It’s now three days since IronMan South Africa 2009 and time for my final diary entry. I could write at least 10 stories about the 5 days we spent in Port Elizabeth, but I need to bring it to a close. Yet strangely enough, after a year of training, hard work and not inconsiderable expense I can’t find it in myself to write about my personal race experience. 

The end of the journey turned out to be much bigger than me and the small part I played on the day. I feel almost humbled and in awe of the experience and can’t quite grasp the enormity of what I have undoubtedly achieved. 

The playing of the National Anthem just before the start was very emotional for me, because despite my strange English accent I am a truly patriotic South African. The feeling of pride I felt at being part of ‘my’ local IronMan stayed with me the whole day and lingers still. It was a special moment that I know was shared by most other people at the start.

I could bore you with tales of how it was hot, because it was VERY hot, or I could write about how tired I was when I got off the bike. I could tell you how I got blisters on my soggy feet from soaking myself in water trying to bring my core temperature down and yet I would simply be telling you the story of exactly what happened to a thousand other age group athletes who were suffering and enjoying the event as much as I was.

Surely it is better to celebrate the event itself and the inspiration that fellow competitors give to us other athletes. People like my training buddy Linda Els who as a single mother manages to raise two alarmingly well mannered and adjusted sons while keeping a house together, training 6 days a week and competing in Triathlon at National level. I can’t even train my dog properly yet Linda does stuff like that.

How about blind athlete Francois Jacobs who has completed numerous IronMan events and sees nothing special in what he does. You can point a finger at Francois and you will be pointing at a humble man indeed. Then there is Francois’ guide, training buddy and friend Jurie Krige who has a far more challenging role than any other athlete at IronMan, being ultimately responsible for another human beings life. These guys are tethered together in the water for goodness sakes. Yet Jurie would rather help another person achieve their otherwise impossible dream than set a personal best time of his own. Jurie to me embodies the true spirit of IronMan.

Like me, I am sure you will marvel at the fact that there are as many volunteers helping to make the race a success as there are athletes that actually compete in it. Guys and girls, old and young stayed out there in weather that saw temperatures hit 37 degrees in the shade at midday then abruptly change to an early evening downpour with howling gales and a massive thunderstorm. They worked from before 5:00am till the early hours of the following morning to make the race possible, and I didn’t see one of them who wasn’t encouraging or cheering for an athlete.

What can you say about Port Elizabeth, a place that combines rural African charm with a modern city and has an infrastructure advanced enough to stage a world class and truly special event. A city that pulls together year after year to keep itself on the International stage. And the people of Port Elizabeth clearly appreciate the massive cash inflow that IronMan brings to them and go out of their way to say thank you. It’s a good thing they don’t have Table Mountain as well or there would be no stopping them.

Do you want to see brilliant organisation. Go and watch how an IronMan event is run. Our Government (in fact any Government) could profit from studying how this event is put together. Even in the face of a near disaster, when the fierce evening storm destroyed the massive 2500 seater marquee and turned it into a shipping hazard, the organisation kept ticking over, no one panicked and contingency plans kicked in. It is an awesome show to watch. It’s on at the same time and same place next year.

Best of all from a cost perspective is the value for money that the event offers. At R1840.00 for your entry fee (and you can thank Specsavers for sponsoring athletes to the tune of over R1300 each to make it so low), you get every one of your hard earned cents worth.

As an example, how many events have you ever done where there are numerous bike mechanics roaming the cycling route in well equipped vans, fixing broken bikes, chains and punctures, and still dispensing inner tubes and CO2 cartridges to those in need of them. At no extra charge. Seriously, they give the stuff to you.

All you need to do as a competitor is arrange your accommodation and food. Everything else is taken care of for you. You are given athlete instruction booklets with idiot proof directions instructing you in the smallest detail about what happens how, when and where. You literally don’t have to think for yourself, and let me tell you, after 14 hours on the road that alone is a good investment.

Finally there was the long anticipated and often visualised trip up the red carpet to become an IronMan.

My wife, who has sacrificed a lot to make my IronMan dream come true, was standing waiting all alone in the middle of the run route outside the finish venue, soaking wet and shivering with cold yet determined to welcome me to the end of my IronMan road for 2009. We crossed the line together to the sound of Paul Kaye announcing to the world….

‘Chris Hitchcock, you are an IronMan’

Yeah, it feels good!!

I’ll do a report later. But in the meanwhile, a picture speaks a thousand words.

Lets get one thing straight. Port Elizabeth is a damn fine town and spectacularly beautiful to boot. 

It may on occasion be a tad windy but the people are exceptionally welcoming to ‘the IronMans’ as more than one has called me and this place knows how to throw a party. I am seriously considering moving up here to live. 

