There’s one quote that I keep thinking of when looking back on this race, and it’s a quote from triathlon-legend Chrissie Wellington: “The perfect race is the race where you deal with imperfections perfectly”.
Text by Koen van Meeuwen | Photo by Koen van Meeuwen
This was a race with a lot of “imperfections”… But the mind stayed strong throughout, so this one comes pretty close to the ‘perfect race’. It’s been another amazing journey, and I have to start with saying that my amazing support-crew guided me through it perfectly, so thank you Jacomina, Daan and Youri!
Make yourself a cup of tea and sit down for a while, because it’s another long story… I’m not going to try and write a shorter version, since even in this long version I feel like I missed a lot of small stories that also happened… Let’s say it was a lóóóng race…
When I cancelled my Deca-plans last February it only took me a few days to finally start to enjoy training again; all the pleasure that had been gone whilst focussing on that one single goal for years came back at once when just ‘playing outdoors’, and swimming, running and cycling without any pressure of a big goal ahead just made it all very simple, and reminded me why I love what I do. But through the powers of social media there was a post about a small race in France that captured my attention in just the right moment… This one would seem like fun… And how hard could this be, after training for the deca… (note to self; my own frame of reference doesn’t help with actually judging how hard things will be…)
7.6km swim – 360km bike – 84km run
As always, racing an ultra-triathlon is a teamsport, and I have an amazing support-crew joining me for this adventure; knowing that Jacomina, Daan and Youri will have my back during the event makes me quite relaxed… The day before the race we arrive in France (Daan, Youri and me by car, and, since I’m not the only crazy one, Jacomina by bike), and while I go through the paperwork at registration The Team sets up our tent, which will be our ‘basecamp’ during the race; it’s a triathlon with small bike-and run laps, so I will be passing by this tent a lot… Then it’s time for the race-briefing and pasta-party, and finally we make it to our airbnb and have time to relax for a bit… It’s been a busy day…
The only thing that now worries me is the weather; I’ve been making plans for the heat, but shortly before the race all forecasts change; and the night (which will be the bike-section) now seems to be very, very wet… And that doesn’t mean ‘a bit of rain’, but the forecasts are that it’s going to be pouring down all night… I’m pretty stressed about that (not just because the course will potentially be slippery, or it could cool down a lot, but I also have trouble seeing when it’s dark and my glasses are wet… And without glasses, cycling isn’t an option…). I try to not worry about it, but I can’t, and decide that there’s always one thing to worry about anyway, so this time this is it…
Thursday June 30th – raceday(s)…
After an easy morning, going through all the logistics and equipment once more with The Team we’re heading to the pool. It’s an afternoon start, so there’s no need to hurry! At the pool we get the bike ready, get some food in, talk to some of the other competitors, and then we wait… Meanwhile Stijn and Inge, and their 4-year-old daughter Tooske (who turns out to be an amazing supporter during the entire event!) show up; they’re on holiday, and happen to be be staying at a campsite near the race-location… A vacation-planning-coincidence? I don’t know, but I do know Stijn has been part of The Team during all my previous Ultra-triathlons, and many events before that as well, so for me the team now feels complete again!
part 1: the swim…
The 50-meter outdoor pool in Colmar is beautiful, but it will be a challenging swim; water temperature is quite high, and the bright sun makes the air really hot as well. Officially a wetsuit is mandatory during ultra-races, since, even with higher temperatures, when you swim for a long time you can still get cold… But this is a ‘short-ultra’, so I check if they can make an exception, and this time they will allow a non-wetsuit swim… And here is where I make the first mistake of the day(s)…
Since it will ‘only’ be a 2,5 hour swim I decide to start with a wetsuit, because a wetsuit helps me swim better (being a ‘not-too-talented swimmer’ I can use all the help there is!) – and since all other athletes are putting on their suit as well, I stop thinking for myself… The idea is that I can always quickly lose the suit when I’m overheating anyway, but I keep this as a very distant thought in my mind, and fail to make this a strategy (I should have talked to The Team, and have made an ‘overheating-protocol-checklist’, which would mean checking at every 1500meter feed-stop… Instead I keep telling myself it’s only 2,5 hours anyway, so a bit of discomfort is only there for a little while…).
