Report from IM AZ
A handful of years ago, I rised off the sofa just as I was on the path to be morbidly obese – but a world-class Nintendo player - to became the fastest Portuguese male ever to complete the most grueling endurance sports event in the world: the Ironman. I went through the process of learning how to swim, was selected for the Olympic project but by the end of 2010 moved towards a career at long distance events, scoring a 8h25m debut Ironman and – just a few weeks later – crossing the line in 2nd place at Ironman Florida in a time of 8h19 to set the Portuguese National Record over the distance.
2011 would be the year where I would step up, leave my confort zone in Portugal and travel overseas to train and race pursuiting a career with only one goal: to became a better athlete.After reaching such a summit on my first Ironman races, I thought I could go further in 2011. That proved to be wrong. With a bunch of setbacks, I came to Ironman Arizona this past weekend, for my last race of the season in a hope I could save my season with a stellar performance. While my fellow competitiores didn’t disappoint the crowds and put down a memorable show, I again failed to overcome my own stream of above pair performances. I finished 23th OA with a time of 8h46m on an absolute crawl to the line. I never walked on a race, I never got so depleted as I did this past sunday in Tempe, AZ.
I’m home now, humbled by my consecutive failures and with no reason to celebrate. It takes courage to face the process in this sport. Failure is part of it and it takes a lot of guts to look at yourself and understand where things went wrong but you need to. Fix it, came back and try again. That's what I will do.
I don't really feel like writing about the race. I made a bunch of mistakes during the race but losing track of my nutrition on the marathon was the most rookie of them all. You can't loose control of what you eat, this' a 8+ hour event not a short run around the block. It's an Ironman.
My bike file from the race (I missed the first mile and this doesn't include the 4 minute penalty I got on the last lap):
