RobbyRicc: ITU

Showing posts with label ITU. Show all posts

Suffering is one of the options

There are a number of race pictures which lurk in the recess of my computer files. Just sitting there. Alone. Brooding. Narcissistic. With no-one to look at them, to ponder, "I wonder what he was thinking when they took that picture?"

Most of the race photos are my Facebook-happy-pictures which reflect some sort of emotion which can be slotted into a holding pen along the spectrum of my contentment. The pre-race excitement shared with friends; crossing the finish line in a state of euphoric delirium; the smile elicited from a kneeling photographer; or simply a photo reflecting the state of graceful racing. These are the sort of pictures I'd share with my Facebook friends or (both) my Twitter followers, so they could see that life was good for me, for a moment, and that it might transfer some of that happiness into their world. Endorphins trickling down through the cyber network of our social cosmos.

But then there are the real life pictures.

A bit like the reality war photographs from Life Magazine or the leech-infested swamp photographs out of National Geographic. They reveal something deeper. Because I am the person in these pictures, they trigger an emotional response within me which differ greatly to what would be seen through the goggles of an impartial bystander. These are my photographs of quiet and silent suffering. My monk-covered-in-flames moment. Not as dramatic or fiery, but at the moment when each of those were taken I was at my limit. Right on the edge. Nudging at the sinewy fabric of possibility and teetering on the brink of my own destruction.

They are not necessarily my best moment ever pictures. But because of that they are interesting. They reveal more about the moment and the athlete within them, than all the other happy snaps combined.

The picture above was taken at about the 13k mark of the Ironman South Africa Run.

The wheels had come off. My heart rate monitor was showing me that I was on a road to nowhere. My lungs were still filled with lurgy-fluid preventing me from breathing easy. And in a race with the magnitude of an Ironman, you need to breathe easy. Real easy. I was not yet spluttering. That would come later. I was sucking in oxygen though. And it was not getting to my legs. I knew it was game over. However I had chosen to ignore all the obvious signals of my defeat. I was pushing way beyond what my body, and its waterlogged lungs, would permit. "The feedback from the body is white noise" I affirmed. "Bring me my sweet glory. Or my sweet death."

As it was, my bleeding gasket blew about 90 minutes after that picture. I had started thinking about my kids and their idiot dad who was hurting himself for a race. Thoughts like that slow the body right down. They remind you that you've lost this chess game. Tilt your king to its right side. Take stock. Reload the chess pieces. Get in line. Plan for another year. Try again.

A friend of mine took the set of pictures (look left) of me at the ITU World Triathlon Championships in 2012. I was on the start of my 10k run around London's Hyde Park.

I was mad.

My tri suit was too small and my quads bubbled on the bike with way too much lactic acid in the muscles, not from lack of training, but from tight untested fabric.

I had a pack of four or five athletes on my heels. They would stay with me for about 2 more minutes and then I'd find another gear.

We were going at about 3 and a half minutes per kilometre. Which was about as fast as I could go at the time.

At about this frame on the left, a shiver of a cramp burst through my quad.

You can see the grimace appear. The body is fighting back. But the mind wants none of it.

Someone whispered "It's all in the head". And I listened.

The body would come back though. It'd be 38 mins for the 10k run. Which was about as fast as I could go at the time.

These were the bad moments in an otherwise good day.

Which brings me to the Sun City Swim pictures below. The picture on the left is the first confirmed sighting of the Cow speedo in action. The one on the right is the second confirmed sighting of the Cow speedo in action, with a passenger.

In the solo shot, my shoulders were fully loaded with what can only be explained as the same burn felt by Olympic rowers. The little guy with the green cap, must have been 11, swam with me thw hole way. As much as I fought to lose him with my Popeye-the-Sailor forearm thrusts, he stayed on my hip for the swim's duration. The vision was blurry and I could barely stand up as I exited. I was 5th old guy in that race.

And later on the same day, Emi and I swam the family race. Jake headed out ahead of the family, with Natalie and the flippered-Ben following on their noodles. Emi was rather mad and teary because the race was too far, and we had been abandoned by her siblings and precious mother. 600m's -it turns out - is really far for kids. And for dad's carrying their kids.

