Race Review - IMAZ 2024

Intro - Ironamn Arizona

To preface:

I'm not an athlete. Never was. Probably never will be. I'm just a stubborn dude, trying to reach some goals. Some silly, some big, some unachievable.

A full Ironman is one of the goals that leaned closer to the unachievable side of things for me.

Doing something that only 0.5% of the world can accomplish. 140 miles of torture. Etc. Etc. It's hard, supposed to be hard. And it sucks. True!

I didn't think I would, or could ever do a Full Ironman. That is... until last November when I crushed that shit and made the IMAZ course my total biiissshhh!

Not really, I mean I did do it. But that triathlon defintley did crush my spirits and humbled me. But hey! It's a full distance tri and has been on my bucket list for the last 5 or so years.

Pre-Race Info

Under my belt, I have done:

• (4) Sprint distance triathlons

• (1) Olympic distance triathlon

• and only (1) Half Ironman distance triathlon

The first few sprints were just messing around and seeing if I was actually into the sport.

The Olympic was mainly a swim test and transition test to make sure I can at-least do the distance that the Half Ironman swim consisted of.

And the actual half Ironman took 7 months to train for with the confidence needed to tackle it. That was my "A" race way back when. (2023 I think)

So, all that out of the way. Arizona.

Phoenix is my home and Tempe is my backyard. My gf (now fiance) has done this Ironman before, in 2022. So training with her and spending as much time as I could on the actual roads of the course was helpful. She knew most of the ins and outs and through training with a few other tri groups, I was lucky to be as prepared as possible. Or so I thought?

I dunno, I think I was as prepared as I could have been. Mainly, you can run on the course all you want, the bike is on the open road that you can hop on and try anytime. The swim is the only part of the course that you're not allowed to try until race week.

I actually got a warning for swimming in Tempe Town Lake by the authorities. Next time they caught me they said it would be a 2,000 dollar fine.

Fine, jeez, I won't swim in your dirty ass lake.

Race Week / Prep

• A couple days before raceday the IM shop is open for everyone to grab some merch and get your adrenaline going. I think the shop and registration was open on Thursday with the race being on Sunday.

• From what I remember, we picked up our race packets on Friday and spent the whole day prepping our bags, gear, etc.

• You get like a hundred different bags for everything which I'll cover below in better detail:

  • Morning clothes bag

  • Bike Bag

  • Bike special needs bag

  • Run Bag

  • Run special needs bag

• I opted not to use the morning clothes bag, just gave my clothes to my lovely father-in-law.

  • ***. Which, side note and special mention, he was awesome. If this is your first, second, third whatever # race. You know the importance of having someone not participating in the race help you sherpa. There are alot of belongings, drop offs, special help that someone can give and help take the load off. I can't imagine trying to find parking on the morning of, nor can I imagine lugging my bike and all my shit back to the car after such a long day of racing. ***

• The beach park bike drop off is the day before

• Tempe is an easy city to manuever around. Tempe Town Lake and Tempe Beach park is where most of the action happens.

  
  

  Okay, I am prepared, all my shit is dropped off. Let's get it!

  
  

The Night Before

So... the night before, my ritual is to *try to sleep as early as I can. The wake up for these races are always ridiculously early.

This one wasn't so bad, I remember for Indian Wells I woke up at 3am. This time I set my alarm for 4:30am. Took some sleeping pills and drifted off. Dreaming blissfully of drowning in the freezing cold water and crashing my bike on the free-way.

The goal for the day/night before the race is to try to not be on your feet at all. This is your most important rest day.

Tried my best to follow that with as much couch-time as possible.

Race Morning

Holy Moly the nervous energy I'm exuding you could probably smell. And see it on my face.

Fuck this, it's freezing outside. Why am I doing this?

The thoughts of dropping out is abundant. But that's not enough, I think to myself - "I'm at least gonna try right? After all, I did pay my registration"

Which is one of the things that kept nagging on me. Registration for a Full IM varies, but this one (and most other US registers) is close to a thousand dollars. That's a new Macbook, or like 3 car payments, half of my rent. I better get my money's worth here!

I don't think myself as a cheap guy, in-fact I'm sure I have some kind of spending problem. But for the most part I think I'm financially savvy. So who knows if the real motivation was the fiduciary obligation I made to myself, or the destiny of finishing an IM as a young man's dream. But one of those two is definitely what made me get out of bed - choke down some coffee, and get my nervous ass to the venue.

