Melissa Hauschildt
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Ironman Texas - North American Championships

28/4/2018

3 Comments

 
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8:31:05   1st

swim 59:07    8th 
bike  4:29:55  4th
run   2:57:07   1st



I might have to put some Texas longhorns on the front of my bike to show my allegiance to Texas after the month I had there. It was an absolute blast. I met so many wonderful, hospitable and gracious Texans. I got to spend a month in the perfect training location with my awesome friends Roberto & Jeannine and to cap it off I came away with 'The Texas Double'. The win in both the Ironman 70.3 Texas and Ironman Texas - North American Championships. With this win, I've managed to keep my 9-year streak alive. 9 consecutive years of winning at least one championship race per year (World, Regional or National).


PictureinHaus photography
Compared to the wintery weather during most of my month in Texas, the weather on IM Texas weekend was absolutely stunning. You couldn't have asked for better. Crisp in the morning, mild warm temps through the day, clear blue skies and not a breath of wind. The water temp, however was right between the pro and age group wetsuit cut-offs. This meant pro women starting the swim at 6:30 without wetsuits and age group males starting at 6:40 WITH wetsuits. I've had one other race where this was allowed to happen, in Frankfurt, and it sets the women up for a ridiculously unfair bike leg. The gun went off at 6:30 sharp, just as the sun was starting to burst up from behind the horizon. I expected that I'd feel pretty sluggish in the fresh water without my Roka security blanket (aka wetsuit) to keep me floating. But we got going and the swim was actually quite enjoyable.

The second half of the swim, the course turned to head down through these narrow, winding canals. It was the first swim I’ve done where spectators can line either side of the canal and cheer within meters of the swimmers. It was awesome. I've always felt that the swim leg feels so isolated from the world, like it's not really part of the race. But this race was different. It seemed a bit more interactive if that's possible with a swim. Lauren Brandon got straight to work on us all, she did what she does best, fired up her secret underwater jets and left us for dead. I think she was through T1 and onto her bike while I was still humming the pre-race American anthem a few strokes into the swim leg. She finished the swim in 48:19. A minute faster than the pro men. Meredith was next, 5min ahead of me and then there was a group 2-3min ahead of me. I exited the water in 8th feeling in control and ready for the race to begin.


Picturephoto by Scott Flathouse
The bike leg was two laps, out-and-back along a dead flat stretch of highway. The first quarter was a peaceful journey for me. No cars, bikes, people, noises. Not even houses or streets. Just me travelling along a big closed-down highway like as if a virus had spread though the city and wiped everyone out. Eerie silence. The pace felt good, under control, how the first half of an ironman should apparently feel.

I expected this race to be like most of my others, put my head down, ride the bike leg solo, chasing down the uber swimmers, passing a few athletes here and there till I get to T2 as close to the front of the field as possible. That's my go-to race plan. That wasn't how this one played out though. This one played out a bit more like Ironman Frankfurt. Some pro men interfered at some point along the way and then eventually age group men became a significant factor in the womens race. Through the second half of the bike leg any previous goals I had of continuing  to push ahead in my race were obstructed by people on the course interfering. For me, any group dynamics at all is a foreign scenario on the bike, let alone when it includes males with a completely different set of rules. The race from that point became a frustrating tussle. Trying to spike my watts to get around everyone and continue on with my own race... and the deflating feeling of having age group men slip steam (they are legally allowed to draft for 25sec at a time) up behind me, sling shot around, leaving me to have to sit up and make an effort to get out of his 12m zone. Of course as soon as I do this, the next one sling shots around, and again and again. Frankfurt was about a thousand times worse. But both races leave no room for women to fairly race each other. At this point the womens race gets put on hold, the safety car comes out and brings the field back together until they're free to race again a couple hours later.



Picturephoto by Roberto Florencia
For the second half of the bike, I remained in a constant state of emotional turmoil knowing I'd trained months for this day, paid a fortune for flights half way around the world, got everything as perfect as I could in the lead-up... for it all to be wasted as the race for woman against woman slips away with no way to avoid it. My mind flipped like a Schizophrenic from anger, sadness, despair to 'here's my chance go hard, harder, keep going' and back to despair. I can't get a reasonable answer as to why the women are not provided a fair race in Ironman. The most common (but laughably unreasonable) answer I get is the age group men cannot start 10 or 20mins later because it would effect their midnight cut-off time... 17hrs and 20mins later.

