#traithlon

Beim Traithlon Mitte Juli

BH Aerolight Disc : optimisé pour l'effort solitaire !

Avec l’Aerolight Disc, BH propose une nouvelle version de son vélo de triathlon et contre-la-montre. Car si le nom demeure il y a de nombreux changements !

Quand on est seul à face à ses adversaires, chaque seconde gagnée est importante ! Pour cette raison, le nouveau BH Aerolight Disc a été étudié dans les moindres détails pour optimiser la performance. L’héritage de l’ancienne version a été…

My race was over. It was done. Finish line? No chance. Laughable. Implausible, impossible, unthinkable. My neck was stiff, my shoulders sore, and my legs lacked any sensation at all. I stared slack-jawed and glassy eyed at the ground between my feet. One of my shoes was laced up; I was holding the other loosely in my hand. The finish line was 26.2 miles away, an entire marathon, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to take the first step.

Completing a marathon is a herculean effort undertaken by hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. To many, the idea of running one miles is a challenge, 10 miles is a huge challenge, and the mere thought of traveling 26.2 miles by foot can be overwhelming. The marathon in front of me was that it was preceded by a 2.4 miles swim and a 112 miles bike ride. This was Ironman.

I was sitting in T2, the transition area after the 112-mile bike ride and before the, entirely theoretical, 26.2-mile run. Despite the long hours of training, the idea of running after a ride was foreign to my body. I hadn't completed a single "brick" workout, a popular triathlon training session of a hard bike ride followed immediately by a run to prepare for the psychologically and physiologically jarring transition between the two disciplines.

For even the most seasoned athlete, signing up for an Ironman is a show of brash over confidence. It is nearly impossible to train to compete at the distance, and I was hampered by multiple stress fractures in my heel four months before the event. Most Ironman training schedules call for 16-24 weeks of preparation; I was on the shorter end of that spectrum and had the added burden of being unable to walk, let alone run or peddle a bike.

Any training regimen I planned to prepare for this event was completely derailed by my injury. Instead of ramping up my running and cycling volume and throwing in as much intensity as my office job would allow, I was relegated to prepare in whatever manner I possibly could. This meant spending endless hours in a pool, six or seven days a week, trying to build any stamina I possibly could and hoping my legs did not atrophy too much in the interim.

I was supposed to run further that afternoon than I had run in the preceding four months combined. Nevertheless, I knew it was impossible. That was the plan the entire time. Swim for my life, bike my heart out, then…. That was where the plan ended.

I stood up on wobbly legs. Light headed and slightly dizzy, I gingerly walked to the start of the run trying to remain upright. There was no way I would be able to run 26.2 miles. It was not about getting to the finish line anymore. I just wanted to see how far I could go. I had more than nine hours before the cutoff so there was no reason to quit now. I looked back down at the earth between my shoes (both now laced up after no small amount of mental effort), brought my hands up in the familiar runners' pose, and slowly started moving my feet forward. First the left, then the right, rinse and repeat.

After a few weeks of training in the pool I was able to spin the peddles on a recumbent bike. I would hobble up the stairs at my local gym on my crutches and sit on any stationary bike for as long as I could stand. Although I originally planned to use higher intensity sessions to bolster my cardiovascular system. In my broken state, anything more vigorous than a pedestrian pace would send shooting pain through my foot and leg. When intensity is not possible, you make up for it with volume.

Did all that training, as ineffectual as it was, pay off? I planned to see just what I could do with it. Slowly. With a shambling gait. A few people jostled me as they jogged past, and I sauntered around a few more along the way. I eventually came to the first turn a few hundred feet away from the "start". Why not try to get to the first aid station? It was probably less than a mile away, and I wanted to thank the volunteers for their efforts in enabling my sisyphean task. Moreover, they might have pretzels. That would make me feel better. I was not going to get a finisher's medal, but at least I could get some pretzels.

There it was. A group of eager, cheering volunteers standing by a table set up in the middle of the road. Everyone seemed so happy, so excited to see me. It was all I could do to muster the energy to smile at them and thank them for their efforts. I could not bear the thought of stopping and letting them down, or showing the other racers around me that it was okay to quit. Besides, I was still moving. I could keep going a little further.

When things go awry and plans are derailed, the best way forward is to evaluate where you are and determine the path that will lead to the best outcome. Or the least worst outcome. In this case, I spent weeks and weeks putting in as many hours at extremely low intensities as I could. At peak training, I was putting in 200-300 miles a week on a bike (eventually able to ride outdoors without too much danger) and 12,000-15,000 yards a week in the pool. It was only a few weeks before the race before I was able to run a single step. In total, I completed 4 training runs in preparation for this Ironman. To say I was underprepared, or simply unprepared, would be an extreme understatement.

At this race, the run course was a 9-mile loop to circumnavigate 3 times. I realized the best place to stop would be back at the transition area at the beginning of the loop nearest to the finish line and transition area. With my head hanging, I kept shuffling along making an effort to lift my feet, though I do not think I was very successful. Every so often, I would see a mile marker, 12 miles, 24 miles, 8 miles; they did not make much sense since the distances for all three loops were placed along the way. There was nothing I wanted to focus on other than seeing the racks of bikes again. So I kept moving.

Near the end of the loop, I passed a turn off to the finish line. I was still able to stand, still able to move my feet. It took more effort than I imagined it should have, but I realized how absurd it was to pick this point where I should finish. Besides, it was not about getting to the finish line anymore; it was just about seeing how far I could go. There was no way I would be able to keep it up for 17 more miles, but I could take at least one more step.

I kept shuffled along expecting my legs to seize or my hips to collapse, or maybe my vision to fade. However, it did not happen. I had slowly been shifting my left foot to the front, then my right foot, over and over for more than two hours when I realized there was only 13.1 miles to the finish line. I had shuffled an entire half marathon. I was at the farthest point from the transition area (having completed 1.5 of the required 3 loops). Besides, some of the people at the first aid station recognized me and joked about my oversized aviator sunglasses. I wanted to see them one more time. Maybe they'd be surprised to see me again. Or happy. I like making other people happy, even if it meant shuffling my feet back and forth for another two hours.

And their pretzels made me happy. There was that, too.

By the time I had completed the second loop the sun was dipping near the horizon and the temperature was falling. In my depleted state, the nominal evening temperatures felt cold, and I knew it would not get any better. The only reprieve was knowing I could stop any time. At least I knew I could handle the chill for a little while longer and take a few more steps.

Except that the finish line didn't seem impossible anymore. I could ignore the single digit mile markers. I only had another 6.2 miles to go. The idea of running a marathon in my condition, or the condition I was in after completing that bike ride, was completely bonkers. What about a 10K? I could do a 10K at the worst of times. This was certainly the worst of times. My legs hurt and would not move correctly anymore, but they were still ambulating in the right general direction. So why not keep going?

So I kept going. Everything from my eyebrows down hurt. Moving each joint in my body took conscious effort. The pain and discomfort didn't abate when I paused at aid station, but that just meant there was no reason to stop. Eventually, I saw the turn off from the main loop to the finish line. I could hear cheering crowds that lined the finishing chute. They were cheering for me. Alright, they were cheering for everyone, but I like to think they were cheering for me as I ambled toward the finish line. And crossed it.

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Its a tool to help you plan your training and diet based on your genetic profile, after all, we are not all the same. We all know someone who is super skinny no mater what they eat, people who can build muscle with ease, people who can go out and run a marathon without breaking a sweat. We are all different and its our genetic differences that contribute to how we perform at different sports and diets.