The human memory is a funny thing. Everyone who does this sport has those moments (in just about every damn race) where we tell ourselves that if we can just finish, we’ll never ever again try something so stupid, so hard, so (gasp!) painful. But the second we cross the line, some mischievous editor begins redacting out all the pain, all those ugly moments, leaving behind in their place a golden glow of accomplishment that makes all those hard moments seem like so many trivial psychological speed bumps on the road to success. This is a good thing (at least for the sport), because if we really remembered that pain in all its gory detail, we’d all be one-timers and move on to something a little easier, like having our teeth pulled without benefit of anaesthesia.

But this tricky memory-editing thing can have a downside. It can lead us to think that that strength of will is all we need; that having achieved it once, it can be done again and again at will; that it’s ALL mind over matter. So it’s been with me; despite the fact that it’s been nearly 3yrs since I crossed the line at IMC, and in that time I’ve done exactly one tri (and an Oly at that . . .), in my mind, I’m still an Ironman. In my mind, anything I’ve done once I can do again; all I have to do is call up the willpower to summon it forth.

In other words, I’ve been selling myself the Brooklyn Bridge and offering generous financing terms . . . and the balloon payment came due last Saturday.

I really have no excuse - in the last pre-race Wildflower newsletter, Peter Reid offered a few tidbits of advice. Embedded among them was this quote: “I consider Wildflower the same as an Ironman”. Despite having no less a luminary than the current World Champion ™ warn me what I was in for, I chose to ignore the warning as mere hyperbole.

Oops.

Now, mind you, I didn’t expect to blast through the course. I knew I wasn’t in any shape to put in a strong performance, but 8h45m to do a 1/2IM? With my previous slowest 1/2IM time being 7h, I didn’t see how I could fail to at least drag my undertrained carcass around and finish, and thereby validate my Kona slot.

Oh yeah, didn’t I mention that part? Evidently the challenge of completing a ½ IM on almost no training wasn’t enough . . . I had to put more pressure on. I got lucky enough to lottery into Ironman Hawaii this year, and had to complete a Half Ironman distance race to validate that slot. With the season already under way, and races selling out within a matter of hours, there didn’t seem to be many other choices; I *had* to finish this race, or give up my Kona dream. Or so I told myself prior to the race.

So, delusions and dreams firmly in hand, I set off for Lake San Antonio, determined to hurt, but to gut it out and get it done before turning my focus to the season’s real work; training for Kona.

Now, dear reader, lest you think this report is all going to be a festival of self-pity and woe, allow me to share some recent improvements in my life. After a few years of brutal downturn, the Bay Area economy is showing some signs of life, which pays benefits in two ways; first, my band (which, as most of you know, is my first love and my ‘real’ job) is finally getting better-paying work again, after a few tough lean years of retrenching.
Secondly, the (day) job market has improved to the point that I don’t have to take every crappy assignment that comes along, but can be a little bit selective. As a result, I’ve managed to work out an arrangement whereby I work 25-30hrs/wk, and can set my own schedule to accommodate gigging AND training. Lastly, I’ve finally managed to scrape together the cash for a laptop, and so now I can get work done for the band and for the day job while on the road, which gives me even more flexibility with my scheduling.

The last time I had an employer this enlightened was in 2001 . . . when I was training for IMC. So it would certainly seem that what with the Kona slot, and the sudden alignment of my personal stars, someone up there wants me to succeed on 10/16/04. So it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think that this ‘special treatment’ would extend to getting me through an early season Half IM that I hadn’t really trained for . . .

. . . but I should have remembered that God helps those who help themselves . . .

* * * * * * *

Friday

I worked a half day on Friday, and then we drove down to Lake San Antonio. I’d been there once before, back in 2000, when I drove down to ride the course with Mark Dolley, Cathy Morgan, Steve Blum and some other Deads who (forgive me) I forget now. As we drove around the lake to the camping area, we rolled up Nasty Grade and I reminisced about that long-past spring day when I’d gotten around the course in about (as I recall) 3-1/2 hours. The course description says that Nasty Grade is 5mi long, and I scoffed when I checked the odometer and saw that as far as I could tell, the ‘Nasty’ part of the grade was only 1.5mi – 2mi tops. Perhaps that was the moment I sealed my doom, for less than 24hrs later Nasty Grade would be the witness to my moment of defeat.

