Malcolm Gunn

Gabrielle Ironman!!

Posted by Malcolm Gunn on 9 March 2010 | 25 Comments

What a weekend! What a race! What a woman!

All the ingredients were in place for a heroic effort - 3.8km swim, 180km cycle, 42km run, windy conditions and an evening chill, and two feet that have defied the repeated efforts of orthopedic surgeons to relieve pain and swelling for the last twenty years.  That's right - as if the distances are not daunting enough, throw in a permanent injury to both feet just to make it hurt a whole lot more.  So why would you do this?  You probably wouldn't, but then you're not Gabrielle.

The logic goes a bit like this:  The feet aren't going to get better without some miracle cure and there is no sign of that happening, so... if I want to do this, best thing is to harden up and get on with it.  Not an approach that most of us would take, but the Ironman is about passion and drive rather than warm fuzzy logic.  Training regime: - swim and bike as much as possible and run whenever the pain threshhold dips below agony for as far as possible, because chances are walking will be a struggle for a the next few days after each training run.  Race plan: - swim easy, bike harder and survive the run through multiple pain barriers (never mind the fatigue), to get under the finish banner before the midnight cutoff.  That's it.  Just finish.

Race day

John Key's cannon sends them off in a monochrome dawn and the still air is stirred with the sound of 1200 pairs of thrashing arms.  It sounds like a waterfall. 

A bit over an hour later and she's out and on the green carpet for the 400m dash to the bikes.  Of course she's limping. 

Onto the bike and looking good along the lakeshore and off to Reporoa. 

 

Three hours later and she's back looking good on the Napier Taupo Road climb.  Even a cheeky response to my "Mash it woman!"

I count a total of five riders without aero bars.  There might be something in that...

So the southeasterly blew and those who had them hunkered down on their aero bars for the second haul back from Reporoa up to Taupo.  The downhill blast along Centennial Drive and into town had most riders grinning with the prospect of getting off their bikes.

And now for the business end of it all... the run. 

It was strange watching with hundreds of others and only I knew of the pain she was enduring.  That's one of the things about watching this race. You don't know what people are battling with besides the distance as they make their way around the course.  But the support from locals is unreal and it was a pleasure to be part of that.  You don't often see people drawing on everything they have to just keep going.  That's what inspires people to enter.  It's ironic that the best place for someone with damaged feet to blend in with people not so inflicted is in the marathon stage of the Ironman.  But it comes at a cost - and that heroic run must have been excruciating.  So after 14 hours a huge crowd cheered Gabrielle across the line.  By then the pain was obvious and they knew it.  It's an over-used phrase, but you were awesome Gabrielle!   Crazy awesome!  As the man said "Gabrielle Gunn, you are an Ironman!"