Hickory Grove Race Report

Quick summary: 1:17:20, good for 25 second PR and 3^rd of 29 in 45-49 Age Group.  It was a satisfactory, but slightly disappointing performance.

This summer, after my A-race for the summer, I had on the schedule a team half event (Pigman, 3 weeks post) and two sprint events.  The first of these was the Hickory Grove Triathlon on 8/29/2010, 4 weeks after my A-race.

In the two weeks previous to the Hickory Grove, I had been focusing my workouts on shorter efforts (e.g., half-mile and mile run intervals).  I had taken a couple of easy days in preparation – a Friday swim only and a Saturday with only an easy 4 mile run.  I had been thinking for the last few days about what it would be like to sustain a threshold effort for the (roughly) hour of the bike and run.

Race preparation was easy.  There was plenty of time and space.  Timothy came with me, so I had to keep track of him, but life was good.  I took a short swim warmup and felt good.

I was in the last wave, with 6 minute intervals.  Given the short swim (500 yards), there would be very little overlap between waves.  We were all very friendly/chatty on the shore, so I felt a little guilty when I ended up banging into a competitor a few times in the water.  I put in a good effort, but I was surprised that I felt surprisingly winded at one point in the swim. The time was a little disappointing, but does include a considerable run up to the transition area.  T1 was unremarkable and quick.

The bike leg was good but a little disappointing.  The course is a little unusual for something this short, with a full 180˚ turnaround in a 3-loop course.  It has a few rolling hills, but nothing difficult.  My perceived effort was pretty high, and heart rate was in the low 160s consistently, which is probably just short of my lactate threshold.  The power, when actively pedaling, was in the upper 20X range, though, which was a little lower than I had wanted.  Normalized power was just short of 210 and VI was 1.04.  I would have liked to see 10-20 watts more on the bike.  I didn’t sit there and whine about it – I just did the race and felt pretty comfortable; it was just something I could sit there and detachedly watch as I was going on.  In retrospect, maybe this was the “problem”, i.e., that I was too detached and not as invested as I would have liked.  On the other hand, I was not passed by anyone in my age range, but that is also a function of how they did on the swim.  The average speed was 21.3 mph.  I had been hoping for 22+. T2 was smooth again.

My run went ok, if not great.  The first ¾ mile or so is off road, which I find less appealing, and the uneven footing was bothersome.  My legs felt much more jelly-like than usual.  The first was my slowest mile, consistent with these two factors.  I was pretty sure I was not leading the age group because I hadn't passed that many riders on the bike leg, but I wasn’t sure how far ahead anyone was; I may have passed a couple, but not more than that.  In the end, it turned out that I was simply beaten by people too far in front of me to see!  I am pretty convinced that the race was just a touch long – maybe 3.2 miles instead of 3.1.  (They re-routed the finish compared to previous years.)  My last two miles got under 7:00/mile.  It had been my goal to run under 7:00 pace overall.  If I am right about the course being a little long, I did…if it was right on, I was just over.  Again, my effort level looks good on paper;  my average HR was 170.  But still, I can’t help feeling like I was a little detached and could have put in just a little more.

As I reached the finish line, I got a big smile seeing Timothy waiting for me.  I got my chip taken off and got my water bottle.  I gave Timothy a hug, and we went to see the results.  I was pleased to see that I came in 3^rd for the group.  

We had a Very Important Soccer Match to go off to, so I had to leave without saying good bye to anyone.  Also, it was a little funny to get to the match wearing my race outfit.  Interestingly, there were a couple other parents who had done the race, but they had managed to change before they got there!  Maybe one parent went to race and another took Johnny to the match.  Oh well, one of the deep mysteries of the universe!

Two more weeks before the last tri of the year – another sprint.  Two weeks to figure out how to maintain my fitness and also apply it just a little better on race day.

Steelhead Race Report, July 31, 2010

Overall time 4:48:43 (best time by 20 minutes)
Swim: 33:58
T1: 5:15
Bike 2:30:28 (22.3 mph, the fastest I’ve ever done ANY distance triathlon)
T2: 2:05
Run: 1:36:57 (7:24 pace)
9th place in AG of 148, 133 of 1788 overall

Prerace expectations

This was my A-race for the summer.  I had two big races for 2010: Boston and Steelhead, and I wanted to do well at both.  I had chosen Steelhead because of the timing relative to Boston, so I had time to train up and taper.

Quietly, my goal all summer had been to break 5:00 at Steelhead, having done 5:08:xx at Kansas in June 2009.  I had not had a good day at Pigman in 2009, and I really wanted to prove to myself that I was the 5:08 guy, not the guy who couldn’t run very well at all at Pigman.  I had also had a very tough day at Bluff Creek this year, so again, I felt like I had something to prove.

I did not widely share my sub-5:00 goal, in large part because it seemed pretty audacious.  Also, I was hesitant, having had disappointments at one level or another at my last few triathlons.  I discussed it in one place on an online forum, and I told Cynthia the day before I left.


Friday

Friday was my birthday.  Christopher and I got up at 5:00 a.m. and got out the door by 6:00 or so.  We were set to lose an hour to the time zone change, and had about a 7.5 hour drive in front of us, which meant that we were likely to get there about 2:30 p.m.  The drive went fine, save for one bad traffic section near Gary, IN, so we got to Benton Harbor a bit later than we expected.  Never did care for Gary.  :-)  I made sure to have a big lunch and start drinking.  Christopher started making fun of me for how often I wanted to pee.

