A three-part story by Valentina, Katie, and Abiah
The Training: Valentina
Katie, Abiah and I are in the tiny bathroom of a motor shop attached to the gas station in Lyme, NH. We are stifling yelps and holding back tears as we clumsily peel off our bike shoes and sopping socks with our numb fingers. We hop in place and fling our arms around as we try to get the blood circulating again after 2 hours in the freezing rain, wind, and barely 40-degree weather. We have been up since 5am to have breakfast before an hour-long swim. It’s our first Big Weekend, the training days that most simulated the actual race in distance and time. We still have another hour of biking and a few miles to run according to our TrainingPeaks plan, but all we can think about is whether we are going to brave the next few minutes and get back on the bike. By this point in the day, we have already thought of everyone we could possibly call to pick us up, cried, turned blue, desperately longed for our warm beds and showers back in the dorms, and thought way too many times about quitting. Nevertheless, once our toes turned pink again, we put our bike shoes and helmets back on, and got back on the bikes to finish the workout.
It was this day that we not only earned major credit in the triathlon world (at least in the books of our coaches), but also proved to ourselves how serious we were about training for the IronMan 70.3. It all began after the CHaD half marathon in October 2016 when we met as the 70.3 group with our coach Jim in the comfy couches of the gym lobby to get our TrainingPeaks accounts (platform for triathletes to plan workouts and build training plans) and learn about Zone 2 training. The first months of our training were fairly monotonous; we had to learn the art of working out with a heart rate cap for a really long time. For Abiah, this meant being satisfied without a high energy and intensity workout despite the stress of her last term at Dartmouth. For Katie, this meant spending nearly every early morning in the pool before her internship. For me, this meant running several times a week at a pace that she could probably walk faster than. Bit by bit, the 10 to 15-hour long training weeks filled with biking on the trainer, running in the snow, and swimming indoors passed and we saw progress in the things that challenged us most. Katie almost finished the West Wing (five and a half seasons watched exclusively on the trainer), I trained the dog to run up to 8 miles with me (Felix started at 0 miles running), and Abiah enjoyed being able to eat much, much more. Despite being in constant communication via TrainingPeaks comments and Skype with our coach Jim, we all really looked forward to being back on campus to be able to spend the long hours together.
Our spring training looked very different from the winter. We now also juggled team practices with our own training schedules, and had to work around spending time with friends, classes, studying, tri team logistics, and the many other things that make up our day to day at Dartmouth. Nonetheless, the balancing act we took on was very worthwhile. Our spring was filled with wonderful time outside exploring the area and finally actually sbr-ing (swimming, biking and running- in that order). Some highlights from our spring training are:
- Alpacas, cows, horses, sheep, goats, chicken, rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, birds of all types, dogs, cats, turkeys, foxes, loons, porcupines… we saw so many animals!
- Beautiful spring flowers and endless blue skies with our to-do lists more than thirty miles away
- Loops around the lakes in the area, especially Lake Morey and Lake Fairlee
- Realizing we were more than 50 miles into our bike ride and feeling great… there were many moments when it hit us that we were getting faster and training was working!
- Endless back and forths on Route 10/ Lyme Road and Route 5, the “five and dime” loop
- Hills: we loved those days where Jim just wrote in our TrainingPeaks “Go ride hills, lots of them!” … the Upper Valley is a perfect place to train!
- Post Pond open water swims… especially at 5:30am and having the smell of breakfast cooking at the inn by the water waft across
- Seeing the TrainingPeaks boxes turn green after a completed workout
- Long runs in the snow and running nearly any and every road in the Hanover area
- Discovering that endurance/ Zone 2 training sessions were perfect workouts to talk with someone on the phone or listen to podcasts
- Wetsuit practices in the pool with our teammates (with buoys made of water polo balls)
- Figuring out nutrition on the bike: learning how to open wrappers, eat, and pedal all at once… discovering yummy sports waffles and regretting bringing PB&J sandwiches
- Finally understanding how wonderful bike shirts with pockets are
- Having other teammates join us for parts of our longer workouts (thanks Catherine!) or biking to the Organic Farm as a big group or finding new routes in Etna (hey Arielle!)
- Syncing up from so much time spent together that we were able to know what the other person was thinking before they said anything
- 6am Eliot Swims with other triathletes in the community
- Early mornings and learning how to best fit doubles, food, and school in one day
- Katie’s new tri bike that allowed her to fly (or get as close to it as possible!)
