Ironman Accomplished!!

Sooo, how was your race?!

Claire's incredibly short version is: 

The swim: so much scarier than I expected.  I was run over, kicked, and hit in the nose.  Two laps, so glad when it was over, finished in 1:15.

The bike: Loved all 112 miles. Quite hilly, lots of support from our friends, finished in 7:10.

The run: So painful, so difficult, much hillier than expected.  Cried multiple times.  Walked many miles.  Finished in 4:50. 

Finishing time: 13:38:44

 

Chris's incredibly short version is:

The swim: It was by far my best swim ever! Half way through all I could think about was how hungry I was. The last 400 meters were the hardest just from being ready to be done swimming. 

  

The bike: It seemed to go by much quicker than I thought it would. The weather was perfect so that was probably the reason for it being so enjoyable. The spectators were fantastic and helped so much by cheering so loudly for everyone.

The run: My legs were tired!  The bike course and run course were much hillier than I imagined. I walked more than I would have liked but once again the weather and fans were great. I didn't quite achieve my ambitious goal but was very pleased with my overall time and finish and am not opposed to trying another in the future. 

Finishing time: 12:23:11

The much longer race experience is as follows!!

At the race expo.

Firstly, I get asked all the time what an Ironman is, and what the difference is between that and a triathlon.  A triathlon is any race that involves swimming, biking, and running (in that order).  The distances of each part varies depending on the type of triathlon; for example a ‘sprint triathlon’ is short distances of each the swim, bike, and run.  Ironman is a branded series of triathlons that are special* (*crazy) because of their extreme length: The swim is 2.4 miles, the bike is 112 miles, and the run is 26.2 miles (a full marathon).  The Kona, Hawai’i Ironman that you may have seen on TV is the world championship of the Ironman race.  Chris and I both signed up for the Bolton Ironman on a whim last fall and have spent the past eight months training for it and raising money for Girls on the Run.  Click here to donate.  It’s been a LONG road full of tough training sessions and major hours swimming, biking, and running!

Like for most big events, the time leading up to the race seemed to accelerate and suddenly we were packing up the car on Friday to head to Bolton.  The race was on Sunday, and you wouldn’t believe how much stuff we had to pack for only three days.  Saturday was spent on logistics: getting bikes to the right place, packing bags for transitions, and going to a pre-race briefing.  Most of our friends were also staying at the same hotel so we were surrounded by friendly faces. 

 Saturday night we ate the same meal we always eat before a race, drank a half glass of wine to help with nerves, and fell asleep around 9:30.  Chris woke at 2:00 AM to eat breakfast (ugh), then went back to sleep until we awoke to our 3:20 AM alarm to get the day started!  Katherine braided my hair while I choked down a bagel (peanut butter feels doubly sticky that early in the morning), took a quick shower, put on a swim top and tri shorts, did some last minute filling of water bottles, applied our race tattoos, then got out the door at 3:50 to catch the shuttle to the swim start.  The shuttle ride was tense; a friend Liz and I chatted nervously for the 20 minute ride out to the lake.   We ducked into a nearby hotel for their toilets and then made our way to T1 (Transition 1: where you change from swim to bike stuff) to remove the plastic sheets from our bikes, pump up tires, stick the water bottles in cages, and attach our Garmins to the bike (which give readouts of average and current bike speeds, heart rate, distance traveled, etc.)  Once the bikes were set we wriggled into wetsuits and chatted with friends for a few minutes before getting into the mass of 1500 wetsuited bodies waiting to get into the water.  A kiss and hug to Chris and we waited for the 6:00 AM swim start!

SWIM

The United Kingdom national anthem played (which threw me as it is the exact same melody as “My Country Tis of Thee”) and the group started moving towards the lake.  I’ve seen nature shows where penguins are lined up at the edge of the water and the front line is pretty much forced in the water by the forward movement of the group, and that’s exactly how it felt at 6:00 AM getting into that cold lake.  Wait!  I’m not quite mentally prepared for this!  Well too bad, you’ve got a thousand people behind you with a very different agenda.  Eeeeee.  