We found our way into the campground, and since we were running a little late, I headed down to the lake and registration while CTB (that’s my girlfriend and love of my life, aka Carissa The Beautiful, for those who haven’t read my race repts before. Since it’s been so long since I’ve had a race to write about, that’s probably damn near all of you) and Jocelyn (CTB’s 11yr old daughter, who I would call my own, except for the socio-political ramifications of doing so when she sees her own dad every other weekend . . . but I digress) set up the tent and the campsite. A wonderfully friendly but woefully misinformed volunteer had pointed us in the wrong direction to start, so it was a 1.5mi walk each way from our campsite down to registration and back. By the time I picked up my packet, tested my chip, ate my free pasta dinner and walked back to the campsite, it was pretty much time to sack in for the nite.

I didn’t sleep very well; we’d left in a rush, and I was focused on getting the things I needed for the race, not for camping. As a result, we left our air mattress behind, and that fact combined with the sloping campsite we’d chosen didn’t make for the most hospitable sleeping surface. All night long I kept tossing and turning to relieve the numbness from lying on the hard ground, and to crawl back uphill when I found myself crammed against the downhill wall of the tent. So while we’d set the alarm for 6:30a, we were awake loooong before then . . .

* * * * *
Race Day

After lying awake for an hour (as opposed to waking up every hour all night . . ), I got up and moving about 6:30a. I hadn’t had a chance to put my race numbers on my bike or helmet yet, so after a quick trip to the restroom (where the lines for the men’s room was longer than that for the women’s . . . weird) I took the opportunity to do just that, and to get into my race togs. By that time CTB and Jocelyn had finished their own morning rituals, and it was time to head for the lake.

We got there in enough time, and I wasn’t terribly rushed in putting together my transition area. But we hadn’t left ourselves lots of time either, and so I didn’t have any time to waste – I racked my bike, set up my towel (helmet upside down – straps out. Sunglasses, gloves, powerbars and gels inside. Running shoes set out. Number attached to race belt – set out) and got into my wetsuit. I had time to head to the fence of the bike corral and give CTB one last pre-race peck, and then it was Showtime. I headed for the water.

* * * *
The Swim

It all started well enough. I’d actually been in the pool a few times in the days leading up to the event, and even told CTB that I was worried less about the swim than I was about either of the other two legs. That’s a 180 degree reversal from my usual state, so maybe the smarter part of my mind was trying to tell me something . . . but, once again, I digress.

The waves were going off every 5min like, well, like clockwork, and I was in the last of three waves of men 35-39. I seeded myself at the very back, like always, and waited for the horn while the others in my wave swam out a bit to warm up. When the horn went off, I let the rest surge off and waded in behind them, and then finally began to swim.

Swimming is by far my weakest discipline; I had a few bad moments where the shadows of my old fear of deep water tried to derail me and make me quit before I even hit the end of the pier. But having already completed an IM swim was a potent fear-killer; the more rational side of my brain just kept repeating ‘you’re fine- you’ve done this before’ until the panicky whiny guy went in search of easier prey.

I was gratified to see that I wasn’t the last in my wave. There were two other green caps (our wave had green swimcaps) that kept leapfrogging me to the next lifeguard’s surfboard, where they’d wait until I caught up, then they’d take off for the next surfboard to rest again. Each time, they’d wait a little longer, while I kept making steady, if slow progress, and eventually they fell behind me. I didn’t see them after about the fifth buoy, so I don’t know if either of them completed the swim. But I knew I would.

Despite what happened later in the day, that swim was a triumph of sorts for me; being the crappy swimmer I am means that I’m usually well out of the antics of the aggro swimmers. But the swim course at Wildflower didn’t really leave me anyplace to get out of the way of succeeding waves, and the large number of entrants meant that every 5-7min, I found myself bobbing along in the middle of an impromptu water-polo match. For the first time in a tri, I was kicked, slapped, and even swum right over (literally – the guy’s right hand came down over my right shoulder, his chest slid right over my back and with a final kick to my head he was gone). Despite all of this, panic never reared its head. I was able to stay calm and just let whatever happened . . . happen. (Well, not completely. When one guy couldn’t seem to just swim on by me, but instead seemed determined to shove me under, he got a couple of ‘accidental’ shots in the ‘nads from my kicking heels. Oops. It seemed to get my point across, however . . . he disappeared and I was allowed back to the surface.)

Eventually, I made my way around the buoys and back to the ramp, and jogged out of the water in about 1:15 (I told you I’m a crappy swimmer – for some of you that’s a *slow* IM swim . . . ). I headed for the (empty) racks and my bike.

T1 wasn’t any stellar performance, I was determined to take the whole day methodically and not get my heart rate up unnecessarily. I mean, when you’re planning on taking the whole day to do it, what’s two more minutes in transition? As it was, it didn’t take me too long to do the wetsuit dance, get myself geared up for the bike, and get moving.

