In shorter races I start the bike leg with my shoes already attached to my pedals for faster transition times. An extra 10 or 20 seconds is never going to be an issue in an Ironman, but I much prefer to run thru transition in bare feet rather than bike shoes with cleats on the bottom. However I was now worried that my calf muscles would spasm when I tried to insert my feet whilst riding. After a very conservative bike mount, I very carefully slipped my feet into the shoes. Luckily I had remembered to leave them wide open and my feet went in without an issue.
The crowd thinned once out of transition. Elaine managed to snap the following photo of me and I saw Jan wearing our Triathlon club top cheering me on. The first section was through the shopping district of Frankston. As I approached a large round-a-bout a Marshall was yelling at riders to be careful of the big bumps in the road, saying that some riders had already come off. After my big crash at Geelong I wasn't taking any chances and took the round-a-bout very carefully. I saw the large bump, but I'm still not sure how it caused some riders to crash. I have a friend who crashed in the first kilometres of an Ironman bike leg - knocked himself out and had to pull out of the race. Such a terrible outcome for anybody after you have spent so much time (and money) training for one race.
All of my pre-race thoughts about the Ironman bike leg were based on Eastlink. I was surprised and a little frustrated how far I had to ride before I reached the Tollway. A fair portion of this was on the Frankston Fwy, but unlike Eastlink it is quite bumpy in places. I was also regretting my decision not to wear the cycling top and arm warmers. A regret reinforced when I noticed at least 90% of the riders in view were all wearing warm clothing whilst I only had a tri-top and tri-shorts (I wasn't even wearing socks).
My mood improved as soon as my wheels touched the super smooth tarmac of Eastlink. The wind was extremely mild and there were numerous good riders around me, although I was still cold. The pace line slowly sorted itself out as slower riders were overtaken and faster riders disappeared off into the distance. There was a little bit of drafting (which is illegal) early on whilst riders tried to gauge where they should sit, but there wasn't any blatant drafting like I often see in other races, and we did have several draft busters watching us over the first 20kms. I passed Heidi (a club member) who had a better swim, and she was far more sensibly dressed than me.
I was happy with the pace. We were sitting just under my planned wattage and heart rate and it wasn't peaking too much up the hills. Everything was starting to come back to plan. My computer beeped every 7.5 minutes to remind me to take on nutrition. The top bottle of Optimizer was supposed to be consumed in the first hour, but at the 30 minute mark I had drank less than a 3rd so I had to start taking bigger mouthfuls to catch up. Even though the first lap out to Doncaster is the uphill section and a slight headwind, the miles went by quickly. It felt a lot easier than when I road this same section back in November as part of the Eastlink Ride, but the wind was much stronger that day.
An official looking car coming the other way alerted me to the fact the lead pro's were about to go past. First on his own was Clayton Fettell. He is a great swimmer and very good cyclist, so he tries to generate a big lead before the run starts. But he only had a few minutes lead to the main Pro pace line that contained all the pre-race favourites including Crowie, Cam Brown, Eneko Llanos, Luke McKenzie, Greg Bennett and Luke Bell. The next group of Pros including the likes of Jason Shortis and Mitch Anderson was a fair way back and surprisingly this group also contained the 2 lead women in Carolyn Steffen and Rachel Joyce who were already building a sizeable lead over the other Pro Women.
Just before the far turnaround, the bike leg goes through the Eastlink tunnel, which means we ride through it 4 times. A lot had been written about the tunnel and how steep it was coming out the other side, I'd even read claims of a 13% gradient. The thing is you go down before you go up. My bike computer is GPS based which doesn't work in tunnels, so I don't know exactly what speed I reached, but I'm confident it was approaching 70kph. When you hit the bottom of a hill at 70kph, it doesn't really matter how steep it is, the speed is going to carry you a fair way up and the gradient eased off the further up you went. I was in my lowest gear (39-23) for the 2nd half of the climb, but I even on my last lap (4th time through the tunnel) I didn't feel like I needed an easier gear.
