Danish Pastries

During our trip to Copenhagen, we were lucky enough to experience the wide, wonderful world of Danish pastries. Just 500 m or so from our place sat the GuldBageren Danish bakery. The GB baked up some of the finest breads and pastries that have ever been tasted by man. These ranged from highly sugared delicious jam-filled pastries to highly sugared delicious custard-filled pastries to even more delicious sugar and apple and icing covered pastries. I loved Copenhagen for a lot of reasons but I would consider living there even if all they had going for them was the GuldBageren bakery.

On a recent warm summer evening in the Southern Europe of Germany, while most Bavarians had long since nodded off to sleep aided in no small part by the liquefied hops and yeast they had enjoyed earlier in the evening at their local garden of beer, Pemulis lay wide-awake in bed longing for an authentic GuldBageren jam-filled, sugar-coated, icing-laden Copenhagen breakfast treat. If anyone actually understood existentialism then they might describe the experience of eating one of these pastries as being essential to the Dasein of human existence. Then again, that hardly means anything at all and the meaning of a consumable of this quality has to rise above empty meaning.

Failing to fall back asleep, and knowing that the shops had been closed for hours (and, having experienced it recently, knowing that Copenhagen was about a ten hour drive away), Pemulis crept silently down to his teeny-tiny kitchen and began the process of trying to re-create the famous GuldBageren pastry. Being limited to DSL Internet speeds as a result of living just one block outside of the Mittlerer Ring and therefore being denied the Fiber Optic connections offered by M-Net to their other more privileged customers, Pemulis could not rely on the vast troves of information that would otherwise have been available to him in cyberspace. Instead, he performed a sort of transcendental meditation that projected his mind backwards in time to the last time he bit into a GB pastry. The trillions of synapse connections in his brain worked in overdrive to distill the underlying constituent parts that made up the incomparable taste of the dessert (or snack or breakfast or lunch or...). He settled on probably: flour, yeast, salt, eggs, milk, sugar, butter, and home-made jam.

He started mixing the flour with the salt and the sugar and the yeast and mixing the eggs with the milk and the butter. He then mixed everything together into one big bowl. By this time it was nearly morning, however, and he realized that he had used the exact same ingredients that he would have for making pancakes, and so, instead of potentially wasting all those useful ingredients, he whipped up some pancakes with blueberries and the whole family enjoyed a gourmet Canadian breakfast.

THE END

Ironman Copenhagen 2017: YARR

Intro / preamble

Hello and welcome to Ironman Copenhagen 2017: Yet Another Race Report (YARR). Yes, we all know very well that the quality of this blog has degraded severely over the last eighteen months or so, and to top it all off most of the limited content as of late has been contextless boring race reports or lame training-related updates (and even those have been admittedly pretty darn sparse). In some / many cases the race reports have been involving races that the author is not even in any way tangentially connected to (cf. Giro d'Italia, blah blah blah) [which reminds me that the Vuelta a España is just about to finish its first of three weeks and our old/new Canadian friend Michael Woods finds himself within the top-10, less than a minute and a half back, which is actually kind of exciting, but don't worry I won't mention that any more]. And to top it all off, if you haven't quit reading yet, you're about to be subjected to a whole other race report and this one might even be just right-full of words because a race report's length should probably be somewhat proportional to the race's length and IM CPH was a doozy.

But here's the good news: with IMC2k17 finally out of the way, way more time on our hands, and no races to report on (though we'll hopefully keep up the tradition of the almost-here Oktoberfestlauf participation) there should theoretically be loads of time for blog post writing. Look for future posts on language, culture, food, art, literature, music, philosophy, bread making, Danish pastry testing and eating, Barolo wine tasting, and much more. With that, let's get started... with the preview to the race report!

IM Copenhagen. 3.9 km of swimming in the sea; 180 km of cycling in the howling wind; and 42.2 km of "running" (or jogging/walking/two-footed-forward-propulsion) over asphalt, cobblestone, wooden deck, and other materials through Copenhagen's beautiful city centre. Why? First, let's be specific about what "why" we're talking about here. Apart from the bigger "why", why Copenhagen, specifically? We touched upon this months ago but to refresh your memory on how it all got started, it was something like a lark: 

- "hey what do you guys think about the Cope?"
- "uh what?"
- "Ironman Copenhagen; I just signed up"
- "crazy.. ok we will too"
- "..."

