Bike check-in day HERE
I really know how to pick them. I expect to do my next Iron distance race somewhere in Europe during the summer of 2016, so I’d recommend you booking your vacations to coincide with that now… after Austria in 2012 (not only the hottest Ironman Austria ever, but officially the hottest day in Klagenfurt ever!), from the moment I woke up at 4:30, I could tell that Challenge Roth was going to be a similar experience. It was already pretty humid and, in the race briefing the day before, we’d been told to expect 34C+.
Our Lass dropped me near the start while she went to park (for such a small place, the logistics of Roth are handled magnificently - big tip for spectators tho: take a bike - makes getting around far easier) and I walked to the pumping race start which was throbbing with athletes and spectators alike.
With an Iron distance race being so long, it doesn’t really require the sort of warm-up you need for, say, a sprint or Olympic distance… but I still made sure I did some dynamic stretching and a little jumping just to warm the body up.
Roth is a wave start event; more than a year ago, when I’d first entered, I had predicted an overall finish time based on previous results and this was used to decide which wave I started in. The pros started at 6:30, with waves going of every 5-10 minutes after that. I was in Wave 6. Finally, I found myself in the waiting corral, pulling on the top of my wetsuit, then being allowed to get into the water for a very brief warm-up swim. By this point, I was nervous but not excessively so - the weather was what worried me most of all. I jostled and fought for position right at the front of the group and finally muscled into some space. Before I knew it, BOOM!, the rope lifted and it was start time.
ERROR #1: After maybe 15 hard fast strokes (I always do this to get away from the craziness of the start) and then settling into a similar number of slightly less fast (but above cruising pace) strokes, I realized that I had already, long ago committed my first error. I should have put down a way faster predicted time so that I’d be swimming with stronger swimmers. Within a minute, I was already way clear of the rest of my wave; within about five minutes, I was already overtaking swimmers from the wave in front!
ERROR #1 (b): Had I been in a faster wave, I would not have had to swim my way through the majority of five other waves! On the whole, I actually quite enjoyed the swim and felt good, relaxed and strong throughout - the crowds were incredible too, lining the whole bank of the giant canal and watching from the bridges that cross it.
But it was frustrating. On the way out, I had to take a long route along the outside in order to find clean water to swim in. By the time I got to the turnaround buoy, it was a real scrap. There were female racers (they had pink caps on) who’d started almost 30 minutes earlier who were grabbing my ankles and pulling me back as I overtook them. From time to time, I’d find a little clean water and make some headway, but it wasn’t easy. In the final 800m, the swim traffic was so dense that I was having to do a few breaststroke strokes to look up and try to spot a route through… but, eventually, I passed back under the bridge and was faced by hundreds and hundreds of spectators on the canalside. Weirdly, amongst all those spectators, I spotted Our Lass taking pics and then running for the T1 exit… that made me smile.
Swim time: 53:43
(well within my predetermined 'success' parameters and generally very happy with this swim, but can't help but think about how much faster it'd have been with other swimmers of a similar level around and without having to play aqua-dodgems)
T1: 2:11
(clean and simple - very happy with this)