This could get long.11 of us traveled from Chattanooga, TN to Cozumel Mexico on Thanksgiving day 2011. We drove to ATL airport, flew into Cancun, grabbed a shuttle to Playa del Carmen where we took a ferry over to Couzmel & rented cars to take us to our condos. None of us speak any Spanish. It made for a very long day, but everyone handled it well.
Friday, I picked up my race packet & was planning to pick up my bike that had been shipped using a service called Trisport Express. Unfortunately, the bikes were detained in customs & had not arrived yet. This caused a little unneeded stress.
Sat. 11:30, bike & bags made it into T-1 without incident. All is well. The rest of the day was spent laying around, stretching, hydrating & resting.
The alarm went off @ 4am. 2 packages of oatmeal, Nuplus & OJ for breakfast w/ Via coffee from home.
Once dressed it was time to go. I entered T-1 check in @ 5:30 am, prepped my bike with my nutrition, handed my morning clothes to my support team & headed for the water.
SWIM
It was a mass in water swim start. I chose to swim close to the buoy line & found myself on the front lines. Water visibility was 100% & it was beyond beautiful. When the gun went off, the swim went as smooth as possible, way better than my last IM swim @ CDA. I was able to get into a comfortable rhythm quickly, until the first turn buoy. That was insane. People were just plain crazy trying to get into that turn. But soon, we were through it & I found a nice easy draft train for the long stretch. There were times that I felt I was swimming too slow, but when I got out of the draft, it didn't take long to realize that the drafting was way easier than swimming on my own. So, I found some bubbles & settled into an easy pace while enjoying the scenery. The sea floor was completely visible, there was brain coral, plethora of fish, scuba divers with cameras, monuments...it was truly amazing & the highlight of the race. The salt water & accompanying sore throat was not. Official swim time was 1:09. A PR for me, not far off from my goal of 1:10.T-1:
It took me a few extra minutes to take off my timing chip, put on my compression socks & put the timing chip back on. I rinsed my feet & dried them too. Actually, I spent a little time in the changing tent while deciding if I should just skip it all & just put on my shoes, skipping socks & all. But due to recent injury, my coach instructed me to wear the socks, so wear the socks I did. Everything else went smoothly as planned. but my T-1 time was 8:44. Room for improvement. Exiting T-1 was pretty epic. Mexico did an excellent job with that aspect.
BIKE
The bike course was a 3 loop course that circles the bottom half of the island. Starting out easy to get the HR down was a challenge. The road was very rough & the wind was blowing hard. At the bottom of the island, Punta Sur, the course turns north along the ocean. This was a very beautiful course, another highlight of the race. Wind gusts of >20 mph kept the pace down. There were a few wrecks but I remained slow & steady. After the first lap, I dropped my mentos bottle full of salt tabs. I didn't stop to pick them up because I had a back up bottle. However, about 30 minutes later the backup bottle fell out of me bento box over one of the bumps, I needed to stop & get that one but as I looked behind me, there were a dozen riders drafting making it impossible for me to make an abrupt stop. So with over 50 miles of cycling to go in the dry heat, I had no salt & started to stress. Literally spent the next 30 miles searching the ground as I rode for dropped salt tablets & eventually found someone elses Mento box half full of endurolytes. In the mean time, my back & neck did start to cramp up. The scenery was pretty distracting though. I really think it was an amazing bike course, except for all of the illegal drafting that no official called out even once. So, I guess if you are looking for a IM that you can draft & get away with it (cheat) then this is your race. I ended with an honest 5:49 bike time. Maybe next time I will be faster. But, that's 30 minutes faster than my IMCDA bike, a PR. My nutrition plan worked well, Ironman perform, concentrated into 2 bottles, water in my front aerobottle & a bottle of 12 diluted vanilla Powergels in my downtube bottle. I put nothing in the special needs bag, my only regret. I should have put a whole bottle of endurolytes in there. Thanks to Andy Sweet & Jamie Ingalls for all the support & preparation on my bike for the race. You guys @ Hub Endurance are the best!T-2
So, it was still sunny entering T-2. My transition time was 2:22. Basically just changed shoes & grabbed my salt tabs & ran out into the amazing crowd cheering.
Run
Ok, so this is where the race fell apart. The first 10 k was good & I ran an easy 9 min/mile pace. Then my stomach went crazy & I had to make an emergency porta-john stop. Montezuma's revenge got me. It was a run to the john @ each aid station from that point on. I did nothing different that day that I had not done in training, nutrition wise, but for some reason, my insides turned to water. Then it stormed. It monsooned! The streets of Cozumel flooded with rainwater & sewage for 2 hours. We were running through water up to our knees at some points. For some, I'm sure the break from the heat was welcomed. But for me, not so much. I prefer the heat. So we had 3 laps to finish. @ mile 13, an injury that I did not know I had reared it's head. My left ITB started to throb all the way up into my hip. By mile 18, I wasn't running from porta-john to porta-john, I was hobbling. My tummy would not allow for any nutrition, the only thing that would stay down was cola (Pepsi). Throughout the run, I saw a # of racers fall & pass out & get carried off in the ambulance. Later I would hear Lovato state that he thought this was the hardest 140.6 in all of his 29 IMs because of the elements we endured. I would agree, it was far from easy. The last 5 miles were a little bittersweet. It hurt, but as the finish line drew closer, my pace got faster 7 easier. At the last turn, into the finishing chute, I was actually denied access & told & needed to go "that way",(by some non English speaking locals) so I did. Until the sound of the announcer started to fade & I realized I was going the wrong way. So I turned around, soooo mad & asked the crowd, "where is the finish line!!?" Everyone pointed the opposite direction, where I originally thought I should have gone. AAAARRRRGGGG! So, I turned around & ran back to the chute yelling at the folks who turned me away the first time. (Disadvantage to racing in a 3rd world country, the volunteers were not English speaking nor did they understand what was going on) Finally, I got to the finish line @ 11:43:24 & 21st in AG. Thank goodness. Unimpressive run time of 4:33. Not a PR.Kudos to my friend & training buddy Jenny Smith who finished in the top 20 of our age group with at time of 11:39:40.
Also, my coach Andy Meyer was super & he helped me so much over the past few months. A year ago, when I asked him if he thought it was possible for me to have a early season of bike racing AND do a late season Ironman, he encouraged me to do so. Very glad he did. I always had a fresh swim workout to keep it interesting & he helped heal my injured legs.
I love & am thankful for all my friends & family, especially my husband Stephen & kids Emma & Alexa for putting up with my training plan, low blood sugars & everything that goes along with Ironman triathlon training. I could never do it without you all.
My dad's guacamole is the best! & my Mom gives amazing leg massages.
Good friends are like good medicine.
So glad to have a week to recover in Cozumel cuz it's freaking COLD back in Tennesee!
The end, for now.