The pace line spread out as it approached the tunnel, because like me, nobody wanted to be in close proximity to other riders when they were going that fast. Once past the tunnel, the pace line started to reform when 3 riders pulled off into the penalty box. They were obviously busted for drafting and now had to serve a time penalty (I think it is about 5 minutes). I had seen the draft busters talking to some riders, but had assumed they had just received warnings. It would seem they are much stricter in Ironman which I believe is good thing. If you don't understand the rules by the time you get to Ironman you never will.
The turnaround seemed a long way past the tunnel, much further than when I did the Eastlink Ride. I think the tunnel had upset my GPS because it seemed to be showing extra distance - at the end of the ride it showed 185km. So we rode more than a kilometre further than my bike indicated we should. Needless to say I was impatient for the turnaround to appear (but I wasn't really cold any more).
By this time I had finished the bottle on my handlebars and had already starting drinking from the larger bottle on the down tube. Before heading back into the tunnel again, we passed an Aid Station - they were situated every 15km along the bike course. The start and end of the Aid Stations are marked by Mini Skip bins and you are only allowed to dispose of used bottles and other stuff between this area. I threw my bottle towards the Mini Skip left handed, it bounced on the rim and then landed inside. The marshall was very impressed and he probably didn't even realise I threw it left handed. Even though I didn't need another bottle, I thought I could use the practice, so I grabbed a Gatorade bottle as I rode past. The only other time I have grabbed a water bottle on a ride was at a Half Ironman at Geelong and they were using the smaller water bottles. This was a large water bottle and only just squeezed in behind my computer (lucky I wasn't planning to drink from it). As I rode past the rest of the aid station, I also took note of where they were situating the toilets - 2 portaloos in the middle. My original plan was to go to the toilet when I picked up my special needs bag at the half way mark, but I didn't feel like I was going to make it that far.
I was now becoming reluctant to drink because I could feel the liquid building in my bladder. Just after I came out of the tunnel from the other direction another rider passed me and then proceeded to urinate on his bike. I have no problem with people doing this in a race, but I'm not sure why he felt the need to pass me before doing this. Naturally this made my own toilet issues more prevalent. Fortunately the next Aid Station had a toilet free, so I could jump straight in. I couldn't believe how long it took, I didn't think I had drank that much. Maybe it just seemed long because I knew lots of other athletes were riding past while I was literally standing still.
Back on the bike I no longer had a good group to ride with. It didn't really matter much, because the wind seemed to have picked up a little and it was a tailwind, plus the trip back is mainly downhill. I was enjoying this section, but I had to be careful not to enjoy it too much, there was a big temptation to go too fast. The whole way back to Frankston I was picking off riders ahead. There was always someone in the distance to chase down, I just had to make sure I didn't chase too hard. During this time I finished my second bottle of Optimizer, unfortunately this time my throw did not land in the bin, so I didn't get a congratulating clap from the Marshall. I grabbed a water to have with my Energy Chews. The water was in the Pump branded bottles you would buy from the shop (I was expecting bidons filled with water) and they hadn't broken the seal, so it took a lot of effort to open it whilst riding - it actually took me a while to realise the seal wasn't broken. The Energy Chews were good, but it took me almost 2 minutes to chew each one and by having 3 each 7.5 minutes, I was pretty much constantly eating (which I didn't think was ideal).
Coming back I saw the Pros again. Clayton Fettell was still out in front, but looked like he was falling apart and the main pack was very close behind. Carolyn Steffen was still sitting in with the next men's group, but Rachel Joyce had dropped off, however she was still miles ahead of all the other women.
It was generally pretty lonely out on Eastlink. Each overpass contained 20 or so spectators who cheered loudly every time a bike went past (or under) and some of the on-ramps contained spectators, although I'm told Eastlink complained and had them removed. At one point I passed my friend Alan who had managed to sneak across onto the inside medium strip. As an experience Ironman himself, he obviously knew the tricks to sneaking around the course.
