Ironman Canada - valuable lessons learned

I know it's been a while since I last posted anything on my blog.  Training for an Ironman tends to eat into any spare time that a person might have.  I raced Ironman Canada on July 27th, and the six weeks leading up to the race consisted of training, training, eating, training some more, eating some more, sleeping, and spending the rest of the time with my family.  Thank goodness that my family was so supportive and understanding.  I wouldn't have been able to do half of what I did if they weren't.

So let me talk about the race for a bit.  The location in Whistler, BC, was great.  Great scenery, great organizers, great town.  Everything started on time and I didn't notice any hiccups or issues.  As far as the overall race itself went, I would recommend this one to anyone who wanted a bit of a challenge.  But I would really like to talk about the personal lessons I learned at this race.

I had a great swim, and put out the best time I could have hoped for.  I got a nice kick to the head early on, saw a few stars, but managed to keep moving along.  The bike was another story.  I have Di2 shifters that are good for about 5000km until you need to recharge the battery.  I brought my charger along, however thought that this was not likely necessary and that I would be fine.  I was wrong.  With about 40km left, my battery died.  I had low gears only and while this was fine for the climb, going downhill meant my cadence was extremely high and I couldn't really get enough speed on the downhill to assist with the next uphill.  On one downhill, gravity took over and I ended up catching up to a female racer.  As I caught up to her, the officials gave me a red card for drafting and told me I had a 4 minute penalty.  I said OK, and keep cursing my bike.  My brain left me for a while, and I failed to report to the penalty tent.  I went on to do my run.  The run itself was slower than I had wanted, but with all the extra cadence at the end of the bike, my hip flexors started to bother me and slowed me down.  So I finished the run, heard the infamous words telling me that "you are an Ironman" and went to the athletes tent.   I was speaking with another athlete about our respective race, and when I told him about my bike and my red card, he said that if I didn't go to the penalty tent, I might be DQ'ed.  I quickly tried to find an official to talk about this, and unfortunately found out that yes, I was disqualified.  All that training, the travel, the time.... and I know that many people have been supportive and trying to get me to see that I finished the race and had a medal, that I heard those words..... but it still really bothered me that my times would not be official.  I can't describe the feeling, but let's just say I have only myself to blame for all of these misfortunes and that I personally need to get this black cloud out of my head.

With the blessing of my wife and coach, I am doing Ironman Lake Tahoe in about 6 weeks.

Is this the smartest thing to do?  No.  My body is beat up and tired.  But for my own mental well-being, I have to finish this race season with an Ironman race with a time.  I'm not shooting for a PR and I'm not expecting brilliance at this race.  But I am expecting that anything that is within my control will be as it should.  We will see what happens in Lake Tahoe, but I know that the lessons I learned in Whistler will make me a much smarter racer.