But more deeply, why in the world does anyone do something like this? I can categorically and 100% unequivocally state that doing the race (this time) was NOT at all fun. During the swim I was freezing and shivering almost the whole time (and had other annoying problems that I will specify in greater detail in the actual race report way down on this page [right -- this is just the preamble]), the bike was so windy and I had to pee pretty much non-stop (even after I'd gone) for 6 or so hours, and I couldn't really run after the first ~10 km due to incorrect nutrition (presumably) / stomach problems. Unfortunately -- not to be a downer or anything -- even crossing the finish line didn't have that famous effect of at least temporarily erasing all the pain and filling you with happiness for having completed such an arduous race. I wasn't really able to even push very hard for the last little bit of the run because my stomach was so bad and would get worse once I started jogging so while I did end up jogging/running over the line, I had been mainly walking up to the last 500 m or so (maybe even less) and finally crossing the line didn't even feel like relief, actually.. It just felt.. kind of like nothing. Ugh.. super downer.

I guess one of the main reasons I felt so down about it (and have a bit since the race which was now five days ago) is that I really had the legs for the run. Despite the windy conditions on the bike, I was much fitter this time and felt like I could totally make it through a marathon (even if it wasn't super fast). Last time, though I finished with a similar overall time, my legs were just full-on DONE at the start of the run and it was a ginormous miracle that I managed to somehow get through 42.2 km of running/jogging/shuffling/walking. This time, however, I could have had a pretty acceptable IM time (and even marathon time perhaps) as my legs felt like they could totally get through a marathon at the end of the bike, but then something was off with my nutrition (or I just had a bad stomach and the nutrition was a whole separate thing) and that screwed everything up. Blah.

HOWEVER, I'm still happy that I did it! Seriously. So this brings us back to the why of doing such a race. For many people it's to prove that they can do it, to beat their previous time (side note: if I had actually beaten my previous time then I probably would have felt at least a little happier about the whole experience and obviously if I hadn't been in pain for most of the marathon then I would also have been happier), to be able to brag that they completed such a famously difficult event, to have an excuse to spend exorbitant amounts of time training, and other things. So obviously there's no ONE answer to the question "why does anyone do an IM race?". If you care (if you don't then why are you reading this tedious post?), I think it's a big mixture of many things for me. One of them is to have an excuse to "have" to train -- a lot -- for several months. That will sound strange because I feel relieved that the training is over now, and during the training I often complained about that requirement or felt sad that I couldn't do other things on the weekends. But, that's part of the point. I'm happy getting myself fit and having a good reason to go for a beautiful 6 hour bike ride. When you come back from a hard workout and spend the rest of the evening eating food that never tasted so good, you feel good about the work you did and the way your body feels after it worked so hard. And that requirement of a big race allows you to do it. For some reason the argument that you like going for a bike ride just doesn't work or feel the same when it's so much work to make sure you can somehow get in the ride (especially when you have a young daughter and both parents are training for the same race) as compared to having to do it because if you don't then you won't complete the race that you've signed up for.

Another thing is proving to myself that I can do this kind of race. I really don't think my body is made for this sort of thing and it definitely doesn't come easily to me, so making myself do it feels good -- in the high high high-level abstract plane, that is :-) ... So there's my narcissistic look on why I personally did the race. There's also the fact that I seem to have a knack for making terrible decisions (like signing up for an expensive race that requires half a year of constant training and that you don't end up enjoying doing that much or spending all of the money that you'll make for the rest of your working life on an apartment that you don't like all that much)... Oh ya, one more thing is the journey of getting there when you and friends are signed up for the same race. The camaraderie of both being in the process of preparing for something really difficult makes your conversations about how you're preparing and what you've been up to in your training somehow meaningful and that feeling of being "in it together".

Actual race report

So let's get back to that race report, shall we? Before we get started, though, a HUGE thank you to the Grandmas that made the race possible. Despite some of the negative things that you'll read in this race report with respect to not feeling super happy about how my race went, I'm super happy that we did it (as just mentioned above) and the time in Copenhagen with you was so much fun and Hannah loved it as well. But now back to the matter at hand...