In the pool I meet the 2 other swimmers in my lane (only 3 swimmers per lane means that we won’t be fighting for positions, at my last ‘Double’ in Emsdetten the swim was a constant fight!), and after a countdown we’re on our way! My first triathlon since 2019 has started, and although I’m excited, I know I need to try and be as relaxed as possible, since this ultra-game is all about conserving energy!
Within 100meters I notice that my goggles fill up with water on one side. Again, I underestimate the swim, and don’t stop to adjust this (or take another pair of goggles, which I did bring to the pool…). And although 2,5 hours of swimming in the heat, and with one eye submerged in the chlorine, is doable, I forget that there’s still a long way to go after the swim…
But right now it’s all about swimming! I am not the best swimmer, and haven’t been swimming a lot the last few years (first due to lockdowns and closed pools, later because of some motivational-issues), but I just get into my slow-and-steady pace, stopping for a drink every 1500 meters, and the bottle of cold water The Team pours in my suit is a welcome distraction from the heat!
Another great distraction is 4-year old Tooske, who is walking by the side of the pool, and waving when I swim by, I try to wave back every time I see her, but I’m not sure if she sees that!
The swim itself is fairly uneventful… I just swim my 1500meter ‘stages’, and keep counting my laps… When I turn after 7500 meters I’m confused; the lap-counters should put a ‘100-meters-to-go’ sign in the water, but they clearly seem to have forgotten… And although there’s a lot of things that I’m not good at, I AM good at counting my laps…
I don’t think I’ve ever miscounted on a swim, no matter how long the swim was… I keep going, but start to think what to do when I reach the 7600 meter-finish-line; not only is there a simple rule about communication (‘do NOT talk to the counters’, since they have to be focussed), my French is also ‘not good enough’ (that’s an understatement!) to have a discussion about the distance… But luckily I see that they put the 100-meters-to-go sign in when I reach them, and although it’s 100meters too late, I know that swimming a bit extra will be faster than trying to convince them that they made a mistake! (and yes; my count was right, since later I saw that my amazing Team had also been counting and writing down the 100-meter splits, and they also had 100meter more than the official distance). Happy to be out of water after 7.7km I get ready for a slow transition, and some cooling down…
part 2: the bike…
After a slow transition (taking the wetsuit of whilst standing under a cold shower is really nice!) I get on my bike for the next part of this adventure… But where I hoped to take it slow, and recover a bit from the swim (I am still overheated and not feeling too great…) that plan doesn’t really happen…
The bike-course is a small loop through the vineyards of Colmar, which I get to ride 40 times. But to get from the pool to that loop I first have to ride through a busy residential area. Luckily the Bretzel-team has thought of a way to make it simple; every athlete gets a ‘support-cyclist’ for those first kilometres, to lead the way, and make sure no-one gets lost or injured in traffic…
When getting to my bike I get a ‘Bonjour’ from ‘my’ cyclist; a man who is not the youngest, but seems to be someone who’s got some endurance-experience! I think his briefing was simple: ‘it is a race, so don’t slow down your athlete’, and maybe seeing my timetrial-bike made him think that it would be a good idea to go fast… But my mind and body are not ready to go fast, and I’m working hard to keep up, and at least keep him in sight so I don’t mis a turn… After a few kilometres I’m on the bike-loop, and I’m on my own, finally, I can slow down a bit, get into my own rhythm, and start to do what I’ve done before; just ride small loops for a long time…
