Ironman Mont Tremblant 2016 Race Report

by Brian Muldowney | Jun 9, 2017 | Race Reports | 0 comments

So far, 2021 has been an extraordinarily challenging year for my family and me. Surprisingly, it has seemed more difficult than in 2017 when I was almost killed in a bike crash and suffered a fractured C1 vertebra, among other things. From my wife Sandra’s breast cancer diagnosis, surgery, and treatment to being forced to replace our kitchen cabinets, countertop, kitchen and hallway floor, and front door due to a dishwasher water leak to going through the college admissions process and ultimately sending our daughter off to college and dealing with her absence from our lives. It has also been physically challenging for me to train without pain. I have suffered from Achilles issues in both ankles since a hilly half marathon in November of last year. One side healed, and the other flared up just in time to pick up the slack and make sure I couldn’t do much running for the year. The healed side flared up about a week before the race, running off the bike after doing my longest ride ever of 117 miles.

Going into the race, I felt like I could do well on the swim and the bike but didn’t have much hope for the run. Even at a week out, I was still feeling pain in my left Achilles and was worried about it just being inflamed for the whole marathon. I had done Timberman 70.3 5 weeks before the race and struggled on the run after mile 6. I had twinges of pain throughout and just felt like my run fitness was terrible. I also remember towards the end of the swim, thinking, “how the hell am I going to do twice this distance.” I did it in 33 minutes, which is good for me, but I felt like it took a whole lot of effort.

The couple we had arranged to stay with (Holly & Scott) were driving down and, getting there a day ahead of us, had offered to take my bike and gear down. So I dropped my bike and gear off with them on Tuesday night. A couple of hours later, I got a phone call from Holly, and my first thought was, “Oh, maybe they forgot something, and I’ll need to stop by their house to grab it.” If only – it turns out our VRBO was canceled with less than 24hrs notice, and we were now faced with trying to get a new place to stay. VRBO told Holly they would find a comparable place or put them up in a hotel, but they ultimately proved useless. We found a house on Airbnb and booked it. My wife also posted to the Facebook Chattanooga group, and we received many offers of help there. Our flight down and rental car pickup went well. Later that day, we met up with one of my training partners (Bryon) for the last three years and his wife (Bridget). The six of us managed all the pre-race rituals leading up to race day.

For race week, I limited myself to just a one-hour run and a relatively short bike/ROTB. I kept my activity level pretty low other than the 1.5 mile walks down to Athlete Village leading up to the race.

The night before the race, I didn’t get too much sleep and got up six times to pee. I used the Osmo Preload Hydration per-race day, but I didn’t retain much with all the times I had to get up during the night. I got up before my alarm went off at 4 am and started the ritual of eating 4 cups of applesauce mixed with a scoop of protein powder. Sandra joined me with a smaller sympathy bowl of the same mixture and declared that it tasted good. I guess it does, if you don’t have to scarf down 4 cups of it. Feeling pretty bloated, dealing with the nagging feeling that I forgot something in my bike and run bags or put run stuff in my bike bag and vice versa, we set off for the village around 5:15 am. The plan was to be on the bus to the swim start by 6 am. We all pumped up our tires, checked our bags, and made it on the bus in time – mission accomplished.

After figuring out where to drop off my morning bag, I found my spot in the 1-1:10 pace. While waiting, the guy behind me commented on how awesome my checkered flag flip flops were and I discovered we shared the same taste in Family Dollar flip flops. I got to hug Sandra before going down the chute and then I finally got to the jumping point off the dock. After two and half years of waiting, I was finally ready to race again.

I jumped in, popped up after what seemed like an eternity, leaned forward, and started pumping my arms. I came upon a few people, but I was swimming by myself for the most part, between the start and three-quarters of the way. At the halfway point, my watch said I was at 27 minutes. I thought to myself, holy crap, this is going to be a fast swim. It got a little congested when I was 100-200 yds out, but I managed not to get held up by people in front of me. Out of the water, I ran all the way to transition and looked at my watch and saw I was around 52 minutes. Wow, I wasn’t expecting to make up time from the halfway point.

