2011 Ironman Journey Story by Joseph Park

Sep 5, 2011

2011 Ironman Journey Story by Joseph Park.

While I write this "shameless self promotional Ironman report", I have a big grin on my face from the 2011 Ironman Canada race (3.8Km Swim / 180Km Bike / 42.2Km Run) as I am feeling much better than I expected. I wanted to feel little bit of the pain but there really isn't much pain. Really!! But there is a little bit of welcoming aches and discomfort when I move around.

??I am also smiling, probably because I finally achieved all my triathlon goals. I set personal best in Gravenhurst Olympic Triathlon, ITU Triathlon and destroyed my PB in Welland 1/2 Ironman. Furthermore, I participated in Goofy Challenge in Jan (It is back to back running of 1/2 Marathon and Full Marathon on Sat & Sun), I set a new Boston Marathon PB in April and I will finish my 2011 season by running New York Marathon in November 6th.

??I will make the Ironman Canada's long story short.. Well sort of....

??First, I need to thank all my friends, who were so supportive during my journey to become an Ironman. Especially to Victor da Silva, Monique Dubord, Rick Cadman, Gary Kennedy, Joni Blanshard, Marc Williams, Helen Song, Sonia Kahng, Linda & Doug, Young Lee, Colin, Chung, John Song, all the West Toronto Pacers & Brampton Triathlon Club members, Coach Chris Pickering and most importantly to Yoon Young. My "super selfish Ironman journey", would not have been possible without Yoon Young & Summer's support. Like I said, "I have Ph.d in Selfishness!" Then again, I did YY a favor by training, as YY is a happier woman, when I am away from her. I wish I was joking but I am not. But I still love YY.??

My Ironman journey started when I moved into Sunnylea neighborhood few years ago. It's amazing how my life changed, when I moved into a neighborhood, where there is good looking Ironman couple named Rick and Sue, living right next to my house. It was simply the best move that I made in my Ironman life. The area is called "SUNNYLEA" in Toronto and it is the Mecca of triathletes. ??

After 5 years of triathlon training, I was in real good shape (and looked even better, LOL ) going into Ironman Canada race. However, I was bit worried, as I did not prepare properly for last 6 weeks of Ironman training. I had 2 week business (?) sports marketing trip to California in July, I also had 4 day golf trip and 1 week family trip to Washington DC, during the most important part of Ironman training time line.

??I was also worried, because I had issues with my left hip and I did no long runs. As matter of a fact, Dr. Jae gave me a corazon shot on hip to relieve the pain. Furthermore, I am a shitty (x2) swimmer. (& I am not being modest!!) Even though I have improved quite a bit over past year, I have never swam 3.8Km in my life. Even though I played it cool, on a race day, I was scared shitless. However, I knew I would finish strong, only if I could somehow survive the swim part of the Ironman, since I trained harder than Korean Olympians throughout the year, with Victor Da Silva. AKA "Victoria" & Joepark's second wife. ??

OK, fast forward....

??August 25th. D-Day 3 Victor, John & I arrived in Penticton, BC, 3 days before the IMC race, to check out the swim, bike and run course. (Shit, if I was this studious in school, I would have graduated on time.) Anyway, I normally do not mind checking out the course before the race but I regretted it this time, as I forgot how long the 180Km course really is. Plus, there are 2 big freaking hills called Richter Pass (10 km long) & Yellow Lake (5 Kim long) with bunch of small rolling hills in between these 2 monster hills. I almost shit on my Nike golf shorts. (That would've been embarrassing.) ??

August 27th – D-day 1. Every past Ironman racers have told me that I should never, ever, change anything leading up to Ironman race. However, I decided to try on a demo Blue Seventy wetsuit and I loved it so much, ended up buying one. I also ended up getting a new cassette gears for my bike and bought a new CEP tri suit the day before the Ironman race. Yes, I went against the Ironman race rules and changed everything the day before the race. I didn't know what fuss was all about. ?? In my mind it make no difference, unless you are a pro.

August 28th. (Race day) 4:00 AM - I only had few hours of sleep, as Victor woke me up at 4 AM. I guess he was somewhat excited about the race.) I tried to go back to sleep but I couldn't, so got up and ate breakfast and took a nice long shit before the heading out to race IM Canada. ??

6:00 AM - Victor and I arrived at the race site around 6 AM. It was a beautiful morning and you could not have asked for better weather on the race day. I checked in my transition bags and got my body marked with #1674 on my arms and legs and age on my left calf. ??

6:15 AM - I realized that I forgot my swim goggles at Linda's place. What seemed like a perfect day turned into an ugly day and I had to call Linda & Doug, to see if they can bring my swim goggles on time. In the mean time, I met a guy named Andrew and he heard my conversation and he kindly gave me one of his extra goggles. I was about to shit pants, so I had to use porta potty. ??

