Ironman Canada 2009- 23rd MPro, 34th Overall

Another one for the books. This was the toughest race so far. The forecast called for hot temps. The wild card was the wind.

The swim went well for me, thanks to my awesome Helix suit. I swam in the main pack for a while, until a quick acceleration left me in a smaller pack. I am positive I would have gone sub 60mins had it not been for a swift kick from someone, putting too much water in my goggles to navigate and forcing me to stop. I swam the entire last leg of the triangle by myself, and had a quick T1, even with a slight race belt malfunction.

The ride was good up to ~ 3hrs or so, holding an average 228watts to that point. This was a tad higher than my target, which may have overcooked me a bit early on, but at time it felt right. I found it crazy windy from the rollers to twin lakes, making that part of the ride very tough. I got to special needs at 3:20, which should have given me a 5hr split, but the ride into the wind up to that point had put a good-size dent on me.



At the end of the ride, I put out my target watts (Ave 210, NP 218), fed myself according to plan with a mixture of CarboPro and EFS, and stayed hydrated thanks to NUUN in my bottles, but was quite tired thanks to the wind.

Off the bike, my plan was to run an ez 10k, then hammer like the race was only 30k long, and hang on for dear life. Well... I did run an ez 44min 10k, but the plan (literally) blew out the window after that.

Let me describe the carnage in the pro ranks that I remember- I saw Dallas Cain hobble off the run course with cramps; I watched as Ryan DeCook took off his shoes and jumped in the lake to cool off; I told a very-slow-walking Andriy Yastrebov to hang in; I offered words of encouragement to Steve Kilshaw, who was just barely shuffling up a hill- I don't think he even heard me;

I have no idea at what point I passed my fellow countryman Sergio Quezada or fellow Seattle-ite Adam Jensen; Scott Curry vomitted his nutrition; Volunteers were running to keep Michael Simpson vertical at the turn around. Amongst all this, I too was struggling with my run. I resorted to counting just about every one of my steps up to 10, and repeated this process from mile 13 on, just to try to stay focused and keep my legs ticking thru pain and exhaustion. I left it all out there, and it got me 34th overall, 23rd amongst the guys. I'm a-ok with that. Wind sometimes beats the crap out of the best laid race plans.

I would like to mention my buddy Jeff's excellent 12:30:00 performance. That is EXACTLY his goal time for the race, so he had perfect execution! Very well done, Jeff. And thank you for your words of encouragement on the run.

Congrats to Jordan on his win. And Tereza as well. They both battled the tough race conditions better than anyone, and were both in a different zip code on the run.

I want to thank NUUN, Oomph!, Blue Seventy, and SportsQuest Direct for their continued support. A great big THANK YOU to Mike, Su and Anja for their hospitality, which made our trip awesome. Thanks to Julie for helping Theresa keep Donovan entertained on race day while watching Jeff race. Thanks for all the emails, vmails, calls, texts that I received on the lead-up days and everyone who followed it online. (We really missed you, Liz!)

I want to thank my beautiful family, Theresa and Donovan. You guys make possible, and are with me, every single step of the way.


Thanks for reading.

JC