Ironman Florida - TriathlonFull Ironman

The swim start was awesome and incredibly exciting! The sun was rising, boats were circling, music blaring, a helicopter circling overhead. I positioned myself about 30 yards right of the buoy line having noticed a greater concentration of swimmers in the overhead shots of previous IM races to the left of this line. Yes, the swim was rough with everyone fighting for space, arms flying, legs kicking, but this really only last until the first turn. After making the turn, the field started spreading out into groups with water in between. My pace was pretty good and I found myself moving up and actively searching for others to draft on. I exited the beach, ran across the timing mat, and vee-lined back for lap 2 feeling really good. The second lap was similar to the last half of the first lap as far as the concentration of other atheltes is concerned.

Swim faster and practice relaxing enough to pee in my wetsuit to avoid a port-a-pot stop at transition.

I took my time here. After trotting through the showers and being handed by transition bag, I found a chair and changed. The tent was pretty crowded, but not nearly as bad as I assumed it would be based on other reports. I wore a speedo under my wetsuit and changed into cycling shorts for the bike to be comfortable. This took some time, along with making sure I had everything on and back in the bag. After exiting the tent, I went to a port-a-pot before having my bike handed to me by a volunteer.

Practice my transition and take less time.

This was a challenge for me given my lack of experience cycling. After being in the top 1/3 out of the water, many, many people passed me on the first 30 miles of the bike. I hate being passed and it took a lot for me to focus on keeping my HR down, not hammering, and keeping my legs fresh. I was very conservative on the bike leg and felt pretty good but for a ten mile stretch around miles 75-85. I started speeding up from 88 to 99, but hit some headwind on the 5 mile stretch back to the beach. I averaged 20 mph plus on the last 7 miles with my HR still in zone 2. Though it was tough to watch numerous people pass me, I posted a good time for me.

Train harder, get faster.

I thought I did this one fast and was surprised by the five minute time. After stopping on the line and handing my bike off to volunteer, I took off my shoes to trot across the transtion area to the changing tent. The tent was not nearly as busy as before and I felt like I changed out of my cycling shorts and into my running kit fairly quickly. I exited the tent, used the port-a-pot again, and was off.

Be quicker.

My legs were surprisingly fresh coming through transition and begining the run course. My focus was to run to each aid station, walk through while eating and drinking, then run to the next and repeat, thereby breaking the run into 26 seperate 1 mile runs. Fortunately, my bike pacing and nutrition strategies worked and I was able to run the entire course save the aid station walk breaks - I use the term run loosely, as I barely kept pace with a couple of guys around mile 20 who were walking. At around mile 8 or so, I passed a guy with a shirt that said he had just had hip replacement surgery which was awesome- he had smoked me on the bike! I made the mile 13 turn in a little over 2 hours, which is about standard for me in the past marathons I have done. Until that point, time had not been an issue I was concerned with, but I realized I could break 13 hours and that became my pressing goal for the last lap. At the 20 mile turnaround, I was able to watch the sunset over the dunes in the state park, which was cool given that the sun had risen at the start of the swim. By mile 22, I was hurting all over, but kept pressing forward and was able to pick up the pace significantly from mile 24. The last two miles are still a bit of a blur and I kept telling myself to give everything I had and to run across the line looking as fresh as possible. I blew off that last aid station, ran as hard as I could to the lights, the noise, and finish. After passing a guy about 1/4 mile out, I eased up to give the guy in front of me the finish line area to himself - I am sure the guy behind me did the same for me. I crossed the line in 12:50:16, my wife and family standing right at the tape and heard my name - "Charles Smitherma, you are an Ironman".

Nothing.

Upon crossing the line, the words "volunteer catcher" finally made sense. I felt like I had won the race and a catcher grabbed my arm and told me congrats. After being ushered to get my medal, the real sense of stopping after having been moving for the past 13 hours hit me and I began to wabble. Luckily, the catcher had a good grip and the feeling quickly passed as my wife snuck through the barrier to meet me and bask in the feeling of achieveing this goal.

After walking around for a bit, I moved to the massage tent where I was escorted to a table to be revived by two cute coeds. This was great, although removing myself from the table post-massage was probably the most difficult thing I did all day. All day I demanded a lot from my body and muscles, but after the massage they revolted and said we are not moving. After some work, I was able to roll off and make my way to pick up my bike and gear.


Genetics. Seriously, I trained for endurance and not speed. I am quick over 100 meters, but have never been that threatening on anything above that. Speed while doing distance is my number one priority over the off-season and preparing for my next IM.