On the way out of transition, there were a *lot* of slow bikers, weaving all over the road. The majority of these were doing the MTB race, a sprint race designed for beginners. And it showed – very few of them seemed to understand what ‘on your left’ meant, and at one point I nearly came to a stop when a 43yr old guy pulled all the way to the left and slowed down dramatically. I rather tersely explained to him that he MUST stay right and that I could NOT pass on the right, so would he please GET to the right so we could both get on with our day . . . eventually he left enough room for me to squeak past on his left and move on.

A few hundred yards later, the MTB folks were directed to the left, and we long course folks turned right up Beach Hill, the nasty, steep m@#$%f@#$cker of a hill out of transition. And I had the first intimation that maybe things weren’t going to go as I’d planned . . . as soon as I started putting serious power (or at least what passes for serious power in my world) to the pedals, I got a chain skip. For the rest of the day it was whir-whir-whir-CHUNK-whir-whir-whir-CHUNK as every 4th pedal stroke the chain would skip on the rear derailleur. I futzed with the shifter to try to make it go away, but without much success. It seemed that I’d just have to deal with it.

As soon as I huffed my way to the top of Beach Hill and got onto relatively flat land, I began my nutrition regime, which was planned thusly; one powerbar per hour, and two gels. My plan was to have half a powerbar at the top of the our, a gel at 15min, the other half powerbar at the bottom of the hour, and another gel at 45min. This is the strategy I used at IMC, and it served me well there.

This day, however, it was a different story. Within just a couple of miles, I felt like utter crap. My stomach wasn’t happy with my choice of food, and wasted no time letting me know. I was also riding much slower than I anticipated, and where the hell did all these hills come from?

As I mentioned, I’d ridden the Wildflower course once before, back in the spring of ’00, when on a temperate March day I got around the course in (as I recall) about 3-1/2 hours. In the years since, my mind had done its wonderful editing routine, redacting out all the hills so that going into the race, I remembered it as a relatively flat course, except for ‘the’ hill, Nasty Grade.

But my memory was a lying bitch; here I hadn’t hardly even gotten started and I was already struggling to spin up each ‘roller’ (with my wonderful whir-whir-whir-CHUNK cadence). By the time I got to the first aid station, I knew the day was going to be very different than I’d planned. Where once I’d thought of a 3.5hr bike, I was now taking my pace and projecting a 4.5hr split, and that wasn’t even taking Nasty Grade into consideration. That, in turn, led to the sobering realization that at this pace, I wouldn’t have enough time left to do a *flat* half marathon before the cutoff, much less one as tough as this one was supposed to be. At mile 11, my stomach churning, my legs burning, I nearly turned around and called it a day right there. The only thing that stopped me was something stupid – I didn’t want to climb back up those rollers I’d just ridden. I was sure that somewhere ahead was that flat course I remembered – I just had to get out of this ‘initial’ section. So I pressed on at the blistering pace of 12mph. As I did so, I remembered something Gordo told me once, that everybody has a bad patch in an IM, and you just have to get through it. So that became my mantra to myself ‘this is just a bad patch; work through it’. Little by little, I made headway.

A few miles down the road, I came across a woman cyclist struggling with a flat tire. I asked if she needed anything, and she responded that she didn’t really know how to change a flat tire. That was all it took for me to stop and get off the bike. Hey, I was looking for an excuse anyway. I took about 10min to change her tire, giving her an impromptu clinic in the process, and somehow the karma all worked out. By the time we had her tire back on and inflated, my stomach issues faded and I felt better. I got back on my bike and rolled away.

I kept at it, dousing myself with water to fight the by-now blistering heat, and just trying to keep my effort high enough to make headway without melting down. Finally I got to the right turn onto G18 and found the flat course I remembered. I got on the aerobars and ramped my effort up a little more, determined to make some time back while I could. What I had thought would be ‘just’ a long training day was turning into a race after all – a race against the clock. My time projections weren’t giving the ending away; each time I recalculated, it looked like I’d finish the bike with about 2h30to do the run – not a gimme, but not completely unreasonable either. So I kept pressing on.

As I came up a rise at about mi24, I began to realize that the day wasn’t just hard for me; a woman was crouched next to her bike, coughing and dry heaving. I asked if she needed help, and she said someone had already gone for medical. I asked if she wanted me to stay with her, but she said no, so I pressed on. I later learned from another competitor that the woman wasn’t just puking – she was coughing up blood. She had lung cancer. (While we may have our doubts as to the rationality of choosing this particular venue to fight her illness, I can’t fault her courage or determination in refusing to let the disease tell her what she can and can’t do. Whoever she is, wherever she is, please take a second to stop reading this and send her whatever good karma you can. The world needs more courage like that, and I hope to hell she beats it. I hope they all beat it.)

