IMDSM Pre Race/Swim: Dreams

Oh, guys.  Guys.  Here we are, a little more than a week out from Ironman Des Moines, DSM, CORN, whatever you want to call it.  1000 miles of driving, 140 plus miles of racing, and about 25 hours of sleep over five days...and its all done.  I got home really early last Tuesday morning, and in the business of parenting, wifing, adulting, and catching up on the slew of drama that happened while I was gone (which everyone wisely kept from me - THANK YOU!) I am now just finally sitting down to reflect on the craziness that was Des Moines - Ironman #4.

After nine days, I'm starting to feel "almost" back to normal - I'm still tired and looking forward to low key workouts this week, and while my legs are feeling pretty decent,  I definitely know I raced.  

But...I'm smiling.  And I have stories to tell!  So buckle in, this one will absolutely be long and drawn out - and would we want it any other way??  

Part 1 of 3 is pre-race and the swim.  When I posted last, it was all about the feeling of Ironman - and what I didn't post was what was ACTUALLY going on at that point in time.  So let's back it up, shall we?

As I've blogged about before, my partner in crime for this ride was my buddy Ken - I met Ken back in 2010 when I was training for my first Ironman at Lake Placid.  Since then, we've remained acquaintances, up until 2019 when he came back in my life in a big way to help me set some zooms (I often wonder if this was the precedent for a lot of bad decisions and epic shit three years ago).  I owe a lot of my running confidence to this guy, and we re-tapped into a tri team when Ken, Marcus and I all ventured across the country for 70.3 World's in September, where we solidified the friendship by spending 72 hours in a car, racing in a bomb cyclone, and staying on speaking terms.  We also learned that Ken never has good weather for a race and that anything east of Utah was considered "driveable" for a race.  It's for one of these reasons only that when Ken texted me about an Ironman in Des Moines, Iowa that I said....sign me up baby!

I think I conveniently forgot about the former reason being an issue, but that's a story for later on in this race report.  With the promise of corn, turbines, and the surprisingly NOT flat land of Iowa, we hit submit and got down to training.  Six months later, all systems go, we had booked the air bnb, put in the prep work, and planned to meet at 11pm to make our fifteen hour trek to DSM.  (No one said we were smart.  You should just remember this).

The trip out was uneventful, save for the first song on my ipod that queued up randomly was "Keep on Running" (duly noted).  We spent the 15 hours chatting up about the race, catching up on tri gossip, and cursing out Chicago traffic.  When we finally hit Des Moines and our Air bnb, we hit the first roadblock of our trip - a place that was not cleaned, and looked little like the pictures, smack in the middle of a really rough neighborhood.  We tried to sort it out, and eventually Ken, with his ever sound logic, proposed a back up - on zero hours of sleep, we googled hotels and forked over our credit cards while closing our eyes to a few pricey rooms at the Holiday Inn.  Two tired triathletes that drove overnight and sussed out our first problem of the week solved with little swearing, we cancelled the air bnb (they did graciously refund us) and hit the road for a shake out run on the run course.

Friday we woke in MUCH better spirits, except I somehow had some epic jaw pain (shush).  My upper left cheek was swollen out and I couldn't chew at all on that side, and I have no idea what I did.  Friday passed in a blur of bike recon, pre race swim (where I met a dentist on the beach (I can't make this up) who felt out my mouth and pronounced my issue that I was "just too cute" - thanks buddy)) and check in for the race.  The bike course was a little hillier than we anticipated, but doable.  The swim, also very doable (and I finally got a nice close up of the spit of land we would have to run over, which I affectionately called the "swim dick" due to its phallic shape.)  I am such an adult.  I possibly also took pics of the swim dick and sent it to my husband and tri buddy with the caption "unsolicited swim dick pic" because I'm about twelve.  Why these guys tolerate me, I'll never know.  

I did the swim sans wetsuit, as the ever vigilant race team kept freaking out at  the weather forecast and the possibility of a no wetsuit swim.  I also discovered a giant rip in my wetsuit leg, which brought doubt on the drag factor of said wetsuit, leaving me scrambling around the hotel room scrounging for electrical tape I had just unpacked four hours before, a tearful call to Greg, and pronouncement that this just screwed my swim time by at least a half hour.  Epic meltdown #1 - in the books.  Thank god for that man.