The bike-lap is beautiful; it curves through the wine-fields, with beautiful views of the mountains in the distance, over mostly pretty good road-surface (part of the course was freshly paved before the race!). But it’s still warm, and I just can’t ‘reset’ the system after the hot swim. I feel like crap, and have trouble eating and drinking. That’s just physical though, in the past this would have led me into a mentally bad state as well, now all I think is “this is a challenge, how can we solve this?”. After five hot laps I get to the ‘basecamp’; the original plan was to get new bottles after every 5 laps (which is approximately 45km), and not get off the bike at those points, except for 2 moments that were planned for some ‘solid food’. But the heat is a problem, and I feel a bit dizzy, so I tell The Team that I need to sit down for a second. They don’t argue (I guess they also see that it’s not going to plan right now), and when I sit down for a bit I get some cold coke, and some ‘strong words’ about my previous nutrition (which was ‘almost zero’). When I tell them I can’t get my planned nutrition in, Jacomina gives me 2 alternatives, and when I choose one I’m told exactly how much I have to eat and drink during the next 5 laps. Slightly refreshed I get back onto the bike, feeling a bit better; the short stop helped to ‘reset’ the system, and the sun has disappeared, so it’s not that hot anymore…
And when the overheating is fixed, the next challenges arrive… The first raindrops are nice and cool, but after a while the rain is followed by ‘a bit of wind’… and that ‘bit of wind’ is followed by ‘a light summer storm’… I just continue ‘by feel’, not looking at heart-rate, speed or power output (looking back at the data I clocked almost all the 40 laps in exactly the same time, except for the ones with nutrition-breaks, toilet-breaks, or mechanical issues! Seems my internal ‘steady-state-bike-pace’ is pretty well trained!). Every lap there’s more debris on the course, and finally I hit a little rock that has been blown onto the road (meanwhile I am trying to avoid another small rock…). When I hit it the first thing I hear is ‘pfffffffff…..’ and within a second my front tire is completely empty. No need to worry; this is a long race, so plenty of time to fix this! But on an open part of the course, standing in the wind, being cold from the rain, I can’t get the tire from the rim… I’m shaking uncontrollably trying to fix it, meanwhile screaming some obscenities (not to worry, since the French wouldn’t understand it anyway…). When I’m about to give up (and ask the next cyclist if they would tell my Team that I’m stuck here… Luckily on these ultra’s you’re allowed to get help from your crew!) my big Brother Daan drives by… What a strange coincidence; he is coming back from a quick trip to the apartment, and happens to drive on the same road that I am standing on… He fixes my tire (while I am warmin up in the car), and I’m back on the road again… In the past a moment like this could have broken me mentally, now I’m back on my bike, instantly forgetting that this happened, and I ride along as if everything in life is perfect again (which it is, sort of…)
The night goes by without a lot of special stories; just lap after lap after lap, with every 5 laps new bottles and energy-bars, and 2 planned ‘stops’ where I get off the bike to get some ‘proper food’ in (although ‘pot noodles’ is not really ‘proper food’… But it is a nice change from a full night of sports-nutrition, it’s nice and warm, and it helps to get some salt in!). The night is wet and cold, the course is ‘not easy’ with some sharp turns which are hard to see in the dark, there’s some issues with my bike-lights (which spontaneously shut of a few times, pretty scary while riding in a pitch-black night on a narrow road…), but I fixed those along the way…
My front wheel is replaced with a spare wheel with a lower rim, to make riding in the cross-winds easier, and I just pedal through the night… After the last nutrition-break I start riding again, knowing that this lap the sun might come up, that’s always a good feeling! But I’m not far from basecamp and I hear the dreaded noise again… pffffff…… This time it’s the back-tire… Luckily we’ve learned from the previous flat tire; I now have my phone in my back-pocket, so before I even start to work on the tire I call Daan and tell him what’s happening. When I’ve removed the wheel Daan comes running to the rescue, but he can’t get the tire of as well (I know my wheel/tire combination is really tight, but apparently it’s impossible to change these tires when tired… So after this race it’s time for another brand of tires!). On a flat tire I slowly pedal back to basecamp, and get another spare wheel…
Back on the bike again, and, just as with everything that happened so far, my mind is still happy, positive, and in racing-mode! I keep ticking of the laps, and finally ticking of the last one; 360km hard, but beautiful, kilometres done!
