A beautiful day for racing! Sunday 5th June at 12h the last big test for IM Austria was on the plan, a half IM distance race called Wasserstadt Triathlon Hannover Limmer. I’ve been around the area on Saturday already to watch my brother race a sprint distance, which here in Germany is without drafting. I’ve never seen disc wheels or aero helmets in a sprint triathlon and it was kind of funny to see.
Our wave start was at 12h midday, we headed over to Limmer around 10am to get everything organized with time, I hate having to hurry before a race, enough hurry in the race ;)
The sun was burning down on us already, I walked around with my holy water bottle as usual, racked my bike, prepared the running shoes and already famous white compression socks (hey they are fantastic to recognize for the photographers ;), went to the race briefing (5min, nothing new), hugged my brother and tried to avoid direct sun, which was really complicated.
As proved in Sydney my Ipod was with me this time again. The prior days to the race I have felt quite tired and not very strong; I was a little bit concerned about that, but took the moment to sit down next to a goal on the socker field where the transition zone was to concentrate and focus on my race. Bruno Mars helped on that with “on the other side” which in this case for me meant: the finish line. I went mentally thru the race the swim, transition, bike, transition, run and finish line, took a deep breath and was ready to go.
I headed down to the swim start, a canal like in Roth and some good memories. I was in the last wave start, I’ve no idea how many people but not too many, clean one! Waiting for the run to get off a girl next to me without wetsuit sais “the water is quite warm, no wetsuit needed”, I smiled at her and thought: yeah, but I like that little help to get the butt up ;)
The gun got off and the party started. It was not too bad, I just had to avoid some feet close to my chin but within a minute I was out of trouble and the water felt good. About 3 minutes later I heard my dear friend Jules when she told and showed me about how to draft in the swim and I started to look for a nice pair of feet, or better, a nice hip to sit on. And I found it. It was the “the water is quite warm” girl, I tried to pass her, but it took me too much effort and I remembered some other words from last year Pre-Regensburg when Jaime said: if you try to pass someone on the swim and you just can’t, sit on these feet. And so I did. I went with the ZeroD black trisuit (the expensive lovely one with the flowers on the shoulder ;) almost thru the whole swim and I loved it. We passed the buoy together and on the way back we had some awesome under water sceneries, clear water with long seaweed stretching out its tentacles to us, tickling in the face swimming over it… I don’t remember 1,9k passing by so quickly (it was a bit less than 1,9 due to a ship parking on the former turning point…) The way out of the water went over some stairs up to a boat, over that boat and a long way to the transition zone.
I made my way quite fast into transition, got rid of the wetsuit very well, grabbed my powertap tuned light blue old lady and out on the bike course. My legs felt bad at the beginning and I had to slow down my energy to not get over the Watts set by the coach. I thought of Lu, my best girlfriend, training partner and rocking athlete who just finished Brazil in a fantastic time, some days ago talking about Ironman Brazil she said to me: Santo Powertap, holy powertap… people were passing me, but I just thought: you guys wait, I’ll get you later, we had 3 laps to go, not one. The first lap I had to control my legs, they wanted to go faster than my head, but my butt was hurting, normally this feeling comes around km 80 of a long ride, the burning muscles, but it was already there. I focused on the numbers on the little yellow computer and went fast, with a sweet tailwind at the beginning which turned into sidewind which turned into head wind. On the second aid station my brother passed me like an airplane, shouting out “come on Kirsten get the tiger out!” My respond: “no worries, the tiger will come! Later!” and let him go.
On the second lap I had got used to control the watts, enjoying the riding and seeing the fast pace on the cervo (aka cycling computer). Half way thru the second lap my dear back decided to challenge my head, it started to hurt and got worse, but I stayed in the aeroposition trying to move a bit back and force on the saddle to change posture… On the third lap the wind got stronger. I heard my coach “you don’t care about wind, watts are watts” and so I didn’t. Controlling myself on the little uphills (it was a damn flat bike course, 440m on 90km) and pacing on the flat, tailwindy kind of downhills. Holy powertap! I caught loads of people on the last lap ;)
I was glad to get into transition and rack my bike there, getting my sore back in an upright position. It reminded me heaps of my Ironman races, it’s always like that. I had some hope that it would be different this year, as I didn’t experience back problems in my training lately, but maybe 2 days and 2850km in a car aren’t very good for an athlete’s back?
So, bike stored, socks and shoes on, race cap and gels grabbed and out on the 21k, 2 laps to go. My face was covered with salt; I realized it at the beginning of the run and tried to get water into my face and cool down a bit. It was really hot now and sun was burning. The first part of the run course wasn’t very friendly, a lot of curves and different soils made it hard to find a steady pace and my head was burning. First gel on the run at min 30.
On the next aid station I spotted a white capped white top black bottom guy walking in front of me and I thought “you see? I told you the tiger would come” even if I didn’t feel the tiger. My legs were tired and without power to push. I got onto him and said “hello my love!”, his answer: “no, that’s not possible!” And we ran together. 3 years ago my brother and I had planned to get over Roth’s finish line together but it failed by 20sec. Now we were running side by side, sometimes I went a bit in front, sometimes he did. We stopped at the aid stations to cool down a bit (they had water hoses there, great thing!!!) and get enough liquids into the body. After the second gel at min 60 I decided that I didn’t want more of them… I got a shower and finally got rid of the salt in my face and felt a bit better.
The last 8k really hurt. I couldn’t help but groan or swear sometimes to keep going. My legs wanted to walk but I didn’t. At one point my brother said: come on we’ll suffer this together to the finish line. And so we did. The last 150m to the finish line went uphill and we paced up until we got there, he grabbed my hand 30m before the line and it was awesome! I couldn’t physically but that special thing gave me an extra push to get the last reserves out of the body. And the tiger. He came, even if it was only for the last 150m.
I sat down just behind the finish line and started to sob… Glad it was over and happy for this very special race that we couldn’t have planned better.
4 weeks to IM Austria and still some work to do. E.g. get my back fixed and regular massages. I failed a bit on that part lately, but it isn’t that easy when you move around all the time…
When we picked up the bikes and headed to the car I stopped by the results, and there it was: 3rd in my age group. We weren’t too many, but even though that’s a great effort for me, beating my personal best in half distance by 40minutes. You can’t compare one race to another, but 40min is not only due to the course.
4 weeks to go. 4 weeks to feed the tiger and get him tuned for the long one. 4 weeks of pro life, even if I have to get focused on real life bit by bit. I don’t know where I will stay, where I will work, where I will live. I don’t even know where I want to live right now. I’m feeling happy when I’m sitting on my bike. The only consistency in my gipsy life ;) The gipsy and her tiger…
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