"YOU ARE AN IRONMAN!" I get chills just thinking about it now afterwards, those were the words I heard when I crossed the finish line at 7:32pm on saturday night.. as I said in my previous post my goal was to finnish before 9pm, so I exceeded my expectations by almost an hour and a half. I am actually not used to exceeding my expectations because I always set high goals that are hard to reach, so this was a different feeling - I WAS SO HAPPY!! :)
I will go through race day from the beginning now.. it all started at 4.30am, woke up, was not very nervous and I was able to sleep through the whole night (6hrs). Had a good breakfast and took 2units of Novo Rapid (fast acting insulin), got a bit nervous as my CGM showed an arrow straight up, but after a short while it gradually leveled out and by the time I had to leave it on my bike to go over to the swim start I was at 11 - right where I wanted to be! :) My dad and I went to the front of the swim start, right before the start I started getting nervous, it was slowly sinking in what I had ahead of me that day.. 3800m swim, 180km bike, and 42.2km run!
The start went and off we were... I didnt see my dad until 2km from the finish line abotu 12 and a half hours later.. there is so much going on in the swim start it is impossible spotting anyone. I tried to stay out of peoples legs and kept to the side, the last thing I wanted was to get too stressed in the beginning - I reasoned that the swimming was my time to get a good time while not having to try so hard, thus already from the start I kept an steady pace and gradually kept pushing a bit more, at a little less than halfway I took the gel I had put into my wetsuit because I felt like I was loosing energy, but other than that it went pretty much as I expected - the swim time ended up at 58min, I wanted to swim faster than 1hr so I was happy! I was 5th woman out of the water including and 1st in my age group.
Took it easy in the transition and tested my bs on the way over to the bike, it was at 7 I think. Thought that was good, but ate my banana like I had decided to do before the race. Got on my bike and started pedaling. From the start I kept a good pace without even trying, around 31km/hr average for the first 20km I believe, I also started drinking my energydrink and took a gel within the first 10min on the bike. 25km into it I realize DAMN! I forgot to take my Lantus (long acting insulin) in the morning!!! SHIIIITTT!!! I started panicking and tried figuring out a backup plan, my lantus was in my backpack that I wouldnt be able to get too until I finnished the whole race or quit (but wasnt about to do that). I decide that I will stop to check my sugar quite regularly just to make sure i wasnt spiking and if I was I would use the lowest dose I could give myself which was half a unit of the Novo Rapid that I had on me to get the bs down ( I figured that any more than that would most likely make me hypoglycemic) .. however, I never had to use it! It was like I was supposed to forget to take my shot that morning.. AWESOME!! My sugar stayed great allthroughout the ride, between 6.5-9.5mmol/L. I think that if I would have taken the lantus in the morning, I would have had too eat so much more and probably ended up with stomach issues - I WAS SUPER HAPPY! My diabetes did so well that day :P
Mentally the ride was difficult, just sitting on the bike for so long was both painful and quite boring, I was so happy to get to start the run eventually! There was no way I would quit this race, allthough the thought of "why the hell did I sign up for this stupid race" did occur more than once during that ride, especially going across Öland which was sooo windy!! The 180km took me 6hrs and 38min, 22min faster than I had hoped :P
Took it easy in the 2nd transition as well and drank some energy drink (celsius) before starting my run. Bs was at 7 when I started running and legs felt decent but weird as they should when youve just gotten off the bike after almost 7hrs haha. After 2km I remember looking down at my watch thinking damn its only been 2km! But after that I got into it and felt really really good - huge surprise for me! ( I am not a runner, but goal is to get a lot better at it this fall ) Knees hurt form the start but my stride and energy level was good. I hade decided before the race to run the whole marathon except from the aid stations which were 2km apart, where I would walk and drink water, energy drink, and coke - and that was exactly what I did the whole way! :) happy about that! My energy was sooo good up until 30km, my average pace was at like 6.25min/km, faster than my marathon in May and I felt like I could go on forever. The 30km mark was right before leaving the city to take one last loop out in the suburbs of Kalmar (the running course was 3 and a half loops I think haha wasnt really keeping track and actually got a bit confuse haha). That was when I died, or at least my legs and energy level did. I dropped my pace up to 7.15-7.30min/km just from one kilometer to the next, I have no idea what happened - but I thought to myself "at least I am still running and not walking like a bunch of people that I was passing was" which gave me the strength to continue running instead of walking. Those last 12km were the hardest, I think I started crying during the last 5km and then with 2km left I was back into the city with the amazing crowd cheering - Mr. C, my mom and brother who had been cheering me on like such great troopers all day were there and so was my dad who finished at an amazing PB time for him 10hrs 31min! The last 1km went faster and the last 100meters to the finnish line (on the blue carpet) I sprinted against another guy that tried to overtake me before right before it... being the competetive person I am how could I have let him beat me!? :P haha I belive we finnished at the exact same time, theres a video of it which I will try to post later! My running time was 4hrs44min, only 7minutes slower than my marathon time from May, could almost not believe what I had done :)
I would advice everyone to do an Iron Man just for the feeling you have when you finnish it haha AMAZING!!!
My time was 12hrs and 32 minutes :) :) :)
My legs were dead, I had chafings everywhere, and I was probably super gross from a whole day of racing - but man was I the happiest person ever! :P
