Until the flying monkeys attacked! 

 

Twelve months ago my friend (and client) Lars sat in line and signed me up for Ironman Florida.  At the time I was really excited by the prospect of doing this race again as I had just finished racing in Kona and knew that I still had a great performance still left in me for the following year on a course that is more ‘my cup of tea.’  In other words…….Flat.

 

I spent the winter training hard for my spring races since I had decided that I would work on my speed versus all the long crap that you have to do for an IM event.  I had so much fun racing this past spring and summer that it was a bummer to have to switch gears and start doing all the long rides, triple brick workouts, and boring swim workouts that would be necessary to get me through the race in November.  All whining aside, other than a slight setback with my Achilles tendon the training season went very well.   And then I was in Florida.

 

With friends and family in tow it was to be a new experience for me this year.  In the past it has been just me and my husband going to these events (Max went to Hawaii with us one year), but to have my daughter, her boyfriend, my mother-in-law, and several friends who also made the trip would be there was just so great!  But back to the race.

 

When it comes to ‘game’ week I generally don’t think about the race much.  I have done the training, done my research, and am just about ready to go.  I go into what some of my friends call ‘Debi’s World’......

 

It's Debi’s World, it's Debi’s World
It's party time, it's excellent
It's Debi’s World, it's Debi’s World
It's party time, it's excellent

 

I know that I am going to have an excellent race, the weather will be fantastic, and I won’t do anything stupid.  Remember, this is ‘Debi’s World’ and it could be 90 degrees out, the wind might be blowing at 50 knots, and the seas may be heavy, but it will be EXCELLENT!

 

In this case it was going to be excellent.  The winds had died down, the Gulf of Mexico was flat, and the temperatures were going to be EXCELLENT!

 

I magically arrive at the race in the morning by my driver Garth (aka Jack), get body marked by my most excellent (am I mixing movie metaphors now?) friend Sherry (aka Sheila on bad training days), get my wetsuit on, and it’s time to go play in the water.  I am relaxed.  I am ready.  I will have a great race.  I will be smooth at the start, strong in the middle, and fast at the finish.  It’s Party Time!

 

There were 2268 other nut-jobs also there to join in on the fun.  I remembered starting this race three years ago, looking down the beach about 200 yards to the west and just seeing a wall of black rubber coated bodies.  It is an impressive sight to behold.  Probably even more so when you witness the start of this pseudo-fish-frenzy of the first 800 meters of this swim.  Being one of the ‘fish’ in the sea is also an incredible experience.  One you will never experience except in another mass start Ironman swim.

 

Pretend that you are waiting in front of Wal-Mart, and there are ten free ‘X-Box’ games, but only ten of the 500 people lined up will get one.  Open only two of the doors and see what happens.  That’s an Ironman swim.

 

This year the first 800 meters was basically pretty normal.  People squeezing you from both sides,  people kicking (why do they kick with a wetsuit on in the first part of the race?  Don’t they know it tires you out faster?), and some lousy-ass strokes going on.  I get to the first turn buoy knowing that it’s going to be a ‘Kitchen-Aid Mixer’ session. 

 

This is when the first ‘Flying Monkey’ attacked (you were wondering how I was going to use this weren’t you?) – some idiot does a breaststroke kick right into my eye.  It was good that I had decided a week before to get new goggles and NOT wear my Swedish version with no gasket protection.  If I had been wearing those goggles I would have been out for the day.  So injury number one was incurred early in the race (nose/eye area bruised slightly), and goggles were knocked off face (but not off head).  I make a vow to avoid this guy which was easy as he was the only idiot with a multi colored wetsuit around me, and doing the breaststroke kick routinely.

 

Things continue with more swimming, more people swimming on top of me, into me, and generally just normal mass chaos.  Do these people think we are in a sprint race?

 

We get to the finish of the first lap of the swim, climb out of the water, and run around the beach singing ‘Kumbaya’….well maybe not that, but some of the guys were walking really slow.  You THINK they might have worked it a bit too hard that first lap?  I jogged past some of them, and it was back in the water for the second round of fun and games.

 

I’m swimming along, with lots of open water around me at this point when some guy starts swimming next to me with some really bad stroke.  He hits my (basically punches) hand as his left hand enters the water, and my right arm is in the extended position.  Ouch.  I continue to watch this guy swim next to me thinking that I need to get away from him when I turn to get a breath and he lands a punch in my face.  I have never been punched before, but now I know how it feels.  I quickly sit up in the water in shock and pain as I watch the ‘Flying Monkey’ swim onward.  A kayaker is right next to me at this point, and I say to him that ‘That guy has a horrible stroke!’  He smiles at me and says, ‘You’re not kidding me.’ 