We arrived at race check-in and there were two things that immediately struck my eye.  First, the check-in line was LOOOOONG.  And second, I was surprised how much it seemed like guys were preening and checking each other out.  I hadn’t really picked up an “intimidation vibe” at a prerace checkin like that before.  I tried to just ignore it.  Fortunately, the line moved pretty quickly.  Christopher checked in at the volunteer table.    We poked around the small expo for a bit, and then we went out to drive the course.  [Christopher was volunteering at one of the bike stations, which turned out to be 25 miles out on the course, so he needed to see it too!]

Our impression of the bike course was that it was pretty moderate.  The road conditions were largely good, and the hills were smaller than the ones in our neighborhood.

As we finished going around the course, we drove back to have dinner with the Nelsons, Jasses and Coxes.  We were late for dinner, but they were very gracious, and the restaurant was very cool about it.  I didn’t want to eat much, but had a great bowl of soup and picked at a few other things.  After dinner, Christopher and I went back to the hotel, did final preparations, and settled in for the night.  Since he was doing body marking, we had to get to the race site by 4:30 a.m. the next day, meaning a 3:00 a.m. wake-up, given where we were staying.

Saturday morning prerace

We got going and checked out of the hotel on time, and got to the venue right before 4:30.  Christopher went off on his bike to the check-in area, and I got there a bit later after re-inflating my tires and double checking a few things in my bag.

Parking was some fraction of a mile away from the transition area, so I rode my bike.  [This matters below!]  By the time I got there, it began to rain a little, and the transition area was not lit.  I did find a good landmark to locate my bike and checked out which way I would be running in, and so on.  This part went well.

The race organizers obviously don’t control the weather, but they could have brought in portable lighting, and in my opinion should have.  I will admit I let this difficulty get to me.  Between trying to stay warm, deciding how or whether to protect my shoes, etc., the situation threw me off mentally.  I forgot to put the sticker over the gap in my disk cover, but this was a minor issue in the long run.  Eventually, I decided I just had to get out of there because the whole situation was making me tense.  David Jass will probably tell you I was feeling/looking a little incoherent, as we were next to each other in the area.

I put on my wetsuit for warmth, and walked down to the beach and the mile down to the start shortly before sunrise.  It was a good thing for me to get away from there.  I went through patches of sitting alone and trying to focus and others of visiting with friends or other racers.

Nutrition Plan

I had done a lot of practice rides using the standard practice of a concentrated Perpetuem bottle and water, and they had gone fine, but I always felt like I got a boost if I actually drank something with simple sugars, e.g., gatorade.  I had also done some rides with just gatorade endurance, and they went fine.  After considering how few calories I wanted on the bike leg (up to about 500), I decided to REALLY simplify my nutrition plan.  I would carry two bottles of gatorade on my bike (~300 calories) and drink (most of) one of them in the first 10 miles, and get going on a water/gatorade mix for the rest of the ride.  Getting through my two bottles and a bit more than one more handout bottle would be plenty of calories.  On the run, I figured I could get away with 200-300 calories total (and take more if I needed).  At about 50 cal per 8 oz, I would need 32-48 oz over the race.  That averages out to about 3 oz per aid station, and that seemed very doable.  So the run plan was just to take a good swig of gatorade and then a second cup of water to drink and/or cool myself.  All Gatorade all the time.  Pretty boring, but I wanted to simplify, simplify, simplify.

The start and the swim

My focuses for the swim were the following:

• Swim harder than I usually do.  As hard as I can without losing form/control.  Don’t fall asleep
• Navigate well.  Try not to sight much; try to let the other racers guide me.  Try to go at least 25 yards per sighting (a dozen or more right arm strokes).
• Try to draft well without pissing off the guy in front of me.  :-)

I lined up nearer the start of the swim than my previous times would indicate, but this was a conscious decision, since I didn’t want to have to clamber around a bunch of other swimmers if I was successful in going faster, and I wanted a chance to catch a good draft leader.

I was totally unaware of any current in the lake walking down, during warmup, or the race.  Nelson said he thought it changed, but that was news to me.

The swim was very straight, which was a huge advantage for me, given my bad eyesight.  I just hugged the buoys and tried to draft as much as I could.  It turned out that it was less time than I would have liked.  There was not so much “violence”, but there was a lot of nudging people of other people’s feet.  After the first half or so, things thinned out as well.  I probably only had a draft half the time.

That I wasn’t sighting very much but stayed on course was testified by the fact that I physically ran into two of the buoys.  Oops.

Especially in the second half of the swim, when there were fewer people, I caught myself not going as hard as I wanted a few times.  In retrospect, I attribute this to the whole issue of being a bit mentally out of it all early morning.  It’s just a crude estimate, but I wonder if I could have gotten another minute out of the swim.

When I stood up, I was under 33 min for the swim.  That was a big bolt of pleasure hand helped kick me up mentally.  My official time was 33:58 by the time I got up to the transition area.  I have no confidence issues swimming, but probably everyone knows I’m kind of slow at it — so this was a good time for me.

T1

I got up into T1 smoothly.  My landmark made it very easy to spot my bike.  As expected, David Jass’s bike was gone already.

T1 was going great until....

I couldn’t get my helmet strap buckled without the strap going across my nose!  This took me forever to figure out.  It turned out that someone had pulled the strap in such a way that the strap slid from the left to the right side of my head (through the top of the helmet), thus making the whole strap totally “out of balance”.  Between the general disfunction of having just gotten out of the water and the fact that my glasses were wet, hindering my vision, this took me FOREVER to figure out.  I finally did, and got it straight.  I am SURE I lost 2-3 minutes fussing with this.  Ouch!  Otherwise, T1 was fine.

Bike leg

Technical analysis.  Over the last 18 months or so, I’ve become a devotee of power analysis on my bike rides.  The simple fact is that if you know how hard you want to pedal, a power meter tells you if you’re doing it or not.

