IM Vichy 140.6

IM Vichy has been on my list for a long time. As a family, we have spent a good chunk of July and August in our caravan in France for many years, and this year was finally the year to make it happen!

A few things about Vichy and the race. Vichy is the queen of spar towns in France, famous for its many deep rooted springs and crystal clear water enriched with all sorts of things to make you more healthy! It is located in the middle of France, where, during August it is common to see temperatures into the late 30’s. The swim is in a “lake” which is sort of man made from a river using dams to create a wider, stiller body of water. This combined with the high temperatures often makes the race a non-wetsuit swim. The bike used to be flat, now it takes on some of the climbs in the area in the Bourbon mountains, with a total of around 2500m of elevation (matching Lanza and Wales). The run is a 10.5km loop around the lake in and out of a couple of parks, but pretty flat.

When I booked the race, we were already planning to be in France for 3 weeks before it, so we booked 2 weeks at a favourite campsite of ours in the Jura mountains near Switzerland, and then moved to a campsite a couple of miles from race HQ in Vichy 1 week before the race. The 2 weeks in the Jura were perfect preparation – the sun was out every day, the temperature was mid 30s, the beautiful lake was 25 degrees, and there are enough hills to make every ride a hilly one. It’s fair to say, I spent a lot of those 2 weeks swimming without a wetsuit, buoyancy shorts or pool buoy – reintroducing myself to how swimming should be, and I got up to 5km in the lake in around 1:30, so got some confidence that I may only be 5 mins slower over the 3.8km swim if it ended up being a non wetsuit swim. I rode every other day up 1000-2000m of hills and settled on a sustainable power of around 3 watts per kg, and ran in the heat of the day. I felt properly prepped as we moved to Vichy!! On arrival, the weather was as predicted – 35 degrees, the water temperature was 26 degrees and there was not a breath of air to be had! The day after we arrived, I rode the course – the 30km lead in, and one 72km loop in the mountains (you do the loop twice on race day), then a 6km bit through town back to transition. It felt manageable!! There is only one bit of the lake that you can swim in which is about 100m long from a manned beach (the rest has too much boat / canoe / paddle board traffic and it is forbidden) – we swam in there for 20 mins just to say that we had, and it was warm! Vichy is also blessed with an amazing aquatics centre with a 50m open air pool, which potential Ironmen get to use for free the week before the race….so the rest of the swimming was done in there. Our campsite was 1km from the run course, and you could see the run course on the other side of the river from our pitch, so I did of course do a loop of that!

The weather all changed on the Tuesday before race day, when the thunderstorms came – 4:30 am for 2 hours was the first of about 5 storms over 3 days. Perfect (unless you are on holiday!!). The water temperature dropped to 22 and the air temperature to mid 20s, and the Facebook chat was all about using neoprene! I registered early on the Thursday, and started to hear some chat about water quality, which was later confirmed by the organisers. It seemed that the volume of water that had come down in such a short space of time had overwhelmed and broken the water treatment plant located on the side of the lake – the lake had basically taken in untreated surface water and sewage. The swim was subsequently cancelled on the Friday morning. I was gutted after spending so long learning to swim properly, but I felt more sorry for those who were here for their first or only full – but for once, you can’t blame IM for this, and I have no desire to swim in a sewer, so I would race the race that was in front of me.

Its amazing how simple kit preparation is with no swim, no rain and warm weather! The bike was racked on Saturday afternoon and the run kit bag hung up, food was eaten and bed at 10pm. The swim cancellation also meant a very leisurely start – in race number order, 4 athletes every 13 seconds – I would be off at 7:35.

Race morning consisted of the usual soaked oats, and a bottle of PH. I had refined my hydration and nutrition plan for hot weather racing in the weeks in the Jura. I had made up my Tailwind syrup bottle with 15 scoops of tailwind in – enough for 5 hours, and another 3 scoops in my aero bottle to start off. That meant that I should consume 4.5 litres on the bike as a minimum, and I carried extra PH tabs in case I want to top up with just water in between.

