Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Ironman Mont Tremblant: The Swim

Pre race post here.

Yeah, didn't so much get a lot of sleep. I fell asleep for a few hours, woke up at 11:30 (OMG it's only 11:30?), got back to sleep at some point and then was wide awake at 3:30. I figured I was best off just lying quietly and trying to relax (fat chance) but by 4:30 I couldn't take it anymore and got up. Got into my tri kit and morning clothes, made a cup of tea, ate a banana, and organized my nutrition bottles and double checked my special needs bags while I waited for the time to pass.

The good news was, that shin pain I'd been dealing with all stupid week was totally gone. So that seemed pretty promising and I put it out of my mind completely to focus on making sure I had all my stuff.

First thing I did on waking up? Put on the timing chip. No way I was going to forget that! Of course it's on the wrong ankle in this picture but I noticed that before the race started and fixed it.
Steve got up just before 5 and we left shortly after that to walk to transition. I dumped my special needs bags, then said goodbye to him before I went into transition to put my nutrition on the bike. He headed down to the swim start to find the VIP viewing area (we bought the spectator pass for him, because we are super fancy like that) and I went to get my body marking, where I ran into Fab. Of course I did. We've done this whole journey together, clearly the universe would make sure we'd find each other at race start!

We walked to the swim start, did the usual line up for the porta potties, I took my pre-race gel, and we got into our wetsuits. I spotted Steve in the VIP section so obviously we got a picture:

SUPERHEROES. (oh, you thought I meant a picture with my husband? Ha. He hates having his picture taken)
I was feeling pretty calm and ready, so we said goodbye to Steve and wandered off, and soon ran into Patricia, Lara, John, and Daphne. Patricia and Lara were ready to swim, with Lara being the swimmer on the Tri4Jeff relay team (and John and Daphne the cyclist and runner). And it was then Patricia told us about the first start delay - 15 minutes due to the fog.

Which honestly was the first time I really noticed just how dense the fog on the lake was. You could only barely see the first buoy! Oh. Yes, clearly that wouldn't work. OK, 15 minutes is not so bad.

Hmmm. Yes that's quite a bit of fog, isn't it. (pic via Daphne)
Which stretched into another delay.

I've waiting this long to be an ironman, a half hour delay is just HILARIOUS. And no I don't have a weird growth on my arm that's just my heart rate monitor. (pic via Daphne)
 And another delay.

You can get a sense of the fog in this official pic - normally you'd see docked boats and lake and mountains and shit back there!
At some point we moved over the warmup area, where we could no longer hear the announcers, which meant I missed that there was yet another delay and the whole thing was pushed back an hour. Super less than ideal, really - I was starting to get hungry! And I was getting cold and was worried about the calories I might be burning shivering. Plus the fog really didn't seem to actually be lifting at all.

Athlete holding pen (pic via Steve, from his VIP spot on the dock. He informs me the delay was very hard on the spectators as well, because the VIPs ran out of coffee and pastries, which was clearly an immensely difficult time for all of them. We should probably have a fundraiser for the poor things)
Finally at 7:35 they started the pros, although I'm not sure the fog had really lifted much. I was pretty relieved they weren't cancelling the swim, because how much would that have sucked. Sure a few athletes might accidentally swim to Montreal, but just don't cancel my swim!

(rumour on facebook is if they'd pushed back another 15 they would have had to cut the swim in half, so thank goodness that didn't happen!)


Male pros ready to start (pic via Steve)
After the fireworks scaring the crap out of me every time (male pros, female pros, age group start, some random ones partway through the age group start), it was finally time to get in the water. I seeded myself towards the back of the 1:15-1:20 group, looked out at the barely visible first sighting buoy, took a deep breath, and somehow all the anxiety and worry and stress of the week was gone. Time to relax and have a nice casual 3800m. No biggie.

Age group start - pic via Daphne I believe
Despite the fact I couldn't see the buoys in the fog, I felt really, really good. Maybe it was just the relief of finally doing the damn thing. Maybe it was that swimming through the fog felt completely surreal, like it was all a weird dream. I wasn't entirely sure I was swimming the right direction, but everyone else was swimming the same way so I figured we'd find the next marker buoy eventually. So I was sighting a lot, hoping to spot that yellow marker, and sure enough it soon emerged from the fog and I was super happy to note they were numbered. Since counting while exercising is not my strong suit, that was really helpful.

Follow the herd, sight, nope no buoy, swim more, everyone else is headed this way, yes there it is! Repeat. Get kicked in the face, damn it, stop and adjust goggles, swim swim swim, where's the damn buoy, ugh, swim swim swim finally there's a buoy!

Wait that's #5? I never saw 4?! Huh. OK.

Keep going. Strong, controlled, happy, ignore the person who just accidentally grabbed your ass, oh my god this fog is INSANE I can't see anything. Just follow the person in front of you and hope this is right. Count off the buoys, nice. There's another one. Wait didn't I already go past #11? Am I just swimming in circles here?! Nah, can't be there's a ton of kayaks out here someone would have noticed you swimming backwards. Probably just can't read.

It really should have felt more stressful than it did, but I guess in some ways swimming through the fog wasn't that much different than, say, swimming towards shore with the sun in your eyes and no way to see a swim exit. With the large number of other swimmers to follow, I found myself pretty on target to hit the buoys when they did emerge from the fog (other than that #4 which I swear I never saw). I focused on swimming complete strokes and keeping things steady, relaxed, and controlled. And almost before I knew it, there was the red turn marker! Whoa. That seemed to go by really, really fast.

Around the marker, where I got hit in the face again and had to stop and adjust my goggles - which is when I noticed the fog was definitely lifting. By the time I reached the second red turn marker I could actually see the line of orange markers stretching into the distance! Yay!

The second half of the swim felt much easier, just because I could actually see where I was going! And it seemed like hardly any time at all and people around me were starting to stand up and I was grabbing the sand at the swim exit. I was almost (almost) sad it was over. It was exactly what I wanted - a controlled, relaxed, easy swim where I didn't expend too much energy and felt good the whole time. I crossed my fingers the time wouldn't be too slow.

I was soon up onto the stairs, hit my watch, and saw... 1:17.

Get out of my picture, dude! Damn it!
Yes!! Pretty much my best case scenario prediction for my swim time. I was totally thrilled to see something under 1:20. The swim really couldn't have gone any better! I even managed to clock pretty much exactly 3800m on my watch!

Time: 1:17:07
Overall: 1034/2272
Gender: 217/602
Age group: 36/131

Got my wetsuit stripped and ran the carpet into transition (oh man, how nice is it to run on carpet instead of the usual run along sidewalk or concrete or gravel!). It was a bit of a long-ish run and also my first taste of what the crowds are like at Tremblant - the whole run up was lined with people cheering and screaming. Such a mental boost!

Screen grab from the live broadcast running along the carpet into T1 - thanks Zindine!
Quick turn into the change tent to grab my T1 bag, and we will pick things up there in the next post!

See the bike post here.

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