For this race, I had targeted a 180 watt warmup phase, and then trying to hold steady at 190 W for the remainder.  These numbers were based on tests that approximate what I can hold for an hour, and then multiplying by a fraction to account for the longer ride and needing to run afterwards.  Real power geeks will probably laugh at the low numbers, but (a) I’m not a large guy; (b) I value being able to run well, since you lose MORE time with a bombed run than a slightly slow bike; and (c) yeah, I do want to get stronger on the bike, so quit bugging me about it.  :-)

My bike computer (a Garmin) had a flaw that I did not know about.  A few weeks before the race, but after my testing, I had upgraded to the latest firmwear.  Unbeknownst to me until after the race, this firmware has a well-publicized bug in which it has a tendency to go into auto-pause for seconds at a time.  It holds the display (not updating power, speed or distance, but not showing zeros, either) but records the ride as shorter than it was.  In retrospect, this appears to have been happening at a rate of about 10%.  (I have since gone back and un-updated...)

This turned out to be a race issue for me for a while, because my Garmin was telling me that the mile-markers on the race course were off.  I thought I was headed for a “normal” 2:45ish ride (near 20 mph), even though my speedometer had felt like I was averaging higher than that.  Finally, when we passed the 45 mile marker, I asked around other riders, who verified we were at 45, so I just gave up trying to figure out what was wrong and tried to stick to the power numbers.

During the first 20 min or so, I was being pretty conservative, and then I tried to move up to my full low-190s target.  I was intentionally working at high cadence. I recently bought a compact crank, so I’m riding 50/34 in front and a 12-25 cassette.  This lets me spin easily up the midwest rollers, without having to stand up.  However, it means that downhills, I spin out somewhere in the mid 30s.

The final power numbers I got for the ride (TSS, etc) are, I think, distorted by the recording issue.  The bottom line was that I held the power pretty much what I wanted the whole time.

My HR dropped from the upper 150s at the beginning to the upper 140s by the end in a very steady manner.  My LT HR for the bike is in the low 160s.  Cadence average was 98.  50% of the time was 90-100, 31% of the time was 100-110.

Descriptive analysis.  Unsurprisingly, the first 10 mi was very crowded.  It was good that I had resolved not to go my full power during this time because it was very difficult to do so, between steering around people and various small obstacles.  I was the first male wave after several female waves, so I was gradually moving up through the crowd.  I ran into David somewhere in the first quarter of the bike leg, but I can’t remember exactly where.  We exchanged hellos and encouragement, but it was in a flat section, where I tend to be moving faster, and I went on.  Similarly, but later, I ran into Steve Cox.  I do always enjoy seeing friends on the course, but the truth is I’m probably not the greatest “friend” during the race.  I try to give a good cheer, but I can never concentrate enough on my race if I chit-chat, and people tell me that I totally miss them sometimes.  I’m sorry about that!

For the first half of the race, I found myself “racing” with a pack of 6-10 riders.  Some of them were newbies (having overheard their conversations), and at least 2-3 were apparently roadies, based on their riding style.  Two were people only doing the bike leg as a relay.  This was pretty frustrating.  It was a lot of mental work to not get caught up in their draft pack.  It was often a fair amount of work to have to pass the whole group of them instead of one or two riders.  (I was clearly going faster on the flats and downhills than their pack.)

At the first aid station, I had a bad experience with volunteers who were not very good at handing off, were running into the road, etc.  I didn’t get a bottle of anything.  However, it was only half an hour in, and the weather was not hot. I had plenty of fluid to make it to the second aid station, so I didn’t stop.  At the second aid station, I got a bottle of water from Christopher (yea!) and stuck it in my teeth.  I got a gatorade bottle from another volunteer and stuck it in my down-tube holder.  Just as I was getting out of the area and was ready to get a water drink then pour the rest in my aero drink, the bottle broke!  I was left with a bottle top in my teeth and nothing else!  Another quick calculation:  Still not hot.  Next aid station in only 8-9 miles.  Nutrition going ok.  OK, I won’t stop again.  But next time, I will take whatever I get first and put it in the down tube no matter what!  Fortunately, there were no more mishaps, and I got my fluids safely from then on out.

The only other annoying problem was that my wet, old velcro of my bike shoes kept coming undone.  Grrr!

Around mile 30, the course finally opened up.  It was totally a pleasure at this point.  I felt good.  The pack was still hanging with me off and on, but it had gotten smaller, they were passing me less frequently, and the rest of the riders dramatically thinned.  Finally, between miles 35 and 40, we saw a course martial.  The pack was down to 3 by then, and they passed me up a hill as a martial rode parallel with them for quite a while.  I passed them back on the flat, and eventually the martial rode off without doing anything.  They passed me one last time shortly thereafter, the unofficial leader kidding with me about how he wondered if the martial had been watching him.  I mumbled something considerably more polite than I had been thinking, and broke a rule for a few min, putting some distance between them and me at about 200 W, and I don’t remember seeing them again.

Somewhere around the 2:10 or 2:15 mark, the ride was feeling a little less fun and more hard and a bit painful.  I knew I could hold it through 2:45 (if that’s how long I would be), and probably be fine to start to run, but I was glad - at least for then - I hadn’t pushed it too much harder.

I can’t recall exactly where, but there was one section of headwind in the last half hour.  I figured I was doing well enough when it became clear that I was moving up through the field more than usual at this point.  It looked like others were suffering more than me, so I figured I had judged things ok.

I did have one potentially important bike mishap.  I was doing my standard stand-on-the-pedals-and-swing-your-leg-over dismount that I’ve done a million times.  Standing on my one pedal, just about to step off, my pedal slipped out, and I went completely down within 20 yards of the dismount line.  I got some scrapes but could “immediately” tell that I was ok.  A well-meaning volunteer picked up my shoe and wanted to help me out.  I assured him (her??) I was fine, but s/he wouldn’t give me my shoe back for what seemed like an eternity despite me reaching for it!  Finally, I just stopped and said, “Please give me my shoe!  I’ve got to get going!” and I got to run into transition.  In reality, this was probably less than a minute, but boy it felt like forever!