This was my first IM, but will not be my last. My race experience was as good as I could have hoped for largely because I trained well, stayed healthy, and executed my nutrition and race plan as intended.

Like many of you reading this report, I studied previous reports, forum threads, books, etc., basically anything I could find. I made the jump from Olympic distance without doing a half and it was largely my research that enabled me to assess and impletment the right training path and nutrition and race plans, stay healthy without overextending my body (which was important considering I tore my LCL while running my first marathon three years ago), and execute on race day.

On top of training for this race, I got married in June. My wife has been very, very understanding, completed about 2/3 of the training with me, and was very supportive. I could not have done this without her support and understanding and the feeling of crossing the line with her standing on the other side of it was priceless.

On race day, I made some stupid pre-race mistakes that I mention in hopes others will avoid. First, I left my Perpeteum bottles at the place I was staying and did not discover this until arriving at the race. Luckily, I had left early and given myself some cushion time, so I was able to get back and take care of the things I needed to do, but I was much more rushed than what was ideal. Second, I misunderstood something at the mandatory athlete's meeting about leaving bike pumps and using the transition technicians before the race, so I left my pump and ended up waiting 20 minutes or so in line to get my tires inflated. For all future races, they will have to pry my pump from my Kung Fu grip to keep me from taking it in to the transition area before the race. Third, in all the excitement and due to some confusion about transition bags, I had a few things that I forgot to put in my bike and run bags, which I placed in the wrong bags. This was not a huge deal, but my back is peeling a bit from the misplacement of my sunscreen in my run bag and not my bike bag (yes, the volunteers have sunscreen and will put it on you, but be prepared to wait). Fortunately, this was about the extent of my race problems.

I keep mentioning my nutrition plan, which I practiced over and over. I worked out that I would burn around 1000 calories on the swim and would burn around 550-650 on the bike and 650-750 on the run, depending on the heat, pace, and other factors. I weigh around 150, so my calorie intake is limited to around 250 calories per hour at below 70% of my max HR, with a decrease as my HR went up, particularly in the run. Based on this info, which I believe is pretty average, I had my normal brekfast of Kashi cereal, banana and two cups of coffee at around 4:00am race day. I had consumed a 250ml Gatorade Endurance at around 1:30-2:00am earlier. I had another banana while exiting the transtion area to the beach and followed it with a GU gel. After lap 1 of the swim, I had water upon exiting (more to get the sea salt tast out of my mouth). After finishing the swim and getting on my bike, I had another gel and immediately began drinking Perpeteum, which I had mixed into two three-serving water bottles (and an additional frozen bottle in my special needs bag just in case). I used Perpeteum throughout the bike course, along with water, supplementing with a bit of Gatorade at aid stations a couple of times and a couple of bananas. I also had a couple of packs of Enlyten strips, a product that allows you to absorb salt and electolytes through a disolvable strip in your mouth thereby bypassing your stomach and providing quick absorption. I used these a fair bit given the sun and some difficulty early in the bike to absorb much water (which is a problem I normally have). On the run, I changed to Gatorade at nearly every station (about 1/2 cup, depending on perceived need) and a gel every 45 minutes. Staying off the gels and Gatorade until the run helped me stomach the taste throughout the run. I had a couple of cups of cola towards the end, but did not really derive much from it. While I did have some issues with water absorption and needing to pee on the bike a lot, I had no GI problems to speak of and finished the race feeling pretty fresh as far as energy goes. In any event, this was my plan, it worked well for me, but I practiced it over and over and did not try anything new (save the cola) on race day.

Like many first timers, I was fairly nervous in the months leading up to the race, but I felt unusually calm in the days before and on race day. The weeks of preparation and the long training sessions demanded therein absolutely allowed me to meet my goal of finishing and to surpass my time projection (which was secondary to me). Before every long training session, especially during the peak period, I told myself to use the session to become an Iroman that day. Many people equate these sessions as putting money in the bank and I am certain that it was these sessions that made me an Ironman upon crossing the finish line at IMFL.

In summary, this is a great venue and a great course. Nearly half the people competing this year were first timers, like me, which only added to the excitement and enjoyment of the event that I took from this race. People of all ages, shapes and sizes lined up on the beach that morning and I felt a great deal of comfort and peace looking into the eyes of the people around me knowing that the dream we all shared, the sweat and sacrifices we all made to get to that line, and the joy and proximity of that dream that lay 140.6 miles away. This experience, from start to finish, was simply amazing and I will keep working and training to do it all over again.