Running In Tune: Ironman Mont Tremblant: The Bike

See the Swim post here.

I ran into the transition tent, grabbed my T1 bag (I noted some athletes had added brightly coloured tape to their bags to make them easier to spot, although since they were in numerical order it wasn't tough to find mine), and made my way into the women's change tent. And did my first good deed of the day, grabbing a woman who was about to walk into the men's tent and pointing her the right direction!

It was a bit of a madhouse inside the change area, and it was really, really hot. Too many bodies in too small a space. I quickly found a chair, sat down, and started pulling out my stuff. First I grabbed the Endurance Tap gel I'd left at the top of the bag and sucked it down while I dumped out everything else. Socks, shoes, helmet, sunglasses on, shove the wetsuit/cap/goggles back into the bag. That sounds super simple but in the crowded tent and soaking wet from the swim it took longer than you might expect!

I waved hello to Shea coming into the tent, and headed out towards the exit, dropping my bag with the others as I went. There was also a table full of cups of water that I was incredibly happy to see as I was quite thirsty, so I grabbed one of those and downed it before heading out to find my bike.

It was right where I'd left it (imagine that), and we were quickly out to the mount line and off on the road.

T1: 7:08

Just after mounting I spotted my mom, who got this awesome picture:

The smile of someone who has never gone 180k on a bike before and doesn't know what she's getting herself into

When you are a midpack sort of swimmer, that means you come out of the water with a whole lot of other people - and then you all start the bike at the same time.

It was super congested, and remembering a conversation with my friend Kris Z from the day before, I resisted the urge to go into MUST PASS EVERYONE RIGHT NOW mode like I usually do in races. That works in a sprint, not so much when you are going to be on the bike for 6+ hours. So I refused to let the fact that some people were going OMG so slow bother me and just spun up Montée Ryan, keeping things easy easy easy, only passing when people were really and truly in my way. No bursts of speed or power to sprint past anyone.

Based on the bottles, I can tell this picture is from the start of the first loop! Heading past the golf course up Montée Ryan.

Soon we made the turn onto the 117, at which point I realized I couldn't remember how far we had to go to get to the turnaround. Some day I will remember to make a note of these damn things before the stupid race. The 117 was much more wide open, being a closed multilane highway, and it was much easier to spin past people on the uphills. I kept myself calm and contained and worked on eating the peanut butter sandwich in my bento box and taking in my first bottle of nutrition (I used six bottles total on the bike, each with about 200 calories of Refresh, half in raspberry flavour and half plain. The plain ones I added different flavours of NUUN tablets to to change up the flavour profiles and hopefully try and avoid hating any of them too much).

The hills on the 117 felt pretty gentle and I was feeling fantastic. At some point on the trip out the lead motos started to go by on the way back and the race leader went by so fast that it took me a few seconds to confirm it was Cody Beals on his Ventum. Cody is a family friend (I've known him since he was a baby!) and as much as Lionel Sanders is great, I had to cheer for Cody in this race. So it was a real thrill to see him out in front!

My heart rate was in a good spot, my average speed was hovering right around 30 km/hr, and everything was pretty much aces. The weather was nice and cool, and I remember thinking how much I was just loving the bike course. Through the turnaround (yay!), heading back towards Tremblant. There was one kind of nasty incline on the way back where I ended up going into a very low gear and spinning my way up, and commenting to another athlete how this climb was going to be fun on the second lap. He sort of grumbled 'I was trying not to think about that' and gave me a dirty look. Oops. Sorry dude!

Back past the golf course - one bottle tossed an aid station is the giveaway.

Back down the Montée Ryan, feeling good. Skirting the edge of the village where there were SO MANY PEOPLE! Oh man, such a boost with everyone cheering and ringing cowbells. I had a big smile on my face. Unfortunately, Steve just missed me coming through that section so I didn't see him that time.

And then it was time to climb Duplessis. I had driven up it the day before so had some idea what to expect, but people talk about it as such a difficult climb that it was still a little intimidating. However, Zindine had assured me I wouldn't have any problems with it, and if anyone knows what I'm capable of on the bike, it's Zin. So I was feeling confident.

I loved it. OMG. My favourite kind of climbing. A few punchy little steep bits, lots of longer more gradual climbing, and even a few little downhills included. It sort of reminded me of climbing Sideroad 1, if you took it and stretched it out a lot longer and increased the overall elevation gain.

Thumbs up on Duplessis the first time through (note the bottles are now missing because I tossed them when they were empty)

And then the descent!!

So good. I was snug in my happy place for that whole section with the biggest smile. And once I finished the descent, it was a quick turn towards transition and a hairpin to turn around, and just like that I was halfway done the bike in 3 hours.

I thought this was me at the turnaround but I can tell by the bottle it's actually more likely from the start of the bike. But I don't feel like cutting and pasting it so let's just pretend.

