Inside Triathlon - The Multisport Life

Era of Iron in the Land of White Cloud: Rusted without water

This report filed - March 19, 2006
Jeff Henderson: IT Interactive Editor
At 5:14 in the morning on March 4 - race day at Ironman New Zealand - I switched off the clock radio rather than allow it to consummate a minute later. I had no need of electrical buzzers this morning, as the ferocity of the gale roaring outside my room had done a nice job of keeping me awake since 1 am. Along with 1,300 others, I had gone to bed in quiet expectation only to rise a few hours later with the baying winds.

Following the breakfast I had charted for myself two months earlier - an attempted ironman is scripted more carefully than a bank heist - I pulled on my sweats, headphones, and sandals and ventured outdoors. Along the lake road now crawling with sheltering cars I leaned into the gusts and did my best to walk on. A million white crests smashed into the cliffs below me, pitifully small orange buoys dancing on their running peaks. Green Day's "Lonely Streets" accompanied me with its ironic lyrics.

The transition area's darkness was blighted by portable lights throwing wild shadows where the enraged wind focused its might. Twitchy athletes wordlessly filled water bottles, pumped bike tires, and nervously joked with their loved ones about energy bars, portable bathrooms, anything. All waited for the announcement to come - would we swim in this?

All week the winds had swept across the North Island of New Zealand, generated by a powerful low pressure system anchored stubbornly off the eastern shore. From Wellington they traveled north, rising in intensity for three days and then, abruptly, falling silent the evening before the race. I had traveled 12,000 miles and trained intently for five months, and this last-minute calm offered hope.

Overnight that hope vanished.

I moved from a thinning transition to an expanding mass of bodies inside the Grand Marquee, a massive tent erected for the pre-race dinner, post-race awards, and body marking on race morning. Great portable heaters blasted warm air at Japanese athletes huddled within their reach. Official voices told us an announcement would be coming at 6:30 am.

6:30 came and went. At 6:45 I began to pull on my wetsuit, though it was obvious a normal race would not be occurring. The tent large enough to shelter 3,000 people rattled, shook, and heaved with the pounding winds. Fewer light-hearted jokes rose from athletes emerging from early-morning adrenaline into sobriety.

Finally, at 6:50, an announcement - there would be no swim. In that instant the race became meaningless. Hundreds of hours of preparation vanished, the weeks of nervous anticipation, the countless details of hauling specialized triathlon equipment across the world suddenly took on a futility beyond words. Further instructions directed us to return at 8:15 for word on what we would be doing. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, I removed the wetsuit and sat down.

By 8:15 the mood inside the tent had changed, from tense dread to something approaching relief and joyfulness. I believe most people could sense we would not be doing anything near a full iron-distance, even without the swim. Minutes passed with no instructions, no update on the decision-making process surely going on in dimly lit rooms and prowling vehicles across Taupo. The tent attempted to withstand its faceless aggressor.

One of the support masts, as big as a telephone pole, pulled free of its tethers and swung dangerously among the masses. Some athletes grabbed it and held steady. Another mast came free, then split from its attachments at the top of the tent and jabbed a hole in the canvas. The trusting inhabitants groaned; the wind seemed to grow stronger.

At 8:30 we were told to leave the marquee. Workmen moved to take it down before the wind could bring it down, and we shuffled to the wire-frame finish line. By this time the morning light was flooding the field, and a chipper Englishman bemused "at least it's sunny." A further twenty minutes would be spent in the brilliant sunshine and thrashing winds before we were told the fate of the morning.

We were instructed to return to the transition area for final instructions at 10:15. There would be a race, but it would be a shadow of its promised self: a duathlon of bike and run, each discipline cut in half. Pros would be sent off first, 30 seconds apart, while all 1,300 age group athletes followed at five-second intervals.

