“Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.”
Ironman Kansas 70.3 – a pretty awesome experience, all things considered. I left Thursday night after packing up the truck with the tri bike and the road bike, as well as all the necessities for camping in the park for the duration of my stay. I had decided to stay in the camp itself rather than a hotel, to get the feel of the entire experience. There were a number of racers on the BT forum that had said that camping was the way to go for this race. Stopped in Plano to have dinner with Amanda and Matt before hitting the road again. Uneventful drive, other than a brief cloudburst up in Kansas – not really enough rain to get anything in the back of the truck too wet. I arrived at Lake Clinton Park about 6am Friday morning, and since there was nobody at the entrance booth, I drove on in to find my campsite.
When I was leaving home, I had called Amanda and asked her to run up to the hardware store and pick up a couple of tarps for me, because the tarp to go under the tent was worn out. Good thing, because as soon as I pulled into the campsite it started raining. But it was one of those rains that came straight down, with no wind. I managed to get one of the tarps over the bikes and pretty much covered the whole bed of the truck, and climbed back in the truck to wait out this rain.
Once it quit raining, I got my tent and canopy set up, the bikes off the truck and covered with the 2nd tarp and locked up. Our race was on Sunday, but they had scheduled for the first time an IronKids event on Saturday, and I had volunteered as a cyclist to ride alongside the kids, partly to just keep my legs loose for Sunday. I had decided to bring the road bike for this so as to not risk any kiddo running into the tri bike and messing up my race.
The rest of Friday was packet pickup, driving into Lawrence for groceries, and hitting the expo for a bit. After the Galveston disaster, I was a bit hesitant about buying anything, but I looked at the IMKS cycling jerseys, and once I figured out there was only one on the rack that was my size, decided to go ahead and splurge for the kit then rather than waiting until Sunday after the race. Chilling out the rest of the evening, grilled chicken for fajitas (I am firmly convinced Kansas grocery stores don’t have a clue about fajitas).
The weather forecast for the entire weekend was projected to be thunderstorms off and on. The rain managed to hold off until Friday night, but the winds picked up earlier in the afternoon, and hung around until about the time I packed up the tent on Sunday. The storm that rolled in Friday managed to fold the frame of my canopy, so I had to deal with that the rest of the weekend. Oh well.
The IronKids event was a blast! They do 3 age groups, 12-15, 9-11 and lastly the 6-8 year-olds in decreasing distances. I ended up riding sweep for all 3 age groups, which was fine… I am not sure I could have kept up with the speedy teens in the first group. But it was so much fun riding along behind the kiddos, trying to keep them moving and motivated. The little guys were hilarious – I had one boy and one girl at the slow end of the group. The girl first had issues trying to climb the hill and got sick at the top of the hill, I think because of the emotional stress. But once we got going she managed to relax. The little boy spent the entire ride looking around at all the spectators, and weaving back and forth across the course, just having a great time. It was a lot of fun to watch them.
After that, it was time for lunch and then bike check-in. Early pasta dinner and watching a few logs burn into the evening, finish packing up the transition bags, and make sure everything was tied down before crawling into the tent.
Sunday morning started early – 4am! And climbing out of the tent, the first thing I see is lightning to the south, and of course, the wind is still blowing… Oh, great, we get to race in a storm. Fortunately, the worst of it stayed to the south of us. But the wind was with us all day, starting with the swim. It was an in-water start, and treading water, it felt fairly calm. But once the horn went off and we started moving, you could feel how bad the choppy waves were. The wind was blowing across the course, which was an elongated U, so there wasn’t any help on either leg of the swim. There were times when my swim stroke would never clear the water because of the height of the wave… and then I would get thrown down to the bottom of the wave trough. Not a fun swim.
Because it was such an effort in the swim, I didn’t feel like I recovered very well early in the bike. It is a long run with the bike out of T1 to the mount, and a brief space long enough to get into the saddle, and then immediately to a hill going up away from the water. The winds continued, and most of the ride is hilly rollers, so I knew early on there was not going to be a PR this day. Since our wave was the first age group after the pros, there were a lot of 20- and 30-year-olds blowing past me, so I just stayed to the right and out of the way as much as possible. Somebody pointed out that the marshals were pretty lenient about the drafting rules because of the climbs and drops, and come to think of it, I remember seeing only one ride marshal on a motorcycle.
Transition from bike-to-run is at the top of the hill from the swim. I rolled into the bike finish and climbed off. Because of the number of people finishing the bike at the same time, traffic in transition was a bit thick, and not contemplating a PR, I decided it was best to get my stuff done and get out of there. I plodded out to the run start, and made my way through the first mile which is also a turnaround. I decided at the turn I needed to stop at the porta potty so I grabbed a water and headed that way. No waiting line so it wasn’t too many minutes before I was back on the course. The run course is a 2-loop deal and you have to go down and back up that hill at the bike start…twice. I knew I would be walking some, so I decided I was walking that hill. A lot of people had that same thought apparently, and it was pretty crowded. I managed a decent first 8 miles or so and about then the heat kicked in. I came up behind a woman wearing a CapTex Tri jersey, and it turned out she was an Internal Medicine doc from Arlington, so we walked/ran together for the next 4 miles or so. Overall, the run was actually an improvement over Galveston and RedMan, even with the hills, so I was pretty satisfied with that.
All things considered, this was a pretty nice trip. I could have done without the wind (which is probably ALWAYS there), but it is a great venue, the IronKids thing was fun and makes this a weekend for the whole family, and I finished the race vertically. AND Ironman rock star Chrissie Wellington was at the finish line to hang my medal around my neck! Camping in the park is definitely the way to go, because it gets you fully into the spirit of the event.
I definitely plan on doing this race again sometime in the future.
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