Editor's note:  Brendan Wolters is an up and coming age group triathlete living and training in San Diego, CA.  This is his story about his experience leading up to and racing at Ironman Cozumel 2009.  Brendan placed 3rd in his age group and qualified for the Ironman World Championship in Kona next year!  Congratulations Brendan!

Pre-race

Going into the race I felt extremely confident and calm.  The weeks leading up to the race I put in a higher level of training than I had ever done before.  I hit pretty much every key workout except for two which were both above threshold bike workouts the day after a hard 20+ mile run.  I can't say enough good things about my coach Mitch Hall.  He is on top of everything and set up a really good training plan to push me to my limit.  I flew into Cancun on Wednesday afternoon wearing compression tights.  I met up with my brother Sean at the hotel and we ate dinner and drank a few mango daiquiris.   Yes, you read that right, we were two dudes sitting in a bar drinking mango daiquiris and they were delicious.  There is a story about how we started drinking these, but I think its better just leaving it unsaid.  Let the jokes begin.  During dinner Sean asked me about the race and asked if the course was a good course for me.  I told him the windier it is the better off I will be because people will blow themselves up in the wind.  The truth is any course I do I always say (and truly believe) it is a good course for me.  We also talked about my cycling fitness and I told him there is a lot of work for me to do but my power to weight ratio is pretty good.  Sean's response was, "Oh, just like a bonobo."  Bonobo's are chimps that are apparently really strong for their size.  Hence, I got my first nickname of the trip Brendan "The Bonobo" Wolters.

I went for a short 30 minute run on Thanksgiving Day and Sean and I relaxed waiting for the rest of the family to arrive.  We met our parents, Kevin, and Caitlin at the Cancun airport and the Wolters family was back and better than ever.  We hopped on the shuttle taking us an hour outside of Cancun to pick up the ferry to Cozumel.  We missed the 4:00 ferry by a couple of minutes which meant we had plenty of time to relax at Senor Frogs.  The family drank a "few" margaritas and we had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner at Senor Frogs in Mexico.  Apparently we made a pretty big impression because people at our hotel the next day asked if me if we were "The Family" that ate at Senor Frogs last night.  The wait staff was telling them about us.  When you roll six deep with a guy with Down Syndrome usually you're making a pretty big impression.  Not to mention the fact that I myself can sometimes get a little boisterous.  Anyway we hopped on the most adventurous ferry ride I've ever been on.  The boat was rocking and since my sister had a few drinks beforehand things quickly turned ugly.  Let's just say she started to turn a little green and we were waiting for the inevitable.  Somehow she made it through the ferry ride without puking.  Unfortunately, she did not make it through the van ride to the hotel and threw up all over the van.  We made a really good initial impression on the Endurance Sports Travel team.  When we arrived at the Hotel the first thing I did was rebuild my bike.  I couldn't stand to have it sitting inside the box all that time.  I wheeled my bike out to the lobby to pump up the tires.  This guy looked at my bike and said, "Nice bike."  He started asking me questions about the race and within 5 minutes he asked if he could sponsor me.  I went up to his shop with my father and it turns out he is the owner of an upscale tequila company called Dichbe.  He gave my dad a shot and my dad said it's the best alcohol, not just tequila, he's ever tasted.  So I talked to Alvaro a little longer and agreed to let him sponsor me in return for a couple bottles of delicious tequila.  At this time Sean had made it up to the shop and sampled a few different flavors of tequila.  He gave me my second nickname of the trip Brendan "EL Dichbe" Wolters.

On Friday morning I slept in and woke up around 7:30.  Friday was scheduled as a complete day off.  All I did was hop on my bike for 10 minutes to click through the gears and make sure everything was shifting properly and the headset was on tight.  I dropped my jersey off at Alvaro's shop to have him put his logo onto the back and ate breakfast.  After breakfast I went over to the race expo and picked up my bib.  I spent as little time as possible at the expo and returned back to the hotel and spent the rest of the day relaxing by the pool.  All I did was sleep by the pool and from time to time wake up and eat some food.  My mom made sure to have a plate of food right next to me so I didn't even have to stand up.  I felt like a Roman Emperor.  Friday evening I went up to the Dichbe shop to pick up my jersey.  Alvaro had my tri-suit on display on a Mannequin and he did a really good job putting on his logo.  It looked awesome.  We ate dinner at 9 p.m. on Friday and I went to bed and got a good night sleep.