I propped the floating buoys under each arm and kicked for all I was worth. The further we swam the higher Emi perched herself on my neck causing me to arch my back and tilt my hips in order to kick. It must have taken us an hour to finish the swim. As hard as it was (and I would not recommend it for novice families) I couldn't help laughing. I motivated Emi from the word go, using every trick and ploy in my arsenal. I was the Tony Robbins of swimming.

But she wanted none of it. She kept calling out to the lifeguards to help her find her mommy. As though I was a pile of floating reeds onto which she had been jetissoned from a passing ship. At one stage she bawled and raged and grabbed my goggles forcing us to zig-zagged blind for a while.

I kept having to control my efforts as my breathing became ragged. The pull-buoys kept popping out. A flotilla of fellow families brought us into their fold and guided us around the course. It wasn't easy, in fact quite the contrary, but - and this is why I love that picture - it was certainly memorable. One of my most memorable daughter-dad moments.

So the point I guess I'm trying to make is that when you look back at the photos in your life, you might remember the Facebook good times, the Instagram'd ecstasies or the archived discomforts. However - and this is the crux of it - is it not both the good times and the times of suffering that help us get to the place on the road where we need to be?

On the road again,
~RobbyRicc

Cape Town ITU World Triathlon Series

"We're not into music. We're into chaos". The Sex Pistols

The water temperature off Cape Town's Victoria and Alfred Waterfront was 12 degrees (an ideal temperature at which to serve Mai Thais), and the controlling bastards halved the 1,500m swim into a measly 750. Warriors on the quayside growled at the easing of the battle ground. Screwed again by The Man. My wife's cousin, MicMac, informed me that one of his damaged ships had been leaking diesel in the harbour for weeks and was surprised that anything, let alone the wetsuit-clad swimmers, could survive those waters.

Undeterred, my support crew, the indomitable twins Keith and Steven Buhr, threw a double espresso down my throat, zipped me up into my wetsuit, put an extra swim cap under my race cap, and pointed me in the direction of the water. I was about to find out what lay in those frigid dark green waters.

The water, surprisingly, was quite pleasant. After you recovered from the initial shock of spontaneous teeth clenching and puckering up of the sphincter muscles, once contact was made with the water, the sight of a brooding Table Mountain and a thousand spectators lining the quayside made everything rather pleasant. The water simply made everything numb. Very numb.

My strategy was pretty simple: Come out with the front guys. Red-line until dry ground. Figure out the rest on the bike.

All went to plan. I was 5th out the water, and because of the cold couldn't tell if I was maxing out or not. A few of the Robben Island swim crew, stopped running as soon as they entered T1 and I exited on my bike in second place. #1 was about 30 metres up the road. "Yeeha Kimosabi" I yelled in my head and lit a few torpedoes to stay with him.

The road was fast, flat and narrow. Within the first few minutes we were enveloped by a team of killer bikers. I was out of my league, but they couldn't tell, and I hung in there. For dear life. The race was non drafting but without sufficient room for draft marshalls to even be on the course, it soon turned into a free for all.

At this stage I need to curse my Catholic upbringing. I confess I drafted, but because of the guilt I tried to pretend that I wasn't and sat off the guys by an unnecessary bike length or two. If I had switched my conscience off and just gone feral like thoroughbred killer athletes are meant to, I'd have stuck to the wheel in front of me like a pickpocket's hands on a Rolex and saved plenty of energy beans for the run. Instead I didn't. And this, alas, became an issue.

By the third lap, I was pressing the "THRUST" button on my quads but just kept seeing the red "No Fuel" sign. Fumes were lactating their way out of my quads and calves, and I could feel my muscle fibres tearing off the skin and bone. "Hold on for the run" I grimaced and made my way off the bike.

At the start of the run (at the time of the above picture), Keith shouted that I was 2 minutes off the leader. A thought occurred to me: "Two out and back loops = 4 x 2.5k segments. I need to make up 30 seconds per segment". I entered instructions into my command module: "Go as hard as possible for 1 x segment. Then reassess."

With this new idea, I switched over to energy reserves and leaned forward to Glory. Glory, it was soon apparent, had buggered off up the road. Nearing the end of the first segment, I looked at my watch as the leader ran by me in the opposite direction. I calculated I was 90 seconds behind. If I maintained this pace, and he overcooked himself, there was a chance. A really small one. But a glimmer nonetheless.

