Race Coverage

Full Montys & One-and-Done

Sunday, 29 September 2013 10:50

By Nick McCulloch

(Photo credits: Kelly McCulloch, Megan McCulloch and some random people using our cell phone cameras.)

Ironman Lake Tahoe Race Report  Overall impressions:  Absolutely stunning venue and it was a great place to both race and vacation.  This is definitely not the place to ever go fast... ever (ever).  There were quite a few hiccups, probably since it was the inaugural edition.  I'm glad I did it but for this course, I'm one and done.

Before the race:  My wife Megan (who raced as well) and family spent 5 days before the race staying on the lake and we had a chance to bike, run, and swim much of the course.  The weather was nice and the water was always very pleasant for training.  The visibility is shocking - at least 60 feet and you can see all types of sea life from trout to crayfish.  I increased my Gatorade consumption, not to hydrate for the race, but so I had enough bottles to build and deploy an extensive network of crayfish traps filled with bacon hoping to catch some of the 280 million that live in Tahoe... but that effort was unsuccessful.  Part of the bike course was not accessible for the week leading up since it...

was in a private neighborhood and even when we could get in during a 4 hour "preview window", we only were able to see 1/3 of that part of the course.  This proved to be the most difficult part of the race and a lot of people were very mad that this was a mystery before race day.  On Wednesday we moved up to Olympic Valley which is where T2 and the finish are located. WOW is it scenic!

Swim (the most eventful part of the day):  A storm system rolled through the day before the race which dropped the water temps to high 50's and air temps into low 30's.  When I pumped up the tires on my bike there was a thick layer of ice on my frame from rain the previous night freezing... I reminded myself not to lick it for fear of freezing my tongue to my bike.  The rolling start seemed to work fine and it was very nice to not have to tread water for 10 minutes before this swim.  The first lap was chaos because there was thick fog on the water and the sun hadn't risen yet (6:40am start) so with almost non-existent visibility there was no good way to sight the buoys.  This resulted in trying to follow feet and a lot of zig-zagging.  I made it around the first loop in 33 minutes and was surprised it was that fast with all the extra swimming.  What happened next I never anticipated would ever be an issue.  The altitude, cold air and water, lowering core temp, and neoprene cap with annoying neck strap triggered a panic attack and I had to doggy paddle to a kayak.  I don't know how long I hung on but it took a while to catch my breath and talk myself down.  I tore off the neoprene cap and took off for the rest of the swim.  I made it to the end in 1:17, over 10 minutes slower than my usual swim.

T1 was an absolute joke.  The tent was way too small, not heated, and there were huge back ups since the only prudent strategy was to strip off all wet clothes and change into dry clothes which took longer.  Some estimates put the comfortable capacity of the tent at 150 with 600-700 guys trying to fit in there.  There are reports of people doing the full monty change outside of the tent because there wasn't any room inside.  By the time I got in there I found a small spot in a corner and was hypothermic.  I spent 5 minutes trying to get my tri suit on but didn't have the accuracy to get my foot into the leg of the suit because I was shaking so violently.  Fortunately the friction between naked men heated the tent up enough for me to regain some coherence.  *Fast forward 20 minutes* I'm finally fully dressed in a tri suit, jacket, full gloves, beanie, vest, knee warmers, and toe warmers and shaking slightly less.  I grabbed my bike and was ready to turn the pedals in anger.
 
Bike:  It turns out that being a BOP swimmer is fun if you're a good biker and I passed over 500 people.  This course is extremely fun!  The fast sections are very fast and the climbing is very challenging.  The Ironman website lists 5,200 feet of climbing, but after the race someone compiled data from 20 devices and averaged them to find it was over 8,000 feet.  I didn't catch my wife Megan until mile 50 on the bike (she didn't have the same special moment that I did during the swim) and my first reaction was "whoa, she had an amazing swim and is biking FAST... she's having a great race!"  My next reaction was "Oh crap I better do some work to build a buffer so I don't get spouse'd" (I'd never, ever live that down).  I rode hard the whole way and it was the best executed ride I've ever had.  I trained to average 210 watts (3 w/kg) and did just that... for a 6:02 ride.  Intermediate bike splits ranged from 6 mph to 27.5 mph averages which shows the variety in sections on this course.  Most of the lapped traffic was walking the climbs and this course beat up a lot of people and left them ragged for the run.

Run:  T2 was not nearly as chaotic or naked as T1.  I reset my watch and blasted out of T1 ready to attack the run.  The run course was advertised as "fast and flat" which was of course the opposite of reality.  It was again very beautiful and ran through the meadow at Olympic Valley, site of the 1960's winter games, and along the Truckee River.  I'd rate the difficulty of the run course as similar to IMLP with 3 significant climbs for each of the 2 loops.  My first mile (mostly down hill) clocked at 6 minutes dead - too fast!  I evened it out and ran steady the whole race.  My official time was 3:47 but I stopped my watch for the 2 required port-o-potty stops so my personal records will state 3:43.  Total time was 11:35 (good for 151st OA) and Megan came through in 13:42 and was 9th in her age group (4th off the bike!).  
 
Summary:  I'm completely writing off the swim.  I biked the power I wanted to, but sustained it for much longer than expected.  My run was exactly what I wanted to do and I've never felt so strong or recovered so quickly after the race.  Even though my time wasn't what I wanted, I executed the last 2/3 of the race to plan and am very satisfied.  Overall it was an epic day that will stand out from the rest of my triathlon experiences.  The beauty and difficulty along with Megan racing and my family watching made it emotional and memorable.  I do worry about the future of this race.  Although it's in a very compelling venue, I'm not sure that 2,500 people each year want to do all the training, additional Tahoe-specific preparations, and put all their eggs in one basket just to be guaranteed a finisher time around an hour slower than at other challenging courses like IMWI, IMLT, IMMT.  Only time will tell!  Thanks for reading!
 
Interesting stats:
Only 1 age grouper to go under 10 hours
Fastest pro bike split - 4:55 
20% DNF rate
Results Analysis