who I recognised by their trisuits. One of them had finished in 9:24 (Kevin) and the other had finished in 9:32 (Simon). We discussed the race for a while and were joined by more Irish, mostly from T3 triathlon club. Although I would have liked nothing better than to stay there chatting and drinking for many hours, I still had the small task of getting my bike, transitions bags and getting back to my guesthouse 8km away. I briefly toyed with the idea of cycling back but choose to get the train in the end. That evening I spent replying to messages, eating and packing my stuff to give back to ShipMyTriBike in the morning.
Looking back on my Garmin file it indicates I ran 41.1km in a time of 3:10:06 which is an average of 4:37 per km. I had stopped for 3 minutes so my average moving time was 4:34 per km. This run moved me up a further 195 places to 85th overall.
Post race
The next day I woke after broken sleep and grabbed breakfast. Some other IM finishers in my guesthouse exchanged times and congratulated each other. After breakfast I cycled the 8km back to the IM Expo with my gear to give to ShipMyTriBike. I then went for a non-wetsuit swim in the lake, chilled out in the sun for a while and headed into Klagenfurt to see what it was like. I toyed with the idea of heading to the main Irish pub, The Molly Malone, later than evening but decided against it as I was up at 4:45am the next day to catch a 5:15am train to Vienna Airport. I didn’t trust myself to go home at a reasonable hour and travelling hungover is never fun. At the airport I met lots more Irish who completed the race and exchanged stories.
It’s little more than a week on from the race and I am starting to come down from the high I was on last week. The race could not have gone much better. I prepared well, executed the race plan near perfectly and beat my Plan A target time by more than 10 minutes. I had also taken the club Ironman record by more than 17 minutes (sorry Moody!). That said, I am not ready to hang up my Ironman boots just yet and plan on going faster. I think I can make up time on all 3 disciplines, mostly on the bike, and hopefully get closer to qualifying for the Ironman World Championships in Kona. I finished 18th in my age category (which seems to be the most competitive based on times) and Kevin from T3, who had finished 10 minutes ahead of me and in 10th place in our category, got a Kona spot which he took. I’ve since realised that on average the Kona spots roll down 4 or 5 place each year in Austria so if I were to go 10 or 15 minutes faster I would have a good chance of getting to Kona.
I want to say a big big thank you to all those people who wished me well and congratulated me on the race. It really meant a lot. I also want to thank my coach Kevin Keane for getting my training spot on and getting me in the best possible shape for the race. And for those wondering, I didn’t get the IM tattoo. If I make it to Kona one day I might have a rethink!
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