The day before the race I woke up at 6:30 a.m. and went for a 20 minute run.  Before every big race I always feel these nagging "injuries."  This time it was tightness in my IT band and every step I took hurt while running.  I knew my mind was playing tricks on me and nothing was wrong so I didn't even worry about it.  Sure enough I never felt anything the next day.  After the run I ate breakfast with my family and they went on a snorkeling trip while I relaxed.  The day before a race I like having people around, but I didn't really want to talk to anyone so I sat in the lobby and worked on a few training plans for clients.  My buddy Ryan saw me sitting on the couch and asked if I wanted to go on a van ride over the bike course.  Even though the course is pretty flat this was a good idea.  I got to see the area where the winds would be really strong as there is no tree cover.  This helped me prepare for my ride the next day and I told myself to make sure I did not push too hard into the wind.  I got back from the van trip and ate lunch with Ryan and his girl friend Julie (nachos and cheeseburgers so nothing healthy).  My family returned from their snorkeling trip and we hung out for a little bit.  It was really good having them around because they were able to keep everything loose.  It was much better than dealing with a bunch of nervous triathletes.  During lunch I got my final nickname of the trip.  Ryan and Julie went to see my jersey on the mannequin and he noticed the agave plant on my butt looked like a hand with a finger pointed up and gave me the nickname Brendan "Stinky Pinky" Wolters.  My family went to go hang out at the bar and I sat back down and worked on some training plans again.  It was really good to have something to focus on and keep my mind calm.  At 3:00 I packed up all my gear and biked over to the transition area to drop off my bike.  I said goodbye to my bike and went to check out the swim course.  I made sure I knew exactly where I had to go once I got out of the water and mapped out the quickest route to my bike.  I returned back to the hotel and ate a big pasta dinner at 6:00.  I went back to the hotel room and organized my nutrition for tomorrow.  I set my alarm clock for 4:00 and was in bed by 7:30.  It took me about an hour to fall asleep but I slept pretty well and only woke up twice throughout the night.

I woke up 2 minutes before my alarm clock went off at 3:58.  I felt a massive wave of excitement and just sat staring at the clock for two minutes getting my last two minutes of relaxation.  At 4:00 I rose up and already had my morning planned out.  I went out to the lobby and grabbed breakfast at 4:15.  Breakfast consisted of 2 bananas, 4 pieces of bread and jam, and 2 glasses of orange juice.  I went back to my room and filled up my 3 water bottles with 300 calories each of fruit punch Accelerade.  I brought an extra water bottle with me to drink before the swim start and stayed really well hydrated.  Putting on my jersey I really started to get excited.  I hopped on the bus at 5 a.m. with my swim gear and water bottles and headed over to the race start.  We arrived at the transition area at 5:15 and I quickly got everything ready on my bike and used the bathroom one final time.  By 6 a.m. I was ready to race and sat on a ledge by the swim start.  A serene feeling washed over me as I closed my eyes and visualized my race.   The past year of my life had been dedicated to this one day and I had worked as hard as I could and sacrificed a lot to get myself ready.  At 6:25 they started to let the athletes through to the swim start.  I found my family and stood by them for almost a half hour.  We watched a dolphin show followed by the Mexican National Anthem.  They announced some of the pros racing and the pros went off about 15 minutes before us.  The announcement went off and it was time to hop in the water and race.  I almost forgot to say goodbye to my family as I headed over to the swim start and had to turn back to say goodbye to them.

