Ironman Waco. Finished in 11:57:52. Swam 2.4 miles in 01:17:56, bike 112 miles in 05:52:16, ran a marathon in 04:34:04. Overall 101, age group 15. Qualified for the Ironman World Championship.

Look back

It’s about time to look back and make a conclusion on this long, strange, painful, but also very rewarding journey. The red button to heaven. The red button to hell. I pushed it in 2016. Before that I’d been running marathons for a few years. I was not a good runner, with 9 races and 9 PRs, my best time of 3:16:35 was 95s out of my Boston qualification time — I never BQed. Meanwhile, I often watch triathlons on YouTube and draw inspiration, then I realized I was a swimmer too, and I used to bike to school. Why suck at one sport if I can suck at three. 

In December 2015, Ann and I visited the big island of Hawaii, Kailua-Kona, known as the origin of the Ironman. We got a small lodge right on Alii drive, about 2 miles from the finish line. Good times, when we ran down the road, swam the pier, and I picked up a tri-bike from a local store. Then the Queen K, and there was me in the aero position, hanging on to my dear life. I was so scared, it was like I could fly out at any time, apparently it was not my thing. That Christmas, on my facebook, I put down a time capsule: “The day will come, when I look back at this long, random journey, knowing that I’ve tried many things very hard, but there was one dream I dare not chase.”

That dream was the Ironman world championship. In the early days, when I naively uttered the word “KQ” with the Ironman slogan “anything is possible” in one sentence, even my Ironman friends had to correct me: it’s not about the kq, it’s about you can accomplish anything if you push yourself hard enough. So I learned: KQ is not one of those anything is possible things. That is fine, I liked it nonetheless, and I was hooked. During the years, I learned to pushed myself in and out of the sport, the pain was enjoyable. Endurance sports are one of the very few things in life that we have the full control of, waking up in the morning knowing exactly what to do and how to do it. No excuses, nobody to blame, it’s just you and your mirror, if you stare hard enough, it will tell you the truth.

6 years later, without any warning, that dream suddenly came true. After all the hard training and races, the fulfilment, the losses in life, after the pandemic, and quite likely being infected by the virus early on, and crawling back slowly… as if the Goddess of Ironman finally opened her eyes, and nodded at me, “ok, you are in.”

But I didn’t take it, I wasn’t there, I was going home with my girl. I heard the news at the airport, thanks to MaoSao, she was an Ironman herself and knows what it means. She sounds more sorry for me than myself. I was thrilled at the news, that’s the KQ slot! and I have no time to take it. Then I thought, wait a minute, do I regret it? “How dare you say no to the IMWC?”, Michael would ask. I kept silent and mowed over the question during the flight. It was a tough question. When the plane touched the ground in SF airport that evening, I was pretty clear. I told Ann, I do feel a few seconds of regret, but I would regret more if we stayed and took it.

I’m 47 years old. During the years, I’ve done, or failed to do, many things that I truly regret. We all lost our loved ones last year. I was dedicating this race to my brother, who passed away from an accident this week last year. I’d give up everything to go back to that day and maybe I can stop the clock, but I don’t get a second chance, nobody does.

I don’t regret missing the graduate party in PKU, twice, I don’t regret never putting on a doctor’s hat, I don’t regret leaving famous companies without a reason, I don’t regret leaving science without an answer, and I surely don’t regret missing a ticket to IMWC. For all those I have accomplished, the cosmos never answered the very few questions I asked. It’s just endless darkness, and everlasting silence.

That said, there is a little regret. For that reason, I painted a bottle of medicine for the cure. I painted it a few months before the race. I also painted a regret for your amusement. That is my regret.

This is it. This is the ultimate goal, there is no more goal to chase, no more reason to stay. I owe Utah a stone, I owe Hawaii another. They say if you take a stone from the big island, you will be cursed by Mauna Loa, until you return it. Maybe that’s why. I don’t know if the stone from Utah cursed too, it saved our lives in 2002. We will visit those places, and return the stones.

