Hillary Biscay

Ironman Brasil Race Report

Posted on 03. Jun, 2010 by hillarybiscay in Blog | 6 Comments

It just so happens that two of my favorite ironman events are scheduled a week apart, on two different continents. Last year I had to miss my beloved Ironman Brasil for the first time in four years because, being based in Europe, I opted for the more convenient Ironman Lanzarote. I ended up falling in love with that race too.

This year I couldn´t imagine missing either one, so in spite of the logistical inconvenience, I put the Ironman Lanzarote-Ironman Brasil double on my calendar and decided I would make it work. To the extent that racing back-to-back ironmans can “make sense,” this one didn´t rank well on the “sensible” chart, given the geographical distance between these two locations and the relatively high degree of difficulty of part one (Ironman Lanzarote is considered by many to be the toughest ironman on the circuit and takes almost an hour more to complete than most others).

This year´s double did not begin well. I had a very disappointing race in Lanzarote; I had spent the four weeks prior trying to dig my body out of a hole I had managed to fall into in training, but despite my best efforts, it did not cooperate. I spent the whole of race day trying to get moving, to no avail. Coming out of the water first after a very average swim was the relative highlight of the day, on which I finished ninth.

With another ironman on the horizon in a week, my only strategic option was to forget about this event and trust that I would feel like a new athlete in a week´s time. It turns out that a trip halfway across the world to one of my very favorite places–Florianopolis, Brasil—was just what I needed to facilitate this reset. From the minute I arrived, I was really fired up to fight for a podium spot in Floripa again; I also was able to have a couple of training sessions during which I was actually able to get my heartrate up again, so I believed that all would be well when the gun went off.

For some reason, however, the Ironman Brasil swim always gives me trouble, and yet again this year I managed to get off to a very average start. This swim course is an M-shape with exactly 4 buoys in the water over 2.4 miles, and I always seem to end up in no-man´s land. Not surprisingly, this year my “brilliant” direct line to buoy #1 that had me swimming alone for about 800 meters somehow landed me in the third pack at the turn. And there I was.

I started the bike in third, which meant that the “big girls” (Dede Griesbauer and Tereza Macel) were well down the road. So much for my plan to try to ride with them as long as possible! In 41 ironmans, however, I have learned to be ready to activate plans B, C, and D as necessary. My goal then became to try to keep the gap between me and my imaginary targets as small as possible (I wouldn´t see them but periodically on the out-and-backs); these girls are two of the best cyclists in the sport, so while the gap would inevitably grow, the thought of them up the road kept me honest.

Because Ironman Brasil has a mass start swim (everyone—age groupers and pros—starts together), I had a few age group men to keep me company at various points during the first of the two bike loops. This meant that I had a few real cyclists to chase for much of the first ninety kilometers. The hills (four per loop) hurt pretty badly on the first loop, and as handfuls of age group men flew past me, I wondered if my shorts were cutting off the circulation in my quads. Still, I felt quite strong on the flats and into the wind, and appreciated the fact that I could push myself to the point of hearing myself breathing hard (How´s that for high tech?!) this week. After trying to “race” an ironman the previous week without finding this gear all day, you can imagine how happy I was just to be able to hurt out there.

I got to see Maiki at the turnaround at the end of the first loop—which naturally gave me a boost—and he also had some good news, which was that I was 7 minutes down. It may not sound good, but given that I was 3 minutes back out of the water, losing only 4 minutes to those girls sounded pretty good to me. My imaginary targets had been effective.

The second bike loop was all about chasing ghosts since it seemed that right about 90 kilometers, all of the age group men I had been seeing blew up. So loop two became a Pac-Man mission, during which I just tried to ride through as many dying age group men (and a few unlucky pros) as possible. I am not sure if my legs really did feel better climbing during the second loop or it just seemed like they did because guys weren´t flying past me this time. In any case, my legs didn´t let me down; I felt strong all the way to the finish, and managed to lose less time to the front on lap two than I did on the first. This put me as close as I have ever been to “the big girls” off of the bike, which made my ride on the Wilier the highlight of this race.

The Ironman Brasil run is a special one—well, the first 21 kilometers of it, to be exact. This run course includes one long, hilly half-marathon loop, with the remaining half marathon split between two shorter flat loops. These hills are not long, but they are steep; one of them may in fact take the prize for the steepest pitch I´ve experienced during an ironman run. My plan was to go for it from the start and hope that I could hang on.

Unfortunately, although my legs felt fine and I was able to push myself the way I wanted to, I was not going anywhere quickly. After cycling in third position all day and running there until kilometer 22, my friend Donna Phelan caught me there, having put a few minutes into me in just the first half of the run. Donna is one of my favorite old training partners from Team TBB and a very tough competitor; we have done countless run sessions together on the track. I figured I would just pretend it was another one of those, and try to match her pace for as long as possible.

It turned out that she had the same idea, and we ended up running shoulder to shoulder for the next twenty kilometers. At times it felt like I was setting the pace, and other times it felt like she was dragging me along and I might break at any second. But somehow we managed to stick together for nearly two full laps of the run course. At some point it became apparent that the illusion of the Sunday long run would be broken only with a sprint finish—in other words, the manifestation of one of my worst triathlon nightmares. That is, the thought of having to find a “sprint” to cap off a marathon at the end of a nine-plus-hour race ranked up there with that of missing my alarm and showing up late to the swim start.

I wasn´t sure if I would vomit on the carpet in the finish chute or otherwise lose my gels, but about fifty meters before we made the left turn down the chute, I had to go for it. Donna and I had been passed several miles earlier, so the podium was gone, but fourth sure sounded better to me than fifth. I ended up crossing the line just six seconds ahead of my friend, after a run that we will both remember for a long time. I must admit that that run and my first ironman sprint-finish were actually a really fun adventure.

I finished fourth in 9:44, and in doing so, also secured my Kona-qualifying slot for this year´s World Championships. Ironman #8 for 2010 is now on the calendar. I want to extend a big thank-you to my sponsors for their continued support: K-Swiss, PowerBar, TYR, ISM, Wilier, Zipp, FSA, and CycleOps. Next up is Ironman Coeur d`Alene in less than four weeks!

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