This is a blog post about my whole Ironman Canada experience. You’ve been reading about my CrossFit Endurance training and this is where it all comes together. After I started writing this blog post about the Ironman Canada event I realized that it was going to be longer than most of my posts, so for this reason I broke up the posts. There will be one post for each of the three days of the event. Please comment, like, and share this post.
Pre-Race
This experiment of using CrossFit and CrossFit Endurance to train for Ironman Canada started over 6 months ago, and if you’ve been reading my blog posts and videos, you know that I’ve been emotionally up and down about whether the training was going to work. I used the training for my Bear Mountain North Face Endurance Challenge 50-Miler back in May, but because of an injury, it was hard to really come to a conclusion about the CrossFit Endurance Ironman training.
So, it was time to put the CrossFit Endurance training to the test, and to see if training only 10-15 hours a week for an Ironman is really possible…
Here we go!
During my 1.5 week taper (click here to see my exact taper post), I had some major drama that could have potentially stopped me from competing in the Ironman.
While doing my second to last swim, my wetsuit tore open on the right leg as I was pulling it on. After the swim, I called my good friend Tara (who’s an awesome running coach by the way), and she was able to introduce me to the Seattle area Blue Seventy rep who gave me a demo suit to wear for the Ironman! I was beyond grateful!
Now that would have been enough drama for one race, but there’s more…
During my second to last training ride, my rear spoke started making rubbing noises which made me think that I needed to get my wheel trued. No problem, right? Actually, BIG problem!
Tara again hooked me up with an outstanding bike mechanic, named Sean Harwin, at Mr Crampy’s in Redmond, WA. Sean assessed my rear wheel and deemed it unrideable because “the spokes could drive through the rim at any moment”. Come one, really?! Right before the race!
In an unbelievable gift of generosity, Sean loaned me his wheels to use for the Ironman, AND gave my bike a great race tune. So after having two potentially serious set backs, I had awesome people help me out of both tight situations.
With my dramas behind me, and my taper week coming to an end, my body felt amazing. It felt better than it had in over a month. On the Thursday before my Sunday race, I did a run-bike-run-bike brick, and the spring in my legs was off the charts (partly because my bike was riding crazy good, thanks to Sean). I, however, still wasn’t sure my body was ready to hold up for the 10-15 hours required to complete the Ironman race… but my taper sure was working!
Day 1 – Friday
For Sunday Ironman races you have to check-in/register at the race site on Friday, check in your bike and supply bags on Saturday, and be ready to race on Sunday.
So, since I needed to be at the race on Friday by 4pm, we (my awesome parents were driving me up to the race in Penticton) packed up on Thursday night for an early 7am departure on Friday morning.
Unfortunately we were a little late departing Seattle, which didn’t seem like a big deal at the time… It always does in the moment…
The first leg of the drive was from Seattle to Chelan, where we grabbed some food at the Safeway, and then hit the road again. Then things got a little weird.
When we rolled up to the boarder between Washington and Canada it was about 2pm (with an estimated 15 minute wait). Well, we waited for about 30 minutes, and I was starting to freak out.
I kept imaging that I trained for 6 months, but missed the 4pm check-in cutoff, and wasn’t able to participate in the race. I’m sure it probably would have been fine either way, but my mind was going crazy!
When it was our turn at the boarder crossing, we were asked all kinds of crazy questions and then asked to pull into the “interrogation area”. I couldn’t believe what was happening and was trying not to freak out at the boarder patrol, which make things worse.
Fortunately, they only held us for about 10 minutes, didn’t tell us why we were held, and then said we could leave. Finally! At that point we had only a 45 minute drive left and I was pretty sure that I was going to have plenty of time to get registered once we rolled into Penticton.
Driving into Pentiction (where the Ironman was held) was a little discouraging because there were no signs directing Ironman participants. I guess they’ve been putting the event on for so long they figure that everyone just knew where to go… We saw signs in businesses welcoming the Ironman participants, but no signs telling the Ironman participants where to go.
After driving around lost for 15 minutes we saw a competitor on the sidewalk and asked him where the registration was located. (I should note that the information PDF on the website said the name of the location where the registration was held, but there was no map. Since we all had our phones turned off because we didn’t have international service, we had no GPS!)
After losing my head for what seemed like an eternity, we finally found the registration tent with 30 minutes to spare, and I entered the registration gauntlet.
Once it was my turn in line, I had to sign my life away, and pick up all of my race day goodies. The goodies included my timing chip, race number, info. manual, transition bags, special needs bags, a swim cap, and a backpack to carry everything.
The people volunteering were extremely nice and quite helpful.
Several hours later there was a racers’ dinner, followed by a mandatory racers’ meeting. At the dinner and meeting it was awesome to be surrounded by so many super fit people! The dinner itself was pretty boring, and they didn’t serve protein of any kind, which was disappointing for us Paleo/meat eaters, and the mandatory meeting was just a bunch of race info that Ironman Canada was legally obligated to talk about. They did have a few inspiring speakers, which was interesting.
After the meeting we drove 30-45 minutes north to our hotel in Kelowna (that was the closest semi-reasonably priced hotel we could find, even though we booked five months early). I was stoked to see that the hotel had a water slide and a full complimentary breakfast in the morning. After getting to our room we passed out!
Day 2 – Saturday
After sleeping in intill about 8am we stumbled down to breakfast where I was happy to find hard boiled eggs, oatmeal, and fruit. It’s really awesome when a hotel gets it and serves good food. After breakfast I went out for my last taper workout…
Stay tuned for the rest of day 2… Day 2 of the blog is ready! Click here to jump right to Ironman Canada Race Review – Day 2