T2

T2 was uneventful except for the small lakes that I had to pour out of my running shoes.  There were a lot fewer bikes parked than there had been bikes missing when I had come into T1.   I saw and waved at Nelson and Jass’s better halves.  Things went pretty quickly, but all that water was a little disorienting.  I knew my shoes would dry up shortly, but they felt like wet mops when I put them on!

By this time, I knew my real bike time, and I knew that as long as I didn’t blow up, I would make my  sub-5:00 goal.  I even knew I had a little room if I slowed down more than I wanted to.  This was great, because it gave me great confidence in my run strategy.


Run

This course doesn’t look like much on the elevation profile, and the truth it that it’s not too bad.  There is one big hill at the beginning, and a smaller one you have to do twice.  On bummer is that one of the major downhill sections is on a very twisty walking path through the park, so you don’t (or at least I don’t) get to take advantage of it like I would if it were straight.  I would not call it a hard course, but I would not call it an extra fast one either.

My plan here was fairly conservative:  First 3 miles easy - slower than my marathon pace.  Next 7 was the “steady block” at about marathon pace, and the last 3 were to be where I would meter out everything that was left.  Everything until mile 8 was to be to get me there in decent enough shape to deliver.  I had my watch set to autosplit the miles and give me current and lap pace.

I ran Boston in 3:16 this year in even splits, which gave me a good handle on my REAL marathon pace.  My VDOT had improved marginally since then, but not dramatically.  The official Daniels MP was 7:09, and my Boston pace was 7:30.  However, “everyone knows” that VDOT give a MP that’s faster than anyone actually finishes.  My plan was to race around 7:30-7:40 for the first three miles, and then see how I felt about getting up to close to 7:10 after that.

As is common I am sure, it felt much easier to fly at the beginning of the run than was wise to do.  I kept telling myself “Discipline.  Discipline.”  The first mile had the one really tough hill of the course, and I still covered the mile in 7:36.  For the next two miles, only the “Discipline” mantra kept my pace down around 7:20.  Section 1 done.  Feeling good, but now I know I’m in a race and I’ve done a lot.  Legs talking to me, but not shouting.  Don’t screw it up.  You want sub-5:00, now is where you have to do it.  Broke Section 2 in to first four and last 3 mentally.  It became apparent that to hit 7:10 would require an effort that felt risky, and I REALLY didn’t want to blow up.  Discipline.  Stick to 7:20ish.  OK, well done.  Three more miles until I’m allowed to go into the Dark Places if I have to.  I am living in a box from mile to mile here, checking them off as we go.  Tick, tick, tick.  One of these miles was mostly downhill and fairly straight section and was the fastest mile of the day.  Now I’m at mile 10.  It’s a bit hard to calculate because I didn’t have a total time split and didn’t know the exact time of my wave, but I am pretty sure I can even beat 4:50.  Wow.  Don’t screw up.  Mile 11 is the one other pretty tough spot on the run.  I gave up 30 seconds here, doing 7:51.  In retrospect, maybe I could have eeked out a faster mile here, but it was respectable.  Miles 12 and 13 were largely downhill or flat.  I ran them well, but I wish I had found that last gear earlier.  The last quarter mile, it was there.  If I had just found it earlier, I think I could have held it.  But this is a petty complaint.  I just about took someone’s hand off high-fiving them as they offered me a hand within sight of the line and I knew I was under 4:50.

In the end, my actual run execution turned out to be about effort rather than actual pace.      Aside from minor mile-to-mile variations due mostly to terrain, the run was evenly paced.  But it was easy-pace, steady-pace, and meter-it-out pace from the point of view of my effort.  Is that a problem with my execution?  I’m not sure.  My self-analysis is that my run’s weakness was not so much that the pace was even, but that “if I had only known” I might have pushed even a little harder.  My heart rate was 155 ± a few beats and totally flat for all but the last quarter mile.  (LT HR is probably about 168.)

The result was fantastic.  I had run my best half-split ever, if not QUITE as fast as I had targeted, but I had blown away my bike split and done some pretty serious damage on the swim.

After being across the line for a while, I found out I came in 9th in the AG out of 148, which totally blew me away.  Top 10 in a big name event.  Wow. I’ve always thought of myself as a middle-of-the-pack guy who did a little better than that by being a bit bullheaded.  I didn’t stay for the Clearwater offerings, but I couldn’t have been more than a few spots away.  What if I hadn’t had the helmet mishap?  What if I hadn’t fallen at the end of the bike...  I would never have thought I’d even consider if I could make that kind of result.  Maybe I need to think about how to get better.

Bluff Creek Olympic Tri Race Report

I like to think that I'm quick enough to whip out a 2:30ish Olympic distance race without a major fuss, based on about a 30 minute swim, a 1:15 ride, and a 45 min run...with enough margin on those times to stick in transitions. My best last year was 2:23.  Didn't happen yesterday: finished at 2:42.  Uggh.

This was a "C" race for me...  I'm not racing that often this year, but I knew I needed to race a time or two before my A race at the end of July (a half-iron).  It was about a month after Boston, which seemed like long enough to be recovered and getting going in training again, but I guess that's pretty accurate - just "getting going" again.  I did not taper for the race, save for shortening Saturday's ride to two hours.

Christopher and I got up about 4:30 in order to get to transition as close to 6:00 a.m. as reasonable in order to get a decent transition spot.  I wanted to get a good spot, plus with my bad vision coming out of the swim, it's important for me to find a place I can easily see.  We got to the race a little after 6:00 and got good places.  Everything was fine.  Christopher found his friends/teammates who were all doing the sprint.

