It's been a week now that I finished the Ironman Switzerland in Zurich and I finally have some time to relax and lick my wounds while enjoying the sun in Supetar on the beautiful island called Brač.
It's been quite a ride to get there because I completely changed how I trained since I gained a lot of experience last year.
My primary tool for tracking my trainings is trainingpeaks.com. I have created an Annual Training Plan (ATP) where I selected the races I want to compete in, assign priorities to it and let the app create a rough plan for the entire season. You see the weekly training load mapped out and then it's on you to fill in training sessions into your calendar and get the workouts done :)
An ATP example from the trainingpeaks.com website.
My season started of good but then work and other commitments made a dent into my weekly hours spent training so I had to made adjustments to get the most out of every training session I could squeeze in.
In the end everything turned out pretty good which resulted in me finishing in 11:38:35 which is 8 minutes slower then planed but I will get to that in a minute.
I will compare my race in Zurich with the one in Nice, France last year so that anyone who wants to try this race out next year can have a better idea of what is waiting for them in the mountains.
PRE-RACE
The Event area was located on the left side of the lake in parks called Mythenquai and Landiwiese. The event area had pretty much everything you would expect to find there (nutrition, gear and a lot of information about this and that). The only thing I bought this year was a visor since I sometimes get ignored but how hot it gets under a regular cap.
A thing I found better in Nice then here was the proximity of the entire area to where most of the daily activities are. In Nice everything was on their main promenade so a lot more people were mingling around and everything looked a little more filled with life but since I spent only 20-30 minutes there and got everything I wanted I didn't really care about the event area.
The registration process was simple as it can be. Get a daily license, walk up to the places where they hand out the race kits (stickers, transition bags, etc.) and get your gift backpack and you are done. I like this backpack more then the one from Nice and Pula by the way ;)
I even had a small chat with the volunteer giving me my race kit once he saw that I was AWA Bronze triathlete. AWA or All world athlete is a Age Group ranking system by Ironman where you earn points for every race you finish. At the end of the season you get your best 3 races ranked against all other athletes in your age group. I got into the top 10% so I received a few more things (special swim cap, a different bib as well as having my name displayed on the race briefing and pasta party). Nothing fancy but it still makes you feel special :)
THE RACE - SWIM
The swim course was changed from being "M" shaped with a short exit to a "T" shaped course. I don't know if that's better or worse but what I liked was the rolling start that was introduced for the first time here. What this means is that every 5 seconds 8 athletes were sent of into the water and this created a nice flow of people and no mass start stress for the competitors.
The swim course
I started in the 1:10 - 1:20 bunch since I expected to swim around 1 hour and 10 minutes.
Into the water :)
I entered the water and was on a doing pretty good until the first buoy.
My swim
As you can see above I have 3 small white sections in my blue pace graph. The first and last were situations where someone kicked me in the face and my goggles fell off. So I had to turn on my back and put them back on but the thing that annoyed me more was the bad navigation many people were showing. I don't really know what the reason for this is since the buoys have been visible from a distance and there shouldn't be any problems navigating to each one of them. When I turned left I found myself on the right side of the pack and while swimming I got pushed more and more to the right which you can see as the offset the purple line has from the red. This and a lot of other collisions caused my final distance to be around 4 km instead of the 3.8 km which doesn't sound like much but this equates to around 4 minutes and with a lot of other stop and go situations along the way caused me to miss my target time by around 10 minutes but it was still OK and not having a dry mouth from the sea water is an added plus
Final time: 1:20:50 (2 minutes faster then in France)
Out of the water finally.
THE RACE - BIKE
The bike course was designed as a two lap course with a total of a little less then 1500 m with two true climbs named The Beast and Heartbreak Hill.
A loop of the bike course
I slipped out of my wetsuit, and rushed into the transition area. Got my bag and within minutes I was out and starting my first of two loops on this course.
Flying start
I was keeping a nice pace for the first 30 km at around 35 km/h when the first incline arrived (up to this point the road is basically flat as a pancake). The next 20 km are split in two parts, a slight but steady incline which is followed by flat/descending terrain until the 52nd kilometer when you face The Beast for the first time. Since I love riding the mountains I was really looking forward to this part of the race. In the end I was a little disappointed. Maybe disappointed is to harsh but I was expecting a lot more from this climb. In essence you climb on a steady 6% grade for 5 km which is something I do multiple times during my long weekend rides. I usually climb the Medvednica hill here in Zagreb which has pretty much the same profile but is twice as long. Since I climb this hill up to 3 times during a training session i wasn't surprised that not a single triathlete overtook me on this segment. Everyone was looking to have problems but I was just plowing up the mountain. After The Best you have another 5 km climb which is a lot flatter and doesn't prove a challenge as well.
Flying up the mountain like a badass :)
After these two inclines you get a nice 5 km descend where you can reach quite high speeds (my max was around 69 km/h) and since I am not someone who is taking a lot of risks (a few minutes won compared to crashing is an easy decision) I got overtaken here by a bunch of people. At the end of the descend before the tunel is a nasty right turn whereyou really have to slow down to a normal speed in order to go through safely. This was the only point where I think the organizer made a mistake by not placing a volunteer or sign to warn you to slow down. Other then that I give them a big thumbs up.