At around this time I heard the dreaded pitter-patter of feet gaining on me. Not one pair of feet, but two. My podium was under attack! I checked my reserves, became aware of a flashing red light and noted my status quo change from "hunter" to "hunted". The first runner (let's call him #2) went by me and immediately put a few good metres into me. Drat! The next runner took his time and pulled up alongside me. My pace had increased significantly to try hold off his killer thrust. Not having the energy to stay ahead of him, he finally pulled up alongside me. I had a quick glance and saw his cool, steely misdemeanor. Wretched international athletes I cursed in my head.

#3:- "Hey Rob, how's it going?"

I quickly checked my face recognition archives. It dawned on me that this was Terry Flack, a fellow age group triathlete from the South African team with whom I had raced in the 2013 London World Champs.

RR:- "Terry!" I heaved. "Howsit. You're styling my boy."

TF:- "The guy with the yellow shoes up the road is in second. If we work together, we could catch him."

I smiled, nodded and attached my imaginary carabiner to Terry's left hip. Let's go get that Glory I thought.

Terry, a chivalrous gentleman of an athlete if there ever was one, helped me through the pain-filled toffee and treacle, motivating and urging me to maintain my form and will to live which were disintegrating. We clawed back a few seconds from #2 every twenty metres. As I faltered, Terry would say something like "I'll lead for the next bit", and on we would go. #2 with the yellow shoes was coming back to us, just barely. He was about 15 metres away from us. With a few k's to go, I mentioned I was on vapours and for Terry to go get him.

Thankfully the rest of the run has since been removed from my memory storage.

The results tell us that:

#1 finished in 1.54 flat.
#2 (yellow shoes) finished in 1.56.29.
Terry (#3) was 3 seconds back in 1.56.32.
4th place was mine in 1.56.46.

It occurred to me, as I sat nursing my singed quads and julienned calves, that it was a good race. Well fought. A bit messy. But all my reserves had been depleted. There were no regrets. As I sat speaking to Terry after the race about life, racing and the road, it occurred to me that both "gory" and "story" rhyme with "Glory".

It would not be right for me to sign off without a quick thanks to my training Squad; my legendary support crew - The Blur brothers; and to Keeto for having built an engine and chassis for our best season to date.

"Call me the Breeze,I keep blowin' down the road...." Lynyrd Skynyrd
~RobbyRicc

War of the Worlds - The ITU London Grand Final Triathlon

The 2nd dude behind me was the overall winner of the race

Before heading into this race report, it would be inappropriate to not set the scene.

I’m going to say it: London is not an ideal location to host a world championship triathlon for 4,000 age groupers. There – see what I just did – I said it. The weather is tempestuous, the traffic is unruly and the beer is tepid. Moreover, the English can be sticklers for rules. Rules imposed on a jumble of nationalities with temperamental personalities. Nationalities with differing ethical and moral exactitudes. I’m not referring to the race rules, just the regular rules which the lanyard-collared organisers enforced, with the assistance of their pens and clipboards, with the precision of a tightrope walker nursing a bout of anal retention.

It was the application of these Kafka regulations that resulted in Keith (The Blur) and I, fuelled on adrenaline and hot coffee, doing 40 miles per hour over Putney Bridge racing towards the race start in Hyde Park. The cold air snapped at our legs and burnt our squinting eyes which wept quietly beneath our helmets. I tightened my grip on the shivering handle bars, narrowing my shoulders to hide from the oncoming wind. The wheels hit every bump with the elegance of a hippo ice-skating over frozen pebbles.

The rain-stained roads were black and empty. I could taste London’s sweet smell with its neon sizzled sidewalks, fried onions and Starbucks coffee. Keith’s fingers released from around my waist and he put them underneath his butt-cheeks. “It’s bloody cold! I should have worn gloves,” he shouted into my helmet. It was just gone 5am, and we had borrowed the only mode of transport we could get our hands on at that time of the morning – my mate Mich’s Vespa scooter.

The organisers had agreed that all bike prep and run prep (placing of helmet, checking tyre pressure, mounting bike computers, setting up bike shoes and elastics, stowing of food & bottles, setting up run shoes, etc) be concluded, and the transition area vacated, by 6.30am. I should say that last bit again and massage the emphasis .... vacated, by 6.30am!