The Swim

We walked the plank over to the swim start.  I made sure to put my goggles on underneath my swim cap so they wouldn't get knocked off when I got hit in the face.  I hopped into the water and lined up about 1/3 of the way behind the leaders and seeded myself to the inside.  The water was incredibly clear.  Also the current was really strong.  I had to start swimming just to keep my place in the water.  They had us waiting in the water for what felt like 10 minutes as some stragglers still hadn't gotten into the water.  People became restless and finally just started swimming.  At this point they just blew the horn because we had already started.  As in any race it starts out at a fairly high pace and then you settle in.  I knew I had to work hard to fight the current and get to the turnaround buoy.  I worked a little harder on the way out to the turnaround.  When I got to the buoy it was backed up with people.  I wasn't waiting for anyone and just fought my way through the crowd and around the buoy.  Once I turned the corner we were swimming with the current and moving so fast.  I had never swam even close to as fast as I was swimming and was amazed to watch the buoys fly by so quickly.  I wasn't struggling at all and thought about drafting off these two people swimming to my left but decided to let them go.  They went swimming by me a little bit faster and I didn't want to elevate my heart rate too much.  When I got to the turnaround buoy I knew I would have to work a little bit harder.  I moved as far to the right as I could to get in shallower water.  The currents would not be as strong there.  When I got to the finish of the swim we all had to climb up a small platform.  There was a little pile up at the finish so I slowed down and did a breast stroke for the last few strokes before climbing up the platform.  I got out of the water and knew I had done what I needed to do on the swim.  I had no idea what my time was but knew I had put myself in decent enough position.  It was a long walk / run from the swim finish to T1.  I grabbed my bag and ran over to my bike.  They wanted us to change by the tents but I was in the zone and wasn't even thinking.  I just started running over to my bike.  There's a reason why they wanted us to change by the tents so we could put our swim stuff into our bags and pick them up later.  I realized this when I took my speed suit off.  Oh well, I wasn't going back to drop it off and unfortunately lost my speed suit.  I was really happy when I looked around transition and still saw a decent amount of bikes there.  It was time to head out and make up a little bit of time on the bike.

 

The Bike

112 (actually it was 114.5) miles of fun.  The bike route consisted of 3 flat loops around the island.  I hopped on the greatest bike in the world and started my journey into the island.  The first loop was packed with gobs of people.  Luckily they closed down two lanes of traffic for the racers so I got into the left lane and passed a long line of people for the entire first lap.  I probably passed 500 people on the first lap.   I was really happy I had my power meter.  At the beginning of the ride I felt so good and 350 watts felt like nothing.  It really helped keep me in check those first 10 miles or else I would have blown myself up.  About 5 minutes into the ride I went by Ryan.  He pulled up to me and yells, "Hey Stinky Pinky!!!"  It was ridiculous and hilarious.  We talked for about a minute and I told him to stay within his zones and enjoy the day.  Ryan dropped back off and I focused back on the ride.  The winds were blowing in from the Northeast.  They were strong on the first lap, but picked up even more over the next two.  This worked to my advantage because people would work harder to fight through the wind.  I kept a pretty sustained power output of 214 watts for the first two laps.  The bike course had us biking south for the majority of the course then cutting back to the North and finishing our loop through town.  This meant we would spend more time cutting through the wind.  At the turnaround on the first lap I was amazed by how much faster I went with the wind at my back.  At the same power output it was roughly 7-8 mph faster.  I think I passed my buddy Evan just before reaching town on the first lap.  At least I think it was him because someone called my name and I doubt anyone else knew me.   Riding through downtown Cozumel was awesome.  The whole town came out to support us and everyone was cheering.  Most of them had no idea what Ironman is but it was really cool to see them out there cheering for us.  On the first lap I drank one of my bottles of Accelerade and was also drinking water from my Profile aero bottle.

The second lap of the bike progressed much like the first.  I stayed within my power zones and kept on passing people.  You could really see people struggling into the wind this time.  I had my first sign of trouble as my back started to tighten up.  I didn't think this would happen, at least not this early, because I had done long rides staying down in the aerobars and didn't have a problem.  About 65 miles into the ride I heard this ringing noise coming from somewhere on my bike.  I had no idea what was going on as I never heard anything like it before.  After about a minute I looked back at my rear tire and saw my rear water bottle system had gotten loose and was rubbing against my wheel.  I hopped off my bike and ripped off my bottle cage.  I took my half drunk water bottle and threw that onto the side of the road and put my full bottle into my front cage.  It was a loss of about 150 calories and about a minute and half so not too big of a deal.  I hopped on my bike and continued to pedal away.  I knew I had to eat some solid foods so I didn't get into too big of a calorie deficit.  I ate a bonk breaker which is 255 calories.  This did not agree too well with my stomach as they are really dense.  I probably should have eaten it a little slower.  Fortunately I did not puke it up.  The second lap through town I still felt pretty strong and started getting myself ready for the final lap and finishing the bike strong.  Unfortunately this did not go quite as planned.

