VikingMan 1/2 Ironman

Well, this is Jake writing this one because I don't have my own blog and I wanted to write this entry...See the video before if you don't want to read the blog. (The music is a song entitled "Dream Big" by Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band.)

Ever since I was in high school, I've had a goal to complete a long distance triathlon. This past weekend I accomplished one of my goals in this by completing the VikingMan 1/2 IronMan in Idaho.

One of the biggest steps in triathlon is racing the 1/2 Ironman distance. It is the longest distance other than the full Ironman that is competitively raced in triathlon. The race begins with a 1.2 mile swim in an open body of water. Upon exiting the water you immediately head for your bike and ride a 56 mile bike ride (or in this case it was almost 57). After finishing the bike you get off and change your shoes to run a 1/2 marathon length of 13.1 miles.

The road to the race...The road to even get to this race can be grueling to say the least. Living in Midway with a race in June you can only imagine the challenge the winters bring. This winter brought 5 feet of snow to the yard (that didn't melt until about 3 or 4 weeks ago) along with -20 degree F temperatures. Living behind Timp also brings challenges because you don't get much daylight in the winters either. The training process begins years before this race as you take time to build up by doing smaller races and a lot of building muscles and bones to avoid long term damages to your body and about 6 months before the race you start your full race specific training, putting my timing right in the middle of 2 foot snowstorms and utter darkness.

Typical training days included running through blizzard conditions wearing mountaineering head socks, two layers of tights, two and sometimes three coats, thick gloves, and listening to lots to music just to keep your mind off the freezing cold temperatures. Biking was long and tedious as a lot of it was on an indoor fluid trainer. Swimming was in abundance during the winter at the local pool and consisted of many workouts nearing 2 mile swims about two or three times a week.

I was more than excited for the temperatures to start rising and be able to ride and run without 5 layers of clothing. Needless to say, it still is only getting up to about 60 degrees most days and has been raining nearly every other day. That still left time in the dry days to get out on my bike though.

The Race...June 7th, 2008 was the date that was set for the VikingMan 1/2 Ironman Triathlon in Burley , Idaho. The race start was only about 35 degrees air temperature. The water temperature was only 58 degrees (mandatory wetsuit on this race). The wind was probably about 25 mph. For the start of the swim, I had to slide down a really steep bank into the water from a vacant lot between two houses. Once you're in, you're in and there no turning back!

The Swim...the swim was a brutal swim with white caps all around you. When I would look up, I got pretty disoriented because the waves were so large in all directions and if you tried to breathe you were just breathing in the water. I tried to keep my head down and that seemed to be the best strategy...like Dora in Finding Nemo, "just keep swimming, just keep swimming!" After a while I seemed to get in a rhythm and it really felt pretty good.

The Bike...Ahhh, the incredible bike ride. The most ugly ride of all time!!!! The winds were absolutely incredible. The first 23 miles of the ride were a headwind that would nearly stop you in place at times. I'm guessing 25-30 mpg right in your face and just a tiny bit uphill. Most everybody was rolling at only around 10 mph because it was so brutal. (One thing about triathlon is that you can't draft or you get penalized 4 minutes the first time, 8 minutes the second time, and a DQ for the third.) Taking 2 hours to go the distance I'd planned on only taking about 1:20 was pretty emotionally taxing. I noticed I wasn't the only one that didn't plan to be on the bike that long as towards the end, most of us were out of our nutrition (taking food with us on the bikes). I can now say that I understand when other long distance triathletes say you go from an emotional high to low and back as at one point on the ride I actually said out loud to myself that I was totally high. 10 minutes later I thought I could totally die! The ride back was really nice in places though as it was pretty fast. Every time you had to hit the cross or head winds it was a really drainer on the energy though.

The run...Wow! I'm not feeling too bad right now! I think I may actually finish this race! That was easy to think for the first 7 miles or so. After that first loop I realized I had yet another loop to complete at the other end and the first part of that loop was straight uphill on gravel.
All in all, I ran until about mile 7 and hadn't stopped at any aid stations for anything longer than to grab water. From mile 7 to mile 13.1 it was a complete mental game. Anybody who has done this length of race can attest to that. You are ready to be done at that point. Your stomach says so, your legs say so, your head says so. Then you just start ticking off a block at a time. Then you start ticking off a few steps at a time. Then you get to mile 13 and realize you have enough in the tank to run hard to the finish from somewhere deep inside of you!

All in all, it was a great experience! I smiled most of the way and just tried to enjoy the race. Will I do it again? Laura says no but I think so and I think I'll still plan for the even bigger eventual goal of full IM. Lessons from this race...eat better for several months prior to the race for optimum nutrition and body weight, lift weights for better strength into the wind, train more!

Good luck to anybody out there trying this race distance in the future and thank you to all the volunteers and race staff that made this race possible. Most of all, thanks to my family for letting me do this as it takes a ton of time away from family.