Grabbing my bike bag and making it through transition was surprisingly easy. I had everything I needed and didn’t forget anything. The ride out of town was pretty congested with other competitors but overall pretty uneventful. I had plugged in the workout from Best Bike Splits on my 520 to help me stick to my race plan, and everything was going to plan. It was pretty cool to see the fog as we headed into Georgia, but I hoped it would burn off soon. I didn’t want to risk crashing because I couldn’t see or someone couldn’t see me. Because of my weight, I go fast downhill and slow uphill, so here was a lot of passing people on the flats and downhills and getting passed on the uphills. I tried getting enough momentum for some of the rollers, but many of them were too long for that. I also kept reminding myself to stick to the plan and not get caught up in passing people. I also backed off in places because I knew I would end up burning myself out when I got into too many draft zones and needing to push more watts to pass. The smoothness of Hog Jowell Road helped me to relax a bit more and enjoy the ride. I also thought this would be great in the second loop. I saw my wife Sandra and our friend Bridget in Chickamagua cheering me on and thought to myself – “ok, you are almost halfway, and everything is going good, keep it up.”

I slowed down a little on the second loop, and I think it was because the field seemed to spread out a bit more, and I didn’t end up in too many draft zones to force me to pass. There was one point in the rolling part that I played the passing game with a woman who commented when she was passing me uphill, “I don’t know why I keep doing this. you’re going to just bomb past me on the downhill!” I just laughed and agreed, knowing that she would drop me once we made it to the false flats up ahead and sure enough, she did.

At the second to last aid station, I decided to toss one bottle of EFS and lose the extra weight. I still had one bottle in the rear cage, and the between the arm bottle was full. I’m not sure if that was the right decision in retrospect because I didn’t realize I either didn’t pack the right number of gels or left some in transition. I also ended up dropping a gel somewhere after I tossed the bottle. I had no gels with about 1.5 hrs to go and one full bottle of EFS. I couldn’t remember if there was one more aid station, but thankfully, there was, and I grabbed a Maurten gel there. About two miles out from transition, my groin muscles started cramping, and I had to back off to avoid having them seize. I thankfully brought a bottle of HotShot with me and downed that a minute or two after the cramps started. Unfortunately, it didn’t do the trick. I kept having to back off to prevent the cramps from locking my legs up.

I completed the bike with a time of 05:54:50. Best Bike Splits had me doing it in 05:48:57. Not bad – I made it within 6 minutes of BBS. Luckily, my legs didn’t lock up getting off the bike like in Ironman Canada 2018. The transition went well again, and I got one of the volunteers to spray my neck with sunscreen. He also complimented me on my choice of shoes. He was wearing Saucony Endorphines as well. My choice of footwear on race day was a hit with everyone. LOL

I took a quick detour at the portalets, and I was off for the run. I was hopeful that my achilles would let me finish the race without too much pain. I saw Sandra waiting for me as I rounded the corner downhill to Riverfront Parkway. She told me how awesome I was doing and how Elliot, my coach, was so proud of me. I started to think about the run and how I needed to have a flawless run if I wanted to crack top 20 in my age group. My race goal was to finish in the top 20 in my age group and come in under 12 hours. Then my Achilles began to twinge with pain sporadically. As I was coming up a hill on RiverFront Parkway, some announcer commented on the need to use sunscreen, and then saw me and said I had done a great job covering myself. My face must have been pasty white from the stuff because my beard tends to make it stand out.

For the first two miles, I looked at my watch and thought, “you’re going to fast, slow down.” I was bouncing between a 8:50 and 9:10 pace. I was also going downhill, so I figured I was ok. I walked through each aid station as planned and managed only to feel twinges of pain in my Achilles occasionally. Everything was going well. Between mile five and six, a guy struck up a conversation with me about the race, and we shared stories of how we got started and different races. He shared that he had only done two sprint triathlons before this race. I let him know he was crazy, but was doing an amazing job in his first Ironman. We ran together for a couple of miles and separated somewhere around the hills on Barton Ave. At this point, I noticed that I felt no pain in my Achilles, and I was able to keep running up Barton.

In talking with my coach Elliot the night before, the goal was to not walk on the run except for the aid stations. So far, I was keeping true to that. Then I got to the footbridge, and my calves started cramped. I resigned myself to walk a little up the footbridge to keep the cramps at bay. Once I crested the middle of the bridge, I started running again and put on a good face when I passed Sandra and Bridget at the halfway point on the run. When I got out of eyesight from them, my claves betrayed me and my feet were turning inward or outward, and it was like I was running on club feet. The same thing happened to me in Ironman Arizona 2017. I thought to myself, “shit, there goes all three of your goals.” Now the goal was to figure out how to get running again. The drill now was run until your feet start twisting, walk it out and start the whole thing all over again. I did this for about 3 miles because the Hotshot I put in my special needs bag had no effect, and I left the other one I brought in my transition run bag. About three miles into the run, I started putting ice under my hat and had a brain freeze when I had it towards the front of my cap. I had the brilliant idea that maybe if I gave myself a brain freeze, it would force my brain to pay attention to that, and the cramps would go away. It seemed to work for about a quarter of a mile, and then the cramps came back.