I rolled into T2 with Meredith, Michelle and Jodie. Kimberly, Lauren and Jen were ahead, out on the run course already. By the time we made our way through T2 I was onto the run course in 4th place about 5min off the lead. I felt great running and it was difficult to run “slow” enough. I imagine that's a common problem for most during the marathon. Tapering and adrenaline do amazing things. Plus racing a half just three weeks prior makes IM pace feel even slower (at least at the start till it eventually grinds you down). I was ticking off 4min km’s on the flat concrete paths around The Woodlands. I took the lead before the end of lap 1, on a three lap spectator filled, scenic course.

Picturephoto by Ironwomen - livefeisty.com
I felt confident on the run. I’d done a few good weeks training back in Australia before Texas 70.3,  but there was one thing bothering me. My feet were burning up under my 3rd metatarsal. At 5km they were sore. By half way they were giving me notice that this was going to be a long painful run. By 32km they were screaming out for me to stop. Every step was like running on glass. I had over 10min lead so I decided to take a toilet stop and put my feet up. As I sat in the smelly, hot porta loo I put my feet up and told myself that it was just 10km of running to go, forget that I've already run 32. As I jumped back on the course it was worse than before. Maybe stopping was a bad idea. But I did need to go to the loo so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. The next 10km I stopped checking the splits on the Suunto and just nursed my feet one step at a time. I was trying as hard as I could to heel strike to keep off my forefoot, but jeez heel striking is tough. And tiring.

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Finally, I saw the finish line. I wished just for the last 100m that the pain in my feet could have gone away cos I’d dreamt of this sight for the past three weeks and how enjoyable it'd be cross the line first. But all I could think about was getting my shoes off and throwing my feet in a bucket of ice. My body felt good but my feet were in a world of pain. I had mixed emotions after the race. I was stoked at how fit and heathy I was but I was annoyed that I still haven’t quite figured out my dropped metatarsal issue. I'll have to keep practicing to figure it out.

PictureJared, myself and our homestay Jamie.
I'd like to give a massive thanks to all my incredible sponsors who continue to ride the ups and downs with me. A big thanks to my homestay family in Houston, Jamie, BJ & Cooper who were an amazing help and made my weekend run as smoothly as possible. Sorry Jared for yelling “my feet are **** killing me” every time I passed before continuing on with my emotionless-block-the-pain facial expression. And finally thank you to the hundreds of awesome spectators and friends I had out on course cheering my name. It's true, the Texans really are some of the friendliest people around.

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3 Comments

Ironman 70.3 Texas

8/4/2018

3 Comments

 
Picturephoto by Talbotcox.com

4:07:55   1st

Swim     27:42  (10th)
Bike    2:18:50 (2nd)
Run    1:18:07  (1st)


​

I arrived in Galveston on Wednesday, leaving home some 30 hours earlier. Also on Wednesday. Coming from our hot and humid summer I chose Texas as my first US race to make sure I had nice warm conditions. The first couple days were a bit chilly but pleasant enough. However at some point around lunch time on Friday, somebody flicked a switch and the temperature dropped from 20C to about -120C. Ok, maybe more like 5-10C, but once you're in single digits, accompanied by 40kph winds and rain, it might as well be a 100 below. The cold weather stayed right through to race day. It was freezing.

Picturephoto by Talbotcox.com
The day before the race, officials advised us it would a non-wetsuit swim. That guy making the call probably just flew in from Iceland, so who could blame him. But luckily on race morning, a regular human retested conditions and changed it to a wetsuit-legal swim. Phew. I was picturing last years IM Frankfurt conditions all over again in my head. I stood on the jetty in my wetty and socks, the wind cutting right through my Roka suit, my hands and feet numb, getting that semi-comfortable sleepy feeling people talk about before they die of hypothermia. I looked down at the water (while the event volunteers diligently chipped away at the layer of ice on top), praying it'd be warmer in than out. The time finally came to jump in. I stepped out of my socks, leaving them stuck frozen to the timber boards, and made the plunge into the water. It jolted my fading brain function straight back to reality and I was pleasantly surprised, the water temp wasn't too bad. My arms and neck were tense from the shivering and I was struggling to find motivation to warm up properly, but for a moment I had a slight relief that I just might possibly make it through the day.

Picturephoto by Tom Pennington
Race start was now 1 minute away. As I sculled on the start line I finally got a flicker of that excited/nervous feeling you get leading into a race. Unusually late to get that sensation kick in for me. Better late than never. When the gun went off I started out without any serious flurry. My starts are usually a frantic thrashing of arms and legs to will myself to keep up with the field. Usually it has the opposite effect and it's where I typically lose most my time in the swim leg. Today however, I kept relaxed and took it easy at the start. Maybe because I was in a different frame of mind pre-race today. I'm not sure why, but there was no urgency. After about a minute I was still getting kicked and beaten up. Most of the girls are usually long gone up ahead by now. I was stoked to get a little thump here and there. About 400m into the race I was still in the group. That gave me confidence. This swim was turning out pretty good so far, and yet I'm not really fully invested in swimming hard this morning. Interesting.