I did a short run warmup and found my quads surprisingly dead.  This didn't seem like a good sign.  However, I figured that, as often, after a good warmup (read: swim), everything would be fine.

We took the bus over to the swim start, and I took a short swim warmup to find out what the 60 degree water would feel like.  Fortunately, it didn't seem too bad.  It was a bit cold on the face and feet, but I knew it would be ok once we got going.

The swim course is harder to navigate than many if you can't see very well because you have a very wide "lane" between the shore and a big turn, and then the swim exit isn't very easy to see after the last turn.  As a result, I think I probably swam longer than I needed to.  The effort, though was pretty good.  I looked at my watch and saw 28-something getting out of the water (there was a very long run up to T1, so official time was 30:44).  So far, so pretty-good.

T1 was a touch slow due to being a little off-balance, but I felt fine.  The heart rate was high, but I was ok with that.

I started the bike, taking the first half mile or so, getting out of the park, a little easy to let my HR get down.  The main part started then with the wind at our backs.  I started going well and slowly catching up to some people, but I noticed that I was having trouble getting up to my target power of 200 W.  This was disturbing, but again, I hoped that with more warmup, I could get there.  In the long run, this did not happen, though power did slowly trend up roughly from 180 to 190 during the sections I could ride at steady state.

I falsely attributed some of the early low power to the strong wind at our backs.  After a few miles, we turned east and had huge crosswinds.  I have ridden enough in this kind of wind that it didn't bother me especially, except that it's obviously harder to do.  But I was still disturbed that my power wasn't going up.

We hit the Pilot Mound river valley crossing (Twister Hill).  I flew down the hill pretty much alone, so the blustery wind pushing me around a little didn't matter too much.  Topped out at 46 mph.  I could have hit 50 I'm sure, but didn't have the nerve under those conditions.  Going up the hill, I tried to keep the watts under control.  Didn't want to burn out, especially because of how things were already going.  I had to crank it up to 250ish in a couple spots, but felt ok about it.

After getting out, a pattern emerged.  I was getting regularly passed any time we'd go uphill, then pass back on the flats (or on the downhill).  This pattern was ok with me, because I knew I was trying to flatten my effort, but it's a little embarrassing, especially when it's the same 2-3 people over and over again!  I decided, given that the legs just weren't happy, not to pedal when I was going 32+mph if I didn't feel like it and wasn't moving relative to the field.  I know that from an efficiency standpoint, you want to pedal with the wind at your back, but from a gearing standpoint, I spin out in the mid-30s.  Perhaps a wider gear range would be better for these very windy rides.

By the turnaround, I had drunk most of my bottle and was very glad that another bottle was available as an exchange.  This was the first indication that the heat and humidity were going to be a factor.  I didn't feel uncomfortable on the bike, but I definitely was consuming water faster than normal.  My recent less-is-more strategy was failing...

The last section of the ride with crosswinds felt longer than I remembered going out, but I felt like I was making progress relative to the field, so this was ok.

• Ave Power = 170 (including zeros)
• NPower = 181
• VI 1.06 (probably not bad, given the wind and hills)
• Ave speed 19.53 (ouch)
• Target power had been 200 W.  Ouch.

Getting to T2, I thought everything was ok, if not great.  I got on my shoes and made decent time getting out.

But as soon as I hit the trail, I again realized things were going to be tougher than I thought.  I felt like I was going at a snail's pace, and I quickly got a nasty side stitch.  I NEVER get side stitches, so that was pretty annoying!  After getting out to the road part of the run, I looked down at my Garmin to see my pace, hoping against hope it would be faster than I thought.  I saw a number that started with 9.  Uggh.  And now it was hot.  And humid.  And windy.  That heat just didn't hit me the same way when I was on the bike.

At that point, I made another quick decision.  The run was going to just be from one mile marker to the next, and I wasn't going to use the Garmin particularly.  I would just meter out what effort I had and get through it.  If things got better, I'd reconsider.

During the run course, I was passed by a few, and passed a few, but the placings seemed unusually non-dynamic.  It was as if everyone in my time range were all suffering.  I was personally disappointed I couldn't give it my usual effort.  I pride myself in running well, and I just couldn't.

Fortunately, the side stitch went away after a couple miles, and I felt marginally better.  I took lots of water and gatorade from the aid station and was pleased to see Joe Robinson and a couple other fans along the way.  Thanks guys!

Eventually, of course, the race ends.  After I was able to get my times, I was actually relieved that the run was "only" 51:10, or about 8:15/mile.  Now that's easily a minute per mile slower than I'd like to go, but I realized in the end that it wasn't the utter disaster that it felt like.  I realized that a few bouts of mental toughness where I had stuck to it instead of walking had paid off at least modestly.  I was hoping to hit a 7:00/mile Oly this year, but it sure wasn't going to happen today.

I found out that Christopher won his age group in the sprint, so that was a fantastic plus.  I should have been mean Dad and made him drink more, though, because he got sick later in the day in a way that sure looked like dehydration.

Some statistics and remarks:

• Start time was 8:30ish.  At 10 a.m., the temp was over 80, the humidity about 90%, and winds 20 mph, gusting to 30+ according to the local weather web site
• Could I have just plain bonked?  I've been trying to take off a few last pounds, and did not take any calories on the bike on Saturday 2 hour ride and really didn't eat more than normally in anyway after a post-ride clif bar.  Normally, this isn't a problem, but did it just put me in too much glycogen deficit?
• Obviously, the legs weren't ready today, on top of the heat.  How many days does it take after some hard work to get them there?  I wonder how much this really mattered as well.

