Race Recap

Tough to describe my feelings about the race. It was a tremendous experience and bigger than the race itself.

Race Start:

It was awesome seeing 2600 people in the best shape of their lives before the race started. Impressive also were the display of triathlon bikes in the transition area. When you first arrive the sun is still below the mountains, but everyone is awake and has a smile on their face. They were all sharing in the same anxiousness.

The Swim:

The start was busy on Lake Okanogan. With exception to the elite, it was a shotgun start with 2600 participants taking off. Spectators, who got up at dawn to witness the start, lined the beach 10 deep.

The start is shallow so I walked a ways out. I then began to swam for a while, but it was still shallow so I started walking again with people swimming beside me. I then jumped in the water again for the long haul. The water was very crowded. I got elbowed in the ribs pretty hard and got punched in the eye, but my goggles didn’t fall off. Nothing was intentional.

My focus was on getting through the swim with a constant pace without worrying about people around me. The day is long so I tried to avoid overdoing it early on. It seemed very long and it was for me (it is the longest I have swam). I did cramp in my calf towards the end, but my wetsuit kept me afloat using the rest of my body to keep going until the cramp subsided. I came out of the water a little disoriented but felt pretty good.

The bike:

I am weak in the swim so I was able have fun the first 30 miles and pass a lot of people. About 40 miles in I was flanking two cyclists. One turned into the other one and they both went down with a few intangibles falling on the pavement and some cussing from one of the riders. I swerved to the right to easily avoid the crash.

Race officials on motorcycles were passing out yellow cards (time to be served in penalty tent) for drafting and crossing the center line. I was able to avoid it, but I did cross the center line once or twice.

I was trying to stay focused and peddle hard without getting my heart rate up too high. The first mountain pass was easy. The second pass was lined with people cheering on the riders. There was a narrow pathway created by fans at two places that made it feel like the Tour De France. Cruising down the backside back into Penticton both quads started to cramp up so decided to take it a little easy with a marathon still to worry about.

The run:

The same quad muscles cramping on the bike aren’t utilized much in the run, so I was feeling good as I started out. I was doing an 8 min 40 second pace per mile for the first 10-12 miles. I started thinking I could do that the rest of the way.

Mile 12 the hills section began and things got tougher. I stopped the dream of continuing 8.5 minute miles for the rest of the race. The goal later became: keep running. My cramping became problematic and I had to stop to stretch my hamstrings and calves on various occasions.

Many people were walking at this point and many people were running faster than me. At mile 21 I began feeling ok again. At this point I knew I could finish. It was like my mind was telling my body I only had 5 miles left. I kept my body compact to avoid cramping. While running I would barely turn my head or give someone a high five. I was just focused on finishing and wasn’t paying attention to anything else. The last mile I saw my wife and the family. It was a good moment and I got a little teary eyed.

When I crossed the finished line the announcer says ‘Brady Gustafson YOU are an Ironman!’. Two people are there waiting for you walk you to the massage tent, outside, or to the medical tent. I went to the massage tent and got a fabulous massage that aided in my recovery. While there a lady came up to me worried that I was not ‘with it’. I talked to her for a couple minutes and she decided I was fine and didn’t need medical attention.

My final time was 11 hours 38 minutes. A success for me. Out of 2600 races 8% didn’t make it in the 17 hour time limit. Unfortunately there was one person that didn’t survive the swim. It was the first fatality in the race’s 27 years. He was 66 years old and wandered off and struggled a bit towards the end of the swim leg. A kayaker found him. CPR didn’t revive him. My condolences.

My recovery was similar to a marathon. One difference was I felt like vomiting for 2 nights following the race. I would stay up in the middle of the night with a very upset stomach. After four days I was back to normal. The massage therapist thought I was going to lose my big toenail. It is still on now, but black and blue. Two weeks later I feel a bit of pain in my right knee, but other than that my body feels back to normal.

It is surprising, but I may be hooked. The race was stunning. The fans were great. I felt like I was a part of something special.

We have raised over $700 for Ahmsa up to this point not including any donations sent in by mail.