By now, I’d gotten my legs under me, so to speak, and so the miles between 25 and 40 just kind of blurred together. They weren’t easy, but they weren’t any harder than the first 15mi, so I’d gotten used to it. I kept calculating and recalculating the time, and the answers were going in the wrong direction. I was pretty sure that once I finished the bike, my day would be over – I was now only 4hrs away from the cutoff, and still had 16mi to go on the bike, including that 2mi climb I’d scoffed at the day before. But I was determined to let the day beat me rather than forfeit, so I kept going, until right around mi 40 when I made the critical mistake.

My tires felt just a touch mushy and soft, and I decided that it’d be a brilliant idea to top them off before tackling Nasty Grade. I only had a CO2 inflater to do the job, though, and in the process of trying to top off the rear wheel, managed not only to empty my only CO2 cartridge, but the tire and tube as well. In ten seconds I went from feeling like I had a chance at finishing to blind rage at my own stupidity. With a loud ‘F#CK!!!’ I threw the bike to the ground, ready to break down and cry.

But before I could get that far, another racer rolled up next to me and offered to help. Obviously my karma from the earlier woman’s flat had come full circle. I quickly borrowed a pump and pumped my tire back up – I was back in business.

Or so I thought; a few miles later, at the base of Nasty Grade, my tire was half flat again. Somehow, in the process of trying to top it off, then throwing the bike down, then reinflating the tire, I had sprung a slow leak, and the tire was pretty soft. I was lucky enough to borrow a pump again and pumped it up, hoping to just nurse it home.

Nasty Grade is nowhere to be having these kind of problems. My legs were shot, it was hot as hell, and I was trying to climb on a semi-flat tire. I dragged myself up the hill to the next aid station, where I took a full minute to stop, remove my helmet, and thoroughly douse myself with water before moving on. But it was false bravado, a few hundred yards beyond the aid station I realized that the downhill on the other side of Nasty Grade was nowhere to have a leaking tire, and my resolve finally gave up the ghost and crumbled to rubble. I turned around, coasted back to the aid station and told them ‘I’m done.’ Just like that, I quit. Oh, I made a few half-hearted attempts to change the tube and get the bike rolling again, but I knew I was just kidding myself; even had I gotten the tire inflated I wouldn’t have the fortitude to get back on and tackle the rest of that hill. My day was over.

I walked a ways up the road a bit from the aid station so none of the Cal Poly volunteer kids would see the grown man’s tears, and ripped myself apart for a few minutes. I was an idiot for screwing with the tire, for trying to do this on so little training, for thinking I had any right to go to Kona . . . “Now wait just a goddamn minute” said the guy with the IMC tattoo. “This is one day – Kona will be different. You choose NOW whether this is a defeat, or merely a day that didn’t go how you planned. You can find your way into other races if you CHOOSE to . . . ” I finally got myself settled down, accepted that I’d done what I could, and let it go.

* * * *
The Aftermath

I spent the next couple of hours waiting for SAG, then riding along as the truck picked up other bikers succumbing to the heat and brutality of the day. Once I got back to the festival area, it was another 2.5hrs before I was able to find CTB and Jocelyn . . . they’d been under a tree on the hillside for hours, waiting for me to finish. I’d spent the time trying to stay out of the sun, eating my free post-race pasta, and trying not to be too critical of the musical offerings coming from the stage. I felt a little (no, make that a LOT) better when some other racers told me about the Big Kahuna Tri in September, and I realized that my Kona dreams weren’t quite as shattered as I’d imagined on the slope of Nasty Grade.

Once I found CTB and J (almost sounds like a sandwich, don’t it?) I told them what happened, and got some condolences, and then we packed up and headed home. We enjoyed a big dinner at Outback on the way, and by the time I got to my own bed I’d pretty much let the day go. A good woman helps in that regard. It’s kinda hard to hate myself when someone as amazing as she is thinks otherwise . . .

So, to sum up (finally!), this race was definitely a wake-up call, a reminder that you can’t fake the long course stuff, and if I intend to make the most of my shot at Kona, I can’t take the same when-I-get-around-to-it approach to training I’ve had the past few years. And I’ll promise all of you right now – I’m taking this seriously. I know that many of you long to do Kona, and it’d be an act of profound disrespect to you, to the race, and to myself to squander this opportunity. So I won’t.

That’s all . . . I’ve got to turn in now . . . I’ve got to be in the pool by 7:30a. See ya on Alii Drive.