In the end, I have to reconcile myself to being satisfied with this race.  It was a disappointing performance, but I didn't really set myself up for success, and the conditions were tough.

If it's a test of fitness, then I know where I am.  More work to do.

Boston Marathon Race Report, April 19, 2010

This race report is way too long.  Sorry.  Because of that, I broke it into two sections.  The first one is about "the experience", which includes "my story" and some pointers for anyone who might read this and is going to do the race in the future.  The second is "the numbers", which is an analysis of my actual race and the time I put up.  It was a 9 minute PR, so let's just say I thought it was good.

The experience

My race preparations for the Boston Marathon began Thursday night with the ritual trimming of the eyelashes and eyebrows.

I grant that this is not a conventional ritual.  However, my racing sunglasses have clip-on corrective lenses within them, and when my eyelashes and eyebrows are at full length, they are close enough to the lens to dump sweat and sunscreen on them – not good for visibility.  Trim them back, problem solved.  For the record, it takes a bit of skill to trim the eyelashes of your right eye with it closed and your glasses off, but I digress.

More seriously.

I arrived in Boston Saturday late afternoon.  Got my self out of the airport and, via bus and subway, got to the convention center with literally seconds to spare to get my number and packet.  The irony that my qualifying time was similarly close to the edge did not slip by me. I could have checked in on Sunday, but I wanted to get it done if I could.  Another subway ride to the end of the D line and a trip on a hotel shuttle, and I was at the Marriott.  I spent a quiet evening, but didn't sleep as long as I wanted.

After a leisurely Sunday morning, I made my way back to the expo.  I also invested in the traditional jacket and a few other small items I needed.  I found a place to buy some food for my room and sunscreen.  I had a nice lunch with some folks from an on-line group; this was my "pasta feed".  For long races, I've taken to the routine of having lunch before the race to be the last big meal, then small stuff after that.

Wake-up on race morning was 4:30 a.m.  Getting to the race involved a subway ride to Boston Commons by about 6:30 a.m., where we got on school busses to go to the starting line, 26 miles away.  The whole thing is amazingly orchestrated.  Once at the start, you go to an "athlete's village" where there are big open-air tents, drinks, and basic food.  There is considerable time to pass here, so you have to wear extra layers of clothing.  You drop off a bag of clothes for the end of the race (like Ironman) before walking the ¾ of a mile to the start.  But since they start getting you moving and dropping off that bag about an hour before the start, they still collect lots of discarded clothes between the village and the start, which are given to charity.

My starting number was 12079, which put me in the first wave, which started at 10:00 a.m.  (This was seeds 1-13,999.)  You go in corrals of 1000 each, dictated by your number, and they are seeded from fastest to slowest. I wasn't sure if I could see the start from where we were!  I shed everything but my hat and gloves (and shorts and top... no worries!) before the start.

I never heard the start, but we started to move, very slowly at first, then a walk, then almost a jog.  Interestingly, the starting line was not very well marked, i.e., no fancy banner across the top or anything.  Thus newbies like me did not know where the starting line was until we were practically on top of it and saw the mats across the road and a sign.  It took me about 10 minutes to get to the start.

Because the corrals are so tightly seeded, there was a lot less diving and dashing around at the start than in many road races.  I found myself choosing to run very near the middle of the road to keep the surface level under my feet.  Water stations were regularly placed first on the right and then on the left.  I chose to take drinks from the left on the theory that most people would take the first opportunity.  This worked well for me in that I only had to slow down from my general pace 2-3 times. 

I had resolved to hold back in the first few miles, which I discuss in more detail below.  Because of the seeding, the first mile was a lot closer to my target pace than it might have been at another race where I was 12000 people back!  Knowing the course had lots of downhills, my mantra for the first half of the course was "feet barely touching the ground".  I was all about trying to run my pace and trying to do it as smoothly as I could.  By the end of the race, I was very glad I had done that.  More than any other race I have done, it felt like running with good form was important here, because the terrain will chew you up as the day goes on.

The crowds along the Boston course are great, but probably comparable to a lot of big city marathons like New York and Chicago.  I raced New York 20 years ago, but my memory of it was the fascination of the changing character of the crowds as you went through different neighborhoods.  I had less of a sense of that here.  There were surely some pretty amazing spots, among them the Wellesley women near mile 13, Heartbreak Hill, and several sections of the last 4-5 miles.  The course itself is run largely on unremarkable suburban roads – pretty, rather than breathtaking, but there is still quite a lot of attractive scenery.  There are also lots of places where the cant of the road is undesirably steep if you get away from the center.  I should also note that the crowd of runners, at least at my pace, never seemed to completely disperse.  I was slowly moving up through the field the whole race (because I ran steadily and finished faster than my seed time), and I can't count the times I looked ahead and thought I was going to be running into a denser crowd than I was already in.  Most of the time, this was an optical illusion, but it's definitely a race you could find a pack and go with if you want to.

Another item on the pack and the crowds: the crowd can't resist yelling the names of people who have written them on their shirts.  I'm sure this is a boost to the people whose names are being called, but it gets old hearing their names over and over and over!

I cannot overemphasize how my impression of the course is that the downhills are far more important than the uphills.  The Newton hills are not easy, but they are just rolling hills that happen to come at a fairly tough time in the course.  However, if you've been pounding yourself for the first 16 miles, running with not-so-good form and hurting your quads going down the steep hill sections, they could break you.  The first hill is gentle but long.  This was the first place I saw people walking the course.  I remember thinking that this was a very bad sign for those guys, because it just isn't that steep.