On top of the brilliance that is PE, the IronMan organisation far surpasses it’s legendary reputation. This morning there was even an official IM table at Hobie beach manned by volunteers where it was possible to leave my belongings in a numbered bag while I went for a swim. And this was two days before the event even takes place. 

Registration was a breeze with everything laid out and all of the staff knew exactly what to do and how to answer even my most obscure questions. They must spend days in training and could teach a lot of our local businesses in Cape Town how to do things. 

Walking around town my wife and I started a game to see who could spot the most people in a city block wearing IronMan competitor armbands on their wrists . It got so ridiculous that we had to change the rules to try and spot non competitors. It’s like the place has been taken over by fit people. 

In the flea pit where we are staying (R170.00 pp per night so I didn’t expect anything better) there is not a single room that doesn’t have an entrant in it and the place is booked solid until Tuesday morning. The same is true right across town. 

IronMan certainly brings big bucks to Port Elizabeth and Port Elizabeth has the good manners to know how to say a proper thank you.

Dear Readers

I am in Port Elizabeth. The weather is great. Wish you were here.

Lots of love

Chris

XXXX

A drive of seven hours has brought me to the place where my journey of the past eleven Months will end. Traveling with my wife who doubles up as supporter in chief, we took a very casual drive up to Port Elizabeth the race City. The only drama we had en route was a stone that flicked up from a trucks wheel and cracked the windscreen which for some reason had us giggling like kids as the crack slowly spread across the glass.

But the journey is just the means to an end and while the garden route is a beautiful place the closer we got to Port Elizabeth the more excited I became and the less I noticed the scenery. I’m feel like a cross between a little kid on Christmas eve and a person who is about to have root canal. On all of his teeth.

Port Elizabeth is cooking, and IronMan fever has taken over the City. Cape Town during Argus time has a special atmosphere, but PE is a lot smaller and IronMan just seems to be everywhere that you look. The atmosphere is palpable. There are branding banners everywhere, the beachfront has been taken over by the start finish area and there are IM athletes everywhere you look. I don’t think I’ve seen an overweight or unfit person on the streets since we arrived. It’s like Baywatch without The Hoff.

This morning at 8:00am the www.mytrainingday.com family are going for a group swim on Hobie Beach followed by breakfast and a 10km ride to shake down the bikes and make sure everything is OK. Then it’s off to registration and the IM expo where I have no doubt that I will buy lots of stuff that I ‘really need’. It will then be time to relax and explore a bit.

I’m loving every minute of it.

Week one of my taper is a thing of the past and if I’m honest I can’t say I’m particularly looking forward to weeks two and three. All of which is a 180 degree change in direction to how eagerly I was anticipating my taper period.

The problem I guess is that I don’t trust myself. I prevaricate on an hourly basis between being convinced that I have done enough training, and being 100% sure that I am so undertrained I will fail to complete even half of the cycle leg. This apparently is classic taper madness.

 Sitting at home on a Sunday with the prospect of a mere 18km run to keep the legs ticking over was pure torture. I wanted to do at least 30km but knew that if I did my wife would be on the phone to coach Claire and my life would be made a hell of SMS messages and an e-mail box containing lots of exclamation marks and capital letters. (Note how I am more scared of my coach than my wife)

 The good thing about my taper is that because I am doing less distance I can start my Tuesday and Thursday morning rides at 5:00am instead of 4:30. And I’ll tell you something strange that I have noticed that happens at such an hour. The suburbs are clouded by the overwhelming odour of the reek of women’s perfume.

There must be gallons of the stuffed poured over the female form every morning and half of it ends up evaporating into the air, wafting out of open windows and polluting my lungs. It’s actually nauseating and really is such a huge waste of money.

Surely a good old fashioned shower and some deodorant would solve the problem far easier and for far less money. Makeup as a masking technique for physical flaws I can understand, but really ladies, when you walk into my office reeking of Eau de Brothel, my immediate instinct is to assume you haven’t showered lately.

Anyway, two weeks from today I will be sitting in Port Elizabeth and IronMan 2009, the one thing in my life about which I have allowed myself to obsess this past year, will be over. Will I be happy or will I be sad? I don’t know but I know that I am going to give it horns.

Have you ever had frozen eye balls. Neither had I until last weekend when I competed in the 11 Global Triathlon at Blouberg in Cape Town. Anyone who has ever swum in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Town will tell you how cold it is, and I have even scuba dived there in the past, so it should have been no surprise to me. So why I entered an event that required me to voluntarily enter the frigid water of Big Bay and then swim 1.5 kilometers in it is quite beyond me. I need to employ a man whose only job is to hit me on the head with a plank of wood when I make silly decisions.