Pain Cave

I built my “pain cave” right at the beginning of the pandemic. Andy bought a treadmill the first week of the SIP, with -6% to 40% percent hill running features. I had an old version of Wahoo kickr, later upgraded to a Tacx Neo. I built a rockler’s plate for the bike trainer, that’s my virtual road. I decorated it with my oil painting colors, with the shape of the virus molecules, and named it “the Covid-19 Kickr”. We also found a Vasa swim simulator, which was good enough for maintaining the swimming strength. Adding some weights, the gym was ready. I stayed in my cave for most part of the training, even after the world re-opened from the pandemic and I chose to work in the office. It was very efficient, that I can double book my time, training while watching videos, and keeping it safer than outdoors. I did fall off the trainer a few times though. 

Set Back

I think I was infected by the virus on November 25th, 2019, but it was hard to tell. There was one covid antibody (IgG) positive result. After my IMAZ PR race, I went back to China to visit Mom. I caught a virus on the train and got a fever. It was quite abnormal for me to have a fever over 24 hours, I am an Ironman after all. But that time I went down for a whole week, mostly on 38C, two nights over 40C. Luckily I self-quarantined in a hotel strictly, and ordered delivered food. After I came back to the US in early December, I coughed for 4 months. Luckily, my whole team has left the company. I asked two close friends to take the test, both got negative. Before March 2020, I found myself extremely tired even when jogging slowly, I couldn’t hold a 13, 14 min/mi pace. I SIP’ed 250 days to find out that I already have the antibody, that was a joke, but I also gradually recovered. By March 2021, I went up Mt Hamilton 7 min faster than my best time, I knew I have fully reset it. Now this has become an unprovable suspect.

Coach

I’ve been self coaching for the first 3 Ironman races, the results were good. I self educated well enough to do it, mostly correct, but to the details, I always come short. Self coaching has its problems. It’s hard to stand on an objective ground. I often get passionate on the road, and easily forget my plan. I would overtrain, get injured, or think too much and do wrong things during the races. My mind was everywhere.

This time, I worked with a friend, Zhang Chu. We knew each other through photography, when we were on the East coast, sweeping the streets in NYC, when the cameras still used films, and the world was black and white. Later I heard him in the news. He races more often, and routinely won races in China. He started full time coaching in recent years. I joined his team last December. Our training was very data driven, he wanted me not only to know the data, but also to feel it.

By the time I can read my body, I started to feel I can also control it. It lasted 11 months, I totally enjoyed the long training cycle without any injury. As I’m getting older, my recovery speed slows down, and the overall training time drops. I was looking at 15h peak week. We lowered the total volume and balanced the intensity, adding yoga and strength. I also walked the dog 1 mile every day. I missed 2 days for the 2 vaccination shots, one swim session when I had to wire up the holter monitor, because my heart rate dropped alarmingly. Other than that I did all the homework. According to TrainingPeaks, I eventually reached my all time peak on race day. TSS 120, came out of the race at 135.

At first I didn’t want to register for a race, I lost the heart to compete, I just needed to structure my life, be a better athlete, a better person. On the other hand I wasn’t sure when the races would come back. Chu told me it’s still good to get some race data, and a goal to aim at. For me it’s racing for training. So when registration finally opened, I chose a time in November, and that was Waco. 

ER

Have you ever heard that you can train yourself so fit, that you are going to die for your fitness? On July 12th, I was working in the office. My Garmin 945 beeped. It detected my heart rate dropping below 45. I manually checked it a few times, the heart rate was not only low, but kept dropping, 42, 39, 37. I was feeling cold and shivering, so I stood up and walked around, it got better, but as soon as I sat down, it started to drop again. That night I recovered, still cold but HR was back to 50. Next day the watch alarmed again, this time, I got 35. Ann wanted me to go to the urgent care to check it out, so I went there after work. 

On my way to the hospital, I dropped by my dentist to say hello, and we processed an implant surgery. I think I won’t have a chance to update my teeth if my heart rate drops to zero.

When we finally arrived at the hospital, the doctors did an EKG test. As soon as he saw the result, he wanted to transfer me to an ER that is 3 miles away, where they have more facilities. He asked me if I needed an ambulance, or if somebody could drive me. I was a little confused, but I told him Ann can drive. I was actively doing calculations, if it is only 3 miles I think can swim it. He saw me looking confused, asked me if I needed a stretcher. He told me that’s the normal procedure in similar cases. Well, I started to get concerned, I know better to respect the doctor’s professional opinion more than my own feelings. So Ann drove me to the ER, and I took another EKG. This time my heart rate stabilized around 50 for 2 hours. The nurse took an X-ray of my chest, but had to try it 3 times! She said my lungs are too long and she couldn’t find the bottom. I told her that’s fine, there is no bottom for my lungs. We then talked about my health history, I told her about my Ironman training. She looks relaxed, “from your lungs it looks like you can do that kind of thing”.  Really? If that’s her professional opinion, then that’ll be my weapon on race day.