At the top of Heartbreak Hill, you know the work that will get your heart rate up is over.  There are some steep downhills after this in the next couple of miles that are "work", but the work is holding form, not getting to speed.  After that, the race is moderate downhills and flats to bring it home.  My experience was that my legs were in pain, but that I was holding my pace ok.  It was all control, all execution, all doling out my remaining leg strength for the rest of the race.  My heart rate peaked at 166 at the top of Heartbreak (LT is a few beats higher than that), but went down and remained in the mid 160s for the remainder of the race, averaging 164 for the last two miles.  Given how I often finish races in greater strain, I considered whether I could have gone faster.  A few seconds?  Sure.  I didn't absolutely kill myself the last couple hundred yards, just ran in as hard as reasonable without feeling foolish.  A minute?  In all honesty, I doubt it.

The end of the race is just as orchestrated as the pre-race.  The post-finish walk seems very long.  First, through the water bottle people.  Then, the Gatorade recovery drink people.  Then the blanket people, followed by the tape-person.  (These are critical, since it's cool and windy there apparently every year, from what I heard.)  Keep going.  Someone hands you a lunch-sack with food in it.  Keep going.  Finally, you get to the medal folks.  Keep going.  Then comes the busses with the dry clothes. I got my stuff, found a place to put them on, and wandered about for a while.  The family meeting area is even further down the road.  It's all great, and wonderfully organized, but it felt a little anticlimactic for me, because they kept encouraging you to go forward and I didn't feel like it was cool to linger and chat with other runners.  I guess they need the space for people following behind you.  All this said, everyone was VERY nice.  My race day ended with a subway trip back to the hotel, feeling very sore, but very good. 

The race and some number crunching

I did a serious marathon training prep for this race.  I focused on building my endurance near race pace and raising my lactate/functional threshold pace.  I peaked at a little over 70 mi per week a couple of times, and I set new PRs in training runs at both the 5K and 10K distance.  So I put in the time and work.

Using tools like the McMillan running calculator or an online Vdot calculator, and my 5K test times of a little under 20 minutes, I found what seemed like ridiculously fast marathon paces for myself.  However, these things are set up to assume that you are equally trained for both races.  The fact is that almost none of us age-groupers are as well trained for the marathon as we are for a 5K, and all the reading I did indicated that a couple of Vdot points lower than your 5K Vdot was a more appropriate target.  For me, that worked out perfectly, because I had a pretty good sense that 7:30 should be my pace from previous races and the "feel" of my long runs...and it corresponded to almost exactly 2 Vdot points lower than my 5K.

To cut to the chase, my final time was 3:16:40, which is as close to 7:30 min/mile as you can get.  It's 7 minutes and 30.06 seconds per mile.  It was a 9 minute PR, so obviously I'm very happy with it.  I would like to claim something wild about how I "crushed" or "dominated" or whatever the race, but the truth is it felt a lot more mechanical than that.  I neatly origami-folded it, put it in an envelope, sealed it carefully, put the stamp on exactly in the right place, and mailed it in.  Not very emotional at all. It was just one of those days where I had earned the right to do what I tried, and I pulled it off.

After quite a lot of reading, both books and on-line, I decided to take a conservative strategy of intentionally going below my average pace for the first 5 miles or so.  I then found a calculator on line that gave a geography-adjusted equal effort pace for Boston, and sat down to make a plan.

I broke the race down into four sections

1) The first five miles (largely downhill) Idea = add 10 seconds to the pacing guidelines

2) From 5 to Newton, 10-11 miles (flat) Idea = subtract 5 seconds from even pace

3) Miles 16-21 = Newton (mixed, but net uphill) Idea = no change

4) The last 5.2 miles (some steep downhill, other parts moderate downhill or flat) Idea = go with whatever's left

After reviewing the terrain adjusted paces and simplifying a bit, I came up with these goals:

1) (first 5 miles, downhill) 7:30

2) (next 11 miles, pretty flat) 7:25

3) (Newton hills, net substantially uphill) ~7:40

4) (last 5 miles, downhill and flat) ???

This was easy enough to remember, and easy to implement with the auto-mile-lap on my Garmin.

Results:

My Garmin had me running 26.6 miles, or 1.5% too long.  That's probably accurate, since we don't get to cut the tangents in mass races, and a little weaving is inevitable.  Thus, I can correct my "Garmin pace" to a "forward motion pace" for each section

1) Hit section one pretty close. Maybe a couple seconds/mile slow, but much better than you might think for a mass start race.  Mile 1 was not ridiculous and I didn't weave.

2) Garmin says 7:19, which is about 7:26, adjusted

3) Garmin says 7:34, which is about 7:41, adjusted

4) Garmin says 7:18, which is about 7:25, adjusted

My half split was 1:38:09.  My finish time was 3:16:40.  Pretty darn close to an even race overall. To me, that's pretty close to perfect execution, given that the second half of this race is the more difficult one.


Here is a link to my full Garmin data  Ignore the "watts"; that's from software trying to guess your watts assuming you are riding a bike!

The first half of the race went unremarkably for me, except for one time.  I started chatting with a guy running next to me early in the race.  After a bit, I looked down at my watch and I was running 20 seconds/mile slower than I intended, and figured I had been for 2-3 minutes.  At that point, I felt a little anti-social, but I resolved that I needed to shut up, focus, and run my race.  I don't think I said another word after that, except "water!" or "excuse me" as I went by someone.

The weather was near perfect. No complaints at all. For nutrition, I took a gel right before the race, and at every fourth mile. Packed 4 in a pocket in the small of my back (wore a triathlon top) and picked up two at mile 17 from the course. Took water at every aid station starting at mile 3 (except one I missed) until mile 14, where I started taking Gatorade at the non-gel even ones, i.e., mile 14, 18, 22. I found myself slowly passing people the whole race. Only in the last 200 yards was I not going a little faster than everyone else. Other people had more of a kick than I did. :-)

I didn't find that I got physically or psychologically too tired - instead, the pounding of the downhills started making my quads progressively more sore. I started feeling them at the half way point. I had a little conversation with them in which I invited them to go along for the ride, and for the most part they did. I had still a little lingering hamstring soreness, but it never got worse at all.  The only really tough part was a very steep downhill in the mile 21-22 region. I didn't feel quite strong/steady enough to really let it fly, but the "braking" that I had to do to not just fly also was hard. But after the hill mellowed out, I felt good again and less like I was making hamburger out of my legs.