- Sprinting for the first time in months in the Season Opener duathlon
As much fun as it was, there were some moments in the term that were pretty tough. Abiah was in her senior spring with lots of plans, and Katie and I both had extremely difficult course loads, so there were days were making training a priority was nearly or actually impossible. By the end of the spring term, Abiah put in many more hours training by herself because schedules didn’t always work out. I never was able to get the amount of rest or sleep that my body needed to properly recover. And Katie would have to work on group projects at 5am during the digestion time between breakfast and a morning workout. About a month before the race, I had a bike accident while we were on a bike ride all together. Fortunately nothing serious came of it and I only hurt my arm, had a bad road burn on my leg, and gave my bike a few boo-boos. It was still challenging though to figure out how to return to training (with bandages & ibuprofen) while giving my body time to recover. The tiredness I felt at that point in the term paralleled the way we had to do force ourselves to study and work despite the growing exhaustion we felt after Big Weekends and high volume weeks. It was hard to be training as much as we did and have schedules filled with an intense load of classes and things that wouldn’t give.
There were also some workouts that really challenged us. We had workouts in the extreme cold (like that first Big Weekend “adventure”) and in the brutal heat that left us all sunburnt, dehydrated and defeated after long miserable runs. At one point Abiah even had to head indoors to the treadmill to finish a Big Weekend run. Learning how to properly fuel for longer and longer workouts was also difficult and I learned what it is like to bonk/ hit the wall.
But it was especially all of these not-so-great parts of our training that made anything seem achievable during this nearly nine-month long training journey. We went through the good and the bad together. Having each other to laugh, talk, complain, and ask questions to made finding the resolve within us to stick to the training plan and do the workouts so much easier. We trusted Jim completely as we followed his training plans and built up our fitness day by day. It became really fun to learn the tri world lingo and more about ourselves, share our adventures with our other teammates, or do crazy things like doing more distance and working out for longer than even the IronMan 70.3 we were training for. Really, I think these months of pursuing a dream goal became a way for us to find a sense of empowerment in an emotional, physical and mental sense of well-being. I know for a fact that I couldn’t have crossed those 70.3+ miles without the endless support from Jim, Katie, Abiah and the rest of my teammates and coaches who just understood what was going on in my head during these months of training the way no one else was able to.
The Race: Katie
Although almost seven months of consistent training had prepared us physically for Patriot, we were nervous. Actually, nervous is an understatement. We spent race week obsessively texting each other about what to pack, what to eat, and what it would be like to cross the finish line (or whether we even wanted to cross the starting line). It didn’t help that our workouts were getting shorter and shorter, and we were facing athletic-induced endorphins withdrawal. I owe a big thank you to anyone had the misfortune of interacting with me during that time and still came to watch the race (thanks Connor!).
Even our workout sessions the day before, which took place on parts of the actual race course, did nothing to calm us down. Coach Jim had instructed us to do a 15-minute swim, a 20-minute bike, and a 15-minute run with some faster-paced pick-ups during each leg. Easy, right? Not exactly. We biked first, and almost immediately got stuck in a torrential downpour on slippery, unfamiliar roads. By the time we got back, we were freezing and completely soaked. On our run, the rain picked up so much that we could barely see. We somehow made it back to the car, texted Jim about our predicament, and followed his advice to bail on the swim and get warm. By then, we felt even more worried about the race than we had before. What if there were storms on Saturday? What if they canceled the swim? What if we got blisters from our wet sneakers, or fell during the bike? Rather than feeling calm and confident, we had a whole new list of worries.
We spent the evening trying to dry out our shoes with the hotel’s coin-operated dryers and newspaper, packing and repacking our transition bags, pumping up bike tires, eating pasta, foam rolling, and trying (and failing) to relax so we could get some sleep. The mood was tense and the conversation topic never strayed far from what was on our minds: “Can you believe it’s tomorrow?” At 4 am the next morning when our alarms went off and we were shoveling down oatmeal, bananas, and peanut butter, it was the same thing: “Can you believe it’s today???”
Race morning was a blur of too many things to do and too little time. Ironically, we found ourselves thinking less about the race itself than we had all week because we were so busy getting our last-minute prep in. We warmed up on the bike (and guess what? It poured again!), stopped at the porta potties, warmed up jogging, stopped again at the porta potties, got body-marked, set up our gear in the transition area, put on wetsuits, took a selfie, warmed up in the water, and stopped one more time at the porta potties. Before we knew it, we were wearing fuchsia swim caps, lined up with our age group, wading into the water two at a time, and we were off!