Final tally

Sorry for the delay:
I finished!
What a ridiculous race. So fun for a while and the such misery later.

Stats:
Time: 11 hrs 38 min.
Status: 7-22 min ahead of my estimate
Caffeine intake: equivalent to 14.5 cups of coffee
cramps: calf during swim, both quads during bike, both calves and both hamstrings during run
# of Pukes: None. Stomach is a steel trap i tell you.
Consumption: 5 pieces of pizza, bag of potatoes (in my back pocket akin to Napolean Dynamite), 15 gu gels, 4 gu chomps, 3 power gels, chicken broth, pepsi, gatorade, cytomax...
State of mind: Euphoria
How is my body feeling: tough to walk, stomach feels queezy, will lose a toe nail for big toe.
Highlight of the day: Tour de france like narrow path formed by rabid chanting fans with cowbells on the last big climb of the bike (felt like Lance Armstrong)
Low of the day: mile 15-16 on the run with big hills and cramping and the end felt so far away.

Lots of thoughts on this amazing day that I will get to later.
Thank you for the comments. Thanks to the 'brady bunch' for their support.

Done with bike, fully on the run.

Sorry for the delay...lack of internet for a bit.
Came in from bike at 2:05 pm, with a whoop, whoop and a big smile.

Stats: 88 degrees
Caffeine= 11 cups
Atttitude: Awsome though worried about cramping.
Getting emotional too now.
Body: Mild cramping in quads and calves,
Me: starting to get teary eyed.

Thinking he'll be done the running at about 6:15-6:30pm.

90 miles...almost done with the bike...

Such a CHAMP...


90 miles in, 22 miles left of the bike.


Stats:
Caffeine: 10 cups down
Attitude: Positive (no more climbing on the bike)
Body: Feeling good, no cramping
Time: 12:55pm
Current temp: 75 degrees

60 miles in...

So this last phone call, I didn't really understand him too well, as it seemed pretty windy, but this is what I got.

Current Temp: 74 degrees

Stats:
Caffeine: 6 1/4 cups
Attitude: Determined
Body: no cramping
Times at ~60 miles: 11:25am

Next update at 90 miles in...He is incredible :)

30 miles in on the Bike...

Brady is now ~15 minutes ahead of schedule!

Pace: 23 mph
Caffeine: 5 cups
Attitude: Excited
Body is Feeling: Good, cramping is over
Time at 31 miles in the bike ride: 9:47am

Go Brady Go!

The RACE is ON!!!

Race started @ 7am.

Brady was ready and calm as usual...I was more emotional!

Brady came out of the water from the swim at 8:15am with a smile on his face and slightly disoriented. At that point he was in the middle of the pack, though the swim is not his strongest leg! Expecting him to kick butt on the bike!

Stats:
*Caffeine intake = to 4 1/4 cups of Coffee
*Legs cramping a bit towards the end
*Attitude: High spirited and smiling
*Body feeling: like he was going into Labor (don't know how he knows what that feels like)...But really good


2.4 miles down, only 138.2 miles to go!!!

The countdown is on

We have been in Penticton for 2 nights. One would imagine I would be relaxing, but there is a fair amount of running around to do. This is not an ordinary triathlon. A lot of logistics.

Seeing 2600 people at the welcome dinner last night was pretty cool. Lots of chiseled guys and gals and not a lot of people with love handles. Everyone looks like they could use a cheeseburger or 3.

The whole family is here. We rented a house on the hill (picture of Penticton shown is taken from the house). They will be wearing green ‘Brady Bunch’ shirts on race day. Love the support!

We have raised $500 for ahmsa so far. This is a great cause alleviating poverty. More donations are appreciated. Thank you so far to Connor & Lona, Angie, Scott & Vanessa, John & Lindsey, mom, Kjell & Kevin, Aaron & Katie, Ryan & Shannon, Fletchenie, Louie & Kristen, and Jessica.

Race Day Updates

We have made it to Penticton! This may seem simple, but the fact that I was up until midnight looking for my passport added some stress to the event.

Race Day is Sunday (30th). It starts at 7am. Swim then bike then run.