part 3: the run…
Transition goes ‘pretty well’, knowing that it still is an ‘ultra-transition’, so it’s not incredibly fast… A full change of clothes, stretching my back by laying on the bench in the transition-tent for 30 seconds, and I’m on my feet feeling pretty good! The only issue I seem to have (which I haven’t noticed on the bike, since with all the rain my glasses were fogged up anyway) is that my left eye has ‘suboptimal vision’; I only see a big blur… Remember that swim, that now seems a long time ago (the one where my goggle filled up with water…)? Apparently swimming for 2,5 hours with one eye in the chlorine of the local pool, followed by an all-nighter on the bike messes with your eyesight… I think I mentioned before: I underestimated the swim… The strategy on an ultra should always be to deal with the very minor issues along the way, since they can have big consequences later in the race… (Luckily, the eyesight got slightly better during the run, and after a day or two everything was back to normal again!).
I start running, and as always, my first few laps are way too fast. I feel great, and I love the lap: it’s about 1300 meters, with 1000 meters in the shade of a forest, and a 300 meters ‘out-and-back’ section passing all the crew-tents. It’s busy on the course; there’s runners of the Double, but also most of the runners of the Quin (the 5-times-ironman-distance, which started a few days before the Double… It’s weird knowing you’re on the shortest triathlon of an event when you’re doing a Double!). As always the atmosphere is very friendly; a short chat or some words of encouragement every time you pass or get passed, and passing my Team always brings the energy!
The body is getting tired now, and nutrition is getting more and more difficult. It’s different from my previous races though, my stomach can handle most things pretty well this time, but I just don’t like the taste. But where I previously gave in to the desire to not eat, making life of my Team very difficult, I am now ‘in control’, and when my Team hands me something I don’t want I don’t just refuse it, I now can refuse it, but come up with an alternative. So still thinking straight, still finding solutions, instead of creating problems… And still in my happy place, just running lap after lap after lap after lap…
The first marathon goes by quite uneventful; I try to get my calories in, I keep running (not fast, but I think during that first marathon I didn’t walk, so that’s always nice on an ultra), and make sure to stay in my own little ‘bubble’, not thinking ahead, since it’s still a long way to go…
After the first marathon my legs start to protest, an I have to walk short bits to prevent my legs from locking up. These short walks become longer walks, and these longer walks become full laps of walking… Luckily I’ve been training to ‘walk fast’ the last few years; so I still can maintain a bit of pace, and try to focus on my form. But after 50km I know that I need to find a way to ‘reset’ the system, and make a plan for a short break…
Taking a break is a big deal; what starts with one short break will mostly result in more short breaks, which will then become more long breaks, and on these distances you can easily lose hours… So the original plan was to NEVER sit down on a chair during the run (my mantra was: “beware of the chair”) to prevent me from entering a too comfortable comfort-zone.
But I now know continuing like this will also take a lot of extra time, so my plan is simple: sit down for one time only, change of shirt, get some food, stretch a bit, and then no breaks until the finish. I tell The Team this, and they agree that this is a decent strategy (I think telling them the plan rationally helped!). I sit down, get some cold coke in, clean shirt, clean socks, clean shoes, and a quick loosening of the legs from Youri (always nice to bring a physio in your team!) and I’m back on my way again. Looking at my km-splits I think the time lost on this break was gained back within 4 laps, since I’m flying again… Until I start to slow down once more… Now it’s very easy to convince yourself that one more break will help again, but that’s not going to happen, since it won’t help anyway, now it’s all about getting through it, one step at a time…
It slowly gets more and more busy on the course; not only are all Double athletes running now (and those who are still doing the Quin), also the 4th day of the ‘5-marathons-a-day-challenge’, and the 24-hour-run have started. It gives a nice distraction to have so many likeminded people around… But the biggest distraction is my biggest (or smallest?) supporter Tooske; Not only was she waving at me during the entire swim, but now Inge, Stijn and Tooske are back. That brings a smile on my face, since I didn’t expect that! And while I think that they will only be staying for a short while (how much fun is this for a four-year-old?), they stay for hours, and Tooske gets more and more involved; what starts with a cheer and a wave when I pass by turns into high-fives, and finally she decides to take my hand and walk with me past the Team-tent a lot of laps, which gave me a huge burst of mental energy every time!
