Originally written in German. Translated to English by AI — please excuse any awkward phrasing.
Last weekend I raced at Ironman Frankfurt — my 7th race over the full distance of 3.8km swimming, 180km cycling, and 42.2km running. It turned out to be my best race in terms of time, but one of my worst in terms of execution. How did it come to that?
In early October 2011 I started the direct build for the race, with the focus on running and cycling. For running, my primary goal was to run every single day. I kept that up for nearly 40 days — at least 15 minutes every day, with one longer session per week. After that I scaled back to 3–5 times a week. On the bike I worked fairly intensively in the early phase to push my threshold power up. That was relatively successful and I’d already made good progress in both running and cycling.
Then February came along with an injury that forced me into almost a full month off. The hard-earned progress was gone and training had to start from scratch. Around that time the DNF form was already sitting on my table …
From March onward, the training was a “save what you can” operation to get into some sort of shape. My first prep race at the Challenge Kraichgau, raced straight out of full training, went fairly well. The second race, City Triathlon Heilbronn, got me an age group win. So I stood at the start line in Frankfurt with reasonable optimism.
At 7:00 sharp the gun went off, and together with 2,300 other lunatics the swim — or rather, the brawl — started. I’d lined up near the front in the second row to avoid the absolute worst chaos. I’d tried deeper in the pack in previous years and had panic attacks — didn’t need that again.
So I swam out hard and got pushed to the left. Together with others we swam the entire first straight left of the buoys — we were supposed to stay right … The kayakers were somewhat overwhelmed by the mass of swimmers and couldn’t push them further right. But it wasn’t a shortcut — the distance was the same.
After the first turn buoy I could get back onto the intended course and the fighting eased up. I covered the first lap in just under 32 minutes, then a brief land section and back for the second lap. That went relatively smoothly and pleasantly, and I came out of the water in a new swim PR of 59:49.
The path to the first transition was long and, above all, steep. Running up a sandy incline after an hour in a horizontal position wasn’t easy. I made up a few places there; the actual transition was also decent, so after another 3 minutes I was on the bike.
And then things went wrong — or more precisely, the pacing went wrong. Once I had the cycling shoes sorted and had taken nutrition, I headed toward Frankfurt with plenty of tailwind and plenty of watts. That felt really, really good — easy and effortless. Then a first glance at the numbers and the averages made clear this wasn’t good — 15 watts more than the already risky plan. I wanted to ease off, but somehow couldn’t stick to it and the numbers stayed high.
Then the external conditions came in: wind and rain. That usually hits me harder than others since I don’t have much bulk to put up against it. After 3.5h and the umpteenth rain shower, I was sitting on the bike completely frozen with goosebumps all over, black spots in my vision, seeing stars …
To be clear: the weather was just the cherry on top — it only accelerated the whole process.
Around the 3.5h mark things really fell apart — I was completely finished. The rest of the bike course, a good 1.5h more, was among the hardest things I’ve ever done. On flat sections I could somewhat keep up with the competition, but on the smallest climb I was immediately dropped and passed. Simply no fuel left in the tank — that was the bill for the first 3.5h. And here it is in graph form:
That yellow line is not pretty to look at …
In the end I averaged the wattage I’d targeted. But the pacing was anything but good. That’s a lesson for future races — this must not happen again.
I finally got off the bike after 5:01:18h, completely wrecked, with no clear idea how I was going to get through the marathon. I had trained to run fast on completely dead legs — but my legs had never been this dead. Never experienced that before.
The first kilometers felt exactly as bad as expected — everything hurt. At the first aid station I grabbed some cookies to deal with the hunger that had set in. Something solid in the stomach was all I needed — drinking nothing but iso drinks for hours is just not great.
After that it got better and better, the pain faded and I found a rhythm I could hold until about 1:50h into the marathon. The first half was around 1:32h — not too bad. Around 1:50h the pain came back and it got harder and harder, slower and slower with every step. The cause is clear: rode too hard on the bike. The second half was 1:37h — over 5 minutes slower than the first. A significant step back compared to last year when I ran very evenly.
Despite the poor execution, I still managed a new PR of 9:15:39h — good for 52nd overall and 15th in my age group. On one hand that’s genuinely great; on the other hand it could have been so much better.
A few thank-yous to close with:
To my physio Tobi, who had serious work to do on me more than once but always got me back in shape. He was also the first to identify the cause of my injury, which then
my new dentist, Dr. Nölting from Wiesloch, confirmed, fixed with a jaw splint, and thereby saved my season
and last but not least to Caroline Rauscher for the “fuel” — which is simply sensational
Thanks also to everyone who supported me during the build-up and especially at the races in person!!!