Fotos © jamesmitchell.eu | Club La Santa
90 kilometers into the bike, riding in fourth place, loosing time, my mind filled with negative thoughts: I am not doing well, I’ll miss the slot to Hawaii, why I wrote in my website that today would be a great day… Shut up! I scream, stop the chain of negativity, take a deep breath, focus on my rhythm, my heartrate tells me I’m riding at a good pace … I have to do my race, the Ironman has only just begun, lot of work remains ahead…
Never, never, never have to throw the towel in an Ironman. The greatest virtue one can have in a long distance race is patience, something I’m learning day by day, race by race. You have to keep fighting and fighting even when everything is uphill, just ask female winner Catriona Morrison who spent half an hour waiting at the roadside for a mechanic to fix her bike chain…
My problems were not that extreme but I had problems from the first kilometers of bike where because of a big hole on the road I lost both my bottles with liquid food. The truth is that I did not give much importance to this fact, nothing could be done to get my bottles back so I survived on bananas and chunks of energy bars I picked up in the aid stations. My legs were feeling well, the day was perfect, no wind and cloudy sky in the first part of the bike. I tried to follow Graves and Twelsiek but their pace was superior to mine, that would result in a psychological slump I had to solve, but I had to do my race. At the Mirador de Haria I picked up my special needs bag, not without another little scare because the bottle I had left in the bag slipped from my hands and I saw it rolling through a culvert, this time I could not do without it, so I stopped, got off the bike and I rescued the bottle from the hole where it had fallen, well, this seemed not my day. I had the bag of special needs well stocked, cautious man… and after eating a candy bar in two bites and taking two big gulps of my liquid food I regained some energy and afronted the climb to Mirador del Río with renewed energy. Time differences to the front continued to rise but they stopped affecting me, total concentration, riding at my own pace, reorganizing my consciousness. Near the end of the bike I managed to pass Graves who wasn´t looking very well, that encouraged me a little bit more, it was clear that the pace the front riders had taken was excessive and they would end up paying for it. In the few miles I had left to Puerto del Carmen I did my calculations and came to the conclusion that to catch Twelsiek I would have to run a 2:45 marathon. I repeated it to myself 2:45, 2:45, 2:45…
Fotos © jamesmitchell.eu | Club La Santa
Certainly it was an ambitious goal but as soon as I put on my running shoes I went for it, running the first kilometers of the marathon as never before, I passed the 10km in 35 ‘, 1h12 for the 20 Km. High rhythms but I was comfortable. Soon I caught Bert Jammaer who had left the bike three minutes before me and the 13 minutes to Twelsiek were soon reduced to less than half, I slowed down the pace a bit, there was no need to risk more, I was back in the race and with serious choices to get the victory, the public was pushing and encouraging me a lot, lots of friends and many people that I didn´t know but that they were cheering me and giving me their support screams. Many thanks to all those who during the weekend have encouraged and supported me, without your help this would have been impossible. It was a very emotional race final, a few hours before I had almost given up all for lost and now I was facing the finish line in first place, all the effort, suffering and the work had paid off, immense joy exploded when I crossed the finish line and hugged Ruth… I don´t cry easily but this time I did. It is for sure the Ironman that more has made me cry. And that`s because in Ironman Lanzarote «Anything is possible.»
Fotos © jamesmitchell.eu | Club La Santa
