Race Coverage

"It Wasn't My Day"....

Saturday, 26 August 2017 23:10

By Erin Klegstad (sweetsweatlife.com)

The short of IRONMAN Canada: It wasn’t my day. 

I gave everything I had and then some, but came up short of my goal (which was, no surprise, a Kona spot). 

I know I should be proud – and I will be eventually – but when you have really high expectations of yourself, set big goals and train your ass off for months, to come up short… well, it hurts. A lot. 

But what did I expect? My race was the outcome of the stories I told myself for much of the build: that I would have rather lazed in the hammock than slog through three 80-minute intervals during a long ride. I fought for so many of those intervals, my internal dialogue I have to do this rather than I get to do this. I lost the bike love. I focused too much on things out of my control, which took the joy out of the journey. And I let myself get in my head – the worst possible place you can be. 

I never want to go into a race feeling like that again. And you can bet I never will. 

Onward. 

With that, a few race day details on my second slowest IM ever… 

Race morning started kinda like any other – an early alarm, coffee, a not-big-enough breakfast, Imodium, Midol (ugh). My cycle started Tuesday, so I felt like garbage Thursday and Friday (constant borderline migraine). I definitely didn’t feel like my sharp ready-to-go self on race morning, either, but I did my best to ignore it.

Since the race, I’ve re-read part of Roar by Stacy Sims for some insight into hormones. While I was in the lower hormone follicular phase, that doesn’t mean my hormones didn’t have an impact. Estrogen spikes during this phase, too – typically higher than during the luteal phase – which can have a pretty big impact on how you feel (or at least it does for me most months). Because of that, it wasn’t the ideal time for my A race. I’m not solely blaming my day on my cycle, but I honestly think it was a big factor in how it all played out (nausea = can’t eat = no calories on the run).   READ MORE