I will be doing live updates throughout the day with the following stats.

Mental state: (I get emotional at the end of long endeavors)
How is my body feeling: (I tend to cramp in my legs)
# of miles traveled: (140 total)
Time:
Status: (Am I on schedule? My marked time is 11 hrs 45 min)
# of pukes: (My stomach is a garbage disposal so I hope to be ok)
Equiv # of cups of coffee consumed in caffeine:
Comments:

Live pictures may be available via the twitter posts to the right.

A Letter to Racers

A letter that was meant to racers of Ironman Canada a few days leading up to the event gives a great look into the race experience. I have attached an excerpt.

Posted by Hurricane Bob at Slowtwitch.com

The helicopters will roar overhead. Maranatha will roar. The splashing will surround you. You'll stop thinking about Ironman, because you're now racing one.

The swim will be long - it's long for everyone, but you'll make it. You'll watch as the Penticton Lakeside Hotel grows and grows, and soon you'll hear the end.

You'll come up the beach and head for the wetsuit strippers. Three people will get that sucker off before you know what's happening, then you'll head for the bike.

In the shadows on Main Street you'll spin out of town - the voices, the cowbells, and the curb-to-curb chalk giving you a hero's sendoff. You won't wipe the smile off your face for miles as you whisk along the lakeside, past fully stocked, silent aid stations for the run to come.

You'll spin up McLean Creak Road. You'll roll down towards Osoyoos, past the vineyards glowing in the morning sun. You'll settle down to your race. The crowds will spread out on the road. You'll soon be on your bike, eating your food on your schedule, controlling your Ironman.

Richter Pass will come. Everyone talks about it, but it's really nothing. You'll know this halfway up, as you're breathing easy and climbing smoothly. Look to your right. Look how high you're climbing. Look at all the bikes below, still making their way there. You're ahead of them. All of them.

You can find the rest of the letter here.

Cramps Mystery

Cramping is probably one of the biggest problems for athletes today. It is said that 30-50% of athletes suffer from cramps. It is a common ailment that can affect performance significantly. Even more surprising is the lack of consensus on what causes cramping.

Cramping is especially a problem for me as it has occurred in every major longer race that I have done. For the Ironman it is very uncertain because the longer the race the more debilitating the cramps. Solving my cramp issues could be the difference between walking and running the second ½ of the marathon.

The different causes thrown out there by people in the industry are low potassium levels, loss of electrolytes, dehydration, and muscle fatigue.

Potassium
People say eat a banana before you exercise. Potassium is an electrolyte that you lose during exercise. It is thought that muscles can weaken from a lack of potassium.

Electrolytes
More general than potassium, electrolytes are lost during exercise and they include potassium, sodium, and magnesium.

Dehydration
People have found that dehydration from exercise increases the likelihood of cramping.

Muscle Fatigue
The longer the workout the more likely the cramping.

A new study attempts to simplify the mystery of EAMCs (Exercise Associated Muscle Cramps). Martin Scwellnus at the Sports Science Institute of South Africa performed several studies in cramping using EMG (measures muscle nerve electric activity).

In the studies Dr. Scwellnus found no relationship between cramping and dehydration, lack of potassium, or lack of electrolytes.

Dr. Scwellnus identified two possible factors that may cause cramping. The first one is fatigue (motor nerve firing patterns have been demonstrated to be irregular during conditions of fatigue). The second factor is the muscle working too hard on its “inner range” or “on slack”. The protein filamensts that make of muscle fibers require optimal overlap to generate force. If the length is not optimal cramping can occur.

To prevent cramping they recommend a regimented stretching routine. It may be beneficial to perform dynamic stretches (lunges, squatting, reaching) after a brief warmup at the beginning of a workout (static stretching still at the end of the workout). The best long term solution is to restore muscle balance throughout the body by combining stretching with a well-designed functional strength training routine (concentrating on core stability).

Devil is in the details

The bike ride today was the last century ride that I will do. The ride today was as much about narrowing down race day details as it was a workout. I felt good, but didn't push myself extremely hard. A couple of thoughts on food/drink and equipment.