After exiting the tunel my fans were waiting for me since it's just at the end of the street our apartment was located and seeing them after 2+ hours of riding was a real moral boost.
Happy to see my friends :)
Once back in Zurich you have 20 more kilometers until you start your second lap but first you have to climb the dreaded Heartbreak hill and, again, I was really looking forward to it since the atmosphere there is supposed to be on a Tour de France level.
It did not disappoint! The climb is quite steep but relatively short so it isn't really (at least it wasn't to me) a big problem. It was a little more difficult the second time out since you have, at this point, almost 175 km in your legs but nothing that will scare anyone who climbs some hills in training. But what really makes this place stand out was the atmosphere. You have hundreds of people there firing you up the climb and the sound of cowbells, horns and a ton of other noisy things replenishes your soul in an instant.
My head was on overdrive at this point and I don't know if it was sweat or one of the manlinesst (is this even a word?) tears that ever went down my cheek.
All in all I think that the Nice bike course was a little harder (it had around 500 meters of incline more) but since the hardest climb there was at around mid race from where you basically had a lot of descends I would rank them both the same.
I started to have some problems with my right calf at around kilometer 120 where I started to feel every pedal stroke but it didn't turn out to get worse. My stomach felt strange as well at the same time which forced me to drink only water and stop eating till almost the end of the bike ride. This worried me a little but I since it got better with time I wasn't thinking much of it.
I finished the ride and again ran into the transition area where some volunteers put sunscreen on my hands and neck and I was out for the last part of the race and so far my biggest enemy - the marathon.
Final time: 5:55:34 (27 minutes faster then in France)
THE RACE - RUN
This was the part I trained for the most in the last year. I am a pretty decent runner but usually until kilometer 30 or so until I start to break down. But this year I was determent it would be different.
I started again waaaaaaay to fast so I had to keep a close eye on my watch in order to keep a 5.30-5:40/km pace. The run course (which has been redesigned for this year) has two underpasses which break your rhythm a little in the first stage of the race but drag on a little longer with every loop you complete.
The new run course
The run course leads you know through downtown Zurich through some of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world which guarantees a lot of people along the road. But I was looking forward to mostly 5 people who were firing me up in every lap.
My plan for the marathon was quite simple.
- Finish lap 1
- Finish lap 2
- Survive lap 3
- Pick up the pace in lap 4
I'll try to explain it a little more. Once you start the run you are still in good spirit and the first lap flies by rather quickly. You start your second lap with the first one in mind and you think to yourself that you just have to keep up the pace and it will soon be over. Then you finish the second lap and a little voice in your tells you that you are just half way through. For this reason lap 3 is (at least to me) the most difficult. You are somewhere in no mans land and with still a full lap to go you have to somehow survive this one. This was the lap I again started feeling my calf screaming for mercy but taking a painkiller dulled the filling a little and I was in for my last lap where I planed to pick up the pace again. My goal was to run a 4 hour marathon but while in my last lap I figured it was pretty much out of he question so I just kept pushing as hard as I could to get as close to my 11:30 time as possible.
In the end I finished just 13 minutes slower than that which is now my best marathon result!
I would like to mention my fans at this point which were just amazing! They were all around the run course so that I never knew where I would meet them next time. This kept my spirit high during the entire run and at the end we calculated that they have finished at least a half marathon while supporting me on during the race. I will never forget this for the rest of my life. They could have been anywhere in the world but they choose to follow me to Switzerland and be there for me :)
The proximity to all those people really put a perpetual smile on my face which you can see in the picture below.
Smiles are everywhere
As well as here :)
500 meters before the start/finish line you would get a hairband to verify you have finished a lap. Blue, green, red and finally yellow. I got my last hairband and people started cheering a little more since they so 4 hairbands on my arms. They knew I was done and I was really happy so we all had a huge smile on our face and I was off to finish the last few hundred meters of the Ironman Zurich.
Once close to the finish line I started searching for my friends and once I found them there was only a few more things I had to do.
Give my wife a kiss...
... cross the finish line lika a boss...
... and pose for a photo with the finisher medal around my neck (and show of my sponsor ;)
Final time: 4:13:41 (47 minutes faster then France)
56110 steps (thanks Garmin Fenix 3) since I woke up I was sitting on the grass with my friends and enjoying that it was all over.
These guys are really amazing. They have been traveling to Zurich with me, woke up early and walked back and forth through Zurich just to push me a bit closer to the finish line. I wouldn't have made it without them in the time I did it.
Maybe I have the medal and finisher shirt but finishing an Ironman starts months before you even sign up for a race. Their encouragement and support the last months is something you can't buy with money.
Thank you guys! You all are an Ironman!
My brother is missing here but he will have to prove his worth in 2 months :)
Final time for the full race: 11:38:35 (1 hour and 12 minutes faster then France!)
As a final thought, I think that the organizer did an awesome job. The course design was excellent. The aid stations were packed and in the right spots and the overall impressions are nothing but positive.
Compared to the Ironman in France, I think that this race was a little easier since you have to climb less on the bike and the twists and turns on the run keep you distracted from the pain.
But in the end everything comes down to a nice quote:
“It Doesn’t Get Any Easier, You Just Get Faster”
Until next time, stay awesome :)