Everyone reading this surely knows that I have problems sleeping before a race. In Kalmar (five years ago [!!!]) I think I might have slept a total of one hour the night before. Also, we had been staying in Thony's bachelor-style apartment in Gothenberg on a totally horribly uncomfortable inflatable mattress that creaked and sunk with every tiny movement and I hadn't been sleeping well at all for several days before the race. Not a good place to start from. This time, we were staying in an amazing AirBnB house in Copenhagen with a very comfortable bed and I had been sleeping quite well in the few days leading up to the race. On the night before I slept for about two hours, woke up for a little bit, slept for another two hours, and then around 3:45 I was up for good. That's actually pretty very good for me and I wasn't too nervous about not having slept enough. We had a couple of open-faced PB&J sandwiches and a little bit of fruit and we were out the door. Linda drove us in the famous Basketball Team Bus down to the waterfront and we were on-site (see initial image above) around ten past six. We had a few things to set up with our bikes (get the helmets and shoes from our bike bags that had to be dropped off the day before and put them on our bikes, connect the bike computers, etc.) and then we met up to stand in the porta-potty line, put on our wetsuits, and sip some more last-minute water.

While Kalmar was a mass start where everyone stood in the water together and then all started racing when a big gun went off (a pretty cool start I would say), this race had a rolling start where you first seeded yourself into a group based on your projected swim time and then 6 people set out every six seconds with the idea that the swim would be much safer and more relaxed without everyone swimming over each other at the start trying to get a position. This format must indeed be safer but I kind of like the mass swim start I have to say. Sandi and I signed up to start in the second group which had a projected swim time of 1:08 -- 1:11 which meant that our group would start being set off at 7:20. I was feeling pretty calm by this point (I had been very nervous all morning -- obviously -- but now that we were in line and ready to go I didn't have to worry about missing the start or forgetting something or anything like that anymore and so I felt much better). Finally we made it to the start and from the way we entered the corrals I ended up starting one or two groups before Sandi (so either 6 or 12 seconds -- I can't remember which).

The very start of the swim was going well. Normally the swim is actually one of my favourite parts and with a wetsuit I feel super relaxed in the water and can enjoy myself and feel happy that the race has started. This good feeling didn't last very long, unfortunately. In fact, I think I've done around a dozen triathlons and open-water swims and this one I felt the worst, by far. We had done a 4 km open water swim race in Munich in late June and it went really well (you might even have read about it here!). This time things fell apart for a few reasons but the first one that happened was my shitty, foggy goggles. They're the same ones I used in our practice swim a few days before and in the race in Munich where I had no problems. This time, perhaps because the water was so much colder (but then they were also fine the few days before which was in the same body of water so who knows) my goggles fogged right up and I couldn't see much other than vague blurry outlines. I didn't want to stop to pull them above my eyes and wipe them so I kept swimming making sure I was following other swimmers from the splashes and commotion in the water. Finally I couldn't see anything and I had to stop to "de-fog" and I realized that I was quite a bit off course. I started swimming back to the main line of swimmers and though I was a bit annoyed knowing that I would have to stop at least a few more times to de-fog and that I had wasted time going off course, I still felt fine.

Then, around the 1.5 km mark where we turned around to start heading to the other side of the lagoon, I started getting really, really cold. My whole body was shaking and I even (gasp!) started kicking to try to warm myself up. I had read a race report a few weeks ago from someone who had started IM Copenhagen in a previous year but had to be pulled out of the water due to hypothermia. I started worrying about two things: (1) that I was getting hypothermia and that my race would be done before it had even started; and (2) that if I was this cold, then Sandi must be really cold. Needless to say, I did make it to the end and got to do my race, but shivered the entire way and didn't feel warm again until maybe 20 minutes or more into the bike ride. My time five years ago in Kalmar was 1h10m and my time in the 4 km open water swim six weeks pre-IMCope was also 1h10m so I had felt confident but in the end my swim time was 1h13m. Only three minutes slower, but I thought that I would maybe even improve on my time and going through the shaking for about half the swim probably took a lot out of me. The transition to the bike went OK but it was difficult changing because I was shaking so much still.

As I headed out to the bike course still pushing my bike (i.e. before we got to the bike-mount line), I saw Peter and gave a wave to the camera, and then as I was heading out (now on my bike) I heard Linda call my name and looked back just in time to see Mom, Linda, and Hannah (being held by Linda) but didn't have time (or mental wherewithal) to yell anything back. The start of the bike was FAST. We knew it was going to be a very windy day and the wind was coming out of the South-West which pushed us North up the coast quite nicely. My first split at something like 40 km was I believe 32 km / h and I was confident that I wasn't pushing too hard. Every action has a reaction, however, and when we had to come back straight into that strong wind it just sapped the energy right out of you. I think I managed the bike and the winds fairly well as I was very concerned with feeling the way I did at the end of the bike that I did in Kalmar where I couldn't even imagine running 1 km, let alone 42.2. The bike was fairly uneventful except for having to pee like crazy and then finally around the 100 km mark I came to a toilet and relieved myself for what I swear must have been 3 minutes. One nice touch with the volunteers is that as I pulled over a volunteer ran up to me and held my bike while I visited the facilities. 