Once before I have started an iron-distance race, only to have its final challenge and ultimate reward slip from my fingers in the waning kilometers of the bike leg. Ironman New Zealand was my second chance, an intersection of time and means where redemption of a deposit paid on the summit of the Col d'Izoard would be realized.

But again I had been cheated, this time by the largest force of them all, Mother Nature. I found no anger, no blame, only despair and helplessness and a disappointment in coming a very long way for a pot of fool's gold. In the eternity that passed between 9 am and 10:15, I tried to search for larger meaning in the circumstances before me. In the end I could find none - just the ego-crushing notion that the universe holds no interest in my ability to travel an arbitrary distance in an arbitrary period of time.

We were called to our bike racks in bib order. The bikes for each rack needed to be removed simultaneously or the rack would collapse. We waited in a silent line which crawled forward in 5-second spurts. As we waited, the transition crew disassembled the racks and quickly moved them to the second transition area a kilometer down the road. Having a split transition and not having enough bike racks for both at once, the race counted on 112 miles of cycling to provide sufficient time to move them all. With a 56-mile course and athletes moving off one-by-one, the challenge was a bit more ambitious. Later I learned they succeeded by 20 minutes.

The race itself was surreal. The winds threw lighter athletes across the road and punished those who had brought disc wheels; the drama was multiplied tenfold by cars intent on overtaking a line of 1,300 athletes, one agonizing and unpredictable cyclist at a time. The wind was square at our backs to the turnaround, which led to exhilarating speeds and effortless pedaling. We were surrounded by the curious silence of moving the same speed as the air against a backdrop of bending and thrashing trees.

At the turnaround we began to pay for our sins - and every one of us was a sinner. Speeds dropped to five miles per hour and we faced a long, slight uphill punctuated by periods of steeper climbing. In the hour between learning of the race format and starting, I had neglected to give serious thought to a strategy suitable for a swim-less half-iron contested in volatile and tenacious winds; indeed, my original plan for nutrition and pacing had been crafted over months. Faced with the false invincibility of racing less than half what I had prepared for, I launched into the bike at full tilt. And due to a combination of errors - dropping a bottle of water, being handed electrolyte drink when water had been requested - I sucked down concentrated Perpetuem with enough calories for twice the race. It would catch up to me.

The run played out in opposition to the bike - headwind first, tailwind on the 10-kilometer return. This was fortuitous, as my haphazard approach to the bike began to unravel at the turnaround. By the finish I had lost 9 pounds, and I wobbled into the medical tent with alarming dehydration. I listened to athletes talk of the difficulty of the course, saying it was harder than Kona, and I was happy to be done with it all.

New Zealand is a lovely place, and a lovely race. Race organizers were confronted with circumstances no one ever wants to see, and they made the best decisions they could. I begrudge no one the decisions that were made, and refuse to second-guess with the advantages of time and increased knowledge. Fortunately life goes on without the completion of 1.2 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling, and 26.2 miles of running. My wife still loves me, my mortgage is still due the first of the month, and the corner cantina still makes amazing burritos.

Life is still good, even if I am not an Ironman.

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A week following the race Ironman North America announced that it would provide 25 spots in each of its five American Ironmans for statesiders who had started the abbreviated New Zealand event. Ironman Australia organizers, the same men and women who put on the Taupo race as well as Ironman Western Australia, announced that they would discount entries to Busselton by $100 for New Zealand participants. And Jonathan Hoskins, an independent race director of the Grand Columbian with no large cash reserves behind him, called to offer a spot in his iron-distance event in September.

These are kind and generous gestures, and suddenly the world is awash in iron offerings. But other considerations tug my shirt sleeve - the Musselman Triathlon, a race I direct in upstate NY, takes place in July, making Coeur d'Alene, Lake Placid, and Wisconsin non-candidates. I would love to sample Mr. Hoskins' event, one of the most well-run and well-respected races in the country, but September is also too close to July. And as Arizona is in a few weeks and I have been wandering around the North Island of New Zealand since March 4, the training is not in place for that one.