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.

Chisago City Half Ironman Race Report

Race Report for Chisago Half Ironman, July 24, 2011


Executive summary:  “Local” quality race on a nice course, with attendant issues of “local” quality leadership.  Foibles on swim (my fault and that of course and RD) meant I have nothing to take home from the swim.  Otherwise, very good race for me, despite not really tapering or even training intelligently.  Smashed my HIM run PR. 4:52 final time.


Background/Prerace


I have been looking forward to this race all summer.  Although it was not a race I was going to “prepare for” other than taking a couple of easy days in advance, it was going to be special because Chris was racing it with me – in fact, that was the only reason I was going to do the race.  He has had a great summer full of elite soccer reffing, but has still worked hard to get the bike work in that he could, and he was running and swimming with organized groups, too, so I knew he would have a good race.  On paper, you could make a case that we should be VERY competitive with one another, but we all know that the first race at a HIM rarely goes perfectly (or even well), so the reality was that I probably had an advantage in the intra-family championship.  Nonetheless it was going to be great.


Saturday, we got packed up, got haircuts, and drove up to Chisago City, northeast of St. Paul.  It was raining, but this was going to be a relief, weather-wise.  We checked in and listened to a not-very-impressive course talk, then drove the bike course.  This was instructive, because I had thought the course was flatter than it was.  Actually, it was full of relatively gentle rolling hills.  
The rest of the evening was fun, if uneventful, except for having to find a new hotel room at the last second.


Race Morning


We again lucked out on the weather.  It would be in the 60s for much of the morning, before warming up to the 80s.  The transition area was – Chris’s words – a bit sketchy, but there was enough basic room, and we got set up, marked and the like.
The start was bizarre.  There was an elite wave, and the rest of the waves were in groups of 50 by registration number.  You therefore were not racing with people in your age group, nor did you know anything about where such people were.  Strict time-trialing I guess!  Chris was in the elite group because of his fast swim.  I was in heat 8, about 15 minutes later.
Right before the start, a fog rolled in.  The RD decided to go ahead and start the swim anyway to stay on time.


Race Plan


I did not really have a race plan. Those that know me will realize that’s pretty uncharacteristic.  However, my race prep for the three weeks in advance consisted of:

• July 1-4 very heavy bike and some swim
• July 5 Swim
• July 6-14 90 miles of running, mainly in 100 degree heat.  No bike, no swim.  (Business trip)
• July 15 off
• July 16-17 Long bikes in 105+ heat
• July 18-20 normal training (SBR) with surprisingly devastated legs
• July 21-23 hard swimming only; I just didn’t see the purpose in digging a deeper hole for my legs.
• I knew what I had been able to do for KS in mid June: aim for 180 W, average 170 after coasting, etc, which led to a run PR of 1:36:35 (7:22 pace).  Given my prep, I just figured I would go with trying to duplicate that effort if it was there, and just enjoy the day if not.  I guess that’s a race plan. :)

Nutrition was going to be sparse on the course; I took one bottle of 200 calories of InfiniT for the first 20 miles, and would then live on Gatorade.   They were vague about what would be available on the run, so I packed several gels, planning to take them at miles 1, 5, and 9, and have a spare if they ran out of Gatorade on the bike.


Swim


The swim course was a straight out and back.  In theory.  In reality, it was shaped like a fork, i.e., with a bend at the last buoy.  I know it’s the athlete’s responsibility to know and navigate the course, but between the fog and lousy buoys, it was darn near impossible to see where you were going.  Furthermore, the small waves made it worse.  You could easily get down to just a few people and no one really knew where you were going or could see anything else all that useful.  The kayaks were far too neutral, given the circumstances.  They could have done a much better job of keeping everyone on course.  We all watched in amazement as people in the elite/pro wave went all over the place…and the rest of us were not immune.  All this complaining is probably something I should just suck up and be silent about, but my visual difficulty didn’t make it any easier, and I went way off course I am sure.  I ended up swimming into people goin the other way as well.  [In discussing this with other people after the race, a lot of people said the same thing; additionally there were many reports of people turning around one buoy too early.]


I finished the swim in a disappointing 39:30.  I thought I was swimming fast enough for maybe 3 minutes faster, but of course we will never know.  However, I came out of the water in pretty good shape, not having had to deal with chop like at KS.


Bike


The first 15 minutes of the bike was a little ragged as usual.  I averaged 168 W excluding zeros or 157 including them.  Ugh.  But then suddenly I just felt a lot better.  I went up to targeting the 180, and it got easy.  Found myself targeting 190.  No problem.  A little taken aback, but what the heck.  This is where I should be based on FTP testing, even though I pooped out at KS.  I thought to myself that this is a fun race for me with no expectations, so let’s see what happens.  The long and short of it was that I stuck to it the whole way.  Final average of 187 W, several watts lower including zeros.  
While out on the course, I decided to play Ricky Racer to an extent.  There was a moderate wind, and a big pile of Sprint racers to go through.  The course was not especially crowded for me though, so I played the “legal draft” game of riding up directly behind riders to pass, then going around them at near the last second.  There was plenty of room, so it was safe, and I was entirely within the rules.  Whether I really saved time, I don’t know, but it was a fun game to play.  I had a good time with that.


At about the halfway mark, I felt pretty darn alone on the course for several miles.  Eventually I caught up with more riders, though.  I was passed by a number of VERY strong riders, but I did not get passed by people I would regard as contemporaries particularly.


