I know I mentioned training for Ironman Boulder a couple times, but I never gave an update on how it went down.
Going into the race I was hoping to PR the 140.6 mile Ironman distance. I've been fighting a knee problem the last half of my training, I get lots of knee pain on the bike after 50ish miles on the outside back of both knees where the tendon moves across the little bone that pokes out. I went to the doctor the diagnosis was tendonitis from overuse and I was told it would not get better until I gave my body a break and and took some time off from training. That wasn't going to happen so I've trained through that and just iced A LOT literally. Then bad went to worse, 10 days before Ironman I ended up in Urgent Care because my left knee was in a lot of pain and it very swollen and ballooned up. The diagnosis... a minor meniscus tear. The joint was stable and it wasn't bad enough to need surgery or anything. I was told as long as the swelling went down and I got range of motion came back i could go ahead with the race as it's not a lot of agility and side to side movement but that it was going to hurt, a ton. Hoping for a PR turned into hoping to start and trying to just finish before the 17 hour cutoff.
Swelling did go down so I went for it. The swim went fine, the bike started good, about 50 miles in the tendonitis pain started in, by mile 70 it was pretty painful in general. It was at 5500 feet of elevation, 90 degrees out and not a cloud in the sky, GPS were reading around 102 degrees out on the east side of the bike route where your baking in the sun with nothing but a blacktop road. The last 30ish miles were all up a false flat, mile 100 was a 1 mile climb up what started as a 14% grade. Stomping on the pedals for that is really what triggered the severe knee pain. I finished the 112 miles and made it back to transition. By the time I started the run I was limping just trying to walk and I still had to run a marathon, all of which was on solid concrete (beats up your joints a lot more than blacktop or asphalt). It was ugly, really really ugly. When I had 9 miles left i knew I could walk the whole way and still beat the cut off but I honestly didn't know if i was going to able to cover another 9 miles. In the end it was my slowest 140.6 by about an hour and half but it was probably the most meaningful going injured and still pushing through it. In the end Boulder ended up being one of the hardest Ironman course they offer (based on one of the slowest average finisher times and the slowest average marathon time of all the race.