U-Haul

We arrived at the Waco airport around 10pm, the rental company closed at 6:30pm. When we came back the next morning 2 minutes after they opened, my vehicle was gone, given to others. We soon realized the whole city was out of rental cars. We called around, and found out all rental cars in all the nearby cities are gone. We called Lyft to do things, but it was very inefficient. It took an average of 10 minutes to wait, each time it felt like a double time penalty. By 2pm, we basically didn’t make any progress on anything. Looking out of the window on the back seat of Lyft, the city is car-less, I wanted to cry. That’s when I suddenly saw the U-Haul company, huge letters, a row of $19.95s, shining under the Texas sunlight. I immediately realized, that’s it !

At about 4pm that Thursday, one hour before the registration close, an $19.95 10-feet U-Haul raced into the Waco Ironman Village. Out jumped an anxious looking man, who didn’t know that everything is going to be fine from there, and that he is on his way to one of his life time dreams. I checked in, and rentaled Zipp 408 from Race Day Wheels, and got my Canyon from TriBike Transport. I’ve been with this bike for many years, going through many races, as soon as my had touched the handle bar, I felt a sudden boost of confidence, the energy start to flow back into my blood, and I started to calm down. By 5pm, we finished everything, the day was still young, the sunset was beautiful, we decided to drive the bike course. Thank to the big U Haul, I’m still on my plan.

The next day, Jermin, Bing and I swam the lake. Jermin gave me a hat, I was inspired but not sure what to do with it. I’m too far off. On the hat it reads, “Hawaii, Ironman World Championship”. The dream I never dared to chase. I should’ve asked for an autograph from the man who never lost. After the swim I checked my bike mechanics, and ran a mile with fast strides. We didn’t know at the time that all three of us were going to qualify the next day. 

The Race

Out of 814 athletes who registered, only 644 finished that day, that’s about 80% finish rate. I remember ~98% was the normal number. Ironman is a very self selective sports, those who dare to stand at the start line have what it takes to pass the finish line. Because of pandemic, a lot of races are postponed, so this race gave us 120 championship slots, 45 to Kona and 75 to St. George. I finished 101 overall, so I should’ve known that I’ve got a slot. The qualification went down quite deep. I’d take the 8 or 9th slot in my age group, if I took it.

Swim 1:17:56, overall 161, ag. 18

The water was warm and nice, not crowded, I tried to draft behind good swimmers at the start, but soon I lost them, most of the time I was on my own. The first 0.6 mile upstream I did feel a little slower, I used stroke rate of 64, effort at about 8/10. Turning around I dropped the rate to 54, with longer strokes, feeling the water very well, and kept effort under 7/10. My time was better than last race by 3 minutes.

Jogging the 0.3 mile uphill to T1, I was happy most of the bikes were still there. I felt very calmful, replayed everything as I visualized the day before, efficiently and relaxed. I took time to put my wetsuit in the bag so Ann can take them easier, I checked the gels, walked the grass field carefully, I even stopped near the air pumps to check the tire pressure. It took me 6m53s to get on the bike. One minute faster than last time.

Bike 5:52:16, overall 118, ag. 20

Bike course has two loops of 56 miles. I set my watch notification every hour. Chu told me to turn off the overall normalized power (NP) and overall average speed, so I only focus on the current hour. During the first 2 hours, clouds were covering and the temperature was cool. I stayed on 165w NP, feeling effort at 6/10, averaging 20 mph. I started to gradually add NP to 175w on the 3rd lap, feeling at 7. Strangely, the speed dropped to 19 mph. Later I learned it’s the variance (VI) grew from 1.04 to 1.09, I pedaled less smoothly. On the 4th lap, it started to get hot. I poured ice water all over my body on each station, every 15 miles. I used Gatorade on the first two, which perhaps was a small mistake, I should take water before Gatorade. My stomach warned me, I took 2 TumTum pills and recovered during the 4th hour. I took a big mouthful of salt around 100 miles, with a lot of water but still cramped the next mile, in other word, the salt worked. I lowered the power to 140w and very quickly fixed the cramp. During the 5h lap, I made a wrong turn, started the 3rd loop of the day. It wasted me 5 minutes, I pushed to 8/10 a few times out of anxious, but soon realized and eased down. I kept telling myself: “keep cool, save the legs, and trust the runner”. After the bike, I was 15 minutes behind my PR time, but my legs were strong.

