Almere Redux - 12th September 2021

Challenge Almere is a fantastic event; I had a great race in 2017 so after a couple of years off full-distance, I signed up for the 2020 edition which, thanks to Corona, was postponed until September 2021. 

The original schedule was a multisport festival including a variety of races throughout the week. But again due to Corona it was scaled back to just a middle-distance race on the Friday followed by the Long Distance Triathlon and Aquabike World Championships on the Sunday. Alongside the championship was an Open Series event to make up the numbers, still full ironman distance: 3.8 km swim, 180 km bike, 42.2 km run.

Enjoying myself early on in lap 2

Training had gone well; at the end of July I came 2^nd in the Castle Howard aquabike, and after that I got in plenty of big workouts, including three open water swims of more than 5 km, and plenty of TT bike action, including three solo rides of over 150 km. I’d also bounced back from a mid-season running injury, building up my long run to over 30 kms.

So I was quite relaxed going into the race. Indeed, I had no big expectations or targets for either a time or position, I just wanted to finish in style, and by that, I mean completing the full distance with a decent run, even if that meant a slow plod.

Well, it didn’t work out quite that way; unfortunately the run degenerated into a painful death march!

Death March Dejection!

The elite men and women competing in the World Championship went off in deep-water mass starts at 7 am and 7:05. The rest of us then went off in waves of rolling starts, with four swimmers entering the water every 15 seconds, and each wave distinguishable due to different colour swim caps.

The 18-44 male age groupers in the World Championship went off at 7:35; the 44+ males at 7:45; and the women at 8 am. Me and the 160 other choppers in the Open event started at 8:10.

In keeping with my relaxed approach, I loitered at the back of the yellow cap corral, in no rush to get in the water, so by the time I set off most of my wave was ahead of me. I was determined to stay relaxed for the first of the two laps. At 21 degrees, the water temperature was nice, and with swimmers well spread out due to the rolling start, there was no aggro, so very quickly I settled down into a nice, relaxed rhythm.

Hanging out with the yellow caps

But next thing you know, I am scything my way through the Open wave, overtaking yellow cap after yellow cap! This was fun; conditions were good and sighting off the buoys was easy. There was some wind making it a bit choppy after the final turn, but no bother.

Before you know it, I’m back in the changing tent stripping off my wetsuit. I noticed that the floorboards around me are dry and there’s no one here. As I’m getting on with it, more yellow caps start coming in and the tent gets busier. I must have had a pretty good swim; despite starting close to the back of my wave, I was now much nearer the front. Indeed, when I get out to T1, there didn’t seem to be many bikes missing in my area. 

Scores on the doors; out of the 148 yellow cap finishers, I had the 12^th and 7^th fastest swim and T1 respectively. Not bad for a relaxed start to the day. My time wasn’t particularly fast, 1:07, my slowest iron-distance swim in fact, but looking at the overall times and people’s Strava files I think the swim was slow, maybe a bit long and/or maybe the wind and chop was a factor. But nevertheless, very happy with my swim, a fair reflection of the training I’ve put in in both the pool and open water.

Bike route

But the trouble with getting out of the water ahead of the pack is that all the uber-bikers are now chasing you down and indeed, while it was fun overtaking stragglers from the earlier waves, quite a few from my wave were overtaking me. But no bother, I was determined to ride conservatively so that I could finish the day in style.

If the swim was a bit slow, the bike was fast! In contrast to 2017 it was bone dry, light winds and the temperature was rising. The wind was coming from the West, so the 25 km stretch along the exposed dyke running East was once again a joy, especially as you get to do it twice! My aim was to keep everything down: heart rate, power, cadence, and head.

Head down, grinding a big gear

The roads were closed to traffic, all the junctions well marshalled, the surface was immaculate, and the riders well spread out; absolutely perfect, this is why I came back to this race! 

With no distractions, it was easy to get into a nice time trialling groove and grind it out in a big gear. The small chainring was dead weight and I spent much of the day in 53-11, resulting in an average cadence of 62 rpm! Power was about 20W lower than 2017 but after the first lap I knew I was making good progress and I finally got off the bike in 5:16, just a minute or two slower than 2017 despite that big power gap – as I said, it was a fast day for cycling!

A well paced bike split

Looking at the data, my pacing was conservative with average power at 70%, maybe 5W lower than anticipated. I kept it steady, with a variability index of 1.01 and an even split across the two laps, and heart rate in Zone 1 throughout. This gave me a TSS score of 257, so in the safe zone. Job done and really happy with my bike split.

Dismount and T2 all went smoothly although I didn’t much care for another long bare foot run through the gravel infested car park where bike racking was situated. More blue carpeting next time please!

As soon as I got out on the run I didn’t feel right, strong stitch-like cramp on the right side of my stomach. Never mind, I just cracked on and made my way around the first two laps at a reasonable pace, averaging 5:15 mins per km. But now I had cramps both sides. I walked some of the aid stations to try to alleviate the cramps, take on board gels/water, pop to the port aloo. But it was heavy going, I just had nothing left in the tank.

Run pace - the data tells the story

On lap 3 I just got slower and slower. Lap 4 I started taking long walks at the aid stations, and on lap 5, the running was very slow, 7 mins per km, and the walks got longer. When I did try run, my calves felt shredded, I was totally depleted. Supporters all around the course tried to encourage me but to no avail. Jacky was unwavering, greeting me with enthusiasm at the end of every lap. 

Rather than risk injury, I decided that the only way I was going to finish this in one piece was by walking, and so began the Death March. This was actually quite liberating; I now knew I was going to finish and I kind of enjoyed the final lap as the sun approached the horizon.

I mustered a very short run to finally cross the finish line, for the benefit of the crowd of course! Run time of 4 hrs 55 giving a total time of 11:28. Not my finest hour, and I certainly didn’t finish in style, but proud of myself for a good swim-bike combo and seeing it through to the end.

Finally finished!

So where did it all go wrong? The usual suspects are (1) lack of training, (2) poor pacing, especially on the bike, and/or (3) nutrition. I and 2 are related, you have to pace it based on your fitness levels, but I think I was in decent shape and paced the bike quite well. This leaves nutrition and indeed, in retrospect, my relaxed approach was a double-edged sword; I think I was too complacent, in particular when it came to my nutrition. I didn’t follow my usual rituals in the final 24 hours leading up to the race. I didn’t eat much in the morning; after breakfast at 5 am, I didn’t feed again until T1 at about 9:20 am. After the race, I realised that I had two slugs of nutrition left in my drinks bottle, meaning 40 mins worth of nutrition missed. Because of the stomach cramps I didn’t have my first gel until 8k into the run.

No. 1 cheer leader

So what next? On lap 5 I was adamant that my triathlon career was over; this just hurts too much, why would I ever put myself through this again? 24 hours later I was over this nonsense, determined to learn from my mistakes and put together a decent race in 2022. See you then!