Challenge Roth: Pre-Race and Swim
Challenge Roth was an amazing event and we took 38 racers from Atlanta Tri Club. I would definitely describe it as the one of those trips of a lifetime! The actual race was a struggle for many reasons. To truly explain I need to start at the beginning!
I waffled a bunch of times about doing this race. Indeed after Raleigh, I started asking around to see if I could find someone to do the run portion and switch to a relay. I didn’t find anyone so I considered just planning on doing the swim and bike. Then, the closer the event got, I thought I might be able to plan to finish without hurting myself. I had a successful 15 and 17 mile run in weeks five and four and hoped that would be enough to carry me through.
Meanwhile the foot status fluctuated on a day by day basis. Some days it felt perfectly healthy and others I thought I would rip it just from doing daily activities. I built up to short, frequent runs and that seemed to make it better instead of worse, it got to where it would only ache on non-run days, then on the days off it would hurt a lot. Then, other times it would hurt only for seemingly innocuous occasions, like being on my feet too long or sleeping with my foot in a certain position. Then I would be sure I would never run again for a few days until I would be able string together some runs without incident then I would forget and recommit to the run leg.
In summary, in a given day it hurt anywhere from none of the time to all of the time following no discernible pattern. All in all it was an exhausting roller coaster of emotions and frankly in some ways, I was just ready to get the race out of the way. Kudos to John for putting up with me during this time and to Josh Glass who let me complain and did his best to get me to the start line healthy. I spent many hours laser-ing, getting adjusted, and running on the Alter-G at Georgia Sports Chiropractic!
Another stressful thing leading up the event was a scheduled procedure on my neck ten days before the event. It’s been a long road figuring out what the problem is there, and I have thought many times that if I can’t get some sort of resolution, I will retire from doing Ironmans. This year I have had an MRI, cortisone in the epidural space which lead to multiple problems (culminating in my foot tear), and now this is the last non-surgical thing for me to try. The pain in long bike rides has become unbearable, and even in my best IMs I end up sitting up for at least two hours. As a smaller girl-non-powerhouse on the bike, I simply can never overcome the disadvantage of having to sit up for multiple hours on the bike. And as the problem is basically one of a cascade effect of muscle issues from nerves hitting bone, it’s not a pain that be toughed out or ignored. It eventually gets to the sit up or black out point and I have always chose sitting up. Getting C4, 5, and 6 burned through heat (radio frequency ablation) was one of the last resorts for me. And it doesn’t necessarily work in ten days and it can actually make things worse for awhile too. ALL that backstory to explain my ambivalence on multiple fronts going into the race. Pumped about the trip of a lifetime, not so pumped about the actual racing piece.
We traveled to Nuremberg the Wednesday prior to the race and everything was a flurry of activity. I was very glad we used Endurance Sports Travel as it would have been a hot mess navigating around without them. Some added stress occurred when my disc was cracked in transit. Thanks goodness Tri Bike Transport is going to make it right which I greatly appreciate, but working it out was stressful. Thankfully, it was cracked in a way that made it still rideable for the event. Besides that my bike seemed to be in perfect working order thanks to Garett at Podium Multisports. He even had detailed notes taped to the top tube about the slightly different settings that needed to be adjusted based on which wheel I ended up riding. There was a mechanic with EST who checked everything over and set it as good to go.
With all the checking in, buying gear, pre-race logistics, we were very busy. I felt tired from the trip and six hour time adjustment, but I ignored it and figured it would be fine. Also, the flight over was very dehydrating and one thing was it was difficult to find water and especially electrolyte water in the days prior to the race. The forecast kept calling for it to be hotter and hotter every time we would check on the forecast.
Two nights prior to race day, I slept like a baby. The night before, we ended up out late at the mandatory meeting and I was wide awake for a long time. Since we had a 2:30 AM wakeup call (8:30 PM body clock time) I only got about two hours sleep. I still wasn’t worried and figured everyone was in the same boat. Unfortunately, I had run out of Beet-It shots so I had brought regular beet juice in a suitcase to Germany, always a scary proposition, but it turned out okay. After a blurry rushed morning, ee all loaded onto the bus without incident at 3:45 sharp and hit the road for Roth.
After transition is set up, after the bags are turned in and there is nothing to do but sit, that is one of my favorite times of the day. Most of our group sat in the grass by the race start and just enjoyed the track of national anthems being played. When it wasn’t the national anthems, it was this sort of classical opera music which I found amusing. After a time period that always seems to short, it was time for the ladies to get moving so we made our way down to the start.
The Swim
In the practice swim, we had noticed that there was a significant current, however, we were told that the dam or lock or whatever it’s called would be closed on race morning so not to expect any current. To me it always seems like there’s a slight current in this situation, so I had that thought in the back of my mind. I always have a strategy to use the current to my advantage, However, as I alluded to in my pre-race backstory and description of time zone changes, my mind was also not exactly right. In fact, I made my first mistake by starting near the center of the river on the upstream leg. I was so in the center I was getting whistled at constantly (by kayakers, not cat-callers) and I actually whacked my arm on three different barrier buoys as I kept getting pressed towards the middle. The contact wasn’t too bad but there was one gentleman, who for some reason, was the only guy starting with out all women’s wave. He had the longest arms I had every seen and kept swimming all around the river. Since he had the only green cap, I found myself constantly looking for him and he ended up hitting me in the head a total of three times with his massively long arms. I should have been clued in to my current mistake by the fact that when I could see him far way from me, he would seem to be getting ahead, but then when he got back near me he would be swimming the same pace or falling behind. I’m not sure if that even makes sense.
In retrospect, long arm guy was a pleasant distraction from how abnormally bad I felt during this swim. I had a new Zoot wetsuit that I bought to replace from my vintage $50 one that had served me perfectly well until this point. It performed beautifully and the effort level was much less than swimming without, however, I was having repeated thoughts that I wouldn’t be able to finish the swim for some reason. I wasn’t out of breath I would just describe it as extreme muscular fatigue. It seemed to be affecting me particularly in my neck and left arm (site of the RFA ablation procedure). I was getting a crampy feeling in my neck and this was within the first 500 yards! After we made the turn, I could feel a noticeable difference in speed as we hit the “downstream” leg and felt a little better. At this point I was pressed towards the shore instead of the center, again not taking advantage of the “free speed.” I’m not sure whether I remembered at this point about the current, or whether my thoughts had already turned to swim survival so I was unconcerned with time. At any rate, I did manage to get to the end of the swim. I was extremely happy to be done but also more exhausted than I ever remember being at the start of a long day.