The third lap started out like the first two and I was feeling ok.  However, pretty quickly my lower back really started to hurt.  I knew it would be devastating if I sat up into the head wind so I stayed as aero for as long as I could periodically coming out of the aero bars to stretch my back.  My power started to drop slightly and my legs felt a little heavy.  I tried everything I could to just stay positive.  I thought of my rides I did in training where I sustained much higher wattage than what I was currently putting out.  Even though I was hurting a little bit I was still passing people.  I even started talking to the wind thanking it for being there to slow everyone else down.  Of course it didn't slow me down at all J.  I just kept on waiting to get to the southern tip of the island so I could turn around and back off the power and start getting ready for the run.  I ate a second bonk breaker and also started to put Gatorade in my aero bottle so I could take in a few extra calories I lost from losing my water bottle.  It seemed to take forever but finally I got to the southern part of the island.  I made the turn and had the wind at my back and backed off the power.  Going into town I did everything I could to start getting myself ready to run.  I took my feet out of my shoes and hopped off my bike giving it to the volunteer.  I put on my run shoes grabbed my gu's and gu chomps and headed out for the run.

The Run

I suffered on the run.  I headed out on the run and tried to settle into my high cadence run stride.  My lower back was killing me so this was not going to happen.  Instead of running 7:00 minute miles I was over 8:00 minute miles.  It was not good.  I told myself I would settle in and start running strong once my back loosened up.  This did not happen.  The run course consisted of 3 loops of just over 8 miles.  It was an out and back so you repeatedly saw people out on the course.  The good news was I saw mostly pro's out there on the first lap so I knew I had a good bike.  I kept on running and just started feeling worse and worse.  My stomach was shutting down on me and my back was still killing me.  I really felt like quitting but in reality I knew there was no way this was going to happen.  I kept forging forward.  At the end of the first lap I saw my family and gave Kevin a high five.  I tried to look as good as I could and run as smooth as possible.  On the second lap Yvonne Van Vlerken (the 2^nd best female triathlete in the world) was running ahead of me and dropped her salt tablets.  I picked up the tablets and ran them up to her.  She ended up winning the race.  I didn't know she was in the lead at the time but I knew she was in contention and wanted to help her out.  I talked to her the next day at the awards ceremony and she told me I shouldn't have done that because I could have pulled a muscle picking them up.  She also told me I looked really strong running which was a bit of a surprise because I felt awful.  On the run I drank a ton of water and dumped just as much over my head.  It wasn't super hot but it was plenty humid.  Unfortunately I only ate two gu chomps the entire run.  I also had about 3 cokes and the rest was water.  I couldn't really take in much else.  I didn't feel like I was bonking at any point but everything felt awful.  I'm sure I would race better if I took in more calories.  On the final loop of the run I just wanted to finish the race.  I met up with a Canadian who I had been going back and forth with ever since the first loop and we decided to run together.  It made things easier just having someone next to me.  We ran through the last few miles and of course over the last mile I started to feel a little bitter.  I crossed the finish line and it was a great feeling.  I really suffered out there but pushed through and kept myself moving.  The race reminded me how tough an Ironman can be and why I love to race.  There is nothing that really pushes you quite like and Ironman because it is such a brutal day.

Although I didn't hit all my goals for the race I hit my biggest goal which was to qualify for Kona.  This was the biggest goal in my life and I couldn't be happier to have the opportunity to race in the World Championships.  There is a lot I can and will do to improve my racing for next season and beyond.  Next year I plan to get involved in bike racing.  I also want to continue to improve my running and most importantly my swimming.  Below are a few goals for next season.

1.        Have the fastest run in my Age Group at Iroman Utah.   I have some unfinished business with my Ironman running.

2.       Run a half marathon under 1:18 and a full marathon under 2:45.  I'm not sure if I'm doing a full marathon next year but if I fit one in this will be the goal.  I need to start working on some high speed efforts and building up my run efficiency at sub 6 minute pace.

3.       Move up two lanes in my masters swimming.  My swimming is by far my biggest weakness right now and it will be a focus of mine these next few months to improve.

4.       Build up strength on the bike.

5.       Enjoy the experience at Kona and make sure I have fun while I'm there.

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