And so a month plus have since passed and I finally had time to post about my latest achievement.. that is a completion of an IRONMAN!! (yay) !
It started 1 year ago in 2012 when I login the ironman website http://www.ironman.com to register for my 1st ever Ironman race. After that morning of registration, it was just all about psyching myself and training hard everyday! Hell yes, I had to spend most of my time training, either gyming, running, swimming, biking and the whole cycle keeps going on and on for 1 year till D-day!
Sometimes I felt so tired from the work in the daytime but training have to go on! So I had to be very determined and stay self-discipline to keep doing what I had to do. I do not wana DNF(did not finish) since the registration fee isn’t cheap!! I remembered it was a whooping AUD745? I believed so..
So ya, for the whole of 2013, I trained everyday and towards the last 3 months to D-day, I picked up momentum in my training and go for long mileage bike rides with my friends. I gymed during lunch hours and then go for a run / swim after work. Almost everyday, I have my dinner close to 9pm.
When the day finally arrived for me to depart to Perth on 5th Dec, I was getting nervous and yet looking forward to the moment when I finish the race. Here we are, all excited at the airport and raring to go.. (as if) haha
And we arrived at Perth in the morning, all tired from the red-eye flight, I couldn’t sleep well on plane and so was quite tired.. the moment I arrived Perth, I had to get myself a cuppa to sooth those tired nerves. We hopped on to our transport, loaded up our bike boxes and are on our way to Busselton!
That’s me!
After about 2 hours, we finally arrived in Busselton village. The place where our Ironman race is to take place. It was a quiet nice town, with nice little quaint shops by the road side. Pretty peaceful too. This is our Chalet which we booked for the next 6 days. Very decent isn’t it, it has 2 rooms, one with 4 bunk beds and another one with a queen sized bed, a kitchenette, living room and a bathroom. Just nice for 5 of us.
As soon as we settled down, we set up our bikes (an arduous process!) just to ensure everything works fine. That’s the problem with traveling with bikes for triathlons, the bike is our biggest headache, because if anything happens to it during flight, its game over. Meaning no need to race anymore. So thankfully all our bikes are all set up and fine after fixing them up! We lined up all our shoes, boy were there many pairs! 1 person with 2 pairs of shoes! Bike shoes, running shoes and slippers! so 5 persons with 10 pairs! haha.
After settling down, it was time to head down to Signal Park to pick up our race expo stuffs and some IM shopping! hehe. We managed to walk there as it was probably about 1km or so.. it was nice walking except for the irritating houseflies buzzing around us constantly!!!
We reached Signal Park and collected our race stuffs and did some shopping too. I bought like quite a few tees, a hoodie, some stickers, some tri gears, a goggle, ya quite a lot right. But I need some shopping to calm me down haha. And besides, these gears are really nice and you don’t get them anywhere in Singapore! So below is a pic of me looking happy with my stash!
My IM race pack consists of run bag, bike bag,street gear bag, bibs, tags and pre & post cargo dinner tags and a Gatorade bottle (not inside the pic)
And then we headed out to Woolsworth after Signal park to get some groceries, need to plan what to cook and what to eat haha. And I think we bought a little too much because looked at those groceries below! It looks as if we are here to stay for a month!
Anyway, we headed back to our Chalet as the night starts to get colder and rested for the day. It was a long day today.. Lights off after dinner!
Day 2 of Busselton – We woke up around 530am (it was already quite bright then) and ate some breakfast before heading out for our wetsuit practise swim.. brrr and boy was it freaking cold! I shivered throughout and I could feel the coldness biting into my skin as I stepped into the cold cold water!!! With my tri-suit, lycra suit and my wetsuit, I’m still feeling cold! Gosh, its really freezing.. here we are looking all cold in the water.. one of our other friend isn’t in the pic as he has gone for his swim, he wasn’t quite intimidated by the cold. haha. We tried to swim a bit and get used to the water before heading back to Chalet for a trial test bike ride. Again, that’s the problem with doing Triathlons, you need to test the water, you need to test the bike but you don’t need to test the run though haha. Or at least not us. We just wana ensure that our bikes are in perfect working condition before D-day. After testing our bikes, it was time to head back again to our Chalet for home cooked lunch by one of our friend. He’s a good cook 😛
We spent the night packing our stuffs as we have to check in all essentials tomorrow including our bikes..I was trying hard to NOT forget what to pack! haha. That’s another problem with doing an IM, you cannot afford to forget your essentials as every bit seems important. so after cracking our heads, discussing what to bring and what not, we finally packed our stuffs into our individual bags. BTW, the red bags mean Run (Red), blue bags means Bike. Cool isn’t it. And another one is Black which isn’t in the picture, that is the street gear bag where you can check in on D-day itself with your jacket, slippers, whatever stuffs blah blah..
Day 3 of Busselton – We were supposed to wake up early for another wetsuit swim but all overslept and so we ended up not going.. Except to check in our bikes & stuffs at the race site, so we loaded up our bikes on a truck which the Chalet owner so kindly lend us. Below is me after checking in my bike.. 😀
Bib #731 is me 🙂
Say Byebye to my bike and my stuffs as we depart back to chalet. Tommorow is D-DAY! Oh my God, this is it, isn’t it. Its like I couldn’t believe it and can’t wait to get it over with either, but yet, feeling nervous and scare. And I kept recollecting what did I miss out to check in at the transition area, I was so afraid I would forget something… energy bars checked, gummies checked, salt tablet checked, nutrition checked, race bib checked, helmet checked, bike shoes checked… the list just goes on and on.
We had our early dinner at a nearby pizza place and headed back to rest for the night. As we needed to wake up at 3am tomorrow, all our nerves are fried. we are worried, excited and having mixed emotions.. errr..
D-DAY! (Dec 8th) – Yep, this is it! THIS IS IT! This morning we all woke up at 3am, groggy and frogged eyes… omg, its like the moment I have been waiting for the moment to be ‘certified’ … We arrived at the transition area by 515am and do our final check before the race flags off at 545am. Everything seems fine ok.. I should be ready – telling self. With a worried mind, we walked to the transition area to check in our street gear bags and I nearly forgot to check in my slippers, talking about nervousness huh. It is time for the race to start, it is time finally after a year of training, to do what I need to do, pace well and keep going..
Swim – 3.8km
The horn sound without much notice and everyone just starts to swim, I was like oh the race has started? Ok. I shall start to swim now then. And I swam like no tomorrow. I was so damn worried that there will be sharks.. and I kept looking down at the sea bed to see if there are any. (not that I hope to see any) hahah
The 3.8km seems like an eternity! Never ending.. I switched between front crawl and breast-stroke (towards the end) and finally I hit shore! Was I relieved!! I remembered the commentor calling my name as I walked pass the crowd, I was a bit giddy from the horizontal swim, so couldn’t walk straightly for awhile. haha. Leg 1 of the race completed!! woots!
The long jetty swim above, we had to loop 1 round and back.
Bike – 180km
Hell yes, this is the hardest part out of the 3 leg. 180km of bike, no joke man! Its what I feared most because anything could happen on the bike, either the bike fail or you fail.. and 180km will hurt yr bums like shit! Thank God I did a lot of mileage rides before this race to prep my bums for such a long long long ride… and I wore a cycling shorts over my tri shorts for double protection. We had to do 3 loops of the bike course, per loop 60km, my 1st loop was pretty ok but because I started my bike quite late, most people are already ahead of me. No worries, Rach I told myself. So long as I pace well, I can do this. So I was determined to complete my bike no matter what it takes, unless my bike fails me which is fated, else I need to keep pedaling non stop.
Loop 2 was hard! And I meant real hard! The head wind + the cold doesn’t help. Plus I had blurred vision throughout my ride, it must be the sunblock or moisturiser oil that got into my eyes when I rubbed them after the swim, so I can hardly see clearly except for blur visions.. I seriously never felt so low before.. I cried as I kept cycling, I was praying that this suffering would end soon, and by praying I could divert my attention to God and not focus on the pain. The wind was constantly blowing at my face in all directions, I don’t know how to go against it. My only consolation is that I have another final loop to go and thats it. So I gritted my teeth and finally, finally! I reached the bike stop line after 3 loops of cycle! I remembered the time was 330pm. God, I have been cycling non-stop for 7 and a half hours.. bloody hell. I was so so glad that I made it for the bike! Leg 2 completed! hurray!!! And all this while, I was holding on my pee, as I didn’t want to stop while biking.. though I did 1 stop at a water point to refill my bottle and that’s it. I had only 3 gels, 1 energy bar & 4 salt tablets for the entire bike leg.
Run – 42.2km
I have absolutely no fear for this leg at all, because running has always been my strongest. Not that I’m a fast runner but anything to do with running, I’m fine. I’m not daunted by its distance..Running is the easiest out of the 3 leg because if you can’t run, you brisk walk! Anyway because of my blurry vision, I couldn’t really make out what is around me etc, I could only see visions of people, monuments etc. And at the transition area before I started to run, I bumped into some friends and we encouraged each other to keep going and not stop.. its great to have friends who do the same race as you so you won’t feel so lonely too.
We had to do 4 loops of the run, I figured I should be able to complete my run in 5hr30mins? The moment I started running, I was looking for a toilet. I really needed to pee! Not to worry, there are plenty along the run route, phew. (a Relief!) But seriously my body felt so tired after all the swim and bike, that I started to walk after 21km, yes, the 1st 21km I was running by myself until the next half when I couldn’t run anymore and so I walked as fast as I could with a friend of mine. I was glad to have her around as my blurry vision is almost killing me.. I couldn’t see shit. Only silhouette of people and lights.. and a few times I nearly hit the cones on the road.. 😦
As the night falls, the temperatures dropped and I got cold, so cold that I couldn’t stand it, thank God I had my windbreaker on and that saved me, but even then it was still cold. The wind is biting and I am so fatigued! I kept telling myself, don’t give up, you have come this far, you cannot stop now. Just keep pushing, Rachel. By the end of 3 loops, I could almost taste victory, every time I passed by the finish line, I hear the commentor announcing some people that they are an ironman and I was wishing it was me there. I could have continued running at some point but I didn’t want to, and timing was secondary to me. I still have my final loop of run to go, and so my friend & I, we pushed on, walked as fast as we could, run a little bit, and we finally got our 4th loop of band, we are that close to the finish line, yes, that close! Just 150m to go to the finish line, I started to adjust my hair, my gears, my visor because I wanted a good finishing pic of myself. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, as I crossed the finished line, I hi-fived all the spectators, I couldn’t contain my excitement. It was like being a young kid again in a candy store. There were so much cheers around me despite my blur vision, I knew these spectators are waiting for me, for us, to cheer and congratulate us!
I hear those words finally after what seems like an eternity
– Rachel Lee, YOU ARE AN IRONMAN!!!!!
And that’s me looking so super happy at the finish line!! I bought the cycle pic of myself for keepsake remembrance, looking quite exhausted then.
I am finally a qualified IRON(WO)MAN! Now I can brag for the rest of my life and because I always told myself that I will do a Tattoo after completing one – I went to ink for remembrance.. 😀 so I can tell those tales to my grandchildren in future.
So for those of you out there, who wants to complete an Ironman, Nothing is Impossible;D
I dedicate this race to my late mom and my granny. From them, I seek strength xoxo
pinkypeas 