IRONMAN CdA Race Recap

Disclaimers:

#1 My writing (typing?) style is conversational and fun. It isn't going to satisfy an English professor, but it should be fun to read. Because I often have about 20 things I want to express at one time, there are necessarily going to be lots of parentheticals, comma-splices, obscure references, run-ons and other gaffes. Deal with it, mmmkay? 

#2 There's a bit of a of family "business" at the end of this, that none of you really know about. I didn't write it to slay anyone nor express any kind of sham superiority whatsoever. Rather, I thought my review of the question that invariably arises (“140.6? Why the hell would you do such a thing?”) is incomplete without a bit of personal introspection. Difference is that I’m willing to share mine.

#3 This is a long write-up, that I intend to use for me to remember this day as I get older. I didn't write about things that bore me, like nutrition or bike power data or run cadence. I suggest you treat this text like a buffet - put it all on your plate, even though it might not be exactly what you want, because hey, it's all accounted for in the price. 

Here we go...

Pre-race:

3:00 alarm clock. Yup, this thing is happening. Mark, Beth, Josh (Shown in order below) and I headed down to the start in order to get a decent parking spot in the small city center. Pretty much sat there and talked about the race, the weather, our goals, and the mid-term effects of male chafing in the groin area for an hour or so before greasing up and getting in our wetsuits (I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere...(That's what she said?)).

The thing about this stage, about an hour before a race, is that no one has any self-confidence left, but they're all trying to convince you that they do, as if any deference you give them will make them somehow feel more confident. Strange thing, that.

Anyhow, back to live action. Wetsuits on and petroleum derivative, military-grade anti-chafe applied, it was down to transition for the Type A Paranoia Olympics (Do I have enough gels?  Are the bolts on my handlebars torqued to 6 Newton-Meters? Are my tires pumped to 113 psi?  (Even within that, have I properly accounted for the increase in temperature and subsequent increase in tire pressure?)). Oh, and we have to drop off our bags for race. I still find it funny that you get two extra "special needs" bags for the bike and run. I mean, what the heck is that about? Unless you're cool with me putting roller skates in my run special-needs bag, there's probably not much that will provide me assistance in, ya know, running.

Swim:

61 degree water is cold, wetsuit or not. How cold, you ask, intelligent reader? Go lay on the floor of a restaurant freezer room, then have a few five year olds stand on your chest. Not so easy to breathe, methinks. Your results may vary, mine will not. 

So, super waves (at least for me) were added to this cocktail of misery. Wind blew from the southwest, all the way up to the northeastern shore, building to some pretty decent waves (maybe 2.5’ to 3’ swells once off shore). Being from Iowa and not being able to swim at all just 400 days ago, (for realz, like drowning in the bathtub levels of suckitude) things got real quite quickly. At a few points in the swim, I just laughed in the water like a deranged clown. I’m pretty sure this was the aquatic equivalent of sprinting on a treadmill: look silly, try hard, don’t move a foot. Come to think about it, I rarely swallow four gallons of lake water on the treadmill, so perhaps it’s not that close at all.

Anyway, the course was two loops of 1.2 miles, where you had to get up and run about 20 yards in the middle. Vertigo, table of this guy. A few deep breaths, an adjustment of the goggles, and back in for another half hour of Bruce Lee hand-to-hand combat in the water. If you’ve not done a tri yet, the swim is basically an aquatic street fight. Wrists grabbed, faces kicked, crazed lunatics out of control. Like rush hour traffic (or 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife) there’s nothing you can do but deal with it.

In the end, I swam a decent 1:08 for my first 2.4 open water swim. Given the conditions, I’ll take that money and run bike.

Bike:

Like the swim, 400 days ago I didn’t even own a bike. Last bike I had was a second-hand Walmart special in college – I think I rode it three times. Once sober. Check that, not even once sober. So, training has been an experience in having muscles that are sore and an ass that’s more sore.

As you might imagine, the wind that made the swim so much fun misery was also present on a bike. So, in addition to more than a 1.2 miles of total climbing on the day, there was a dramatic amount of headwind. No matter though, just about everyone had to endure more than 5 hours on their bike, so there was misery to be had by all.

Other than those things, I don’t have much to add about the bike, other than I didn’t have any mechanical issues, I peed on myself intentionally several times (hmm, did I do that in college on the old Wally-World Doom Bike?), I sniped a water bottle from a teenage girl at an aid station at 22 miles per hour and she said “Wow, nice handles” (to which I quickly replied, “you too, kid” which earned some quality laughter from the not-quite-stone-sober volunteer partners in the group).

Highlight (and by far the scariest part) of the bike was hitting 49.1 mph on the downhill…wowza. I was scared like an 8 year old with a Ouija board.

All in, 5:55. Not where I wanted to be (which is to say, getting a massage somewhere far, far from the race), but it was acceptable.