All 1500 of us treaded water between the two starting buoys, waiting for the starting gun.  I barely heard its sound, even at 10 feet away.  All I remember is the sudden mêlée – the mass of arms, the kicking feet, getting swum over, smacked in the nose, and swallowing a little water.  The thought of “this is NOT worth my life” crossed my mind and that was one of two times the entire race I considered quitting.  A few seconds later was the realization that I’d have to leave the ‘polite swimming’ to our Friday club lake swim and I’d better start defending my space and get MOVING ALREADY!  So I did.  I kicked HARD every time someone came up to my feet, which worked in that they’d then swim around or back off instead of swimming over me.  I also drifted all the way to the outside of the pack so I could have a little more room.  Things thinned out after the first twenty minutes and I got into my rhythm and enjoyed most of the rest of the swim (except going around buoys because things got cramped again and the war was reinstated). I was so, so excited to get out of the water that second lap!!  I got out of the swim in 1:15, which was exactly my goal.   Whew, out of the lake, past screaming spectators (awesome), down a rocky dirt road (not awesome) to the changing tent.  I grabbed my previously racked bag and since I was completely changing, tucked into the women’s-only area.  12 minutes later (ridiculously long transition time!) I emerged in a fully dry, clean set of comfortable bike clothes, with sunscreen applied, shirt pockets full of food, and helmet fastened.  On the way to my bike I was passed by one of the double leg amputee athletes who was being fireman-carried to the change tent by a helper.  How did he manage that swim?!  Goosebumps. 

Swim start.

Getting out of the water.

Bren, Rachel, Deb, and Katherine chalking our names onto the bottom of the hill.

BIKE

I love my bike (a Trek Madone), I love my pink wheels, I just love riding in general. The perfect 70-degree, sunny weather was icing on the cake.  Those first few miles were exhilarating, amazing.  Our bike was a 15 mile leg to a three-loop (each 30+ miles) course.  The course was really hilly, and on the biggest of the hills was our cheering squad.  OH MY GOSH, they were AWESOME!!!  There are photos below with the names of everyone involved.  The group was waiting at a steep bit of the hill and would run alongside me Tour-de-France style just screaming and ringing cowbells and waving flags to help get me up the hill.  I’d get a pat on the back at the top and then thoroughly enjoyed the really fast descent that followed.  The hills were tough, but being on a bike for 112 miles is also tough in its own right. In Ironman, there are ‘competers ‘and ‘completers’.  I was definitely in the second category and really enjoyed when someone chatty would ride alongside for a while… it helped the hours go by!  The ‘competers’ are more the heads-down and all-business sort which is fine but less entertaining.  My goal was to finish that leg in 7 hours, and although I was a few minutes over that I was still quite pleased with the whole experience.   The temperature hit 80 degrees by that afternoon- hotter than it’s been since last October.  The heat and hills caused some problems for some of the English competitors because both are so uncommon around here.   They claimed one friend from the club who had to pull out after only a few miles on the run because he couldn’t get food or water down on his bike.  I feel for him so very much as he’s been training just as long and hard for this as the rest of us have.  Some days are just not going to go your way, but it’s so very tough to have that happen for such an important event.  He’s already completed an Ironman, though, so he didn’t have anything to prove!

Andy in fancy dress!

Katherine, Andy, Auntie Lovely (Deb), Rachel, Amy, Sandra, Janice (aka most of our cheering squad!)

Keith Douglas, our amazing race photographer!

Other great supporters.

Running tour-de-France style after all the BRJ competitors.

Loved it!  Grinning from the chaos of screams, cheers, flags waving,etc.

Chris on his bike.

Hand bikes are a lot tougher on the hills - these guys are amazing!