Picturephoto by Talbotcox.com
By the end of the swim I was still in the main pack and I was happy with how it went. Relaxed, no stress, the opposite to most of my swims. I exited the water with Rinny right behind. We're usually pretty close out of the water. I wondered if she was as happy with her swim too. I thought of giving her a high-five running up the ramp out of the water, "look at us go Rinny, we're in the main pack". The leader was 3mins ahead and there were two others 2min ahead of our group. Most of our group were pretty quick to get on their bikes and clear out of T1. I took the time to put socks on and I had planned to put on a vest but no-one else did and I was warm after the swim so I left it behind thinking they all knew what they were doing. As soon as I jumped on my bike I felt the freezing wind and wished I'd taken the time to put that vest on. Heather and Rinny were just up ahead now and seemed to be taking it easy, winding out onto the main section of the course. I stayed back thinking I should build into it once I get some warm blood in my legs. It turns out I don't think it would've mattered at all. It was freezing and I was feeling it. My quads were frozen, my fingers were numb, it felt like I had ice down my chest, deep in my lungs, and I had that brain freeze with the cold wind getting up under my helmet.

Picturephoto by Scott Flathouse
Once we were out onto the main highway, the course was 40k straight, flat, following the coastline, with a big tail wind. You never know it's a big tailwind till you turn around. As the k's ticked down, my core temp did too. There was never a point where I thought I was starting to warm up. Shivering and tensing up I knew I'd be burning more calories than normal so I tried getting nutrition in. The first 20k I was able to get some liquid calories in, but after that my fingers were useless. I would've had as much luck trying to pull the bottle out of the frame with my foot - in cleats. At 45k we turned around and headed straight back. Gail force. Icy. Tunnel vision. Arctic suffering. I'd always pictured Texas as hot. Not today. Except maybe for that guy visiting from Iceland.

Picturephoto by Tom Pennington
I eventually rolled back in to T2 after being out in the elements way too long. Kim was now 3mins up the road, Heather was right behind me and Rinny was about a min back. I didn't know how I'd feel getting off the bike with everything so numb. And I didn't know how I'd tolerate the lack of nutrition, knowing I would've burnt extra calories from shivering. I figured at least I'd get the jump on Heather in transition as I already had my socks on from T1. Unfortunately my fingers still had the dexterity of a hoof. Have you ever seen a horse undo a helmet clasp. No. Me neither. I ran over to the nearest volunteer for help. Of course my lips and face didn't work either as they were frozen. Luckily this volunteer must work with special people like me all the time. She knew what I needed and she made it happen. I owe a big thank you to that volunteer, without her, my Plan B was to run 21k with my helmet on. I guess that might've got me a little more media attention. As you'd expect, getting running shoes on was a mission too. My fingers were no help so I just kept jamming my foot into the shoe until it looked like it was kinda on. At least my eyes were working. I couldn't tell you if it 'felt' like it was on. The first 3k I still wasn't 100% convinced I had my shoes on the right feet. It just didn't feel right with the numb stubs attached the end of my legs. I eventually caught back up to Heather and tucked in behind her 6-foot-11 frame until I thawed out. After 3k, I started to feel more normal again. Blood was returning to all the extremities and I started to feel good so I made the pass to move into second place.

Picturephoto by Talbotcox.com
The run course was really enjoyable. It was three laps winding in and around the water park with several hairpin turns. You could regularly see your competitors, there were spectators all over the entire course and there was no long straight stretches so it kept it interesting. I felt really good running. Possibly because I was returning to life after my earlier 'out-of-body-cryotherapy experience'. I passed Kim around 10k to take the lead. Heather and Rinny looked to be running strong behind me so I couldn't back it off. I was extending my lead every time I saw them but not because they were slowing down at all. They looked good. It wasn't until 1.5k to go that I knew I should win it from here. I was able to shut it down a little, take it all in and enjoy the excitement of the last k.

Picturephoto by Talbotcox.com
I was stoked to take the win against a strong field of women and in conditions that really hurt me most. I didn't die. Well, actually it's hard to say for few brief periods there I'm not entirely sure. But as they say, what doesn't kill you...  Congrats and thank you to Rinny and Heather for the top-quality racing. And congrats also to Kim for hanging tough, finishing 4th, after a smoking bike leg. The only thing I saw smoking in that weather.

A big thank you to Ironman for looking after me during this race and a the biggest thank you goes to my good friends Roberto & Jeannine for running me all over the place and welcoming me in to their home for a few weeks while I prepare for the full Ironman coming up soon in Texas.

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