 

Run:

Short and sweet here, which is intentionally ironic, as the run was long and bitter. I figured, hey, I’ve run 17 marathons before, I don’t need to worry about this part. Yep, dumb as can be. I hit “the wall” at like mile three (not mile 23). I take that back, I didn’t hit the wall. The wall hit me. Hard. I don’t have much else to add because, genuinely, I watched my shoes for about the last 10 miles. Not very interesting, though quite painful.

One last bit. It’s always funny when I have to walk during races. I hate it. But it’s not just that I hate it, it’s that I reason with myself that it’s okay if X happens, because then I’ll do Y. Like, I’ll walk 50 steps, then run 200, then walk 50, then run 210, and so on. The thing is though, I always trust myself and I always lie to myself, too. Brain melt, amiright? Usually goes something like this:

Good Jake: No, no dude, you got this. Just walk a bit, catch your breath, then jog until you catch the octogenarian up there. That dude cannot beat you.

Bad Jake: Totally agree. BURY THAT OLD MAN.

Good Jake: Poor choice of words, dude.

Bad Jake: Ok, that wasn’t intentional. So, I’ll just walk here for 30 more seconds then, I promise I’ll run.

Good Jake: That sounds reasonable, I’m glad we could chat. Ok, 30 seconds are up, go get him!

Bad Jake: Yes, it’s time to run! Let’s run, let’s run, let’s…wait about two more minutes, then we’re totally, definitely, maybe going to run some more.

^ Good Jake foiled again.

After about 1,000,000,000,000 of these back-and-forths, I got to the last ½ mile, all of which was downhill and to the finish. When it was all said and done, Mike Reilly saying “From Waukee, Iowa, 29 year old Jacob Johnson, great day Jake, YOU ARE AN IRONMAN!” made it all so freaking, stinking, worth it.

Run time: 4:04

Total time: 11:16:31

Tattoo Earned

So, that last piece of introspection. Gets mushy here – I’ll keep it short but don’t feel like you have to read it. Here’s my brief summary of why I think I do endurance events in general. This is direct, blunt, and unfiltered. It’s not funny. It is raw. It could not be more real.

I never really knew my birth father. Barely ever even saw him in pictures. I wanted to, and didn’t want to, all at the same time. It was kind of like one of those things where you just want someone to wish you were there just so you could tell them to fly a kite, in order to express how much it sucked not having them there at all.

Anyhow, he left when I was about five and my sister was about three. He went to Washington state (during this Ironman, I was physically the closest I had been to him in over 25 years, which occurred to me at the western-most turnaround of the bike course), worked for-cash jobs so he didn’t have to pay child support, and was pretty much not heard from again until he, got very, very sick a couple of years back. I’ve been told that when he left, he told me he’d “be back at night.” So there I’d sit, on that front porch, night after night, to the point where I would cry myself to sleep waiting for him to come home. Real winner, that guy.

Me, Andrea, and Mom, not long before he left:

 

There’s plenty more context to this story, most of which is of the same ilk, but there’s no need to take it any further here.

Bruce Johnson died on December 15, 2012. He was just 51 years old. Worth noting that while my sister, who had called and even visited him before he died, was included in the obituary, his oldest son was not.

I had a chance to call him a couple of nights before he died, but I just couldn’t do it. Call me selfish. Maybe, call me wise, too, as I don’t imagine that I’d have been able to give him what he was seeking – forgiveness. He had my number all this time, and was too chickenshit to call. I didn’t have his, though admittedly I probably could’ve figured it out. Either way, he was in the position to try to right the wrong, and he didn’t. Near the end, he gave his hospital phone number to my mom, to give to me. So fitting. Couldn’t make it up.

During the grind of the marathon, I thought a great deal about why I do what I do, when I do it, and particularly why I’ve run so many marathons when I know they’re all going cause so much suffering. I was at about mile 22 that it came to me. I do it partly because I like setting myself in difficult situations, but mostly it’s because I like to overcome difficult situations. This is probably to prove to myself that I can, even though I know that I can. To remind myself that I didn’t need him to grow up (I had my step-dad Kevin from that, all the way from when I was just a little boy). Kevin was, and always has been, extremely patient with me, despite how much I’ve tested him. I knew as a teenager that I desperately wanted to push him away so hard, just to sense his need to help me, to pull me back. He did. He has never failed. He has always prevailed.

In the end, I’m who I am and I do what I do in large part because of these two people, one who was a father, and one who is a Dad. I cannot say that I’d be who I am without either of them, or both of them, so I suppose I should be thankful that one terrible situation led to an amazing one, all outside of my control.

That’s my conclusion for why I have done, and will continue to do, Ironman races. To suffer, to prevail, to know that I can only control myself, and what I do, and how I think.

Until next time, my friends.

-Jake