RUN

Oh, the run.  If you followed me online you could surely tell that I fell apart.  The first six or eight miles were okay, actually, although my right IT band was tight from the get-go.  Going into the race, I was pretty sure I’d have to walk quite a bit of the marathon but truly didn’t have a clue how much that run would hurt.  At mile eight, pretty suddenly, the pain in my right hip/butt/hamstring/knee (all IT band related?) increased ten-fold.  I walked for a while and had the thought, for the second and final time, that I may quit the race.  Right around then, a completely tattoo-covered tall man in his 40’s walked alongside me for a while, just chatting about the weather and how good the Pepsi tasted at the aid stations.  He had two arm bands on, meaning he was literally 12 miles ahead of me on the run.  Part of me wanted to try to snatch the bands and run but he was such a nice guy I decided against it.  (Plus, I obviously wasn’t the faster of the two of us.)  Talking to him jerked me out of my negative mindset and by the time he said goodbye and ran off I realized I should also do the same.  The Pepsi DID taste great at the next aid station, as did the Ritz crackers (who would’ve thought?)  By this point I’d eaten so many gels and drank so much Gatorade that all I wanted was something salty and crunchy.  The caffeine and sugar in the Pepsi hit the spot as well.  I knew at this point that I could literally walk the rest of the course and still make it in the 17-hour window, still become an Ironman.  I’d run for a while, have to stop and stretch my right leg (flashback to the Paris marathon), then walk for a bit, then get sick of walking and jog for a bit… repeat.  Having spent 12 hours moving forwards, my body didn’t want to stop, really, I just didn’t want to hurt anymore.  My name is printed on the BRJ club vest I was wearing, so spectators constantly called out “Great job, Claire!”, “Looking good, Claire!”, “You can do it, Claire!”, “Keep moving, Claire!”,  “Almost there, Claire”, etc.  We ran three loops, back and forth, so the same people watched as I started off strong, then resorted to walking a bit, then walking more (blistered feet), and finally sobbing out loud for most of the final three miles.  I stopped to give our friend Andy a hug at one point and just lost it.  He and Deb, Katherine, Rachel, Bren, Amy, Keith, Sandra, Janice, Sue, etc, were all just so supportive and loving I felt suddenly overwhelmed and had zero extra strength to hold back those tears.  With only about 0.3 miles to go I saw Chris.  He had finished about an hour before and had made his way back to the other supporters. I stopped and hugged him for a loooong time – basically until our friends pried us apart and told me to get a move on, already, and finish the dang thing!   

So I did.  I ran the final 0.3 miles.  People were lined up along most of the course but the crowd thickened significantly along the last half mile or so to the finish line.  The stands along the final hundred meters were packed with screaming people and FINALLY the finishing archway appeared.  I heard the announcer as I passed underneath: “From the United States, Claire Schmidt!  Claire Schmidt, you are an Ironman!”   It was amazing.

Chris looking so strong on the run.

Me running.

Katherine, Rachel, Auntie Lovely, Bren cheering on the run.

So glad to see Chris, 0.3 miles to go!!!

Chris crossing the finish line!

Me crossing the finish line!

It was about 7:30 at night by this point.  The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur.  I ate pizza and tried to say thanks to everyone I saw that had been supporting but after a little while started shaking and realizing that I needed a  shower, a lot of water, and some serious pain medicine!!  Katherine was our little angel – she retrieved ice, found some Advil, forced me to drink some water, and even got a Corona for Chris from the bar downstairs. We were asleep within the hour!

The next morning we spent a couple hours (hobbling around) retrieving bikes and transition bags and attending an awards ceremony in which our friend Jax received a trophy for taking second place in her age group!!  I’m so proud of everyone in BRJ but that’s an especially amazing accomplishment for Jackie.  

Well, that’s the long version of events.  Was it worth it?  It’s too soon to tell, but I think so.  As our friend Gareth put it, though, I’m ‘officially retired’ and hope to never do another Ironman again!   

Afterwards - finishers shirts, medals, and race tattoos.

Farmers Schmidt

The garden in July

The fondest memories I have of my dad are the many hours we spent together in our garden. As a child, he taught me how to plant, what to grow, and how much to water. He later helped me get my first job at a small plant nursery in Huntersville. Our home veggie gardens were small but productive, and I remember a few summers when our zucchini output was so prolific we’d have to offload grocery bags of the stuff at neighbors’ doors! After high school there was a ten year pause in my veg-growing life while attending university, optometry school, residency, and relocating to Arkansas. The hiatus was broken a few years ago when Chris and I decided to put in a little vegetable plot in the backyard of our new house. A few things happened: I lost control of the tiller and would’ve ended up in a fence if Chris (one arm in a sling from shoulder surgery) hadn’t come to my rescue, Chris discovered that he loved tending the garden almost as much as he loved me and Bailey (new marriage rule: you have to at least come in and say hello when you get home from work!), and we learned that Little Rock is a great place to grow Italian food. We were eating fresh tomatoes at every meal and making basil pesto by the gallon.

