Sérgio Marques Blog

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Part4

part5

 Its quite unbelievable…

Thursday i spent the morning finishing THE HOTTA, let me say that other than a few aspects, that frame is well above most of the top frames in the market, the internal cable routing for example is flawless, I was really impressed. At noon I finally left for a ride on my “brand new” hotta V.1…

I rode for ten minutes, ten minutes!!!!! Enough to have a car ignoring a STOP sign, a STOP sign!!!!

I was riding at around 50km/h and had no chance to avoid the car other than a slight change of direction. the result? i was pretty darn lucky I tell you, nothing broken on my body and plenty of road rash and of course pain. I remember being at the floor cursing the damn girl that has done that stupid S#$t and looking to the mortal leftovers of my beautiful bike, 000031 was the first thing i saw, the frame serial number.

Of course it was pretty close from home and the store, so my biz partner Julio and my dad came pretty quickly. Went to hospital, to do all sort of stuff you do in an hospital after hitting a “wall” at 50km/h, like I said nothing broken other than my ego and my bike. I actually recovered pretty well with the aid of anti inflammatory And today I took my mountain bike for a spin in 50km race, 60km from home. although i still have plenty of pain in the impact areas I was able to actually win it :P. Good fun, im getting ready to go back into decent training.

Back to the Hotta, the 000071 Fork is destroyed, there are plenty of scratches in the aerobars, cranks and frame but i think the frame was saved, mainly because it was me who absorbed most of the impact but i really need to inspect the frame closely. Now is all about that girl insurance company covering the costs of a damaged piece of collector value.

Please be careful opening the following photos parental advisory needed.

SAD, very SAD. Sorry khai, project Hotta is on hold for at least a few weeks

actual weight 7.9kg.

i will start from here, i have a lot of weight to trim from what you see. Its really fast as you can see…

Just before the race starts I always get the same feeling. I always think, “What the heck am I doing here in the middle of all these crazy people.”  Of course, I am one of those crazy people but when the gun goes off all that is gone.

Right from the start I didn’t have to sprint much because I was right in the middle of a pack. I didn’t have anyone hitting me, it was just a busy start. In the swim, when you’re not a front-of-the-pack swimmer, luck sometimes dictates a good or bad swim. I got on someone’s feet on the way to the first buoy and noticed that a group was just ahead of me. I was feeling very comfortable and I went to try to catch them. Of course, when you make that move, either you catch them or you end up leading a group all the way to the end of the swim. This time, I was able to drop whoever was with me and by the end of the first lap I was right at the back of the group I was trying to catch.  Leaving the water at the end of the first lap, my time was 25 minutes and change, which made me feel pretty good.  After catching the group, the rest of the swim was a very comfortable ride and it was just a question of paying attention to see if there was a breakaway to cover. In no time, the swim was over.  I love it when the swim goes by fast, sometimes it feels like it takes forever and sometimes it’s over in no time, even if you go all out. The swim turned out to be a good indicator on how I would feel throughout the day.  I left the water with 53 minutes on the clock, which is pretty decent for me and I was right with my friend Will Ronco.

Transition went smoothly and in no time I was out on the bike. I started a bit faster than usual, going by feel rather than the numbers on my ergomo.  I didn’t have a lot of people passing me this time, probably because I took the first kms a bit harder than usual. Stijn Demeulemeester passed me at around 10-15 km as did Favre-Felix and I just let them go as they were riding way too hard for me.  I was riding alone but comfortably.  I had a group in sight, around 40-50 seconds ahead of me and had a few other guys passing me here and there with a blistering pace…the usual for the first quarter of the ride.  I was trying to keep that big group in sight but it was very slowly pulling away.  I started getting splits to Vuckovic, who from the start I knew would be my main competition.  At around 40 minutes of riding, I got my first split and it was only 2:30.  I was a little surprised that the gap wasn’t growing a lot and that made me feel good about my riding.  One thing that was not going according to plan was the absence of food at the aid stations.  I usually base my nutrition on what is available on the course, but after a few aid stations, I realized there were not a lot of gels available and my own stock was running out!  It was time to rethink my pace and nutrition strategy.  The pack I had in sight was already out of my mind, and getting calories in was my only concern.  I eased my pace a bit and tried to grab as much food as I could from the aid stations.  No gel?  Then I would grab a banana or half of an energy bar, anything that I could eat because my calorie count was pretty low.  A small pack of 3 guys caught me somewhere in the middle of the ride and I kept at the same pace.  That actually complicated my situation because as we were going through special needs they didn’t have my bag ready.  I didn’t panic with the whole situation, but really aid stations should be handled with a little more care.  With all this my gap to Vuckovic grew to about 6:30 minutes, which was still manageable.  Then the little out-and-back came, which was a good opportunity to check out the competition.  Markus Fachbach was leading and there was a big chase group and then my group of five.  From then on, I pretty much pulled the group most of the time, and only slowing at aid stations to make sure I got some food.  At the pirate aid station, when trying to get a gel from one of the volunteers, I accidentally hit one of them in the chest!  If you’re reading this, I’m sorry!!!  There isn’t much to add about the ride other than the gap steadily increased to around 9 min by T2 since the front pack had really good riders pulling it.  I kept a steady pace coming in and even managed to drop some guys from my pack.  The others who did a great job of sucking my wheel the whole ride, stayed with me.