• (via being dropped off - clutch move)

Garmin Tactix 7 Amoled with the Minimum paces to miss cutoffs written on my hand

*** The one practical tip I did for the morning of - I wrote down the cut-off times on my watch hand. This way, just in case I was falling behind I know where I needed to be at and could speed up. ***

• Keep reading to find out if that was helpful or not!

Swim Leg

Okay

We're all in our wet-suits lined up in front of the lake.

It's a balmy 55 degrees outside.

I'm shivering as I have no socks or shoes on.

I'm standing in line next to my fiancé, there's no women/men section, everyone lines up according to their own expected swim finish time.

The national anthem plays,

Silence.

I cry a lil bit.

(In a manly/tough guy kind of way)

I'm ready to go and we're walking.

The pros are in the water, the music is pumping, people are taking pictures of their loved ones.

My fiance and I are at the start line, it's our turn. We fist bump.

And then I hesitate. I stopped.

Right in front of the jump into the water, I was next up. I didn't jump at the alotted time. Fuck!

Some guy yells out "Don't be scared!"

Who tf is this guy? I'm not scared.

So I jumped.

I think my adrenaline was pumping a bit too much to be able to feel how cold the water was, but once the shock wore off and I got a couple strokes in. Maybe 100 yards, I could feel the cold in my bones. It was freezing. My face was an ice cube.

So I tried to swim faster.

Which helped.

Finally got into a groove and just kept on chopping at the water.

One giant oval around Tempe Town Lake. And I was doing okay going from buoy to buoy.

• *** Some advice I got for nervous swimmers. With Tempe Town Lake, the buoys for the course are around the lake close to the wall, the middle of the lake is empty. So the lane to swim in for everyone is in between the wall and the buoys.

• Closer to the wall, and the water is shallow, shallow enough to stand-in just in case. I kept that close to heart for my first 1000-2000 yards.

• *** HOWEVER, the buoys are a good 20 yards away from the wall. So if you hugged the wall for your entire swim, that means you're swimmin extra baby. And we don't want that, we wanna get out of the water as quick as we can.

So I swam closer to the wall for the first half, and swam close as I can to the buoys for the second half of the swim.

Stopped for a second at a kayaker to pee.

I don't know if you've tried to pee and swim at the same time but for me it's impossible. And you can safely stop at a kayaker and catch your breath for as long as you want. As long as you're not making any forward progress while you stop, it's totally within the rules to stop and catch your breath.

As I'm typing this, I'm remembering those last 100 or so yards and how grueling it was.

That last little bit is always the hardest.

Out of the water, done. YESS!

Total time:

1hr 49min

Total Dist:

4,389 yards

Pace:

2:30/100 yards

Yes it was slow, but I still finished well within the time.

Onwards!

T1

Running over the the transition area, you call out your number and one of the lovely volunteers grab your bag for you.

This is the bag for your bike clothes.

I was ushered to the changing tent. Which definitely wasn't just a single person tent.

There must have been 100 or so other dudes in there changing.

I find a chair and start stripping off my wetsuit.

I'm realizing now how cold I am. My teeth are chattering.

Next to me some nice fella is striking up a conversation about how dirty the water was.

Across from me, some dude is shivering and theres medics around him diagnosing him for hypthermia. He's covered in towels.

So anyway I strip full naked (that's allowed) and put on my bike clothes.

Plus a sweater.

It was that cold.

Walk slowly outside towards the bikes as I'm still catching my breath

Another volunteer sees my number and runs to grab me my bike.

Damn the volunteers are awesome.

Onwards!

Bike Leg

This was my time to shine.

I know how to bike. And I've biked this course at least 30 times.

I'm zipping and zapping, passing people.

Whoops, dropped my water bottle.

Anywho, zipping and zapping, staying in aero, refusing to go into higher gears.

Ya boi's a speed demon. This is cake.

I'm at like mile 6, I'm going uphill. I'm out of breath. And there's 106 more miles to go...

I need to calm down and just stick to a steady cadence....

The Tempe IM Bike course is 3 laps up and down the B-Line.

Half of the lap is a slow and steady crawl up the north side of the B-Line, about ~800ft of elevation.