When we moved to our house here in England we immediately decided to put in a veg garden. Chris’parents had given us their old tiller (yep, that came with us from the States) so we (Chris) tilled and mixed in some organic compost last fall. I spent some weeks at South Farm around that time, so had brushed up on old knowledge and picked up a hundred more great tips from Farmer Bart. Last November we tucked some garlic cloves into the newly tilled soil and waited for spring. It was a long wait. It’s been a cold, wet, dreary spring and summer even by England standards. In April, when our Little Rock garden was well on its way to tomatoes, the daylight hours here weren’t even long enough to support growth and a rogue hard freeze set us back even more. It’s been tough to be patient.

Harsh conditions in April - lots of hail.

Although both of us prefer hot and sunny weather, the different climate has given us a chance to grow new types of vegetables. In March we planted four types of potatoes and three kinds of onions. In April we started lettuces, rocket, carrots, beets, chard, leeks, spring onions, pak choy (epic failure), dill, cilantro (failure), and sugar snap peas. In May and June the climbing, bush, drying, and runner beans all went in, as did the corgette, tomatoes, corn, peppers (failure), and kales, and In a few months the cabbages and Brussels sprouts will be planted as an over-winter experiment (again, all new to us). 

Benson tilling what would become our corn, kale, and drying bean patch in June.

 

The garden in early June - still looking a bit scarce!

It wasn’t until late June that things in the garden got exciting.  The snap peas started producing like crazy and after we had our fill, friends came over to eat them off the vine.  Most of the kids in the neighborhood have also taken a turn pulling up a potato plant up and rummaging through the soil for the prizes.  As you can imagine, the kids LOVE this game and the parents laugh as their otherwise picky children are eating spicy arugula and lettuce straight from the garden and asking for carrots be washed so they can be chomped on immediately (always Bugs Bunny style with the leaves still attached!) 

Pulling the first of the early potatoes in late June - they're small but tasty! 

 I’m writing this at the end of July and the carrots are huge and perfect, beets are a good size, each potato plant is producing about five large potatoes, the heads of lettuce are picture-perfect, and the chard and corgettes are producing like crazy.   The Early Purple garlic started looking sad and the leaves were starting to get rusty so we pulled it up, let it dry, and Katherine braided it so it can hang in our kitchen ready to be used!   In about two weeks we’ll be harvesting runner, climbing, and bush beans.  By the end of the summer we hope to the Dalmatian beans will be dried, the onions will fatten up, the corn will produce, and the tomatoes will finally ripen.  All we need are a few good weeks of sun… here’s to hoping!

Lots of lettuce!

Pulled the Early Purple garlic in July, let it dry, and then braided it to hang in the kitchen. 

Corgette is being quite productive!

Corn - not exactly 'knee high by 4th of July'... we'll see what happens!

It’s been a bit of a learning experience, as you can imagine.  The potatoes, especially, didn't go according to plan.  Although they're producing great potatoes, they plants themselves are about 5 times as large as I thought they would get!  The onions are suffering as the hedgerow of potatoes blocks all their sunlight!   

Garden from our bedroom window in mid July.  I absolutely love the various colors and textures.

Katherine and I did some math and figured by the end of the season, if things continue as they are, we’ll have picked about £300 worth of fresh, organic (and very locally grown) vegetables.  We put about £100 into it this year (wood for the border, compost, seeds, tools), so for the first time ever I think having the veg garden has been profitable.  Obviously it’s a hobby more than it is an attempt to be independent of the grocery store but it’s still nice to know that most nights at least part of our meal is straight from the backyard!

The Mom and Benson Whirlwind - Part 2

Sunday we all piled in the car and drove to Edinburgh, Scotland.  The drive was pretty, although there were some really weird clouds (or mist or dust?) moving in from the sea so we never really saw the water.  We checked into our sweet little B&B just after lunch and started off walking from there to the famous Edinburgh castle which is perched at the top of a steep hill in the middle of the city.  The views from up there were amazing, and the Stone of Destiny and Crown Jewels (housed at the castle) were really interesting to see. 