The final hours it’s all about the mind trying to overcome the body; just one lap at a time, some bits slow running, some bits fast walking, some bits slow walking, just keep on moving, keep on trying to eat whatever I can, and just continue… I see the first athletes finish on the Double, and although I don’t know how fast or slow I’m going, or what position I’m in (it’s a conscious decision to not get that information, since it can only distract from the race; on these distances you go as fast as you can go, no matter the outcome), I feel like I’m in last-place (with all the side-events going on there’s so many people on the course now that it’s impossible to know in which position of the triathlon I’m in). Being in last place doesn’t bother me; I came here with different expectations, but seeing what has happend over the last ‘I-don’t-know-how-many-hours’ I’m just really, really happy that I’m going to finish this one, and proud to have another Double done! But then 5 laps before the finish Daan tells me I’m in fifth place, which totally surprises me and gives me a huge boost of energy! Unfortunately, that energy is only mental, since physically the tank is pretty empty… One lap at a time… And then there’s the final lap; it’s the ultra-triathlon tradition that the final lap goes in the opposite direction, and you get to wave a flag during that victory-lap, so you can celebrate with all your fellow-athletes… It’s an awesome lap, and it’s great to have my Team running with me… And there it is; the finish-line… This was a hard race… Finally time to sit down…
Afterthoughts…
I’m writing this almost two weeks after the start of the race, and my mind still is a bit fuzzy… So many things have happened, and although this was definitely not the race I expected, hoped or planned for, this might just have been my best race so far; not by finishing-time (I think the Double in Emsdetten was 3,5 hours faster), or by emotion (the Double Brutal wins that one on positive emotions, and the Triple Brutal in negative emotions…), but this was a race where my mind was in control almost every second… No matter what happened; overheating, rain, storm, cold, nutrition, pain, tiredness, flat tires, I never, ever felt that there were problems, only ‘things that needed solutions’, and I never once fel into the trap of self-pity, or doubted myself or my Team. I got to keep the focus from start to finish, and that is the biggest win I could ever have (those who’ve seen me race hard races before know how my mind can bring me down)… People have asked me the past week ‘why did the mindset work this time?’, and I think the answer has three parts to it; there’s experience, which helps a lot on these crazy long events, then there’s the ‘form of the day’ (I think that, just as you can have good and bad days physically, your mind also has good and bad days), but let’s not underestimate training; the last years sports-psychologist Danielle has helped me so much by building a strong mental foundation, and that now starts to really, really pay of…
After a race like this it always takes time to think if I want to do this again some time… But I feel that we finally start to put the pieces of this ultra-puzzle together, so I am curious what happens if the final pieces are added… So who knows, there might be another one next year…
And as always, a story like this ends with some thank-you’s: thanks to all who have been following and supporting the journey, thanks for all the support via whatsapp/social-media and all other ways, thanks to coach Jacomina for getting me this far, to Danielle for building the mindset, Mieke for my core-strength-training schedules, all the friends who joined me in training, and I’m probably still forgetting some people…
And a very special shout-out to Laurent “Bretzelman” Quignette and his team for creating this race, and an even more/bigger shout-out to my support-crew on location; ultra-racing is a team-sport, and couldn’t have done this one without the help of Jacomina, Daan and Youri! And then there’s the support of Inge and Stijn, but especially Tooske, who might just grow up to be an awesome coach!
Double Bretzel Ultra Triathlon – IUTA worldcup race – 5th place
7.6km swim – 360km bike – 84.4km run
30 hours – 51 minutes – 05 seconds
Koen's website: koenvanmeeuwen.nl