 photo by Petko Beier | 1st 9:01:17 swim 59:15 (5th) bike 4:57:10 (3rd) run 3:00:12 (1st) |
| Standing on the start line shivering with a thick vest on until 2min before race start was not what I'd imagined after seeing footage of last years IM Frankfurt race where I clearly remember Jan climbing into the ice bucket on the run. The air temp and the wind was cold while we stood on the beach, but the water temp had been recorded at just over the wetsuit cut off for pros. I had a good start and swam the first stretch, about 700m sandwiched between two other girls. At the first turn buoy I pulled ahead and swam the rest on my own. I felt like I had a decent swim but was really looking forward to climbing aboard my new Shiv - Froggy and getting to work. |  photo by Getty Images for Ironman |
 photo by Ironman | I exited the water in 5th place, 5:30 down on the leader. As I ran out of the water and up the sandy/grassy hill to T1 my feet were so numb I couldn't tell if they hurt or not, you know that weird/uncomfortable feeling where you could be standing on glass and only feel a blunt pressure. I ran out of the change tent and to the pro bike racks. My bike was the easiest to find in the whole of transition! I was the last seed for the pro women and the few pros listed before me did not race. This meant my bike was racked in a totally different zip code to the rest of the pro women. My Shiv was parked in no-mans land about 10m to the nearest pro and about 20m to the nearest teams bike racks. It was also easy to find because my brand new Shiv is BRIGHT GREEN with pieces of black splatters on it. My favourite colour. It's so cool. I received it when I arrived in Frankfurt. Dan from SRAM built it up perfectly ready to go. All but pedals which I left in Aus. Rinny kindly let me borrow hers for the first couple days. And thanks to our awesome Frankfurt helper Timo Voight, I bought a new set just before the race. |
 photo by Marcel Hilger | For the first hour or so on the bike I was still shivering from the cold. I tried to pull my mars bar out to eat something along the way, but because my fingers didn't work properly it slipped out and miraculously landed on my leg and stuck there because of the sticky caramel. I grabbed it quickly and shoved it in my mouth. I thought my teeth chattering would help to chew but it made it even harder to move the mars bar around in my mouth without accidentally biting my tongue off in the process. For the most part, the race was a great experience and I feel like I'm being ungrateful to bring up a negative on how the race was run/officiated. But my experience of the age group drafting on the bike course was something I've never encountered before and it significantly effected my (and I imagine all the pro women) entire bike leg. So I'll be brief...the swim was non-wetsuit for the pros, but it was a wetsuit swim for the age groupers who started 8mins behind. This meant the wetsuit-clad age group had caught and passed the womens field before any of us got on our bikes. |
| The first 100k of the bike was ridiculously crowded with age group men. As I caught and passed long packs of them sitting 5-10m apart (less than 12m is cheating) I thought I'm finally in the clear. But as I found out throughout the race, it only took one rider out of each peloton to sit 5m behind me and eventually slip stream up to my wheel (this is cheating for pro's but AG'ers can do this as much as they want) and whip passed for me to have to sit up and give him a 12m gap (that's the rule). When I sit up to allow him to have his 12m, this means the next age grouper slip streams up behind me and whips around, maintaining his illegal gap of 5-10m. I then sit up to allow him a 12m gap. After 10 of these go by, I think I can get back to my race now, so I move 3m wide again and begin to pass 10+ men at one time, pushing well above 300watts for a couple mins to make the pass. This process would continue with a few different age-goup-team-time-trial packs through out the race. The size and intensity of remaining testosterone in the packs eventually settled down after about 110k as more and more of the men blew. I had "draft busters" with me for most of the race and I'm confident in saying there role was to admire the scenery and in no way to officiate any drafting rules on the bike segment of the race. Like I said, I've never experienced this before in racing and makes me realise I will have to choose races carefully in the future that either have a reputation for enforcing drafting rules or allow a longer gap between pro women and age group men start times. As it was in this race, the pro women were not in a simple race against the other pro women to see who was the best. They could have easily been racing their age group peloton against another girls age group peloton. |  photo by Ingo Kutsche |