At T2, It started to feel very hot, so I took more time to recover. I sat down to wear my shoes slowly, drank a little bit of protein, and added some sunscreen. 6m44s.

Run. 4:34:04, overall 102, ag. 13.

Out of T2, I felt better than in 2019, no pain points. Although I still couldn’t run well at first. It was very hot by then, feels like 90F., I was forced to walk at first to lower my heart rate. It took me a few miles to gradually recover back to running mode. Then into the park there is a 15% uphill, I had to walk again. Turning around that hill, I decided to take a risks. I decided to hammer down that 15%. If I cramped there, I’d fuck up the whole race, but if I’m lucky, there was still a little hope for PR. I started to accelerate, every step I was waiting for the daemon to come out, but he didn’t. I fled down that hill, passing people, and gained back my confidence. I didn’t cramp, maybe I am a strong runner after all. It became really hot now, I dropped to walk almost all the uphills, hammered the downhills even faster, a few times I saw sub 7 pace on my watch. Only one problem, I walked too frequently, and started to get used to it. I walked about 20s every 3-4 minutes, as if every cup of coke only fuels for 0.3 miles of running. I decided to go full coke mode, filling my hand bottle with ice coke at every aid station to keep the sugar flowing. The marathon was hard, as always. I eventually ran an overall negative split, averaging 10s/mi faster in the second half.

I think it was a perfect race, I did everything right. I was 27 min slower than PR, but I felt joyful. I can tell that my A goal of 11h would be doable on the IMAZ course on a good day. I didn’t know it was a KQ effort at the time, but I could accept this one as my last race.

One last Heist

We used to joke about it, that racing an Ironman is like robbing a bank: you got to be a little bit crazy, you will need badass friends, and sometimes it can be dangerous. I had two badass friends 6 years ago when I started, Ray and Ethan. That time I made a ridiculous plan, but they wanted to do together, so we trained ourselves to the ground. Vineman was our first target, it went bankrupt a few years later, following our robbery. We made some good money (memory) together, robbed some more and they retired.

I kept on robbing the banks. In 2019, I got my personal best time of 11:26:48 in IMAZ. Knowing I was close to my potential ceiling, I made up my mind before this race. If I can execute a perfect day with no regret, I will retire. One last heist.

Fast forward to the last miles of my last robbery, by that time, I had missed my A goal of 11h, missed my B goal of PR, the clock was ticking for 12h. If I want it, I’d have to run the last 2 miles faster than I did in the last 24. But why, I had no reason to push now, no goal to chase. My mental tank was empty. It was getting dark, nobody will see if I slowed down a little bit, they will still call me an Ironman and we will celebrate, and the days will pass and I will get old, then one day I die. The universe does not remember.

What I didn’t know was at that specific space and time, the Goddess of Ironman was watching, with a KQ medal in her hand, she was hesitating whether to give it to me or pass on. That’s when I suddenly heard my name, then a much stronger looking Ethan jumped out of the darkness. I was freaked out, for a second I believe I already died and he was a ghost. Quote his line, “every time we see each other, we bring the most pain to each other”. I haven’t seen him for many years, didn’t know he moved to Houston during the Pandemic. He heard I was going to rob the bank, and drove 3 hours to save my ass at the last mile. It was like he opened the door of the car and called, “get in”, so I ditched the money, got in the “car”, and I escaped.

I’m still as poor as when I started, I never raced the Ironman World Championship. My friends asked me why I didn’t take it, I hope I’ve answered the question.

When you fall into a black hole, passing the event horizon, passing the famous point of no return, the universe will still remember. According to the minus first law of the universe, information does not disappear. I’ll see you on the other side.