by Tom A.

Every race teaches you something. Sometimes it’s a lesson about nutrition, or pacing, or what your body does in the heat. Ironman Wisconsin taught me that the workouts I was the most frustrated with this summer were the ones that actually got me to the finish line.

There were sessions on my plan this year that I finished and logged feeling like I had blown it. Typically this was a long run on the weekend when we had horrible heat and humidity. I would end up missing my paces but Coach Joe said keep pushing through and get the miles in even if it’s walking. At the time it read like my fitness just wasn’t there. What I didn’t understand is that those workouts weren’t on the calendar to test my fitness. They were there to teach me what to do when a day goes sideways, and you can’t practice that on a good day because on a good day you never need it.

The first eight hours of the Ironman were the easy part. My swim was great and honestly the best I’ve ever felt in the water. Coming home along the Terrace on both laps I hit that glide you spend all winter chasing in the pool. The bike was a long section of the day and mostly went to plan. My legs woke up somewhere around mile 60 and I spent the last fifty passing people without really trying to. You don’t feel that good at mile 100 of an Ironman bike and get to skip the reckoning though. You just get to schedule it.

Mine showed up right at the mile 7 sign on the run. Very quickly and a bit suddenly I lost the feeling on the outside of both of my hands. I’ve had something similar happen in a past marathon but way later in the race, so it got my attention. I had been running a bit ahead of my planned pace but it felt easy. This felt like my body letting me know it had a different opinion.

Then I realized I had missed a gel that I was supposed to take. I took it on a walk break and my stomach, which had been great all day, immediately said no. I tried a little Coke at the next aid station just for the sugar and my mouth didn’t want that either. So now I’ve got no feeling in my hands, nothing I can safely eat, and eighteen miles to go.

Miles 8 through 11 were a walk-run. Not gonna lie, it sucked. But it also felt oddly familiar, because it had almost exactly the feeling of those long runs that I complained about during the summer. Yes the heat and humidity were not there but how my body felt was starting to turn in that direction.

So I did the things those workouts taught me. Stop trying to fix everything at once. Drop the pace to something sustainable instead of something impressive. Get in whatever the stomach will take even if it isn’t the plan, which meant gels were done for the day and it was bananas and grapes at aid stations from there on. Walk the aid stations on purpose and dump water on my head at the end of every one. Then pick the next thing that’s close enough to actually get to, and go get that one segment. None of it is clever. All of it I learned on days I wrote off as failed workouts.

I was able to get to the halfway mark, get my socks and shoes changed, and head back out for the final 13 miles. Coming back through downtown Coach Joe asked if I knew where I was time-wise and told me all I had to do was same split the back half of the run to hit my goal time. That reframed the whole rest of the run for me. After that it was all heart, I felt like I was all over the place but it kept moving and getting one step closer to the finish line.

Training is Learning

If you’re in a build for right now and you just had one of these workouts that didn’t go to plan, log it and trust it. Sometimes the heat gets to you or you go in tired and finish nowhere near the paces on the page. That session isn’t a bad day, it’s the instructions you’re going to need when things go sideways in your race.

The good days gave me the fitness to get to the start line in Madison. The days I thought I failed are what got me to the finish line.