Equipment.
I am set up so I can bike in the aero position. It is all about aerodynamics. I used to think weight mattered the most, but that is secondary to a good aerodynamic riding position. I got fitted at Speedy Reedy for a set of aerobars on my Felt F3C road bike. Today I tested the Aero Drink Bottle for the first time shown at left. It makes it so you don’t have to leave the aero position to get a drink. It worked pretty well and I will use it for the race, but there is some splashing and I was sticky at the end of the day. It was the newer model, which is a big improvement over older models.

Food/Drink
I ate the following today:
Gu Chomps (Strawberry)
Gu gel (Vanilla Bean)
Cytomax in my water
Kashi breakfast bar
Pizza (Picadilly Circus from the gas station)

The Kashi breakfast bar takes too much energy to eat so I won’t be using it. I like the Gu Chomps and Gu gel. They are easy to digest and taste good. But at a certain point my body yearns for something else. The pizza worked well, but which kind do I use for race day (Digiorno?, do they sell that in Canada?). The only things that sounded good during the 2nd half of the ride were pizza, potatoes sprinkled with salt, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Cytomax works well for me as a carbohydrate drink, but I don’t know how to mix that with water while I am racing yet.

In the 3 minute break at a gas station a spider managed to start a web from my aero bottle to the handle bars. I didn’t notice him until later in the ride. I respect his will to hang on, but had to let him go.

Sadie Sadie

The race is in two weeks so after the weekend I will start to taper. I have a 12 mile run today and I will bike 100 miles tomorrow followed by a short run. After that my workouts will be shortened so I can get appropriate rest for the race. The last couple of weeks I haven’t recovered enough to get stronger. I am in constant recovery mode while I am working out. So the next two weeks my body can rest up for the big day.

The loveliest little distraction has been our newborn Sadie (three months old last Monday). When we signed up for the Ironman in August of 2008 we didn’t have a bun in the oven. Like a friend and new father told me: "things are always going great until you are in a head-on collision with a Mack truck". That scared me a little bit with a baby coming, but we have been pretty lucky with Sadie. She cries, but she is not high maintenance when comparing her to some of the horror stories from new parents out there. with Juggling work, training, and raising our first child has been interesting, but it has been possible.

Thankfully, my wife has been supportive of the ironman and has done more than her share often. I definitely look forward to spending more quality time with Sadie after this is over. Work has been OK primarily because I make my own schedule. There are plenty of nights where I am up with Sadie in the middle of the night, but I usually sleep in more to get the rest I need to stay motivated at work, in training, and at home.

Thanks to Tricia for the photo.

Reality Bites

I have been updating daily workouts via twitter, which shows up on the right side of the screen. This gives you an idea of the the daily schedule during ironman training.

Summarizing the past couple of months, the following shows the average time spent exercising per week.

April: 6.5 hours
May: 9 hours
June: 10.5 hours
July: 13 hours
August: 11 hours

August has only been two weeks so far. I did an eight hour workout on Sunday, but last week I had too much work to exercise daily.

This isn't the recommended regimen. I would have liked to add 20% to the last few months, but reality is I am balancing training with work and raising a newborn.

Lake Samish Triathlon Recap

Had so much fun at the Lake Samish Sprint Tri this morning! It is just a small community race, but I still get so excited to compete. I start thinking too much before the race about everything. Such a scatter brain. There are small things that I forget sometimes (e.g. remembering where my bike is after getting out of the swim or where to leave the transition o the bike or run).

Today’s race went pretty smoothly. My goggles didn’t flood with water. No flat tires. I stayed on the correct course. I have screwed up on all of those things before. My swim/bike transition was very slow (2:20). To put it into perspective, most competitive racers do it in 60 seconds. I always feel unstable rushing out of the water. The seemingly simple acts of putting on a shirt and shoes becomes very difficult and probably comical to observers.

It is a fun course. It was well supported. The bike is somewhat hilly. The run is definitely hilly. I placed 13th overall out of 231 participants. I got 41st on the swim, 10th on the bike, and 7th on the run.