Then somewhere around mile 16, the cramps subsided, and I could run again. At this point, I was in somewhat of a daze, and I started feeling somewhat sleepy, not just tired but sleepy. It lasted for about two miles, and then I started cramping again, and I resumed the run/walk dance. I decided at his point it was time to try taking in red bull. In 2018 at Ironman Canada, I thought I was done after the bike, but the combination of red bull and getting out of the sun, (a good part of the run was on a trail in the woods at Whistler), saved my race. For some reason, I didn’t get any red bull at mile 20 as I planned. Instead, I started taking it at mile 21 and immediately felt its effects. From then on, I only walked at the aid stations and for one steeper section of a hill. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed by the run. But it’s going to be a massive motivator for Lake Placid next year.

Ultimately, I finished the run 5 minutes and 15 seconds faster than my best IM marathon with a 4:44:29. To my surprise, I reached my goals of sub 12 hours with an 11:44:48, and I came in 16th for my age group. I set PRs for each leg of the race and finished my fourth full Ironman.

I couldn’t have done any of this without the support of my wife Sandra. I am amazed by how strong she is with all she has faced in the past 14 months. I am lucky to have her in my life.

Spending the week with the other Northeast Multisport members made racing much more enjoyable. It was great seeing other members on the Zoot Team out there racing and the Zoot Team member that fist-bumped me each time I came down Barton.

Thank you, Bryon, Bridget, Holly, and Scott for a great week. Congratulations to Bryon, Holly, and Scott on becoming an Ironman again. Thank you to Bryon, Meredith, and Rachel for putting up with me for the last two years of training together. And to Elliot Kawaoka, my coach, thank you for helping me manage my Achilles issues and training me to PR in each leg of this race.

Now it’s back to the daily grind. I really miss having people yell at me all day about how awesome I am. Chattanooga is a great place to race.

I am a tad late in writing my race report for my first full Ironman, which happened in August 2016. It is getting close to a year since I finished the race, but recently I came across another race report for the same race that was written two years after he completed the race. I believe he had most of it written and just had to finish it, whereas I am just going on my vivid memories of my first Ironman. So here it is, and it is long because despite suffering a head injury recently I still have pretty good long term memory.

My family and I arrived on the Thursday before the race, so we could check out the resort and give me plenty of time to relax as much as I could given this was my first full Ironman. My biggest fear was rain for the bike portion. The times I have ridden in the rain, I always felt like my tires were sliding around quite a bit and the thought of sliding on these hills scared the crap out of me. I had been up here three weeks before for a training camp that allowed me to ride the bike route and I was familiar with what I would be facing on the roads. However, my biggest challenge, on Thursday and the few days before the race, was to stop myself from being too active and make sure I got plenty of rest.

The Night Before the Race

I went to the banquet dinner the night before with several of my Northeast Multisport club mates. There was plenty of food and entertainment, but I had a hard time not thinking about what the weather was going to be like the next day and how I was going to manage the bike in the rain. During the announcements part of the dinner, they talked about what would happen in the event of fog and swim delay or cancellation. I was thinking to myself, “it would really suck to have to spend all this time training only to have the swim canceled.”

Race Morning

I woke up at 3 am to force down my 4.5 cups of apple sauce mixed with protein powder – yum. I always feel like my stomach is going to explode after eating that mixture. I then got dressed in my tri suit and got my wetsuit ready with plastic shopping bags that help ease my arms and legs into the suit. My wife and I gathered up the rest of my stuff and headed outside to walk down to get body marked. As soon as I walked outside, I noticed that the sky was cloudy, but it was also windy. My first thought was, “hey it’s windy, no fog delay for the swim.” My second thought was, “shit it’s windy; it’s going to be a pretty choppy out there for the swim.”

We go down and get my body marked and head into the bike transition to prepare my bike for the day. I’m not sure what tire pressure to set my tires to because of the impending rain, so I pump them up to 100 psi, then release some air down to 90 psi and then decide to push it back up to 100. I have never been accused of being skinny, so I think I’ll be alright with 100 psi. I had been reading up on what to do with your tires to manage the rain and found an article about what they do on the Tour de France to treat the tires for rain. I had my vinegar and water mixture in a spray bottle and sprayed my tires with the mixture and wiped my tires down. From what I read, it is supposed to make the tires sticky and less likely to slide in the rain. Before leaving transition, I make sure my bike is in the right gear and head off to meet my wife and daughter.