 photo by Petko Beier | That aside, the bike course was really scenic. I've only raced one other triathlon in Europe before, so the streets, towns, and views are all a novelty for me. I enjoyed weaving through the little towns and over the rolling hills through the countryside. One of the hills on the course was packed with spectators crowding the road, giving it kind of like a tour de france feeling. The cobblestone section was something different too. I'm obviously not good at riding on cobblestones. I bounced around like a frog in a blender. I'm lucky it didn't rain before I got to them. The weather gods held off till I got through T2 thankfully. I jumped off my bike at the end and wobbled my way to the bike catchers. I love the bike catcher deal in Ironman racing...it makes me feel like I'm a VIP when I get off the bike. I got through T2 without dramas. My transition bag was again hanging in the middle of nowhere on its own just like my bike had been earlier. Quick change of shoes and away I went running. |
| 'Controlled and patient' I kept repeating to myself as I started the run. Soon into the run I heard Jared yell that I was 5:30 down on the leader. 4.00-4.15 pace was the original pre-race plan depending on how far behind I was off the bike. At 5:30min behind, 4:15 pace was the call to be enough to get through and stay conservative. I finally made the pass to take the lead at around 19km. Even though everything was going well so far, the balls of my feet were starting to cause me concern. I could feel the beginnings of the problem I get in my feet when I run too far on hard surfaces. I foot strike on the ball of my foot so it bears the brunt of my body weight with each step and consequently I end up with bone bruising on the metatarsals of the bones in the foot. The swelling it causes around the bones eventually increases the pressure inside the joints and starts jabbing me sharper and sharper deep in my foot the longer I let it go. It's something I can at least plan for now that I know, so I had a spare pair of shoes waiting for me at special needs which was at 22km. I was so thankful to see them...made the quick change to shoes with holes cut out of the bottom for the swelling...and felt like new again. |  photo by Petko Beier |
 photo by Petko Beier | 3k later, at around 25km I heard an official coming from behind on a bike yelling at me to stop. I think most things are hard to comprehend when you're 8hrs into an ironman race, but a random guy on a bike yelling at me to stop was particularly hard to mentally process. I slowed down to listen to what he was saying and he was quite angry with me and told me I had a penalty for changing shoes. I stopped and told him it was within the rules of Ironman and that I'd even got it in writing the day before from the race director (Ironman racing is still new to me so I had to check myself to make sure it was allowed in special needs). He wasn't interested and went on to tell me that I was wasting my time and that my penalty time could not start till I shut up (I haven't looked up that Ironman rule yet). (Ironman has since apologised to me a number of times for the rogue official they had out on course who wrongly penalised me for having a change of shoes in my special needs bag) |
| The remainder of the run was as enjoyable as I think an Ironman can probably be in closing 15k. I put the penalty behind me and tried to be as relaxed as possible. The crowd was getting thicker and thicker with each lap. The last 500m was the best finish chute that I've seen in triathlon. The course narrows to squeeze through ancient buildings on cobble stone streets before opening in the middle of the historic Romer town square. Grand stands either side, flashing lights, booming music, dancing cheerleaders and accompanied to the line with little kids and their balloons. An incredible overload to the senses after a long day in the elements. |  photo by Ironman |
 | A big thanks to Ironman, in particular Paula Newby-Fraser for the invite to race IM Frankfurt and for helping me organize my trip. My stay in Frankfurt was thoroughly enjoyable. Frankfurt even went out of there way to name everything here after me to welcome me... 'Haus'-this and 'Haus'-that, Sport'haus', boat'haus'. My name is everywhere! And a special mention to Timo and Sibylle who helped me navigate my way through all the commitments for the weekend. Without them, the logistics of my stay would've been impossible. |
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