Benson looking out over Edinburgh.

From the castle we walked about two minutes down the Royal Mile to the Scotch Whisky Experience.  Our trip to Scotland was prompted by mom wanting to try different Scotches and the Experience turned out to be the perfect way to accomplish that!   It was a unique sort of thing – we basically showed up at our designated ‘tour’ time and spent ten minutes on an amusement park-like ride that illustrated the steps of producing Scotch.  The ride ended at a tasting room where we all sat down in a semi-circle facing a guide and a video screen.   We were educated on the different regions of Scotland and the guide walked us through the smells and tastes of four types of Scotch whisky.  I have to say that Benson was a trooper!  He is absolutely, 100%, a Miller Lite and dry red wine drinker.  He’s hated Scotch his entire life but went through the tour with us and tasted a few different ones (his faces were priceless).  When we got to the one from the Islay region, though, his eyebrows rose to the ceiling and when he looked around the room to see people drinking it he gave up and started handing my mom his taster glasses.  Neither Chris nor I could muscle down the one from Islay. Imagine eating a campfire. That’s exactly what it was like.  It burned, it was smoky, and it made your nose feel like it was on fire.  That ended up being mom’s favorite kind, and it makes me wonder if in 20 years my own tastes will change to the point of liking that sort of thing.  After the tastings we walked through an amazing collection of Scotches and were then taken to dinner downstairs in the attached restaurant. We had ordered a lovely taster menu of many things Scottish.  We ate bits of mussel stew, haggis, lamb, salmon, sticky toffee pudding and finished dinner with coffee and (yep, you guessed it) a dram of Scotch.  We wrapped up with dinner around ten o’clock and even though it was still quite light, the few drams of Scotch over many hours left us tired more than tipsy, especially after the monster of a Saturday we had, so we walked back to the B&B to get some sleep.  

Quite the Scotch collection!

Scotch Whisky Experience tasting room.

What a face! Not a Scotch fan...

Me and Mom on the Royal Mile.

At breakfast the next morning we were sitting in a little dining room with one other couple who turned out to be from Huntersville, NC, which is only a few miles from where mom lives and I grew up!  Talk about a small world, huh?  We left Edinburgh a few hours later after a bit of shopping and a quick peek at the Edinburgh beach.  We were to be in Ilkley, just north of Leeds, for supper and it was supposed to take about four hours.  Little did we know how epic that drive would be....

Lovely photo!

Getting around this island is not nearly as easy but generally much more scenic than getting around the US.  We were going from Edinburgh (quite north east) to Ilkley (sort of mid-central) and so typed the Lawson’s magic postcode in to the GPS and started blindly following that crazy lady’s directions.  Unsure how, but at one point of this drive we were only two miles from the WEST coast of England!  There are just no straight, wide-lane highways traversing the central corridor of this island… instead there are ‘motorways’ that oftentimes are narrow, twisty two-lane roads used indiscriminately by tractors, 18-wheelers (aka lorries), cars, and bicyclists. Chris drove the entire way and said he was a little stressed (but I caught him smiling to himself quite a few times).  We did more passing in that 4-hour drive than I’ve done in the past year!  Oh, and at one point we had to stop for a herd of cows to cross into their new pasture.  As a whole, the scenery was stunning but one particularly dramatic view was of a rolling rapeseed field in its full florescent yellow bloom contrasting with a line of dark green pine trees at the crest of the field.  We’re still teasing Chris that he wouldn’t let us stop to take a picture. (He had just managed to pass four slow-moving trucks and was not ready to get behind them again!)  We made it to Ilkley in time for dinner which never would’ve happened if any of the rest of us had been behind the wheel.

Pretty view on the drive.

Stopping for cattle.

One more pretty vista.

