Tired, proud and content after having finished my first iron-distance (for all my non-tri-geek friends: “very long”) triathlon. The path to the small bavarian village of Roth included more than 250 hours of training and preparation over the last 6 months, sacrificing a lot of time that I could have spent with friends and family. Eating properly, getting up early in the morning for swim training, runs both short and long in snow, rain, sun and blue skies aswell as boring hours on the indoor bike and long hours on the road: it was very important to me to make all this count and finish a strong race. Even though and I already drove to Nuremberg on Thursday, the days leading up to Sunday flew by like nothing: a last bike ride, an early morning swim in the canal, check-in, meeting old and new friends at the expo and greeting the rest of the support crew of Conny, Henning, Christiane and Sascha and a final barbeque with local friends. Still, the start gun blasted on Sunday morning without mercy and so I was sent off on a very common swim course (I have done the swim as part of a relay team twice). I knew my support team was waiting at the edge of the canal and with every breath I anxiously waited for them to show up. I finally spotted them and my heart jumped. The relaxed 3.8km (2.4mi for my american friends) swim ended at a decent time of 1:14. Had a little chat with a volunteer girl in the changing tent who mentioned that she has never seen so many naked butts in her life (and contrary to what you would believe, I did not even show her mine, already wore my tri-suit under the wetsuit). The crew welcomed me on the bike course which is a two-loop affair, so you get to suffer on every hill and enjoy every spectator hot-spot twice. And it turned out to be much harder than anticipated. The sun burnt heavily and I could barely keep my temperature at acceptable levels by taking a shower at each aid station on the way (each one about 24k apart). I knew Henning was waiting at the southern end of the course while Conny and Michael cheered their lungs out on Solar Hill in the north where thousands of spectators (including Donato, who I have not seen in years) go crazy. Magical. Goosebumps. But I had to pay tribute to the sun and heat and went easy on the last third of the course for a finish that was much slower than what I had planned. Even so I made it in good spirit while the course was littered with athletes laying down in the sun or even pulling out. I was not the only one suffering. Running a marathon off of a very long bike ride (turned out to be 6:40) was what I had been worrying about in my preparation. The plan was to hold an easy pace and walk each aid station to be able to recover a bit and take in as much nutrition as possible. And it worked. The clouds that came up now helped and I felt very strong on the first few kilometers. By the time I met Conny and Michael again I had a very good feeling about this. The course has long out- and back sections so I was able to greet all my competing friends who were much faster than me. But that did not bother me. I was feeling great and the confidence of finishing strongly grew with every step. Met Petra and chatted for a while. After the HM point (where I got to see the crew again) a thunderstorm set in. This was a nice change to the heat but it turned the gravel path into interchanging mudpuddles and hard sections with nasty sharp little rocks. This muted my spirit a little bit and my walking breaks slowly extended a bit past the aid stations. This feeling was expected though. “Embrace the suck” is a mantra I learned from world champion Macca and so I was doing just that. And at the same time I wanted to kneel down and kiss every part of concrete section there was. My biggest mistake of the day was propably to keep drinking lots of fluids even after the rain set in and temperatures dropped. I had to stop and pee 6 times on the last 10k (yes, I verified this number on my GPS). I finally cleared the dirt path and met my friend “asphalt aswell as the crew who cheered for all the competitors in the rain while waiting for me. I stopped one last time when I entered the stadium for a final lap before the finish line. This was just magnificent. Thousands of spectators stood in the ranks cheering for everybody who made it this far. Goosebumps. Did not even have to put on an extra smile for the finisher pic, I had it on for hours already. A last random note: if you ever see me at an event and want to yell something cheerful: DONT state the obvious “you can make it” - I would not be there if I could not DO state the obvious “looking good” - I never get tired of hearing this Thanks to everybody who supported me in this journey. I am honored to have a great wife, friends and training partners.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 20:19:06 +0000
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