A few weeks, good and bad. Next stop, Copenhagen

I have now been in Boulder Colorado for the past month and a half. Having comfortably now settled into our Dakota Ridge condo. I have had a solid 3 weeks training and have now hit into full the US race season. My first race didn’t go quiet as planned, Rhode Island 70.3 Ironman, well actually it was a complete disaster. The story/adventure goes a little like this….

Belinda and I headed off to Rhode Island the Friday of race weekend at 3am. We managed to get our first flight to Baltimore before all the fun started! We missed our connecting flight due to Bel taking to long to eat her lunch, but lucky for us I am a charmer and managed to pledge our innocence’s and get on the next flight to Providence (Rhode Island). So we got onto the next flight and then proceeded to sit on the runway for the next 3 hours due to severe thunderstorms. Whilst sitting on the runway our pilot informs us that we will not be able to take our usual route to Providence due to the weather conditions and that he has made the decision to turn back the plane to refuel up as they will now be going the long route there.

The refueling process is going to take 30 minutes as the pilot informed us, whilst sitting on the plane people were starting to get a little pissed off and tired as the company we were flying with could only offer us peanuts and light refreshments whilst waiting that whole time. While we fuelled up the pilot announces that he wont be able to fly this plane any longer due to his 15 hours being up, so now the company was trying to find a new pilot, this was going to take a further 30 minutes. After waiting those 30 minutes we get an announcement from the pilot that they were unable to find a replacement so this flight was now cancelled and everyone was to get off the plane.

By this time I was losing my cool just a little. Lucky I had Bel there to try and keep me calm! Once off the plane the next adventure was to try and get on the next flight out if possible. At the customer service desk, where every single person off that plane went to, was only one lady at the counter. We waited patiently in line for about 2 hours and I managed to meet some nice friendly Americans in the line with a big family. I would hate to have been them and trying to work out what to do from there. When we were in the line up I was hearing rumors going around from everyone that the next available flight to Providence wasn’t until late Saturday night. I said to Bel to try and get our accommodation money back as where we were staying was rather expensive. Bel doesn’t like to stay in crappy places! So Bel managed to get our money back in full, so I suggested she also try and get our returning flights back also – lucky for us we got them fully refunded.

Once at the front counter talking to the lady we told her of our situation and it was not going to be. We could not get to the race and the best she could do for us was to get us back home to Boulder free of charge. We took this offer and got home at 3am Saturday morning after starting our travels 12 hours earlier on the Friday.

So now what to do considering I had tapered for the race and needed a start somewhere that weekend. Luckily for me there was a local race here in Boulder, the 5150, which I could possibly try and get a start at.

So later that day after sleeping for around 4 hours we headed down to the race brief to speak with the organizer Barry and see if he could help me out. Barry was kind enough to give me a start. Now it was time to get my head around the fact that there was some big names in this 5150 race plus my track record at racing at altitude isn’t that crash hot either. Plus of cause all the stress and drama off the past 12 hours and lack of sleep will prove to have taken it’s toll come race day. Well a lot can be said from this learning experience. I had a disastrous swim, part way through I had a panic attack and had to backstroke for a few strokes to catch my breath. I got out of the water quiet a fair way down and I pretty much just finished the rest of the race off by having a roll around and finishing in 15th place.

A week later I was onto Racine 70.3 Ironman. This race went a little more to plan. In the swim I was not In the spot where I wanted to be rather in no mans land by myself, in between the front and second pack, having to do a bit of work on my own. The same happened on with the bike, riding solo for much of the whole 90km, and only seeing the front boys within the last 1km coming into transition. I was rather pleased with my bike as I had just put on a SRM Power Meter (Thanks to SHIMANO) and found that it helped me keep to a great power output and keep the lid on myself. I was not to blow my legs up for the run by staying within the range of 250 and 300 watts pretty much the whole time. I had a quick transition and was now onto the run sitting in around 6th position. Within the first 500m I passed Hackett and then I was surprised to catch and pass Crowie followed closely by Cartmell and Rhodsey was just down the road and he was passed at the 7km mark. So now I was in 2nd place and I knew Ambrose was going to be hard to catch as he was a man on a mission. The first lap I managed to put a bit of time into him but later on the heat caught up to me and the wheels started to fall off a little.

In the end I only managed to take 2 minutes out of him, he got a well-deserved win. Although I then later found out that I still managed to get the fastest run split of the day, having thought I did not run to my full potential, this gives me a little bit of confidence!

I have now had a couple of rest days and I am ready to knuckle down into full Ironman training for Challenge Copenhagen in four weeks, which I cannot wait for.