So why were we going to Ilkley?  Fun story:  When I was a baby, our family lived in South Africa in a small town called Honeydew.  Our only neighbors (as we lived on eight acres) were the Lawsons.  Ian and Tamara were good friends with my mom and dad, and their son Bruce was my childhood best friend.  The Lawson’s cow Molly even grazed on our grass and gave us milk every day.  Anyway, sometime after we moved to the States, the Lawsons moved to England and have continued to be in touch.  We spent time with their family last time we visited England, and they came to the States for mom and B’s wedding a few years ago.  Ian and Tamara live in the gorgeous town of Ilkley and their house literally backs up to the Ilkley moor.  The views from their place are absolutely stunning, and I would’ve stayed a week just to walk the footpaths crisscrossing through the moors.  Our few hours with the Lawsons were amazing: We sat on a little bench and enjoyed the moors for a bit, walked around their sweet garden, and explored Tamara’s studio before dinner.  Oh wait, I didn’t mention that she’s an internationally known artist?  She’s been jet setting all over Europe with her latest works, of which one of we are now the proud owners!   For dinner, Tamara bought (massive) steaks from an award-winning local butcher and then topped it off with baked potatoes and toffee pudding.  We felt like royalty. Unfortunately Chris has this thing called work (what a bummer!) so he and I had to head home after dinner. 

The Lawson's back yard leads right out to the moor.

Lovely families with a loooong history!

Tamara trying to fatten Chris up!

Mom and B stayed in Ilkley for a few days while life continued as normal around our place. I popped down to the farm for a day of planting and worked in our garden for a bit but otherwise had a lazy time of it. Mom and B came back on Thursday and finally got a taste of drizzly England.  Farmer Bart had previously mentioned that the elderflowers were in bloom, so we decided to try to make elderflower cordial.  After tracking down some un-waxed organic lemons and citric acid, mom and I walked around the neighborhood and picked about 50 clusters of the flowers. We were absolutely covered in pollen by the end of it!  You can tell that it’s elderflower season because it kept showing up on the menus the next week.  Mom tried a couple different elderflower grown-up drinks and we had some sort of elderflower/berry crumble.  It’s a lovely, unique flavor.

We were totally spoiled on Friday.  Benson, totally unaccustomed to sitting still for more than an hour at a time, offered to do yard work then he and mom cooked dinner while we went to our weekly lake swim!  Benson felt he had to ‘redeem’ himself after a previous imperfect grill session (he’s persnickety about his grilling) and absolutely succeeded in doing that!  We finished off the evening with a really nice drink at a nearby pub.


Saturday we all hopped on a train to go into London.  Britain was in full-on celebration mode for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.  She’s been on the throne for sixty years, the second longest reigning monarch in England’s history!  I’d say the English at least are generally a stoic lot, but not this weekend.  Everyone was in full Union Jack attire, waving flags, and so proud of their much-loved Queen. 

Union Jacks everywhere.

Mom and B in front of Big Ben.

Westminster Abbey

We got into London and did a few hours of sightseeing, then took the tube to the Tower of London (the castle downtown).  We had a really fun time exploring the castle and all of its exhibits and couldn’t believe how few people were there – it was almost as if we had the place to ourselves.  We hadn’t planned on seeing the Crown Jewels (basically all the precious metals, gems, swords, crowns, etc owned by the royal family) but on our way out there wasn’t any line so we walked straight through to see them.  It really is astonishing how much there was on display… over 15000 diamonds, for example, and who knows how many pounds of gold.  We were a little sickened by it all – it’s impressive until you think about how many people starve every day and wonder if there may not be a better way to distribute wealth… There was a little donation box at the end of the display (we laughed).  It felt a little wrong to be asked to chip in money for the upkeep of the Tower of London after A. paying for tickets and B. seeing a billion dollars worth of treasure.

Me and Chris in front of the Tower of London.

Something about a guy in a uniform!

The rest of the day was super relaxed… we had a beer at a lively London pub and then took one of those iconic black London taxis to dinner at the Laughing Gravy which turned out to be a great choice.  We enjoyed everything from the ambiance to the waiter and the food was really, really tasty.   We slept so well on the train ride home! 

Cool glass, mom!

The Laughing Gravy restaurant.

Lovely last dinner together.

The next morning we said goodbye over a big breakfast and dropped mom and B off for their last day in London together.  Poor mom and B had to battle wet, windy, and crowded conditions their last day in England, which I’m sure wasn’t the most pleasant way to end the trip, but overall think the trip was really successful!