Coming out of T2 the Italian guy, Cigana, literally took off from me…surprise, surprise!  I knew that 9 minutes was a lot to make up, especially to someone with Vuckovic’s running ability, but I was feeling good coming off the bike and decided to take a shot at the win.  I had tons of people cheering for me and giving me splits.  I was out of the top 10 at the time, but was confident that with just 9 min to the lead, I would finish at least in the top-5 and get my Hawaii slot.  My major concern at the beginning of the run was, of course, getting some calories.  The Italian, Massimo Cigana, started out really fast and was actually putting time on me, but I decided to just stay with my pace without getting too crazy.  I thought at the time, “He is SO blowing up soon,” in Portuguese of course.  I went by Paulo who gave me another split to Vuckovic and told me not to worry about Cigana.  I could see that Paulo believed that I could get to Vuckovic, which gave me a little confidence.  Vuckovic’s lead was shrinking, not by much, but it was and I was already within 7 min at 9km.  I started doing some math and realized that I was gaining enough time that I would be very close to the lead…near the finish line!  I got to the first turnaround at about 10k still behind Cigana and that was a chance to see how everyone was looking.  Surprisingly, Vuckovic was not looking the best.  I was still in 9^th place, but coming back to the transition area was where I made more passes.  I finally passed Cigana and right after I passed Stijn, Rhodes, and Bayliss.  At the end of the first half-marathon, I was 4^th place only a minute from second place and 4:30 behind Vuckovic.  I had cut the initial gap in half and Shawn and Jonny were going crazy.  At around 28-30 km of running I really started to believe I could catch him, I really thought I could win.  I was the closest I had ever been to leading an Ironman.  Of course, I was already starting to slow, somewhere in the 6:20min/mile compared to 6:00min/mile on the first lap.  Still, I was making time on the German.  At the final turnaround, I had my last glimpse of him and he wasn’t looking that bad, but I was still feeling pretty strong.  The gap was down to 2:40.  It was possible but it didn’t happen.  With 7-8km left, I was totally done and the gap didn’t change much from there.  I finished the run at around 6:45 pace and it was about the same for Vuckovic.  I still had to dig deep to just get to the finish line and was pretty spent at the end.

I am, of course, extremely happy with my race.  It was at the end of a great block of training and racing that got my confidence back up.  I was very close to winning it but I am more than happy with the huge PR and my highest ever placing in an IM.

I really want to thank all my friends that helped me during the hardest parts of this season.  When you’re down, it seems like everyone has an opinion and knows what is wrong with you and how to fix it.  But the good thing is you find out who your real friends are.  I want to thank my coach, Paulo Sousa, for all his support and for keeping me on track towards my ‘overnight success’.  I also want to thank all of my sponsors, the guys and girls from Team HTFU that were down in PCB for the race, Shawn for coming out from Colorado, as well as all my friends back in Portugal who spent the whole day watching the race on-line.  Finally, I have to thank all the people out on the course who were cheering for me…TONS of people.  Your encouragement really helps!

Now it’s time for a much deserved break. All the bad stuff that happened this season is behind me and it’s time to think about Kona ’08

It pretty much worked the way i wanted, almost everything. Ill leave the details for a real race report.

I swim was good, ride was good enough to get to T2 with less than 10 min to the my pre race favourite and i raced the run like i never did before. It was close, but im happy for my best ever 2nd place finish and PR (although i dont care much about it).

Many thanks to everyone cheering for me out there in the course, i never heard so many people calling out my name. really fabulous.

And of course, all my friend that supported me during the season that was far from great but finished perfectly.

race report will pop up soon

here are some photos

And i like it.

First few days have been rather boring, everything is going smothly, the was it should be. i had my tool box lost (stolen???) during my flight and that was it, no big deal.

I have some friends with me now, Paulo, Will Ronco, Jonatan Caron is around, Shawn will arrive tomorrow so i will have plenty of company.

One of the really cool news is that i even have a spare bike, you can’t really ask more than that :P. Yes that is true, if you remember one of my old posts (here) this is the proof i wasnt kidding like someone asked. I now have a fully equiped Hotta in my room. Ok its not built but its mine and what a piece of history i have here the frame is absolutely beautiful and i really dont want to ride it, ok, im lying big time, i totally want to build it and ride it to see how it “feels”

here is a photo of the frame, the rest is in the box

Today i went for registration, Pro meeting and a very short run.

The ones who know me well already know how i am feeling during the day, every single athelete looks fit enough to kick my ass really hard and the “oh boy im going to finish well back in the classification” is a comom tought for me, i cant held it, its part of my prerace “routine”, some times, i just feel stupid about it

now isnt that frame fabulous? it has 000095 as serial number SWEEEEEET