6:40 AM - Linda and Karen and the world's 3rd "cutest baby ever" Ryder, rescued my swim day, by bringing the goggles on time. I quickly, put on my new wetsuit and walk towards to lake and realized that I had shit again. I forced myself to shit one more load and moved towards swim start line. (That was not worth it, as it was only a tiny shit. That was my 3rd shit of the day.) BTW, shitting with wetsuit was not easy, so try to shit before putting on a wetsuit.??

7:00 AM. (3.8 Km SWIM) - There were 3000 A type personalities lined up to swim 3.8 Km. It will be the craziest swim EVER in my life. I didn't want to start the swim portion, with 3000 competitors, so I started move towards the west side of the Lake Okanagan, By the time, Canadian Nat. anthem was played and start gun went off, I moved so far to the west, I was closer to Kona than Penticton.

I started to swim by myself. I swam calm, cool and collected like the still water of Lake Okanagan, I swam smoothly (by Korean standard) for 1.5Km, till I noticed, the Tsunami of "sea lion like" Ironman wannabes moving towards me and with in seconds, I was joined by 100s of other swimmers.

Next thing I know, I started to swim like little crazy Chiwawa and started to swim faster than my normal pace, which caused me to panic and caused a major breathing problem. ??Again, what started as a perfect day, turned into a nightmare in minutes. At one point, I thought I was going to die in Lake Okanagan. I swear, few guys purposely pull my legs to drown me and few ladies purposely grabbed my tight ass and some purposely swam over me. As I struggled in the water, I started to wave my hands like a fanatic NY Stock Exchange floor man but none of the lifeguards noticed me. For a brief moment, I thought about how cool it would be to die in the middle of Ironman race but I just laughed it off and started to breaststroke to relax a bit. When my breathing got back to normal, I continued with my front crawl and finished it rather happy. As matter of a fact, I really enjoyed the last 1000 m of the swim and had fun time swimming. ??

I came out of water with wrinkles all over my fingers and I looked more like a 500 year old man than a 48 year old man. (I guess that's what happens when you spend too much time swimming!) ??I came into Transition tent with just over 1:22:44, 1809th place and realized I was not the slowest swimmer in the competition. Normally, when I come into transition area, there are only handful of bikes and I can clearly see where my bike is but not at IMC. There were still over 1000 bikes in transition area. I got strippers to strip off my brand new wetsuit and off I went, to find my bike.???

8:30 AM (180Km BIKE) - Since I felt good come out of swim, I was more than ready to take my Canadian girl friend, Cervelo for a long ride. I was all smile and start to ride fast for first 60Km, as it was little downhill and there was nice tailwind pushing my ass ever so gently. ??Oh, there was bunch of people with flat tires less than 30 km into the race. Apparently, there's this asshole, who throws bunch of tacks on the road before the race every year. I felt so sorry for poor guys who got a flat tire because of one fucking asshole. I guess, I was lucky to be a shitty swimmer.??

IM Canada bike course is so beautiful and so majestic, at times, I forgot that I was actually in a race. It was a beautiful course and I rode beautifully, to the town of Osoyoos. By the time I reached Richter Pass hill, I averaged 38.3 km p/h. (Trust me, I can't ride this fast.) I was HOTTER than the weather. However, when I got to the top of Richter Pass, weather got HOTTER than me.??

10 AMish - I was cooking up the Richter Pass, passing everyone. Richter Pass was a tough and long hill but it also was an amazingly beautiful place to ride. Sadly, I've caused a major air pollution, as farted all the way up to Richter Pass. At one point, farted so loud, one of the white female athlete, was laughed at me. Then again, IMC is not like PGA golf tournament, we were in a triathlon competition!! I did not let that white lady bother me and kept farting away. (I know, I know, I have issues.)
??For next 50 km, I pretended that I was competing in the "Tour To France", riding next to big boys from Tour de France and I dusted them by riding like Lance Armstrong on French Alps. ??

12:30 PMish – By now, I was hotter than Korean red chilly pepper but sadly, so was the temperature, It was sizzling hot and temperature was off the charts. By 12:30, there weren't too many athletes on the bike course. Then, all of sudden, a disaster struck on my both my hamstrings. I've got a major cramp, on my left hammy first and then moved to right hammy. It was so painful, I almost fell off the bike, while getting off the bike. : ( I actually thought my day was over, as I still had to climb the Yellow Lake.

After 5-6 minutes of stretching, I felt better and I started to ride like my mom and started to ask few riders for salt tablets, as they weree passing me by. It was like a "Chrissy Wellington's moment" in 2009 Kona Championship. Three (3) nice riders were kind enough to give me enough salt tablets, after 30 minutes, I was able to ride pretty hard again. I would like to thank them. I wish I had remembered their names.