Half an hour before the event started I was urged by my training buddies from www.mytrainingday.com to go for a swim to acclimatise to the cold water and warm up. With hind sight this was obviously a wind up. I dived into the water and immediately some cruel and vicious animal hiding below the surface punched me so hard in the stomach that it drove the air out of my lungs and then painted me light blue. Luckily the water was still knee high so that I could immediately stand up, shake my hands like an effeminate spastic and scream for my Mother. Which is what I did. Then I levitated to the shore to be met by howls of laugher by all those who were watching the show. It. Was. Cold.

After the race briefing we all went and stood at the shore waiting for the start. I placed myself right at the back in the hope that those in front would pee in the water and warm it up before I got there. The crack of the start gun saw the top guys sprinting into the sea and me recoiling in the opposite direction away from the frigid pond, hoping that in the nanosecond between the start and me plucking up the courage to get back in the water, the organisers would cancel the event. The reality of the situation had me realising that I had to do the swim if I wanted to finish, so against my better judgment I again dived in.

I have to be honest with you when I say that for the first 10 minutes I seriously considered giving up. All my swim training went out of the window, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see and I couldn’t think straight. My overriding thought process was to get out of there. NOW! Classic fight or flight stuff. I persevered only because I couldn’t give up in front of the cute young surf lifesaver chikkas who weren’t even wearing wetsuits. It was a classic case of ego triumphing over common sense.

It was at the first buoy that I first felt my eyeballs were freezing up. I couldn’t understand it until I realised that in the excitement of the start I had left my goggles perched on top of my head. Placing them over my eyes relieved the problem and I could concentrate on breathing and surviving. Surviving one minute at a time at least. It really was desperate stuff.

28 minutes later I staggered out of the water, a frozen, half drowned and very relieved man. But my problems were not over by a long shot. I was so cold that I couldn’t grip the zip cord to take my wetsuit off and I had to ask a marshal to assist. When I got onto the bike my hands couldn’t grip the aero bars, they just slipped off the ends forcing me to sit up for 10 minutes until circulation had been properly restored and I could ride properly.

The day got a lot better once I had thawed out. I overtook a lot of riders on the bike leg and only one overtook me on the run ,so I had a positive gain on the field. A final result of 73rd overall out of 116 finishers and 11 non finishers was better than I expected given my performance in the swim leg.

There are some positives to be taken from the race. This was my first long triathlon swim in the sea and I survived. The swim at IronMan will be in much warmer water so will not be such an intense physical jolt to the system and on top of that I didn’t get sea sick which was my biggest worry.

IronMan is coming like a steam train. Have I done enough training?

Well I’ve done this much since 1 May 2008.

Running: 1163km 121hours.
Cycling: 5373km 253 hours
Swimming: 151km 59 hours.

I guess that sort of matches the time proportions of the event but I’m still worried.

Chill pills may be needed.

When I entered the Argus I filled in my existing medical conditions on their website. It seems they are worried about me because now they want me to visit the MediClinic at the Cycle expo to get checked out.

 The only problem is that I listed my conditions as follows. 

1: Spontaneous dental hydroplosion.

2: Leprosy.

3: Flesh Eating Bacteria.

4: Government created killer nano robots.

5: Hotdog fingers.

I’m going with that exact list to Mediclinic and I’m telling them that the cycletour insisted I be checked for these conditions. Who wants to video it?
 

Today we did a brick session, which to me is a new form of training. It consisted of a 1hour bike ride followed by a 30 minute run, repeated 3 times and in theory getting faster each time. To add insult to injury the riding leg took in the 2nd climb of the Argus Cycle Tour, the infamous climb up Smitswinkle Bay. With a total altitude gain of 1010 meters and with a howling North Easterly wind on the return leg for good measure, it was a proper workout. 

The day started with an early call at 4:30am, followed by an hour’s drive to Simonstown to meet the bunch at 6:00am sharp. Since when did 4:30 happen so early in the day? 

I took a couple of positives away from the session as well as two little negatives to add balance. 

On the bad side, one of the objectives of the mornings training was to test the food we are planning to use for nutrition at IronMan in April. Two problems cropped up immediately. The first and most obvious one was that I left all my carefully planned food goodies at home over 60km away. A Big thank you at this stage to USN sponsored athlete Kent Horner for donating some delicious USN calories to my stomachs cause.  

The second and not so easily remedied problem is that I apparently don’t have a clue what to eat on race day anyway. 

I love muffins, and my initial Google research indicated that being low GI, they would be the perfect food for the job at hand. Except that they are not very palatable in 35 degree heat. They are what my dear old mom would call ‘claggy’. I compromised by swopping muffins for pancakes. I mean the ingredients are vaguely similar and they are easy enough to cook. 