The bike course was quite scenic with a lot of coastline, many millionaires' mansions, some farmland, and every type of weather too: sun, tons of wind, torrential downpour every now and then, and then somewhat pleasant with clouds and sun as I pulled into the bike-run transition after just over 180 km in the saddle. In the end, my bike time was 6:15:46, for an average speed of 28.8 km / h. That compares to 6:14:23 in Kalmar (crazy that they were so close actually), but this ride was much, much better. First, my legs felt seven thousand times better at the end than they did in Kalmar (note: they did NOT feel "great"; they felt horrible and tired -- but that was still infinitely better than in Kalmar!). Second, Kalmar had great conditions and though it was a bit windy and we had a tiny bit of rain, Copenhagen was in a whole other league and I think that 28.8 km / h over 180 km in that wind is not too bad.

After changing into my running outfit, I walked up the ramp from the underground parking garage that housed our T2, and began jogging right away. In Kalmar my legs were so done at the start of the marathon that I had to completely walk the first km at least but this time I got right into jogging and my first few km's I held a pace of around 5:20 or so which I was quite happy with. I (stupidly) thought "wow! If I keep this up I'll get a 3:45 marathon and I should easily break 12 hours!"... Well, things were not so bad until nearly 10 km or so and that's when my stomach started to get really bad. I will obviously spare the details but I couldn't push myself at all or I would be in terrible pain and have to slow down to a very slow jog and then a walk and I had to make full use of the many portable toilets that they so generously sprinkled throughout the course. It sucked. The first time that Sandi and I saw each other on an out-and-back we both looked good and were running at not bad paces. At this point I remember even foolishly thinking that I would beat her! Ha! I remember telling her that my Garmin died (side story: my Garmin died and is still dead and I need a new one finally) and that was the extent of my problems at that golden moment in the marathon history. When she passed me a short while later she still looked great and I was feeling awful at that point and that made me feel pretty down. I continued like this for many, many kilometres and finally Thony passed me with about 2 km to go while I was visiting one of my favourite toilet stops on the course. That was really too bad because I was jogging faster than him when I could jog but just had to stop so much. He started later than us so he was actually ahead of me but it would have been nice to finish together and it was so close to happening as I finished less than two minutes after him. In the end, I did a 4:53:42 marathon which totally sucks but what can you do...

With transitions of 8:19 and 7:59 (the only discipline where I improved over Kalmar!), my total time came in at 12:38:47 which, compared to my Kalmar time of 12:30:02, is not that bad. The median finish time for my age category was just under 12 hours, though, so it's definitely not good either. It feels a lot worse though because as I mentioned seven or eight times above, I had the fitness to do a lot better. In any case, as I came across the line both Sandi and Thony were there to greet me, I got my "space blanket" to try to get warm (it had started pouring rain basically thirty seconds before I finished), and I got a medal put around my neck. Right around the corner there is a Finisherpix cameraman and we remembered to get a picture. Buying these pictures costs a small fortune and so I've never bought any of these race photos but this time -- despite it not exactly being my best race -- I might relent because at the very least this one below is pretty nice:

Takeaways

What did we learn? What can we take from this? First, if I were ever to attempt such a thing again, I have to take the nutrition planning seriously. Every training plan and coach tells you to practice exactly the nutrition strategy that you'll follow on race day numerous times during your long brick workouts (extra note: make sure to actually do long brick workouts) but we never did it once. Each time that I did a long bike ride I would invariably stop half-way for a coffee or two with a big piece of cake, and usually also near the end have a big pretzel and an Alkoholfreiesweißbier in one of the Biergartens that I pass near the end. We skipped almost all of our brick workouts too because as soon as we would get back from a bike ride, the other person would have to head out on theirs and Hannah needed some attention.

Second, I would definitely not sign up when having a very young child and also at the same time as Sandi. Training for Kalmar was a lot of fun as we did all of our long bikes and runs (in fact, essentially all the training) together. This time it was less fun because we didn't do any training together and it was always stressful setting up a plan to make sure that we could both get in at the least the de minimis amount of required training on the weekends. It would basically be: one of us wakes up early and heads out, and when they get back, we would quickly have lunch together, and the other would then head out the door. The whole time you're out biking you're a bit stressed and in the back of your mind you're thinking "oh I better hurry up and not enjoy this because either (a) the other person has to go do their workout; or (b) it's about to get dark!".