I wish I give a more exciting recap of the race itself, but I’m happy to report that it’s not a very interesting story. Somehow, everything went right. The rain held off, we felt strong, and guess what? We made it to the end in one piece! The swim was a little chaotic with lots of feet in our faces and splashing around the buoys, but we stuck to the plan of not going out too fast and settling into a “speedy but sustainable” rhythm that we could maintain for 2100 yards. T1 was fun, as we got some help from the official wetsuit strippers—several super strong volunteers who helped us racers by pulling off our tight wetsuits much faster than we could on our own. The 56-mile bike was an awesome two-loop course with beautiful scenery and not too many hills, and we got to put our fueling-while-riding skills to the test as we made it through energy bars, electrolyte drinks, and other quick carbs that would keep us going until the end. Coming out of T2 and into the final leg (a 13.1-mile run), we were all getting tired, stiff, and beyond sick of CLIF’s “razz” flavored energy gels, but we pushed on with the end in sight. After getting up and over a steep hill at mile 12.5, we turned into the race site entryway, crossed a footbridge, and smiled across the finish line.
We may have gone into Patriot not knowing exactly what it would be like. Now that we’ve finished, it’s pretty clear that racing a Half Ironman is the only real way to find out what it feels like to race a Half Ironman. “Exciting” doesn’t cover it, and “exhilarating” feels like a cliché. It’s a weird mix of feeling awesome and feeling like your heart might explode. Don’t forget to add the relief and pride that follow, plus the extreme chafing, GI turbulence, and muscle soreness that lasts for days. Maybe we can’t put that race feeling into words, but one thing’s for sure--we know we want to feel it again. Until next year, Patriot. We’ve got some records to break.
The Aftermath: Abiah
When I crossed the finish line, my legs clenched up into what felt like 100 charley horses and my heart rate was nearing 190. My mind was groggy, perhaps from the dehydration or the 3000 calorie deficit, or maybe from the euphoria of finally being done. Some wonderful angel (read: race volunteer) handed me a water bottle, ice-cold towel, and finisher’s medal before I hobbled over to the ice bath to dunk my feet in. Almost immediately, I had loving family and friends coming to me with excited faces and hugs, embracing my grime and sweat from the past 5 hours and 45 minutes. (Of course Katie had been waiting for OVER AN HOUR at the finish line; be sure to check out this blog next year when she’s elite). I wondered if I could’ve come even close to the finish line without I couldn't believe I had finished, and was so happy that the months of training were officially over.
For the next hour, I went through cycles of icing, stretching, begging my family for massages, and eating anything and everything so long as it didn't resemble Gu or make me nauseous. We all watched in amazement as Katie took the podium for our age group and was the first non-professional in female overall rankings. Then followed the picture taking, because pics or it didn’t happen. It took three people to gather all my things, now strewn all over transition, and get me to waddle to the car.
I was so relieved to return to the AirBnb that I had left that morning at 4:30 am. I thought I was done with physical pain for the day, but I was wrong. What could be more painful than completing half ironman? (No, not a full ironman). Taking a shower when you have chafe literally all over your body, from your wetsuit, your heart rate monitor, your ankle timing chip, your bike helmet strap, your ill-fitting tri shorts, and from any tiny, repetitive movement. After a long nap, I pored over race results and scrolled through races photos. It took me less than 24 hours to sign up for my next race. Why is it that we continue to pay money for this special kind of pain? I blame it on the post-race high.
The adjustment back to normal life has been strange. My body still expects me to feed it over 2500 calories a day. While only working out an hour or two a day has given me much more free time, a 6 mile run is no longer enough to give me the endorphins I need to be a functioning human. I’m sure that the transition out of college and into the real world will be even weirder.
Through the 6 months of training, nearly 6 grueling hours of racing, and 6(+/-2) days of post-race reflection, I’ve come to realize just how lucky we are. We are fortunate to have healthy and strong bodies, the free time to train, coaches to guide the process, amazing teammates to do it with, and friends and family that cheered us on the whole way. My time with the Dartmouth Triathlon Team may be over, but I know the friends and memories I made (plus my love/hate relationship with swimming, biking, and running) will last the rest of my life.
sbr
Valentina, Katie, Abiah
About the Authors
Valentina Sedlacek is an '18 on the tri team studying Spanish and Anthropology modified with Global Health, and is pre-med. She loves berries and exploring the Upper Valley in the sun swimming, biking, or hiking with friends, her family, and two dogs.
Katie Clayton ('18) is a tri team captain studying Government and French. She loves cooking, the color purple, Maine wild bluberries, and summer.
Abiah Pritchard is a '17 captain who recently graduated with a degree in Biology. She will move to Boston this year before beginning a career in healthcare. She loves golden retrievers and dark chocolate.