I spent the last 1/3 of the run tracking down a woman in her mid 50’s. Very impressive she was. I finally passed her, which kept my pride at a reasonable level, but she ended up still beating me in overall time because ladies had a delayed start.

Practice Run

Tomorrow I am participating in the Lake Samish Sprint Triathlon in Bellingham. I haven't done a triathlon for two years so this will be fun for me and will get me to remember the little things in the sport like transition planning.

I am happy to get the warmup before the ironman, but the timing isn't great. I am in peak training right now so my body should be pretty exhausted from training. Plus it is a vital saturday with few remaining saturdays. It would have been good to do this race a few weeks ago or one week before the ironman during my taper. Like always, the chance to race gets me excited!

It is a short race: 0.5 mile swim, 14.75 mile bike, and 3.1 mile run. There are probably 150 participants.

The Scary Swim

The first leg in Triathlon is an open water swim of 2.4 miles. Many people who do triathlons cite swimming as their least favorite leg. With a shotgun start you can have swimmers on top of you and underneath you. This strikes fear into many triathletes as a majority of participants didn’t grow up competing in swimming.

So why has triathlon taken off rather than Duathlon? A Duathlon gives you biking and running without the headache of swimming. Take a look at the picture on the left. You can see how much is going on in the picture at Ironman Canada 2008. It is an exciting image that certainly adds to the allure of the event. Despite my own inadequacies in the water, I am drawn to it. This is why the triathlon has taken off despite the fear by many of the swim.

The Crawl

In 1997 two women battled it out for the top ironman spot in Hawaii. This crazy video shows what happens when your body is failing, but your will is not. Has there ever been another race where someone won by crawling? Don't worry mom, this won't happen to me. Note: This may be hard to watch.

Putting Ironman on the map

Julie Moss partially made the Ironman famous by her struggle to get to the finish line in 1982. She was trying to hold onto the lead, but her body was shutting down. A warning, this video is a little bit difficult to watch.

Cyclists, Runners, or Swimmers: Who is the better athlete?

Although the first triathlon was in 1974, the first Ironman triathlon was in Hawaii in 1978.

The idea for the original Ironman Triathlon arose during the awards ceremony for the 1977 Oahu Perimeter Running Relay. The participants were runners and swimmers, whose members had long been debating which athletes were more fit, runners or swimmers.

On this occasion, US Navy Commander John Collins pointed out that a recent article in Sports Illustrated magazine had declared that Eddy Merckx, the great Belgian cyclist, had the highest recorded "oxygen uptake" of any athlete ever measured, so perhaps cyclists were more fit than anyone.

CDR Collins suggested that the debate should be settled through a race combining the three existing long-distance competitions already on the island: the Waikiki Roughwater Swim (2.4 mi.), the Around-Oahu Bike Race (115 mi.; originally a two-day event) and the Honolulu Marathon (26.2 mi.).

Collins said, "Whoever finishes first, we'll call him the Iron Man." Of the fifteen men to start, twelve completed the race. Gordon Haller was the first to earn the title Ironman by completing the course in under 12 hours.

Gordon was a runner. The debate is over.

Or not. John Dunbar, a Navy Seal and all-around athlete, had a chance to win, but he ran out of water during the run and his crew gave him beer instead.

Race Details

Date: 08/30/09.
Location: Penticton, BC.
Distance: 2.4 mi swim, 112 mi bike, 26.2 mi run.
Time goal: Will be shooting for 12 hours, but will be happy with survival.

Charity: Ahmsa

I am dedicating this ironman to ahmsa (formerly fusion), which is a charity we are passionate about that helps impoverished Colombia with community enterprise development. Please give generously. Every dollar effects their ability to give poor families work in Colombia.

Please email me at bikingforacause@gmail.com with contribution amounts.

Thank you so much for giving during these hard times. If I can raise $3,000 I will do the race backwards.... jk.

Ironman Canada

Ironman Canada is August 30, 2009. This is my first race of this magnitude. Wish me luck. It was only a couple years ago that I thought an Ironman was out of the question because it literally seemed insane. I am not sure why it appears within reach now, but I am committed to finish.