The Swim

The plan for the swim is for me and one of my Northeast Multisport teammates, Craig, to swim together and draft off each other when we can. I have sucked at drafting up to this point, so we had been practicing for several weeks in some OWS leading up to the race. We are in a swim class together, so we are used to drafting in the pool, but in an OWS it’s a whole different story. I get down to the beach practice area and get into the water to do a couple of laps to get warmed up. Although I think I am a fairly strong swimmer, I always get nerved up about the swim. I feel pretty good about the warm up, get out of the water and start looking for Craig and can’t find him. He’s nowhere to be found, but luckily he’s looking for me also and grabs me as we head to the outside left front of the pack. The gun goes off, and I lead us out. Everything seems to be going well, and after a few hundred feet, Craig taps my foot to let me know that he’s going to lead and I can draft off of him. I slow up, and he powers ahead of me. Everything seems to be going well, and I decide it’s my turn to lead, I lift my head up to see what the pack is like ahead and I realize I am no longer following Craig. I think to myself, “Oh well, there are plenty of other people here to draft off of, I’ll be OK.” We were in the second to last wave, so there we were swimming through lots of people. Someone must have gotten between us and the guy I thought was Craig swam at the same pace. So I just hung with the guy I thought was Craig until he slowed down a bit and then I pushed on forward.

As I approached the turn, I noticed the waves were getting big. I didn’t realize how big until I was into the turn. The waves seemed to be about a foot and a half and were crashing into my face when I tried to breathe. I am stronger breathing on my right, and although I bilateral breathe in the pool for a moderate pace, I had trouble switching to breathing on my left. It just felt awkward, and the waves intensified that feeling, so I just switched back to the right. I timed my breaths to be when I crested the wave, and I made it through the turn. My next challenge was swimming into the waves and them crashing over my head when I tried taking breaths. Again, I adjusted the timing of my breaths and pinned my chin to my shoulder, so my mouth was pointed away from the waves.

Several hundred feet from the turnaround, my swim cap started to pull off my head. So I had to stop to pull it back down. Being upright in the water caused my whole right side to cramp up. I think to myself, “shit, this is fun, got to get horizontal and try to work the cramp out.” I start off stiff-legged, but the cramp slowly works itself out, and I find someone else to draft off of. Despite starting in the second to last wave and how many people were in the race, I didn’t have the same number of people crashing into me on the swim as I have in other races and I am thankful for that.

As with other swim legs, I misjudge how far away the finish is, and think I am reaching the end when I still have a half mile to go. So my pace seems to seesaw for the last half mile. I find different people to draft off of and then start seeing the rocky bottom of the lake and think to myself. “Shit – you did this.” People are standing up, walking in the shallows, but I keep swimming as long as I can because I know if I stand up I’ll surely cramp up. I reach the end and get out of the water and start the long journey up to transition. Thankfully, it’s not raining yet, and I hope it holds off for at least some of the bike leg.

I finish the swim officially at 01:15:50. I was hoping for at least a 1:10 and a 1:05 at best but I’ll take this given what the conditions were half way through and the fact that I cramped up. My friend Craig beat me by a little over two and a half minutes.

Transition 1

00:09:32 – I totally didn’t think it took me this long to transition but it was a long walk/jog from the swim to the transition tent. I didn’t change clothes for the bike and just had to towel off, put my bike gear on, drop off my transition bag and head out to my bike. I did see my wife and daughter both on the way to the tent and then out onto the bike course. So maybe my long time in transition paid off that way.

The Bike

As I head out to the Montee Ryan, I pull out my Bonk Breaker bar and try to choke it down as I prepare mentally for the ride ahead. I see my wife and daughter cheering for me as I head to the rotary. It’s not raining, so again I am thankful for that. My trip down and up the Montee Ryan is uneventful, and I feel like I am cruising along. I make the turn onto Route 117 and make sure to not go hard up the hill and don’t worry about people passing me. On the first major descent, the rain begins, and I face my greatest fear cycling. I feather the brakes a bit in an effort to scrape the water off the rims and brake pads. Luckily, I don’t have any crosswinds. Much of the ride to the first turn around is a blur other than I really had to pee. I make it through the turnaround and decide to stop at the next aid station and pee. There’s no line, so it helps me in my decision to go. It was around this time that the rain and the wind picked up and made for a cold journey back down Route 117.