??It took me 5:38:27 to finish the bike stage. By the time I finished my bike, I moved 1809th place to 538th place. That means I passed over 1270 riders on the bike. I was awesome. : ) I wonder, how many more riders I would've passed if it weren't for my cramp?????

2:20 PM – (Inside transition tent.) Now comes my strongest stage, "running". First, I had to look for a doctor to if he can fix my hamstring issues but the doctor was the most useless doctor that I have ever met. He made my cramps even worse by stretching my quads. What kind of doctor was that??

Anyway, one of the racer sitting next to my transition area had extra salt tablets and was kind enough to give me 4 tablets and I also saw Gary Wheeler in the in front of me and he was kind enough to give me his water bottle for me to drink. ??

BTW, did I mention that running is my strongest part of triathlon??? My intention was to run under 3:40 for the marathon portion and finish it strong. However, with tight hamstrings, I knew my 3:40 marathon day was highly unlikely. ??I started walk out of transition tent to put more sunscreen on my body, as I knew I would be under the sun for long fucking time. I asked a pretty lady to put ton of sun cream on my legs and massage my legs for a while and she did and it felt so good. : )??

I saw Kelly Hanson and Jim from Brampton Triathlon Club, calling my name, start of the run. I went over to give them a hug. : ) and then I saw Saraunas calling my name, so I walked over and started to chat with him a bit, while stretching my cramped lets.. I also heard Patrick Trainor and Jen Winters calling my name, so I went over to give them a hug, not realizing there were bike riders coming into the finish line. Ooops!! I still gave them hugs and got yelled at from the race officials. BTW, I like to thank Pat "pain in the neck" Trainor, for cheering me on and taking pictures of me, all day long.??

To my surprise, I was running at 4:50 p/km pace for first 3km. Maybe it was Marc and Helen's loud cheers and their Supersoak water gun shots but I was feeling good again. After 6-7 Km into the race, I was still running at 5:00 p/km pace but Roger Jonas passed me, as if I was standing still like a Statue of Liberty. However, he was nice enough to say that I still looked "sexy" and left me in the dust.?? After 10km, I saw my favorite site, "porta potty", and I had to visit and take a nice break from the sizzling sun. FYI, that was my 4th shit of the day. : ) If Ironman had shitting as 4th category, I would've won my age group. LOL.

After the 10km point, I started to slow down quite a bit and by the time I got to 20Km point, I was running at 5:30+ pace, running steep down hill. So sad. ??BTW, this hill on 20km point is a nasty hill. This hill is long and steep. I shit on my red Nike shorts. I wish I was joking but I am not.!! I did shit my pants! OK, I didn't shit my pants but I almost did. (for the 5th time.) For the future first timer to Ironman Canada, (Carmen, Linda and Dug and Chris and other friends,) please take my advise and take the adult size diapers with you, when you are inspecting the bike and run course.. You too, will shit your pants!!?

?3:15 Pmish.. I saw Roger Jonas again running up the hill, (where I almost shit my pants on) as if it was a small traffic bump on the road and tells me that Victor was just couple of minutes ahead of me. I managed catch up to Victor on 22 Km point and we said to each other that "we started this Ironman journey together from day 1 and we are going to finish Ironman together," which gave me goose bumps and I had little tears on my eyes. I had to suck the tears in, as I did not want him to see it. ??

By the time I reached 36Km point, I had another cramp on my legs, which slowed me down considerably but Victor said, "We are finishing together, no matter what"!! and he slowed right down to my pace, to run next 6km with me. For next 40 minutes, we talked, smiled, waved, and said "thank you" to all the people in Penticton, all the way to the finish line. To me, all the people, volunteers, wives, husbands, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, grandfather and grandmothers and all the friends, who were involved in 2011 Ironman Canada were Ironmans, just like me. To me Yoon-Young and Summer were the true Ironmans, for supporting me for past 8 months.

The time, which was so important to me in the beginning of the race, did not seem all that important by the time we were near the finish line. We met up with Helen and Marc, Sarunas, Pat & Jen again and gave them more hugs... Victor and I crossed the finished line, as all the people in Penticton were cheering us on, I held Victor's right hand and held up the finish line tape together with the biggest smile on my face.

??My not so important Ironman time was; 11:25:24. 434th Overall. / 51st out of 327th in my age group..??

Now that my Ironman journey & all my days of coming home with one sock are over, I will have to find another challenges in my life. For now, I want to be a good husband, a good father and more importantly, a good person, not a selfish person.. I've thrown away too many perfectly fine running socks due to mother nature's call during training days and I've thrown away too many valuable hours away from my family and I do not want to throw away anymore of my family time over Ironman training. I AM AN IRONMAN BUT I AM A FATHER AND A HUSBAND FIRST. I WILL NOT BE 2X IRONMAN! EVER!

JP