Again the section between Eastlink and Frankston seemed long and I definitely missed the smooth roads of the Tollway. As I headed towards the turnaround at Frankston I was greeted by one of the biggest crowds of the race. A commentator was revving up the crowd and they were roaring cheers of encouragement towards the riders and an even bigger cheer when the commentator announced each athlete's name and town. It may of helped that living in Seaford (the next Suburb down the road) I was seen as a local.
The Special Needs Station was just past the Aid Station as we headed back towards the Frankston Fwy. They had spotters ahead calling out numbers to the bag handlers so that I could grab it without stopping. However I wanted to apply more chamois cream (which I had in the bag) and couldn't do this whilst riding, so I had to stop anyway. My original plan was to combine this stop with another toilet break, but the toilets were over 100m back, so this was not really practical. Instead I swapped my water bottles and re-applied the chamois cream in the street amongst lots of spectators - not quite how I'd planned it. This stop seemed to take forever and combined with the awkwardness of the situation I think the chamois cream idea was a major mistake which just ended up costing me lots of time.
Now there were no good riders to be seen and I was riding back into a headwind. The headwind wasn't strong, but it would have been so much better to be in a nice pace line. I passed 2 more club members, first James (Heidi's brother) and then David. It turns out I had a faster swim than David, but he obviously passed me during one of my stops. And of course having not gone to the toilet at the Special Needs station I now needed to go again. I was busting by the time I arrived at the next Aid Station. There was a queue for the toilets, but I was not going to last another 15kms. David re-passed me while I stood in the queue and I think this is when the frustration started to set in. I'd been riding well, but the 3 stops had ruined my bike time. The 2nd time out to Doncaster containing 2 stops was 10 minutes slower than the first lap which I thought I took pretty easy. Ironically I passed David back again whilst he was taking a leak on the side of the road - illegal in a race, but only a problem if you get caught.
The rest of my ride out to Doncaster was pretty uneventful. I saw the Pro's come back for the last time. A different rider had replaced Clayton Fettell out front. I mistakenly thought it was Mitch Anderson, but later discovered it was another Pro I'd never heard of before who simply rides the same bike as Mitch. Up till now my saddle sores had been behaving themselves unbelievably well. I had done very little riding in the 3 weeks leading up to the race to give everything a chance to heal and the smooth surface of Eastlink definitely makes a difference. But as I approached the far turnaround for the 2nd time things were starting to get uncomfortable. I don't know if was me moving into different positions on the seat or just a result of a long ride, but not long after this my knee injury started to play up as well.
Despite the saddle sores, I felt like I could still power back for the last lap of the bike. But with my knee starting to hurt, I could not risk starting the run in a bad state. So I backed way off for the last lap and ended up riding 9 minutes slower than the first time back (and the first time included a toilet stop). This just led to more frustration. The conditions had been unbelievably good and it felt like I'd wasted a great opportunity for a really fast bike time.
The last 20km of the bike really dragged on. By now the saddles sores were really getting my attention and generally I'd become bored with riding. During this time I saw the last riders still near the beginning of their 2nd lap. I couldn't even contemplate how long their day was going to be.
The rough roads as I headed towards Frankston didn't help the saddle sores. By now I was almost sitting side saddle. I finished the last of my 4 Optimizer bottles with just a few kilometres to go. I didn't throw my last 2 bidons away because they were special insulated bottles I'd bought for $20 a piece (I usually never pay for water bottles). The Pros and lead Age Groupers were well onto their run by now, so as I rode through the turnaround section, the crowd was only a fraction of what it was before.
4h45m isn't too bad for an Ironman bike split. Before the race I was expecting 5h30m, but I wasn't expecting conditions to be so good. If I didn't have the 3 stops (edit: it was actually 4 stops, because I also had to stop to fix my chain that came off around 150km mark) and didn't back off due to my sore knee I truly believe I could have gone more than 30 minutes quicker using the same energy. What's more, I think I was too conservative on the bike leg and could have gone harder without affecting my run.
Ironman is mostly about survival and getting through the race. This is how I approached the day and possibly why I was able to finish. Mentally I just want to race and any lost time is extremely frustrating which is probably why I don't think I am well suited to longer races such as Ironman.