Back on the Montee Ryan, I approached the part on the bridge where it is down to one lane and split in half to allow two-way bike traffic. It has been raining hard for a while, so the narrow lane I have to travel has standing water in the tire rut down the hill on the bridge. I am traveling about 28 mph when I hit the bridge and think to myself “Oh shit, please don’t crash.” I make it through and make my journey to the Chemin Duplessis. We go back near the start on the way to the Chemin Duplessis, and there are plenty of spectators cheering us on despite the pouring rain.

Parts of the Chemin Duplessis are somewhat steep, at least to me; it’s all in the eyes of the beholder. I don’t remember how far up but I remember the accident scene vividly. It was at a slight turn that had a good climb that I came upon a crash with five or six people on the ground and blood streaming down the road in the rain. The people I saw first weren’t moving, and one of the several people that stopped to help the crash victims said, “I can’t find a pulse, can you find a pulse?” I think to myself, “Oh shit, do I stop to help, what do I do?” I keep going because more people stopping to help will just make it more of a mess. I think, “can I really finish this race like this, keep going, shit this sucks.” This colored the rest of my ride, and I vowed I was going to take it real easy the rest of the ride and not take any chances. As I made my way up the rest of Chemin Duplessis, I came upon other people off the road in the woods but couldn’t figure out what happened to them because they looked like they were heading up the hill. Maybe it was hypothermia.

So I took it really slowly and made an uneventful trip back down the Duplessis and pretty much the rest of the ride. I have yet to figure out how to pee on the bike, so after trying several times, I relented and stopped out on 117 again to use the Portalet. The rain was steady, and there was plenty of wind for the rest of the ride. I threw out the idea that I could even come close to the time I had done the course in during my training camp or what Best Bike Split had for me. The last hills on the Duplessis were taking their toll on my quads and hamstrings. I felt a few twinges and had to dial it back a bit on the last few hills but I finished the bike without crashing, and now I only had the run to do.

I finished the bike in 07:09:04. Not anywhere close to what I thought I could do but it didn’t and doesn’t matter because I made it through it. I believe Best Bike Split had me at 06:40:00, but unfortunately, I recently changed the settings in there, so I don’t have what I initially created.

Transition 2

Still raining, the carpet leading to the transition tent is soaking wet. It seems like a long hike to the tent, but it is nowhere near as long as from the swim. I make it through transition faster this time – 00:6:10. Sandra and Brenna are there to cheer me on when I head out to the run course.

The Run

I had never run a marathon and had no idea what to expect on the run. I had run all the sections of the course when i was up here for the training camp, so I knew what to expect from the terrain but had no idea what it would be like to string them all together, especially after all I had done that day. My first stop was the portalet just around the corner from leaving transition. It was on the run that I got to see many of the people from Northeast Multisport. While I didn’t know some of them well, it was great to see others in the race cheering me on and to cheer them on.

The plan on the run was to start off 1 minute slower than my goal pace. My goal pace was somewhere between 10 and 10.5 minutes per mile. I blew my plan on the first mile with a 9:37 pace, but was able to reign myself in for the next mile with a 10:37 pace. The plan for the next four miles was to keep my heart rate under 138 bpm and then depending on how I felt to keep it in the high 130s – low 140s. The rest of the run, I kept it in the mid to low 130s. I felt steady the whole way and never felt like I couldn’t take another step. I was lucky enough to have been caught on video for the run. You can see me below at around 3:06 min and again around 4:11 min.

As luck would have it, the sun came out during the run, and I didn’t have my sunglasses any longer. I figured I wouldn’t need them with how cloudy it was and that I would finish in the dark.

It was only at the last two miles that I felt like I was running out of gas. I had to walk on the hills, but was able to still maintain between an 11:47 and 12:44 pace. For the run down through the village to the finish chute, there was a woman in front of me most of the way. As we got closer, I thought to myself, “I’ll be damned if they are going to announce her name and not mine.” So I started to sprint so I could create some separation between us. She was running with her elbows out, and I caught one of them as I sprinted by. I called out an apology but who knows if she heard me. I got to hear Mike Reilly say “Brian Muldowney, You’re an Ironman!”. Unfortunately, my sprint effort brought me right up to someone else, so there is someone in front of me in my finish pictures. Oh well, it was pretty cool to hear Mike Reilly call out my name. I finished the run in 04:49:44.

I have my wife, Sandra, and daughter, Brenna, to thank for putting up with the hours of training I put into preparing for this race, not to mention the money spent on equipment and travel. Thank you to my wife for helping ease my self-doubt. I also have to thank my coach Elliot Kaowaka for preparing me so well for this race and Colin Cook for running the training camp and coaching me in swim classes. Both Colin and Elliot are with Peak Tri Coaching.

Here are my official results: