IM 70.3 Las Vegas RR

It is with great mixed emotions that I write this report.

As I have made clear, competing at the Worlds for the 70.3 distance was my big goal for this year, and I was successful in qualifying for it at the KS 70.3 in June.

The result of the worlds were...well...a reflection of my own stupidity.  Because of that, this race report will not have the normal feel of my others.

First, just a bit of prelude for those who do not know:  the Las Vegas course is very fair and challenging for a Championship course.  The bike is almost constantly up and down, with a net rise in elevation, since T1 and T2 are maybe 15 miles apart.  None of the hills is excessively steep, but it's pretty relentless. It's September in Las Vegas, so it's going to be hot.  The run is a three loop L-shaped course that is basically up for half and down for half.  It's not steep, but it's certainly enough for you to notice at the end of a race!

I felt physically prepared.  I had a good taper and good training.  Unfortunately, I developed a head cold in the couple of days beforehand, but it was not enough to keep me out.  I felt more or less under control with some decongestant and pain reliever.

On the one hand, I am very pleased.  I had a great swim.  My time of 37:xx with no wetsuit was quite comparable to where I have been in wetsuit swims previously.  I got out of the water feeling strong and ready to go.  I had gotten some prescription goggles so I could see better and this was wonderful.

The bike transition there is nutty-long.  I got going fairly efficiently and was happy enough.  There were aid stations about every 12-13 miles, and I drank 8 bottles over the course of my ride, seven of which were Perform, and one water.  I was in nearly the last wave, so the course was not crowded at all.  As usual, I got passed going uphill and passed people going downhill.  While I would have been happier with a little faster bike split, I was intentionally being conservative, knowing the run would be very hot and tough.  After about an hour on the bike, some of the people in my AG who passed me were coming back to me...so everything seemed to be going as per my normal pattern.

I got onto the run, and started to go.  It was hot and difficult, but I was going fine.  However, I had a malfunction with my Garmin.  First, my HR strap battery apparently chose race day to poop out.  Either that or I was dead sometimes, and crazily high on my HR sometimes.  This was frustrating, because I had planned to race by HR rather than pace, given the course and conditions...so I went to RPE, glancing at pace.  Secondly, I don't know exactly what I did, but I was using the watch in multisport mode, and it did not behave as I expected... it stopped for a while and I really didn't notice until I had no idea how much it had missed...so I gave up using it for distance.

I continued my run and passed a particular landmark for the third time, and turned in to the finish.  I raced very hard the last mile or so, and managed to out race a couple of guys in my age group.  I was really excited...even though I knew it was totally middle of the pack stuff.

But in the end, I discovered that I had skipped one of the loops somehow.  I still can't figure out how this slipped past me because I was counting the mile markers as I went, but I can't deny the evidence.  My finish time of just under 5:00 is unrealistic, and I am missing two checkpoints (there were two of them per loop).  I was in decent enough condition and would not have had any trouble finishing the race more or less at the pace I was going.

I have made an estimate of how much longer I should have been on the course, and it's about 40 minutes, meaning I should have finished in about 5:40.

The irony is that - maybe because of the late start and therefore higher temps - maybe just the luck of the draw - who knows... that time of 5:40 would have been very close to the 50th percentile "A-goal" I had.  (That would have required a much faster time in 2011)

I am, of course, really frustrated about this.  But it has given me a mission to accomplish for 2013.  I have unfinished business.

Pre Las Vegas 70.3 Training Report

I posted a report before my KS 70.3 and found it useful to go back to and think about, so I am doing the same again here.  The KS race itself was bedeviled by very tough conditions and a bad swimming incident, so my time wasn't where I wanted it to be, but (other than the swim thing), I had ultimately judged it successful, and I did meet my goal of qualifying for the WTC 70.3 Championships.

In retrospect, ideally, I probably should have taken a little more just plain time off after KS.  This would have shortened my training for LV (bad), but in the way things worked out, I felt pretty spent and slow in most of July.  (In August, things really started coming around better.)  That said, the family took a week's vacation in early July and starting AFTER that would have been too late.  As a result, it's hard to really say I did anything too terribly wrong given the circumstances.