 

My cheek hurts, and it feels like he has broken skin, but I’m in the middle of a race, I’m alive, I can breath, and the rest of me is more than fine so I just put my head in the water JFS (Just Freaking Swim).  I quickly get past this fool and continue with my swim.  Rest of the swim was pretty uneventful and easy. 

 

Swim time:  62 minutes and some change (same as 3 years ago)

 

Get out of water and go to the wetsuit strippers.  Personally I could do without this service as I am much faster doing it on my own, but what the heck…. if someone offers me a free service I generally just go with the flow.  I stand up with my wetsuit ready to run when some other athlete drops down right in front of me to get his suit stripped.  I almost landed right in his face.  We smiled at each other as I get up off my hands and knees (his face inches from mine) and I get up and jog to T-1.  Disaster (for the other guy) avoided!

 

Get on the bike, and start to pedal.  112 miles.  Weather is great, roads are great, and it’s fun to be out here.  And I pedal some more.  The thought occurs to me that this would be a really boring bike course if it weren’t for all the other cyclists on the road in front of me and behind me.  It’s Way Cool.  Ten miles, 20 miles, 30 miles…..still pedaling.  I start to sing in my head ‘I feel Good, I knew that I would’ and keep pedaling.  Riders pass me, I say hello,  or make comment to make others  smile as I ride past them. 

 

Before I know it we are at the special needs point (about mile 50) and I pick up my nutritional stuff, and I’m off and riding within seconds.  We turn right onto Route 231 (a busy road) when this guy in a red and white aero helmet, the rest of his outfit matching right down to his bike, and is then made complete with the fashion statement of 2007….the must-have ‘compression’ knee-high socks.  But are they really socks if they only go to your ankles?  Anyway, as he passes me I say to him:

 

“You’re so color coordinated!”  He says, “Vat is it you say? I’m German, and my English is not so good” (say it in ‘Arnold-Speak’ and you get the picture).  Instead of trying to explain it to him I just give him a big smile and tell him “You look GREAT!”  He give me this huge grin and says “I feel GREAT!  It is my first Ironman!”  I have to put the exclamation points in here because he was truly ecstatic about doing this race.  I later saw Klaus running great on the course.

 

It is here that I start to truly appreciate how my body is able to continue to pedal at the same cadence, my heart rate stays steady, and how the human machine can do what it was trained to do without a lot of effort.  And I was still going fast.  Up to this point I had been riding as fast as my last few half iron distance races, but with less effort.  A lot of this had to do with the course, but I knew the rest I could chalk up to great training, great coaching (Thanks Graham!), and a great attitude.

 

I continue to pedal.  I see draft packs, I see people I know in them, but it doesn’t bother me because I know that what they do will not affect me in the slightest.  It was up to them to justify their cheating to themselves.  I kept it honest, and I kept it fun.  And I was still riding faster than I had ever done in an IM event.

 

Mile 100 comes by, and I’ve just set a PR.  Do I slow down?  Nope.  I can smell the finish of the bike, and I still feel great.  In hindsight though  I wish I would have backed it off a notch the last 20 miles.  It would have changed the outcome of the race a bit, and probably cost me about 10 minutes on the run, but you know when you make a decision you have to live with it.  It’s all about choices.

 

The good news is that I was still in ‘Debi’s World’, and ready to run!

 

Bike time:  5:39

 

I get out of transition quickly with just a short break in the port-john, and start to jog out of transition.  It was time for the fun and games to begin.

 

I see friends cheering me the first half mile, and then I get a lot of people yelling out ‘Go Debi’….I keep turning my head to see if I recognize who is yelling my name out, only to finally realize (dope-slap on the head) that my race number has my name on it.  Stupid idea in my opinion.  Should have worn the race number with my last name on it instead.  That way I would have known who truly knows me by how they tried to pronounce my last name.  Since this wasn’t an option this late in the game I just took my race number, and folded it up around the race belt so that no one could see my name (which also means I probably won’t have any ‘official’ run photos from the race, and hell if I’m going to search through their ‘who are these people’ files with my dial-up connection).

 

For those of you who are initiated in the art form of running a marathon after getting off the bike, here is what you see in an non-championship Ironman race:

 

A lot of people walking.   A lot of cups, sponges, and trash in general.  A lot of people walking.  Really interesting spectators like the woman who was playing the accordion during the entire race (she did have a break one time I passed her corner, and she had a stand in who was just learning how to play).  A lot of walking.  Then there were the women who were dressed in their ‘prostitute’ Halloween costumes at the Beer Station.  Some more walking.  Then there was ‘Batman’ – I swear to God that a guy ran the entire thing in his Batman costume.  People talking as they were walking.  I could have sworn that this was a race.