We did the majority of our bike training indoors using the smart-trainer with Trainerroad. It's a program that gives you a structured training plan based on your functional threshold power (basically the maximum average power that you can sustain for one hour). We had never done any kind of structured cycling training before and doing it this time made a huge difference. Despite the fact that we spent less total time on the bike than we did while training for Kalmar, and of course biking through the Alps around Grenoble is a little more amazing than sitting in your living room, we were both much fitter for cycling and overall much better cyclists than we were last time. I hope that I keep up the Trainerroad training but the main problem is that having the trainer set up in the living room takes up a lot of space and space is a bit of a premium for us...

Not sure what to say about swimming. My slightly worse time was kind of due to coincidence / equipment problems so the takeaway there is to make sure you've sorted out your equipment issues well before the race. I think if I had gone to our club swim workouts 2-3 times a week all year (rather than going on my own and just swimming super easy) then I could have done a little faster and probably felt a bit fresher going into the rest of the race, but in terms of realistically improving the swim time a lot, I think that would require a lot more time and work than I actually have or want to invest.

And what's next in our triathlon lives? Definitely not an Ironman. If not never, then at least ten years away. A lot of it just seemed silly to me. All the people with the tattoos and the 10,000 EUR bikes with 6,000 EUR wheels and 500 EUR aero-helmets (both my bike and Sandi's bike put together are worth less than most people's single rear carbon aero wheel in these races) and the huge time commitment -- they just make it not worth it and too... almost "decadent". Perhaps next summer we might do some short races around Munich (for example the Krailinger Duathlon in May if it doesn't rain like it seems to on that weekend every year). I will definitely keep cycling around here when I have time which is great exercise and a lot of fun; south of Munich has beautiful cycling and the Alps are just a short ride away. I think we'll both keep doing running races as they're cheap and fun and don't really need any equipment (= less stress and simpler logistics). Perhaps our next race will be the Oktoberfestlauf (as we do almost every year) in just 4 weeks from today and who knows? -- maybe we'll sign up for the Munich Marathon coming just over a month from now on October 8th. After all, I did all that training to prepare myself to run a marathon over the last six months and in the end I didn't really run one :-)

Final thoughts

If you made it all the way here, congratulations! You are a patient person (or a speed reader or someone who just skims what he/she is reading or maybe someone who just always skips right to the "final thoughts" section). My feelings about this race are somewhat paradoxical. We had way less time to train for obvious reasons and so on the one hand I expected to not do as well. On the other hand, especially for the bike, we trained smarter and I felt fitter and I know that I could have done much better -- if only some unforeseeable things hadn't happened: swimming off course, having stomach problems on the run, having an exceptionally windy day in Copenhagen (OK, that last one was pretty foreseeable). I guess that's part of what a race of this length is, though: you need every single thing to go right to put together a great performance, and that can make it very frustrating: you can't control everything, no matter how much practice and preparation you have. In the end, as I said before, I'm happy I did it. But, I'm in no rush to do it again. Thanks for reading!

P.S. And to reward you for making it all the way down to the bottom of the page, here is a very short preview of the "coming soon" Ironman Copenhagen 2017 race video! Enjoy!

They see me rollin'...

Two pieces of advice. The second linked to the first. The first consisting of two non-mutually-exclusive clauses, both of which can stand alone, but are immeasurably reinforced by the presence of the other. Number one: do not sign-up for an Ironman if you have a small child and/or are planning to move homes any time even remotely near the beginning of the race. Number two: do not sign-up for an Ironman if you have a small child and both parents of said child have signed up for that event. You will likely regret it! It's just too much! Bonus number three piece of advice (yet to be confirmed): just keep renting a place; there's so much less stress involved. So much less. But anyways...

On to a totally (well, not totally) unrelated topic: rolling.

When the weight of the world has got you down, heading out on a Monaco Velo Club "Thursday after-work ride" is a great way to unwind. You have alpine vistas, beer gardens, and even (if you could speak German) good conversation (one presumes anyways, but one cannot be sure if the conversation is actually good if one doesn't understand any of it). In any case, though, that was fun.

Believe it or not we leave for our trip to Copenhagen just one week from tomorrow. Packing should be interesting (we have to find everything that's hidden away in boxes somehow) and before we leave we both need to get a couple of things fixed on our bikes. Getting scary!