The other side of the loop coming back south is a quick downhill.

I reeaally need to be saving my energy for the later laps.

SO, this part of the story is a little TMI, so please feel free to skip this.

___ I don't know if it was all that lake water I ingested during the swim, or if it was an old gel I ate during the bike but my stomach was in ROUGH shape...

I was as bloated as a balloon.

(Looking at my pictures later, it seemed like half the lake was in my belly when I got out of the water)

But I needed to stop for a porta-potty.

Luckily there's some at the top of the hill, and some at the bottom of the hill.

In total, I stopped 3 times at the porta-potties.

Nothing but "wind" happened in those potties. But I didn't want my IM journey to come to an end because of embarrassment so I was fine to take the time penalty.

___

... Speaking of penalty. I actually got a penalty violation.

It's a weird story, and I'll keep it brief.

A coworker of mine knew I was doing the IM, and decided to join me halfway through. He tracked me on the app and waited at a spot with his bike. Once I passed he got my attention and we rode together for a few miles.

I'm not sure if the penalty I got was referring to the fact that he wasn't an athlete, or the fact that we were biking side-by-side, but a 1-minute penalty was issued.

At the top of the hill, I stopped at the penalty tent and wisely used that time to... visit the porta-potty.

One more point I wanted to make about the bike. This day in particular, was windy.

Earlier in the day, the wind wasn't as bad, but by the later hours... holy cow the wind was rough.

It felt like sandpaper on my face.

You know how I talked about the slow up-hill and the fast down-hills?

For my third lap it was reversed.

I checked my Garmin stats afterwards and compared it to the map. Yes, I was going FASTER going UPHILL than I was going downhill.

I can't tell if that helped or hurt me. But if was most definitley an interesting point. If you haven't biked in the wind... then try it? I actually don't know how to advise for that.

Good luck!

Anywho,

Bike, done.

Avg speed: 14.7mph (including stops)

Total Distance: 112.0 miles

Total Time: 7:46min (including stops)

Avg HR: 143 bpm

T2

I'm a wiggly, wobbly mess.

Some nice volunteer takes my bike.

Someone else hands me a bag with my number on it.

I'm back in the tent and naked as ever with 100's of other friends.

*** Pro tip! This is a good time to shove a bunch of crackers in your mouth, or deep throat a whole banana. If you have a favorite solid food that your stomach likes it would be wise to have it packed in your T2 bag. You gotta whole ass marathon to run after this.

I ate a granola bar and downed an entire can of coke.

Onwards!

Run Leg - The Whole Ass Marathon

You ever ran a marathon?

It sucks.

Ever run a marathon after 9 hours or other exercise?

It still sucks.

Honestly the run was kind of a blur. 3 Laps around the Lake.

Family and friends on the South side of the lake cheering you on.

And then silence and misery on the North side of the lake.

I've barely ever run without music, the only times I do are for races. And I've never done one this long before.

My mind was going places, it's never been. Thinking of my childhood running around day care.

Besides a very weird cramp in my left leg (turned out to be a stress fracture) I was doing fine... slow, yes. Walking and running, but the progress continued.

But as I looked at my watch to check the time and pace, the cutoff paces I had written on my hand that were almost faded glared back at me.

I was flirting with the cutoffs.

Any second now I could be stopped by an official to say "Sorry, you cannot continue, we closed the course past this turn"

I saw that happen to some kid running opposite me. And the look of defeat on his face... haunting.

I kick it up a notch

And by that I mean, I ran my 13min miles to 12 and half minue miles for the third lap.

My mom gave me a hug right before one of the last turns.

She was the only spectator at that particular area... whereas it was once bustlingly crowded.

The finish line...

I see you, you illusive fuck.

I can HEAR you.

The red carpet... I can see it. And I'm now on it.

It's loud, people are cheering. People I know. People I don't.

I'm high-fiving dudes, and kissing babies (not really)

I ring that sweet stupid bell.

I cross the finish line.

The voice says.

"Brian, you are an Ironman"

I say,

"I get a free hat for this right?"

No one laughs. No one can hear me.

I see my girlfirend, now fiance.

She finished hours ago.

She waited sooo long!

Total Time:

16hrs 11min or whatever.

One of the last in my age group.

But still... Ironman

Conclusion

If I can do it, of course you can too.

-BB 2025