Off we went and onto the 30km lead in section which features one 3km climb at 6% and then the most twisty, technical descent of the day, followed by a 10km slightly downhill, fast TT bar section to the main turn point and spectator hotspot at Cussett. I had ridden this twice, so knew what to expect and whilst technical descents are not my strong point, I descended faster on race day than in practice (and climbed at higher than 3 w/kg – no surprise there!!)

The second climb starts in Cussett and is 4km long at 5%, followed by a 10km stretch of irritation – lumpy, bumpy stuff that has you in and out of the TT position every touch and turn, before a short simple descent and the start of the main feature – the 16km climb at 3%. On my recce ride, this had taken me 50 mins, so was happy to get to the top in 45 on race day without feeling as though I’d burnt unnecessary matches. The descent from this climb is my sort of descent! Great road surfaces, mostly gradual twists and turns, with good visibility of what’s coming. This leads you into the final short climb 2.5km at 4% and a nasty descent through woodland where its hard to see the road surface as the sun shines through the trees and there were some pot holes – thankfully IM had been out and marked them up in the days before. This descent feeds you back onto the fast 10km TT section and back to Cussett……just to do it all again!! The loop from Cussett back to Cussett is 72km with 1000m of elevation and took me 2:40 on the recce ride. I had a target of 2:30 in my mind, and am pleased to say I achieved 2:28 and 2:29, the model of consistency 😊.

Nutrition had gone to plan and the last few kms through town back to T2 were uneventful.

Flying dismount completed (something else practiced on holiday!!) and into T2, and about 150m run with the bike to rack it up. The hydration plan for the run had also been developed in the Jura and featured a new waist water bottle carrier with a 600ml bottle in it. The plan was to fill this at feedstations 1 and 3 and put half a 1500mg salt tab in each time – this meant 600ml of water and 750mg of salt every 5km, I would then use the Maurten gels from feedstations 2 and 4 in place of the PH ones I planned to use (I have used Maurten before and it just made life a little simpler than sorting our gels in special needs with all the water / salt stuff to attend to). The only issue with Maurten is that they only have 25g of carbs, so I needed 3 per hour rather than 2.

I started the first lap of the run and felt better than I have ever felt at the start of the IM marathon, so of course went out far too fast, at around 70.3 pace!! The plan was to run between aid stations, which meant 3km / 2km / 2km / 3km run segments, and after the first 3km, I managed to reign it in to a more sensible pace. If I believe the science, the training that I had done in high temperatures had encouraged by body to generate more red blood cells to carry more oxygen…..it certainly felt that way – I felt fabulous! First lap (10.5km) in 55 mins, second in 57 mins, and after 25km, I said to Ann “I have no idea where this is coming from, but it cant last much longer!!” The nutrition and hydration were working fine, and I supplemented a bit with Gatorade for a change. The 3rd lap featured the usual portaloo visit, which was a bit unplanned and as such took a while to get my water belt off, race belt off and get out of my new trisuit (thanks Raceskin for sending the new premium, full zip version to France for me 😊), do the business and get dressed again – consequently, the 3rd lap was about 1:05. Onto the final lap, and as ever it’s just a case of “how much do you want this” – I dropped to 9/1 run walk, and was happy to still be running kms at 5:45. Nothing left to do now but zip the suit up and sort out the finish line protocol!!

In my pre race thoughts, I wanted a 1:15 swim (non wetsuit) / 6:15 bike and 4:15 run, which would match my IMW performance 5 years ago and beat my Lanza performance from 4 years ago. So to finish with a 6:11 bike and 4:08 run made me very happy!! 23/103 in my AG isn’t worth going to the Kona slot allocation, but on a course with that amount of climbing and descending on is just fine!

It’s a shame the swim didn’t happen, especially in a town that prides itself on its spas and its water quality 😊😊