The rest of Friday and Saturday passed in a haze of carbs when I could eat them, a shit ton of ibuprofen, and the lack of ability to lay down for more than a half hour.  I was so ready to go.  The kids down the hall in town for a softball league also organized an impromptu flag football game right outside my window at 8pm the night before the race (I cannot make this up).

Needless to say, I was so ready to go at 2:50am race morning when I woke up for the seventeenth time. 

I blasted Van Halen's " Dreams" as I prepped for the day, working through some deep breathing.

Never Losing Sight

Spread Your Wings

We'll Get Higher...and Higher

...

Cause thats what dreams are made of 

I checked and double checked my gear, ate a bagel, read the wonderful notes my kids wrote me, and when Ken knocked on the door at 3:30 I left all the negativity behind.  For the first time in days, my mouth didn't hurt.  I was ready to go.  This is what I came for.  Time to leave behind Placid 2018.  It was my day.  I could feel it!

We arrived at transition about 4:30 and loaded our bikes with our nutrition and set devices.  The lack of lights in the massive field left a lot to be desired, but I was done with negativity.  The water was 74.5 - wetsuit legal.  The daytime high called for 96 degrees and headwinds from mile 60 on of the bike.  What's to be done about that?  RACE, baby.  This is IRONMAN.

Ken and I hung out for an hour or so and let go of our tension, then he lined up with the zoomy swimmers sub 1:00 and I lined up with the 1:10-1:20 pack.  My goal time for the swim was 1:10-1:15 but with this busted wetsuit I was having second doubts (I am an idiot).  I made some small talk and got a high five from Mike Reilly and was ready to rock it!

Right before I went down the ramp, Snow's "Informer" came on the speakers and I started to laugh.  Back in 2008, when I ran my first Marathon, my mp3 player got stuck on repeat at mile 2 - and I spent 24 miles during a 95 degree day listening to....you guessed it.....Informer.  While this might be a good song, I can't friggin stand it to this day, and as luck would have it, spent the first leg of the race repeating it to myself.  But to my nervous pre Ironman state, the comic relief worked, and without further adieu, I stood before the wonderful volunteer who counted down 5,4, 3, 2, 1.....and I was off!!

Swim Time: 1:13:45 (1:45/100)

The swim, as noted before, was a two looper - you swam a mile, got out, ran over a dick spit of land, ran back in the water, swam another mile, came back for sloppy seconds to run over land again and then swam a half mile to the finish.  While I was initially dubious about that much of a....hump...during an Ironman swim, it actually wasn't too bad.  I found my rhythm really quickly in the first loop, got smacked around a bit, but not terribly.  I ended up using my goggles from serpent the week before that epically broke a minute before the gun went off (that's a fun story) but re threaded other goggles elastic.  It worked.  I got out after a mile, ran over the phallus, and dolphin dived back in.  Loop two started out well, then my chip began to slide off.  NO.  I reached for it and half assed secured it.  Worked for awhile. 

Swim Dick.  Note we had to run over this twice - Ironman has already had the wisdom to delete the evidence and the 70.3 course is up now

 Most of loop two I tried to find feet with little success, and just focused on even breathing.  It felt easy, and wonderful, and I barely burned any energy during the swim.  As I went to climb out for phallus run #2, my chip fell off and I secured that sucker back on - timing chips are important!  The last half mile was actually the most contact part of the while swim - I got beaned in the head by one aggressive dude three times before I dropped to the side and accidentally in purpose grabbed his feet.  All hard feelings forgotten, I breathed deep, increased my flutter kick, peed (You know you wanted to know that) and was out of the water with a grin on my face in 1:13!

I was really happy with the swim time, good for an Ironman two minute PR.  I might have been able to go faster, but had a ton of energy in the tank, which was the point.  I found some sidewalk, let the wetsuit strippers do their thing (I didn't stutter, and my stripper was kind of cute, but flatly refused the gel I was grasping as payment - oh well.  Win some lose some).

With said proffered gel rejected, I slammed it as I ran the half mile to T1 ready to face my ultimate Ironman past nemesis....this bike!