Going in Zindine had suggested I target 6:15 as my bike time, so I was a little bit worried I'd gone too fast on that first loop, but I was feeling fantastic and had managed to get in my entire sandwich and all three bottles of nutrition I had on the bike, so I figured I was probably in good shape and would just try and keep the effort level the same for the second time around the loop, which I was now looking forward to. The Tremblant bike route is incredibly gorgeous and a complete dream to ride on. The pavement is just stupidly perfect.

Through the roundabout and up a small hill to special needs, which was a model of efficiency. A volunteer radioed my number up ahead and when I got to the special needs area, another volunteer was already there holding my bag open for me. All I had to do was grab my new bottles out of the bag and empty the disposable bottle into my BTA system, then toss that bottle back in the bag. Not sure exactly how long it took, but Strava suggests it was about 40 seconds!

(I can't remember now if it was before or after special needs, but around this time the lead motos came past again going the other direction, and I was thrilled to see Cody still in the lead!)

Up the Montée Ryan to the 117, which is where things started to go a little sideways.

I can tell this was after special needs by the polar bottle I can just see on the downtube. Of course it could really be anywhere on the second lap, but let's put the picture here just because.

The sun was now out in full force, and the highway was completely exposed to the full sun. The wind had picked up and somehow the hills seemed a lot bigger. My speed was dropping from the first loop, and there were a lot less people around which made it a little harder to get motivated. At the first aid station, I saw a cyclist ahead of me grab a water bottle and spray himself down with it, and decided I was going to copy him. I hadn't planned to use the aid stations at all, so fortunately I still remembered how to successfully grab bottles from volunteers! The water was icy cold (they must have been keeping them in coolers) and was pure bliss. It helped cool me down and I repeated the same move at every aid station for the rest of the bike.

Got back out to the turnaround (hooray I don't have to do it again!), and discovered that yep, it's a headwind in every direction sort of day. And around here I noted I was developing a hotspot on the bottom of my right foot and it was starting to get really uncomfortable. Damn it. I wiggled my foot around in the shoe and adjusted the angle of my pedal stroke looking for ways to relieve it, which worked for a bit but then it kept coming back. At every aid station I thought about stopping to adjust my shoe/sock, but I was worried if I got off the bike the motivation to get back on and get going would disappear, so I kept at it. I had a lot of time alone in my head during this section, and I kept looking at the temporary tattoos in Jeff's memory on my arms and reminding myself what a gift it was to be here and be doing this, and to enjoy the race even when it was feeling kind of shitty.

The steep hill taxed my ability to find the good in things. Spun up that sucker in granny gear and was glad to see the last of it! Sorry guy from the first loop, it really did suck a lot the second time around.

I was starting to have trouble convincing myself to take in my nutrition, but I was drinking water at the aid stations along with spraying myself down. I had a tube of base salt in my bento box, which I don't normally use but had packed just in case, and started taking the occasional lick of salt just to clear the sweet taste out of my mouth from my nutrition mix. Super, super glad I packed it, if only because tasting salt was a nice break from tasting sweet.

Definitely the second loop because now I have my good bottles on the bike. Still smiling!

Finally back onto the Montée Ryan and although I knew Duplessis was going to be a lot less fun the second time, at least it would be out of the wind and the sun! And this time as I came back past the village I spotted Steve by the side of the road yelling 'YOU ARE KILLING IT' and that put a big smile on my face and helped me ignore my painful foot for a bit.

Such a pretty course!

Up the climb, not quite as much fun this time, but climbing I couldn't feel the pain in my foot so that worked out well. Plus I felt like I was passing a lot of people and that's always a good motivator! (I went from 953rd at the checkpoint before the climb to 934th at the top of Duplessis, so yeah, I wasn't imagining it). It felt like forever to the turnaround, but then I was flying back down the hill. Maybe the salt also kicked in because I was suddenly feeling much better. Taking stock of the situation I was glad that other than the hotspot on the bottom of my foot and the usual back fatigue from holding aero, nothing else was hurting at all. Legs were feeling good and ready to run.

And I was heartily sick of my bike and could not wait to get off the damn thing. Made the turn into transition, rode the red carpet to the bike catchers, handed Bad Wolf off and restrained myself from making a 'keep it' joke to the catcher, as I'm sure he'd heard it a hundred times already, and then attempted to follow him to the bike rack because when you come into T2 you go to the bike rack, obviously.

D'oh. Not in an Ironman you don't!

Fortunately there was a volunteer forcing us to follow the red carpet to the transition tent where our run gear would really be waiting for us. Man it is hard to make your brain work properly during an Ironman!

Bike: 6:14:54
Overall: 948/2464
Gender: 127/648
Age group: 25/140

Almost exactly the goal time of 6:15. I was pretty happy with my bike performance overall. Although it was a sizeable positive split of 15 minutes, I felt I'd done a good job keeping the effort level fairly even through the bike. The heat, wind, and fatigue all added up in the back half to an understandable slowdown.

I spotted my husband in the VIP area on the transition stage and Laurence's wife got some great pictures of me waving enthusiastically while Steve yelled at me to just GO already. Heh. Hey it's hard to run in bike shoes, ok?