At this stage I should point out that if when making pancakes a fly comes into the kitchen, it is easy to mistake a spatula for a fly-swatter. And a crushed fly is equally similar to a blueberry. And a wife is a lot like a fly eater. I’m not telling her if you’re not. 

So, baby potatoes, pancakes (still to be tested), energy gels and Perpetuem are top of the ChrisH feeding regime at the moment, but I really don’t think it’s enough variety. The range of energy powders, bars and gels at the local sports shop is staggering and enough to confuse even a confused person, so I’m going to have to swallow my pride and ask the guys in my training group for advice on what they eat. More on this in the future, although the future as far as my IronMan quest is concerned is a mere 2 Months away. 

On the positive side I have a brand new pair of running shoes. Spiffy blue and white New Balance 1063′s. How good are they you may ask? Well good enough that I don’t even know that they are on my feet. I love them.  

And if you think the nutrition section of the sports shop is confusing, try choosing the right pair of running shoes from among those punted by the many manufacturers. There are dozens of them, all making similar claims, and frankly I doubt if there is really anything to choose between any of them. Which begs the question, why did I chose New Balance over the others? 

I chose them for the same reason my hydration pack is a Salomon and all four of the family bikes are Raleigh’s. Because the New balance directly supports South African sports and in particular the sports that I love, multisport and adventure racing.

I am a firm believer that life sends me messages, so why I keep deleting them without even giving them a cursory glance is beyond me.

Take last week for example. The life messages were coming in fast and furious and my internal mail box that is labelled  ‘Warning’ was filling up at a rapid rate. Yet I was ignoring them, knowing all the time that heed should be taken and I should be crawling under my bed for maximal protection.

On Tuesday evening the reality came home to roost when life’s postman gave me a whack on the back of the head to wake me up.

On the way to the group Tuesday night track training session, I wasn’t feeling too fantastic with an overpowering urge to stop the car and just sleep. I ignored the message reasoning that as I had been up since 4:30am I was just tired.

The training session consisted of a 20 minute warm up run then running 17 x 400 meter laps, with the first 200 at a sprint and the second 200 meters slowly  recovering with no breaks in between. It was to be interesting.

(Sensitive readers should look away)

After lap 10 I got the message that I needed to pee. I deleted it.

After lap 12 I REALLY needed to pee. Again I ignored the signals.

Lap 15 concluded with me in ever increasing pain and an overpowering desire to head behind the nearest tree. I continued running instead.

The last lap ended with me screaming into the undergrowth for relief. But now I needed to vomit as well which I did in no uncertain manner and continued to do so on the way home. (stopping the car first obviously)

Tuesday night and Wednesday passed in a blur of sickness. I have never felt so ill in my life. I was off work on Wednesday and Thursday and then on Thursday night my wife also got sick with the same malady. This neatly cut off my supply of sympathy and nursing. I was in hell. (So was she, but lets be honest about this, you read this column to find out about me) Come Friday I was feeling a bit better so I headed off to work to see how the body held up.

Any normal person would have taken an extra day or two to recover after what I had just been through before venturing back into their fitness regime, but the Western Province Triathlon champs were on Saturday. I was entered and had been looking forward to the event for a Month already so I had a hard question to answer. Was I really going to stay at home and not compete? Of course not.

I reasoned with myself that I would just take it easy and go for a finish no matter how slow. I wasn’t reading the messages you see.

The swim was great. Halfway in 15 minutes, and out of the water in exactly 30 minutes, consistency at it’s best. The short run to the bike was fine and transition one went off with no drama and no sense of urgency in keeping with the aim of just going for a finish.

To set the rest of the scene, I need to let you know that I have managed to ride 18 Months and almost 6000 kilometres on my road bikes without having a puncture. Frankly I was getting worried about this because the closer IronMan is getting the more the law of averages was looking at correcting the puncture balance in Port Elizabeth in April.

Not to worry, the South African National Glass breaking championships appear to have been held last week on the very same route to that shared by Saturdays triathlon. 22km and 3 punctures later I was stranded on the side of the road with no tubes, no CO2 bombs and just as little enthusiasm left. I was out of the event and looking for a lift back to the finish.

Luckily on my walk back I met up with a young rider from Wellington who was competing in her first Triathlon and was also stuck after numerous flat wheels. She was able to use the phone at a local Winery to call her mother to come and rescue us.

This young lady whose name escapes me, (I think it is Lizandre or something similar) was actually the first lady out of the water after the swim and had her first puncture as she left the swim bike transition. I was happy that despite all her problems at her fist Tri event she was still bubbling with enthusiasm for the sport.

Perhaps, like me, she needs to learn to listen to life’s e-mails.