For what it's worth, I finished in 3780 place, with a 12079 place seed time, so that's obviously good.  But I also recognize that a lot of people focus on getting to Boston, and then just running it for fun.  Regardless, I don't think anyone thinks Boston is a particularly fast course, even though it is net downhill, so I'm very pleased with the PR.  I hope to take some lessons from it for the future.

Newtons, retired

I finally retired my first pair of Newton Gravities.  Well, at least semi-retired.  I got two replies from the @sirisaac twitter feed on my query about when to retire them, and they were a bit different.  (I assume more than one person does the job, but I didn't ask.)  The first said that they have a number of runners get more than 600 miles out of them, and the second expressed concern that I was keeping them past 500.  I asked about what the limiting feature was, as long as the lugs were still in decent shape, and they replied that there is a membrane beneath them that wears out over time.

So, at 557 miles, I have put my first pair on reserve, to serve as backup shoes in case of emergency need or need to go out in yucchy conditions.  Here are a few key photos (click to enlarge):

   

As you can see, there's more wear on the right forefoot and a bit more on the left rear. However, they still appear more than usable.  When I switched to a new pair, I really can't say that they felt dramatically different as is often the case when you go to a new pair of shoes  from an old one of the same model.  Thus, although I will leave them retired, I believe there is still a bit of life left in them.

And thus I come to my n=1 conclusion.  Newtons are a big change in the type of shoe for most people.  (You read of some people who love them from day one, but I believe that's a rarity.  See the Slowtwitch reviews, for example.  I think this is a good example of how they grow on you, or you grow into them.)  As most people know there is this investment in trying a new philosophy of shoes that they may or may not like, there is a hesitance to buy them and try them because of the relative high cost:  $175 list.

Although I still think this price is excessive, at least for me, the Newtons certainly performed on a dollar-per-mile basis comparably to another pair of shoes that would cost a bit more than half of that, but only be good for about 300 miles.  This is the range that I have most recently experienced with other shoes, regardless of whether the outsole has worn out.

[An interesting point:  At 300 miles of wear and $100 cost, you get 3 miles/dollar.  If you run 7-8 miles per hour, that's pretty close to $2.50 per hour of running just in shoe cost!]

Another caveat I have to consider is that these shoes had a majority of their miles run indoors, where I presume the wear on the lugs is lower than it would be outdoors.  Come spring, we will find out if this high mileage holds up.

In any case, I am pleased with the Newtons on these points:

• The high initial investment on the shoes was accompanied by a high wear factor, so they didn't end up costing more per mile than I've been paying already.
• The upper is just super comfortable, especially for someone like me whose toe joints stick out a bit and can get dug into by some shoes.
• After a long, slow adaptation, they really are supporting a new forefoot/midfoot style of running for me.  I am not one who gets a lot of injuries anyway, and I will not yet claim that it makes me a lot faster.  However, at 10K-marathon pace ranges, I now feel more efficient.  Next season will see!

More Newtons. More running.

Today (a Thursday) I had a great tempo run.  Tuesday and Wednesday had put a total of 24 mi of moderate pace work in, so I was a bit slow to warm up.  It took me a couple miles to get to my ~8:15 pace.  After 4 mi came the tempo part.  I was kind of looking forward to this because over the last couple of weeks, I've finally felt like I REALLY had a good-feeling stride down with the Newtons, particularly when running faster.  Faster turnover, lighter touch, etc.

It turned out that the tempo section wasn't exceptionally FAST (averaging a few seconds slower than 7:00/mi), but my HR was very low for that pace.  The average for 5 mi was 149 bpm.  Pretty cool.  Must be doing something a little more efficiently these days.  Possibly a bit of fatigue from the previous two days kept the pace a little slower than it might have been.  Hard to say.

This also gets me back to the Newtons.  As you read about them on line, a common (and reasonable) complaint about them is the very high cost.  They list for $175, which is about $50 more than other "high end" shoes usually go for.  (Obviously if you shop around enough, you can get a 10-20% discount, but that brand hardly ever goes on sale - it's usually a store-wide sale.)

As of today, I have 476 miles on my first pair of Newtons, and I took the following photos a few days ago, when the total was 440.  You can click to enlarge.

 

The left image shows the wear pattern on the more-worn shoe.  The inner lugs are more worn than the outer ones, but 1.0-1.5 mm of rubber remains on the front of the more worn lugs.  The red/orange coating on the toe area is starting to bleed through to the yellow beneath.  I haven't detailed the photo, but there is some visible wear on the far outside of both heels, but it's the kind of wear you'd see for <50 miles on a normal pair of shoes.  (This is kind of a funny place near the break of the black area - further to the outside than the typical heel-striking spot...can't figure out exactly what it's from.)

Supposedly, there's not much on the "inside" of these shoes to wear out, like a normal foam midsole on a typical running shoe, i.e., they "wear from the outside in".  If that is really the case, I could easily get 600 miles out of these before the front lugs wear down to the ground.  Granted, a large fraction of this running has been indoors, but that kind of total is double what I've been getting for other shoes.  If i can get 600 mi on a $175-list shoe - all other issues of stride/technique/etc aside - it's a bargain.

Do you wear these shoes?  If so, what kind of mileage do you get out of them?  When do you replace them?  How does the wear compare to your previous shoes?