I continued to follow the general EN plan, but made a few adaptations.

• I continued to swim more than called for (with the ACAC masters group) through the end of July. After that, I shortened the swim workouts down to the hour range, but usually had more than 3.  (And I swam on my own, as the club was off for a month.)
• I was unmerciful on myself in maxing out the number of full 2 hour (or even a little longer) runs possible, of course keeping it to 1 per week.  I got to 2 hours faster than my plan called for and stayed there longer.  However, I did not push the speed on them as much.  For these, running the time at a decent pace (no collapsing allowed), no matter the conditions, was the major goal.   I have no proof, but I have a general observation that it feels like I do better with some overdistance training, even if it means sacrificing a little of the "quality". 
• In my Pre-KS report, I noted that I was ok with the threshold running, but that I was really hurting in the MP and HMP running.  Those paces seemed like way too much work compared to how long I should be able to run them.  In July and August, I sacrificed a fair amount of (50%?) of the threshold pace running in favor of longer HMP-MP segments.  This had the predictable affect of making that pace easier to hold; I probably threw away any chance at getting any faster in a 5K sense, but I really thought this was closer to race specific effort, and I wanted to do even a little better running in LV than I had at KS.
• I had faced a bit of an "intensity burnout" earlier in the year.  For this round, whenever that would start to come on for the bike (which is where it usually happens for me), I would still push the watts expected (maybe even a few more), but do it sitting up rather than in aero.  This relieves the quads for me, but let me get the aerobic work in and get in my race pace (~80-85% FTP) work without having devastated legs.  Only time will tell, but I have felt very good about this.

As noted earlier, July was pretty discouraging.  Nothing was ever over target, and often things were a bit shy of where I'd want them to be.  It was also a crazy busy month for the family and at work, and this may have contributed to fatigue, etc.  However, as August matured, I really started feeling more workouts coming together.

I write this with just under a week to go before the race while in the midst of taper.  Total volumes for the weeks starting July 2: 8 (4 vacation days), 10 (2 vacation days), 15, 14, 11.5, 15.5, 15.5, 11.5, 10, (and this is race week).  So I've put in my time.  And the 11.5 and 10 hour taper weeks have been still hard... no just giving into exhaustion and limping into the race.

I normally have pretty wild oscillations of feeling good and lousy during a taper.  This has been considerably more mellow along those lines.  I have not had any workouts recently that just dragged or where the quads just moaned as they often do.  Is this luck or being a little fresher?  Again, I can't prove this, but I think it may be being a little fresher from easing off the bike a touch as described above.

As a result of these modifications, I basically think I gave away my opportunity to get inherently faster during this two month buildup for LV.  However, what I think I got in return was the opportunity to build where I was to a much more solid level.  My testing numbers would cease to be artifacts of a particularly strong effort/day.  I am hoping that the small gains I might have made are banked against a much greater "insurance" against the day being tough.

I should ultimately comment that another rationale for this modification of my KS prep was that the LV race is KNOWN to be one in tough conditions.  I know it's hilly, and I know it's going to be very hot.  I do ok in hilly, but I'm not the greatest in hot.  So building up the foundation has been meant to be a bulwark against the fact that I may be running in 100 degree heat.  I'm not going to be running 6:45 equivalents on the hot hills in all likelihood, so let's get tough for what I am capable of.  Or so I rationalized.

I probably qualified in the bottom quarter of the field.  I have looked at the times from 2011, and that does seem realistic, to the extent that I have to guess what the effect of the heat is on people.  The 50th percentile of the 45-49 age group was very close to 5:10.  I've done 4:48 on a pretty flat course and 5:0x a couple of times on the KS course, but not sub 5:10 in that kind of brutal heat.

Being realistic, I should be pleased if I place in the second quartile (from the bottom) in this race, and that will be my "B" goal.  My "A" goal will be to be in the top half of the field.  That is, I believe, a very significant challenge, without being an utter pipe dream.

Wish me luck.

Kansas 70.3 Race Report. June 10, 2012

Kansas 70.3 Race Report

June 10, 2012

Summary

Absolutely nothing in my performance looks very good, but the conditions were very tough, and taking those into account, I am satisfied with the result.  5:16:42 overall, about 10 minutes slower than the year before.  45 min swim, 2:45 bike, 1:42 run.  Qualified for Las Vegas.  Woo too!

Prerace

Between 2 and 3 weeks before the race, I gave myself a minor hamstring twinge.  Up to that point, I had been very pleased with my training.  Swimming was a big point, and I had made a lot of progress.  Biking looked good, and was statistically strong; I was at my all time best FTP. Running, however, was (at best) the same as in previous years.  I had had a severe hamstring pull several months before and had not been able to work the run as hard as I wanted, obviously.  However, this meant more time on the bike, so maybe it was a wash.  Regardless, the hamstring tweak with a couple of weeks to go wasn't good, but it wasn't debilitating.  I managed it fine and did not hurt myself worse, but the running going in those last 3 weeks was definitely toned down from what I had planned.

I drove down to Lawrence Friday night after helping out with the kids' swim meet all Friday afternoon.  Unfortunately, it was very hot and I had to be outside all day.  However, as I drove down and drank a lot I felt better and better, and I thought I had probably fixed myself up well enough from being dehydrated.

Saturday morning I got up, loaded my gear and checked in.  I didn't have any local friends racing, but did have some EN teammates, so it was fun to meet them.  Registration was smooth, but as I was almost at T1 to check in my bike, I realized my front tire had flatted out.  That meant a long walk back to the parking area to change the tube.  Not the end of the world, but it was another very hot day, and I would have preferred to get out of the sun faster.  Lunch with teammates was great.  I had my last big meal before race time - a pretty stripped down pizza.  I drove the course in the afternoon to remind myself of where the sections of the hills were.  That was useful, but didn't give the perspective of the wind that was to be so important the next day.  The biggest takeaway was that the "entrance to the park" was actually miles from the finish and it was important to keep the racing head on for much longer than just to the entrance.

The evening was uneventful save for normal race preparation.  I had an early light dinner (5 pm 6 inch subway) and bought my usual Naked Juice smoothies.  Drank one right before retiring at 9 am, and two would be early breakfast at 3 am when I got up.

On arrival at the venue, I hung out in T2 to find out about the wetsuit ruling (so as to decide whether to bring it down to T1).  I learned, as expected, that wetsuits were not going to happen.  This was ok with me, and was good because it would save me a trip down to T1 after the race.  :-)

Swim

I went off with my wave, and at first everything was fine.  I felt like I was swimming strongly.  There was quite a bit of chop, but it didn't bother me nearly as much as it had the year before.  I projected myself as finishing in ~37 minutes because I felt like I was swimming a lot stronger, but would have to deal with chop and no wetsuits.  (I thought I had swum myself into shape for a ~32 minute smooth wetsuit swim.)

After the first turn, however, I went way off track.  Literally.  The first turn was into the sun, which is to be expected, but that doesn't help visibility.  By then, my wave had dispersed more than usual - which I attributed to the chop - and the density of swimmers around me was just very low.  The chop and (I think) a couple of small or under inflated buoys made it hard to see them.  As everyone knows, I also just can't see that well.  I accomplished the impossible.  I got lost.  

I wasn't so lost that I had no idea where I was going; after all I knew where the sun was and could see the shore in a vague sort of way (not the finish chutes...just the shore).  I made every attempt to look for buoys and swimmers, and I just kept going crooked one way or another relative to the course.  I got stopped by kayaks three times.  A few times I had to just stop and tread and look around to figure out where to head next.  I wasn't totally alone this whole time, but for some reason I just couldn't stay with even any small group.  Additionally, the water was very murky, so you couldn't easily follow feet.  At no time did I panic, but obviously this led to anxiety about my general performance.

While I felt like I was swimming well, it was clear that I just swam way too long.  I have no idea how far I swam, but I know the way back, which is shorter on the map was a hell of a lot longer in my experience.  I pulled up out of the swim and saw 44 min on my watch.  i was devastated on the one hand, but I knew it was going to be bad on the other.  At least I ended the swim feeling strong and ready to go.

T1

What to do now?  My whole goal of this race was to qualify for Las Vegas, i.e., the IM 70.3 championships.  I knew I had blown it on the swim.  Before the race, I had looked up most of my competitors and seeded myself about 10th, which would probably be good enough to get a spot on roll-down....but usually where I finish starts to get dense with finishers.  So who knows how much those ~7 minutes (I was guessing) cost me.  Ugh.

I had rehearsed finding my bike, so I got there smoothly. Everything was as I left it.

I made an instant decision on how to deal with the race that was a slight change of plans.  I felt I could no longer take risks that might cost me time in the end.  I knew it was going to be very hot, and get hotter with every hour.  I also knew that the bike would be windy.  I decided that my best chance was to race "smart" rather than aggressively, and hope that too many of my competitors would blow up on the run.  I decided I would drop 10 W from the bike to deal with conditions and save something for the run...and use a modified PE-based approach on the run (more on that later).

The only bad thing about T1 was that doing all this thinking distracted me and I forgot to take off my skin suit.  Last year, I left my swim cap on, so goodness knows what I will forget next time!

Bike

My bike was uneventful.  Maybe that's as is should be.  I knew it would be windy and it was.  I knew it would be hilly and it was.  I knew it would get warm and it did.

I felt good going out and was pleased not to feel like I spent half an hour recovering from the swim.  In retrospect, I am a little disappointed with my overall watts numbers (175 NP, 1.05 VI), but the simple fact is that it was hard to hold the watts that I wanted (190 on the dial for current watts) in large sections of the course.  When the wind was blowing straight at my back, it was tough to keep up the watts.  When the wind was blowing (and gusting somewhat) straight across making steering/stability an issue, it was tough.  When I was going straight into the wind on flats, I noted that my speed was the same if I really, really hunched down and rode a little easier (because it's hard to push as hard when all scrunched up) or when I was in my normal position riding at target power.  Again, I made an instant decision to go with scrunched up and hope I was saving a little more for the run.

I broke my power segments into half hour blocks.  The highest power half hour was the first...which is not good execution, but this was also one of the major into-the-wind and uphill segments.  So, while not great, I'm not disappointed with that.  The lowest half hour was 120-150 minutes (which again, on its face, is bad), but this was the section that was most wind-aided and had lots of downhill segments where I was coasting over 35 mph.  So again, I'm not too upset with that.

Hydration and nutrition were to be kept simple.  I had a bit over 250 calories of InfiniT in my Speedfil A2 (essentially a big, refillable torpedo mount bottle with a straw) and water on the down tube. There were three exchanges on the course.  Up to the first one, I focused on downing most of the InfiniT. At that point I took water and put it in the Speedfil and took Perform as the down tube bottle.  This let me focus on getting more water in without drowning myself in calories. I finished the diluted InfiniT, then squeezed the Perform into the Speedfil. I repeated this at the second and third station, and this got me about 450 calories and as much water as I wanted.  Worked great.

I wish I could make the bike segment story more entertaining, but there's not much more to it; I got tired like everyone does, but not badly.  I felt ready to run.

T2

I was sure glad to get that skin suit off!  One layer gone and I was instantly cooler.  Other than that, T2 was smooth.  Grabbed my sunscreen, sprayed it on while I ran out, and dumped the nearly empty can in the garbage as I left.  Perfect.  In retrospect, it turns out I didn't lose more than 15-20 sec tops taking off the skin suit, either.

Run

Under ideal conditions, I thought I was in shape for a run in the low 1:30s, i.e., at or near 7:00 miles.  I had done that kind of run last year on a flat course in good conditions, and I knew I was in comparable, but not better, run shape.  But I also knew today wasn't ideal.  

But I know pretty much exactly what it feels like to run near 7:00 pace in a HIM.  As noted earlier, I had decided to stick with a PE approach.  I was aware of generally what kind of paces to expect for hot temps, and I knew I didn't know exactly the temperatures were...so I would just try to run the appropriate effort, glancing at the pace to make sure I was in the right universe.  Going from base pace to 95 degrees, the classic Daniels table suggests that pace should slow by about 5% (ca. 7:20), but experience and data collected at EN suggest this is a severe underestimate.  For the IM run, about a 20% slowing (ca. 8:20).  I guessed that for the HIM run it would be somewhere in the 15% region, near 8:00.

(I learned during the run that my Garmin was making my "miles"  about 2% too long.  I have adjusted the times here, but most of what I saw on course would have appeared a few seconds per mile slower.)

Starting out on the run (somewhere around 10:15), I got delayed by a volunteer who flagged me coming out of T2 for some reason, but then I got going fine.  Mile 1 was 7:20, which was fine, considering the delay and the general settling that I always need for about half a mile.  Mile 2 was downhill and mile 3 uphill.  They averaged 7:00.  Perfect. But then I started feeling the heat. By this time (calculating back), it must have been about 10:30 to 10:45 am. and it was 85 degrees or more (again, looking this up).  Miles 4-6 were about 7:30.  By this time I had begun to suffer, like everyone I'm sure.  But I kept trying to draw on what it should feel like to run at this stage and not worry about the pace.  According to weather records, it got over 90 degrees by about 11:30 am, which would be somewhere in the range of mile 9 for me.

I had passed several people in my age group in the first 6.5 mile lap, but as the second lap begins, you can never know for sure whether you are passing (or being passed by) people on the same lap as you or people 6.5 miles behind.  Given the conditions, the people on the second lap might be going just as slowly as people in the age group who were just starting.  I knew this, and decided that I had to take everyone with a number near mine seriously.  But I wasn't going to go too far off my PE-based pace until the last few miles.  I couldn't blow up.  That had to be avoided at all costs.  I had to hope a few of my competitors would.

The course has two significant out-and backs on each lap.  I began watching carefully on the "out" trying to find people in my AG that were within striking distance. For miles 7-9, my pace dropped to about 7:55-8:00 as it heated up more. I passed the last 45-49 male I saw during the race as I approached the one steep hill of the course, and I decided to take one tactical power walk up that hill, confident he couldn't pass me back.  Matt Aaronson from EN saw me and yelled at me, and I tried to yell back that I was ok and taking a tactical walk.  That mile captured almost all the uphill of the course, and I was almost 8:45 for that mile.  (I got delayed at an aid station, too, but that's my fault...).  I watched carefully during the last out and back and didn't see anyone ahead of me in the AG in striking range.  I sure hoped I hadn't missed anyone.  I finished the last miles in about 8:10 pace and averaged about 7:47 for the whole run.  I worked very, very hard, but - to be honest - was glad I didn't feel like I had to sprint to catch anyone.  But I was fully prepared to turn myself inside out if anyone caught me...but no one of any age over ~25 did in the last couple miles.

After the race was over, I discovered that the next person in front of me beat me by over 3 minutes.  That meant I had been right about not seeing anyone in front of me within range for the last couple miles of running.

My aid station strategy was pretty simple again.  I know it's pretty oversimplified-sounding, but I've figured out that if I get one "cup" (3-4 ounces) of coke or sports drink at most of the aid stations, I'll be fine.  So that's what I did.  I slowed down enough to get the nutrition down every time.  I tried to get two big swigs of water.  And I tried to get as much ice as possible.  I put some down my shorts every station after mile 3 or 4 and I ran with ice in my hands pretty much the whole time.

After the race, I was able to analyze what happened using the finishing times.  It turns out I passed 9 racers, and was not passed by anyone in my AG.

Overall

This was NOT the prettiest race I ever did.  Not by a long shot.  It was hard, and parts of it were disappointing.  I still am hitting myself about wasting so much time in the water.  It was disappointing to slow as much as I did on the run, but I knew that was the game I was playing, and I find it really hard to complain too much that I should have done better.  Like always, I was giving it pretty much everything I had the last 3 miles or so.  Like everyone probably, I wanted to stop in the last three miles, but I gutted it out.  I kept appealing in my head to all the work I had done and I was not gong to give in and throw that away.

In the end I placed 11th, 3 min behind guy #10.  I was 10 minutes slower than the year before.

I looked up the top 10 finishers on Athlinks.  The guy who won (in 4:31!) had a PR.  Wow.  More power to him.  Out of my league.  Of the next 9, 7 had done KS in the last three years, and one had done Vineman (a similar course).  Every single one of them was at least 15 minutes slower than before, and the average was 19 minutes slower.

To that extent, I take solace in only going 10 min slower than my best on this course.  Before the race, I had thought I would be about the 10th seed from among the people who I saw had registered.  So 11th was right in line, particularly given the number of late entries (almost 4 weeks worth).  I would not have seeded myself over anyone who finished in front of me had I known they were all there.  The closest one had a 10 minute advantage over my best time, comparing same course to same course.  (He came in 9th.)

After waiting literally hours, it was time to do the roll downs.  Because this was a targeted race by WTC, there were more spots than usual, but the fields were also stacked with good racers more than usual..or at least mine was.  The few women's slots went very, very quickly.  There weren't many roll down slots, and the people were there ready to claim them.  The 30-44 year old men, though, had more spots and went more slowly.  When they got to my AG, there were 3 slots untaken and I was 3 positions out of an automatic slot, so I knew i was in.  As it happens, placers 9 and 10 weren't there, so I took the first roll down, and the next two were claimed by people very shortly after my name.  So I guess it was only the 30-44 men who were slackers about wanting to go to the championships!  

This goes down as a qualified success.

Pre KS 70.3 Training Report

Pre KS-70.3 Training report

I thought it would be worth writing this training report in advance of my race so that it would have a little bit more credibility.   The KS 70.3 is my A race for the first half of the season.  I have a goal of a PR on the course and hope to place well.  I've been basically following the Endurance Nation plan, with various modifications as dictated by my life and needs.  Thanks to the EN  coaches and community, and especially Patrick McCrann who has gone out of his way to keep me in check, give me advice, and occasionally calm me down this season.

After last year and my performance at two HIMs and the full IM at WI, i tried to do a critical analysis of how I could get faster.  At the IM distance, the answer is simple: I have to execute the run well.  I still believe that my WI bike split was responsible but that I underestimated the heat on the run.  At the HIM distance, though, I'm executing fairly well.  I ran well enough in 2011 that I thought I could actually shave more time from improving my swim than from improving my run. This could come from both the actual minutes saved in the water and limiting the "damage" done by it at the beginning of the bike.  I had a somewhat under powered bike at KS and still wonder if that was due to being underprepared at the swim.

Fate dealt me an easy choice when I sustained a fairly serious hamstring injury about Nov 1 2011.  This meant I was not going to be able to run seriously until early 2012 anyway, and I focused my efforts over the winter on the bike, just carefully bringing my run along.  By mid-February, I maxed out on an FTP test at just barely 4.0 W/kg on the road bike. (My FTP tests are inevitably better indoors than outdoors and better on the road bike than TT bike.)  Over that period I took a couple single-weeks easy and another at the transition in mid Feb.

I had been doing enough running that my 5K test pace was actually about where it was at the same time in 2011, but not what it was at my peak in 2011, i.e., around 19:40.  But I knew I hadn't worked enough distance to maintain the corresponding paces out to the half marathon distance for sure.

