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.