At this stage I‘d like to digress into a tirade of soliloquy, bear with me:

My age group race started at 9.40am. Setting aside the fact that we’d be freezing our nuts off for 3 hours waiting for the start of the race, the key issue was that public transport, on which we were heavily reliant and fell within our budget, did not commence until 7am on race day. We had run out of options. No tube, no train, no direct night buses, no reasonably priced taxis, no nada. And our accommodation was an hour from Hyde Park. If I was perturbed, you can imagine how Keith, straddled with a firecracker of a temper, unleashed his thoughts on any ITU official who cared to listen.

Bill Shakespeare would have paraphrased accordingly:

To taxi, or not to taxi, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to pucker up and pay the faire
suffering the slings and arrows of the taxi driver’s fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles provided by Mich’s two wheeled chariot,
And by opposing end them: to ride early or to sleep in an extra hour, or so,
and by a sleep, to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That tapering flesh is heir to?

To ride, nay to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to dream; Aye, there's the rub,
To grab a hold of that line between speed and chaos,
Wrestling it to the ground like a demon cobra,
For in that extra three and ten score minutes of sleep, what dreams may come,
As ye ride ye two wheeled apparition,
ride it like a skeleton horse through the gates of hell,
and then ye win, forsooth, ye win.
And ye don't win for anybody else.
Ye win for ye, ye know why? Because a man takes what he wants.
Before we shuffle off this mortal coil all alike, before we give pause,
A man takes it all.
And ye be a man, be ye not?
Be ye not?

Hence the scooter.

TT'ing through Wellington Arch.
Perched atop the arch is The Quadriga.
It ios Europe's largest bronze sculpture and depicts
the angel of peace descending on the chariot of war.

Fired up and saying howsit to my London friends.

THE RACE

SWIM

The water temperature dropped below 16 degrees and the 1,500m swim was halved. Immediately my race position dropped 40 places. My advantage is the swim. It allows me enough time to get to the pointy end of the race before the strong cyclist onslaught. They usually reach me at about 20 to 30 k’s into the ride, dented from the swim and their hammering of the bike pedals. At that stage their speed tends to settle and I can hang with them. A 750m swim, unfortunately for me, would not have the same affect. This distance change had a big impact on my race. Anyhow, everyone races the same course so I didn’t worry too much about it.

I loved the swim. I’m able to generate considerable effort in the water so I didn’t feel the cold. I was one of the first guys away from the pontoon and managed to hold onto the first group, exiting in the top few guys. This is a new experience for me leading me to smile broadly as I ran through T1 to my bike. I attribute my recent swim improvements to working on an increased stroke rate and concentrated exhaling to relax the body.

BIKE

The riders came past me with a ferocity felt only by homeless pedestrians from the wake of passing long-haul trucks. At one stage I was doing 42kph along the flat and fast Thames, and riders came by me as though they were on travelators. It was impressive and frightening at the same time. My quads were in the red zone for so long that I doubted their ability to get me through the run.

One thing about the ride though: it has to be one of the most impressive historically charged courses I have ever done. We rode around Hyde Park, through the Wellington Arch, past Buckingham Palace, past the three parks (Hyde, Green and St James), past Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, under Big Ben, along the Thames, to the Tower of London, around Trafalgar Square and down the Mall. An excuse I am working on for such a slow bike time is that my highly refined cultural tastes were so aroused by the iconic course that I forgot I was in a world championship race.

RUN

I opted for the approach of hitting the road at pace and holding on. Thankfully the screaming crowds and run legs were there waiting for me and I was able to push. Seeing old friends (including those from my first triathlon club, SAUK) and Jake and Natalie on each loop was an incredibly powerful stimulant. The run was three loops and on the start of the second loop, Roger Oakley, the South African team manager, called to me through the cacophony of the crowd, “It’s all in the head”. I thought for a split second about that, concurred, and pushed even harder. I was on the limit for the rest of the run.

High-fiving Jake on the last bridge before the turn to the finish line was one of my proudest moments. I hope that one day when he’s old and grey he remembers his dad giving it horns for his country over London’s Serpentine in pursuit of age group glory.

My final position was 54th out of 163 athletes with a time of 2h00m40s. The winner did a 1h50m21s.

My splits were:

• Swim 10m46s (13th fastest)

• Bike 1h04m37s (63rd fastest)

• Run 38m50s (39th fastest)