 

Either way I went through the first half of the race feeling like someone had stomped on my feet, and I had no energy in my legs.  I lost that ‘Giddy-Up’ feeling on the bike course.  This is where I just started to think in terms of ‘Relentless Forward Progress.’  But I was running the whole thing.  Last year at Kona I spent a lot of time walking the first 10 miles.  This year was much better.  Debi’s World.

 

Once I finished up the first lap (and saw Sherry and Beth with their salted Margarita glasses in hand…those b!tches) it was time for round two.  I knew I had to change tactics to be faster the second half of the race so I started out by taking a couple of electrolyte caps.  This quickly helped to change how I felt, and then I was running comfortably from aid station to aid station.  Coke?  Gatorade?  Gels?  Pretzels?  Watermelon?  Banana?   Water?  The choices were amazing, but I just stuck with water and an occasional sip of Gatorade or coke depending on how I felt. 

 

The good news?  I’m still running.  I pass by one of my female competitors who I know from several races in the past.  She complained about the drafting penalty that she got (which she deserved), and I just kept running.  JFR.  Just Freaking Run.

 

At mile 19, on the road that never ends,  I catch up to my friend Liz Schieber.  She had a great swim and ride that day (58 min, and 5:30 bike), and she promptly started to run with me.  Before I know it she’s starting to make me run faster than I had been when I caught her.  We’d stop at aid stations together to get our choice of poison, and off we would go again running stride for stride.  This was the best part of the race.  How often do you get to run with a friend in the later stages of a race?  We would get to an aid station, I would tell her let’s slow down a bit, and before I knew it she would be pushing the pace again.  I bet she tells people that I picked it up…..but it was really her! 

 

I start to think it would be great to cross the finish line with her, as that would be a picture I would actually buy.  Unfortunately I lost her at the mile 24 aid station as her IT Band was giving her issues, and she didn’t want it to totally lock her knees up.  Either way she had a great race (big PR), and crossed two minutes after me.

 

As I approach the last two miles I don’t stop at the aid stations.  I have all the stuff in my system I need and I just want to get this race over with as soon as possible.  I have several thoughts in my head going on this time.

 

1.        It is my last Ironman event I will do in the States, and maybe forever.  I’ve done five of them, and this is probably about as much as my body can take.  But I’m very happy with my race.

2.       That people who actually do the double IM events are truly crazy.  I just can’t see abusing my body to this point twice over. 

3.       The race doesn’t excite me as much as it used to. 

4.       The Ironman Addiction is broken.  I will no longer have to go to IMA(nonymous) meetings again.  I will save myself a fortune.

 

I cross the finish line with a smile on my face.  Why?  Because I’m done, but also because I had a great race.  I ran the entire thing (with the exception of the aid station breaks), I qualified for Boston (again), and I accomplished my goals for this year.

 

But mostly because I had my family and friends there.  They truly did make it special for me.  Having my daughter at my race was the best.  Having my friends, and most of my family there made it that much more special. 

 

Run time:  4:00 and some change.

Total time:  10:51

Place – second 45-49 women.

 

For those of you in the know, I did qualify for the World Championships again, but I didn’t take the slot.  I have bigger fish to fry than do Kona again (plus that race is hard as hell, and not fun at all).  And for me?  It ‘s all about FUN!

 

Debi Bernardes

 

PS.  Special thanks go to the following people for making this possible:

1.       My husband Jack who trains with me, but refuses to pay 475.00 to say he did an IM.  He’s an animal.

2.       My kids who support me no matter what crazy things I do.

3.       Shelley Kovacs my training partner on the bike and some of the brick workouts….aka the ‘Tick’

4.       Sherry Dowdy who keeps me laughing by coming up with new slogans for me.  From ‘Debi’s World’ to ‘Debimademedoit.com’ and other pokes at my persistent optimistic attitude.

5.       Ruth Olson, Betsy Butler and Irene Ultee who keep me feeling good about myself with their support, and they train with me when needed.

6.       All my clients who’s support is so wonderful you can never know how much it means to me!

7.       And lastly my coach Graham Wilson who keeps me laughing, pushing me harder than ever, and not putting up with my whining.  I’ve had some great coaches in my life and he is one of them (Mike Plumb also has a huge role for helping to get to this level).

 

Oh….the whole flying monkey thing?  I saw it on the t-shirt of some teenage kid in an elevator in Florida and thought it summed up the race.  Because since this was basically an almost perfect race there weren’t as many wacky things to write about.  Don’t you hate perfect races?  They make the most boring stories.

 

PSS.  Liz Shieber, Lars Dahl, and Linae Boehme-Terrana had the races of their lives on this day with me.  I am so proud of you guys!!!!!