My first Half Iron Man - Part I - Race application, swim cut off and sleepless nights....

As with most events I've entered, the amount of anxiety I feel pre-race is proportional to the amount of time in advance I enter, the earlier I enter, the less I worry....initially.  

And so it was, on a typically beautiful day in Greece whilst on holiday, I made use of the free wi-fi and after much panic and reliance on a friend sending me event links, I entered my first half iron man - Staffs 70.3.  In Tri-talk, this was going to be my 'A' race for the coming year.

I entered on the first day of availability, not only to make sure I got the cheapest price but also Staffs was known as an event that usually sells out very quickly.  So, on the anxiety-o-meter, I was fairly comfortable.  Ok, I'd just entered my first half iron man and up to now, had only completed one super sprint and an Olympic distance, neither of which I could safely say I covered myself in glory at !  However, I had faith in my ability to do the required training and be in the best shape I could come the day and, on top of which, race day was months and months away...what could possibly cause me to worry unduly.

I hadn't stopped training since I did my super sprint and Olympic earlier in the year.  I carried on training after those events and now with the goal of completing a 70.3 race, I continued to train virtually every day through winter.  Training was going well, it was consistent and I was getting in some good sessions.  And then it happened....

The first 'Athletes Guide' arrived from Iron Man and I duly started to read and digest each and every word on my daily commute to and from work.  And then I spotted it, whilst reading the swim guide, those two words that sent my anxiety-o-meter through the roof - "CUT-OFF".  There it was in black and white, the two words guaranteed to start second thoughts about my ability to complete the event.

No one told me !! No one mentioned it, there had been no cut off's in the previous races I'd entered and completed.  Clearly, still being a novice had meant that I was not aware that in most (if not all) middle and long distance events, cut offs are common.  I had vaguely remembered friends mentioning cut off times when doing Iron Man events, but hadn't really taken it on-board, as at the time I had no ambition to complete at Iron Man distance.

I couldn't get it out of my mind, I read and re-read the athletes guide, maybe I invented it, dreamed it.  When it was clear it was for real, I started to ponder how it would work.  Would there be an official at the swim exit waiting for me and telling me I couldn't continue, maybe I'd get a tap on the shoulder in T1..."sorry son, you can't carry on, collect your gear and follow me..."  I went through all these different scenarios, genuinely believing there was a real opportunity of me not making the grade.  But, I had to, I had to get to my bike ! The bike and run were my better disciplines, where I could hope to make progress to my goal of that Iron Man finisher medal.

So back to those two-words, CUT OFF.  For the swim, it was 1hr and 10m in total.  I started to calculate in my head if I was capable of completing 1900m in that time.  I was fairly sure I could based on previous lake swims where I was completing 2 laps (1800m give or take depending on navigation!) around the 50 min mark.  However, at the time, I was only swimming up to 1500m really as I was only training at that time for an Olympic distance event, so I wasn't going 'all-out' for these two laps and didn't consider it a reliable benchmark.

But even so, based on this approximate benchmark, the margins for predicted 1900m weren't great and I convinced myself that any mishaps on the day, or some poor navigation could easily eat into whatever margin I had and see me fail to complete the swim.

Over the following weeks and months I had to make a concerted effort to improve my swim, buying paddles and a pull buoy to focus on technique and referring to my 'swim smooth' book.  I had a friend who happens to be a swim instructor come and watch me swim and leave me with lots of things to work on.  It was good to have this focus in the pool, so I could make sessions count toward improving the areas where most gains might be made and then see how I was doing as soon as the lake opened in April.  All the time telling myself, you have to get to the bike, you have to !  Besides, imagine telling my wife when I came back, that I'd just paid £200 for a swim !

Now here comes the really interesting part.  During my training, when friends, family and other tri friends would ask how I was getting on, I always said it was going well.  I said the swim was my big challenge and this was (still is) true.  However, what I never let on about was my approach to the swim training, which at the time, made sense to me, but writing this now seems somewhat odd.  So in the pool, I was averaging 2 swims per week.  Monday was always my endurance set, Friday's was technique.  In those Monday sessions, I would swim 1500m, nothing more and note my time for this.  On average I would be hitting 37 minutes for 1500 (yeah, ok, its slow, I get that!).  On some days, I could get near 36 mins or 35 mins.  I knew 400m was taking me in the region of 9 minutes so in order to assess my capability to get inside the time limit of 1hr 10m for 1900m, I would just add the two times together and tell myself, I should be ok, especially as I was banking on gaining a small amount of time from the wet suit.

What I wouldn't do would be to swim 1900m so I could see my ACTUAL time for that distance, the distance I'd need to cover on race day.  I knew I was kidding myself that adding times from a 1500m swim and a totally separate (not even on the same day!) 400m swim was no way to gauge my estimated finish time.  But the thought of swimming 1900m and being somewhere near an hour, really made me nervous...I'd rather not know.

This game carried on for many sessions until the point where something got the better of me.  I had to start swimming the distance to see (a) if I could make it and (b) more importantly if I could be inside that cut off.  I started to work toward the 1900m distance in my Monday sessions and once there, I was always 'comfortably' under the hour, although there was still that nagging doubt that, on the day, with perhaps only a 10 mins or less buffer, I was cutting it fine if my navigation was off on the day.

I did consider looking at early 70.3 races in order to get some practice in but in the end, decided my first attempt at the distance would be the Staffs race day.  In the meantime training continued to go well, I was getting in consistent sessions and feeling like I was making good progress.  The swim still loomed large so I just kept plugging away at it - got to get to the bike, got to get to the bike I told myself.

Friends would ask me when they saw me how training was going, I always said it was going well and always added...and I've got ages yet until race day - I've got 3 months to go...2 months to go, 1 month to go......before I knew it race week was upon me.  Where did that time go?  It was almost time to get started on my packing and organisation for the big day.

Join me for part II where I talk about race week, packing, more pre-race nerves and the excitement of a stay at the Holiday Inn on Jct 13 of the M6.....