Mid-February: The Run Focus and early outdoor riding

My plan developed so that I would take 8 more weeks working my run and just "holding" the bike before turning in earnest to the HIM prep phase.  This would have me still running relatively short and hard through the week of April 9 and give me 8-9 weeks of real HIM prep with the longer rides and runs.

With the very early warm spring, I was able to get outside on the TT bike much earlier than I had anticipated.  As expected, the FTP dropped, but I had messed around with my fit, shortening my cranks to 165 mm, and the drop off was less than in 2010 and 2011. I tested out at 247 and this was confirmed by the Critical Power plot in Golden Cheetah.

The biggest challenge I had with the run was bringing more endurance in.  I had only basically run threshold (6:30-6:40), VO2 pace, or easy.  The biggest challenges were increasing the duration of the threshold intervals and being able to run extended tempo intervals.  The bike did seem to hold stable.

The swim

I started swimming with a small masters group in January.  Boy, was there room for improvement.  My stated goal was to have a swim split at my race of 32:xx  of "in the water" time.  That was pretty aggressive considering most of my HIM times were 38-39 min.  Uggh.  But I was going to put in the work and see what happened.  I honestly believed that was more realistic than taking 6 minutes off my run.

The swim program was 3 days/week, with 2 1-hour workouts (ca. 3000 yds) and 1 2-hour workout.  I got a few lessons from the coaching staff, and there's no question that (a) the lessons helped and (b) I had to get fitter at swimming to improve my stroke too.  On weeks that I felt good, I would usually stick in an extra 30-45 minute swim at a lunch time one day for some frequency.

As of this writing (May 20), I can hold steady a 1:30 (100 yds) pace with some work, and can do it easily when pulling.  I find that virtually everyone in the pool has an additional fast gear that I do not.  But I am the oldest swimmer of the masters (and obviously older than all the kids), and I may have beaten both of my fast twitch muscle fibers out of existence many years ago.  I note that, although I am among the slowest swimmers, I can hold near my fastest pace better than most of the swimmers of anywhere near comparable ability (masters or young girls).  So I am ok with that.

I am swimming better than I have at any time since I started triathlon.

But it has come at a cost.  The swims are hard, and there is nothing I can really do about the time/day that they are.  Most of the time, since I moved to my full HIM training, they have been the same day as a long run or a long bike.  There simply is no kidding about the fact that you've done a hard 2-hour swim shortly before trying to do a long hard bike ride.  This has been less than ideal because it just makes it that much harder (if not impossible) to hit the wattage targets. The only consolation I have taken is that on the few weekends where I have managed to rest/recover better between swim and bike, the bike intervals have been where they should be.

I also observed that as soon as i started doing my long weekend stuff, my swim time progress completely plateaued, and I had a few poor Tuesday morning swims.  It took 5 weeks of long rides on the weekends before I was recovered well enough from them by Tuesday morning that I felt really good.

However, again, as I write this, I feel I'm breaking out of the plateau in that 6th week.

Where I stand

Because of the relatively short HIM prep, I gave up the opportunity to race the Bluff Creek Sprint/Oly try on May 20 in favor of getting one last hard weekend of double hard rides.  Although it would have been fun, I do not regret it now.  With the hard swims and limited number of long ride weekends, I felt that the quality rides this weekend would outweigh any benefits of racing.

The strengths of my position right now are that the swim is good and the bike feels appropriately strong when I am a little rested.  I feel like the 6 weeks has been the minimum time I needed to adapt to the long rides and runs.

I am a bit concerned about my run still, however.   The threshold running is fine.  So is my ability to just grind out a couple of hours of running.  But where I have felt inadequate is the ability to run more than about 20 minute segments of sub-7:00 (marathon or half marathon) pace at a time.  It just feels like a heck of a lot of work.

As taper begins now, more than any time I can remember, I am hoping for "the magic" on the run.  I am not expecting to get faster in an absolute sense, but i am hoping that that the ability to sustain the marathon pace running comes with greater rest.

By this time, three weeks from now, I will know.