The bike course has several sections of excellent road.  It also has a few (maybe 10 mi total?) of really terrible, bumpy road.  This was bumpy enough to jar lots of bottles out, and bumpy enough that I had a hard time maintaining power.


With the increase in power and flatter course, the result was better than KS – 21.6 MPH average.  This is not my world record, but I was still very pleased, given the circumstances of the day.  The only question was what would this harder effort do to my run.


Run


The answer:  nothing.


Again, just running the race for fun, I figured I’d just run the first few miles at a comfortable pace, see what it was, and just keep an eye on the pace to keep it not completely out of control, fast or slow. First mile 7:10.  Whoa buddy, just a little fast.  Relax a little.  Second mile 7:00.  I said, “relax” would you!  Third mile, 7:01.  OK, what the hell. Let’s just go with it.  I did my gels as planned and walked the 10 steps or whatever is required to get the water every time.


Ran the whole course at a 7:00 pace with pretty even splits, taking account for a bit of geography.  Yeah, ok, the last couple were harder, but not death defying.


Amazingly, this led to a 1:31:43, a FIVE MINUTE run PR for the distance.  


Back to the bit with Chris and the race:  the run course is out and back, mainly through residential neighborhoods.  It’s a very pleasant and pretty flat course.  I had expected to see him somewhere in my 5-6 mile range coming the other way.  In reality, I was closer than I thought and the out-and-back had a loop at the end, so I missed him.  I caught him at the 8 mile mark and he was clearly suffering.  He had had some cramps.  I didn’t get all the details, but I tried to encourage him because I knew he was really doing pretty well.  But, if there’s one thing that boy can do, it’s suffer with the best of us.  I worried a little bit, because I know what cramps can do to you, but I moved on and knew he would be ok.


I finished my race and wandered around.  Just a few minutes later, Chris came through…very excitedly.  I saw the whole thing; he ran straight through the chute and eventually just dived onto the ground. I misinterpreted his excitement for pain, but I was very proud.  I caught up to him and offered him my best.  It was great.


We finished the day with him picking up a 3rd place medal, and me finishing 7th.  There were quite a number of very fast dudes in my age group, even though there were only 56 entries.  I came away very happy with my time and experience.


Pluses and Minuses of this Race


The Chisago half is an inexpensive race, and they let people under 18 race.  Those are both big pluses.  The location means it is unlikely to be excessively hot.  That too is a positive.
On the negative side, there were consistently too few volunteers throughout the course – on the swim, at the aid stations, etc., and the transition area was crowded.  I have also alluded to the road quality, but the course has changed on the bike more than once and this may or may not be an issue going forward.


Overall, it is a good enough race if it fits one’s schedule and needs.  It is not as well run as Pigman, but the run is a lot more pleasant.  


Lessons Learned


I have been thinking about this ever since we started the drive home.  What did this race mean?
I’m not certain of that. I think I am pleased with my ability to adjust upward, as well as downward, from whatever low-grade “plan” I had.  I imagine I should take home the idea that – for me – “less may be more” on race week if there is any question about it for the last few days.

2011 KS 70.3 Race report

Executive Summary

• Goal time sub-5:00; actual time 5:06:51 (slow swim for everyone)
• 6^th place in age group
• Swim improved regarding placement if not time; bike iffy but ok; good run
• Minimal nutrition worked fine for me. 300-350 cal total on bike. ~600 total for race.

Saturday

Christopher and I drove down to Lawrence on Friday night and had dinner with EN friends. Our plan was that Chris would ride the bike course Saturday morning while I checked in, etc. (He is getting ready for a race in July.) Then we would drive the course.

We slept in and then got over to the venue a bit before 10:00 a.m., which was the opening time for registration. Chris got his gear on and we headed up to the check-in area. After a bit of confusion from the staff, he found the volunteer check-in and got on his way. I checked in easily as well. I put my number on my bike and headed over to T1. I was pleased to find that my space would be very easy to find coming out of the water. I checked my bike in and practiced finding the spot a few times, then left happy after deflating my tires.

With Chris being out for about 3 hours, I went back up to the outdoor expo area. I was feeling optimistic; the T1 spot seemed like a good omen. I bought a few small knickknacks and met some friends from TRIracers and Endurance Nation, but tried to keep mostly in the shade and hydrated. After Chris returned, we got Subway for lunch and then drove the bike course. This was a good thing. Although none of the hills were outrageous, I had forgotten just how constant they were. Chris was an excellent and invaluable course guide.

We then checked into the hotel and joined the TRIracers for early dinner. I made sure to keep it very simple: pasta with a plain sauce. We sat outside in heat and sun, which I didn’t care for, but I did my best to minimize the problem. After dinner, Chris and I retired to the hotel after buying some stuff for breakfast in the morning. He went to sleep and I finished up packing for the morning. The last step was to shower and then (yuck) apply a heavy dose of sunscreen. As in 2009, I obsessed over the weather, which didn’t look good (storms…), but there was nothing to do about it, so I went to sleep.

Sunday Pre-Race

By morning, it was clear that the weather would cooperate. Breakfast was 500 calories worth of Naked Juice smoothies with protein and one small breakfast bar (so I wouldn’t feel hungry) all before 4:00 am. This worked fine. I was not hungry all day, well into late afternoon.

We arrived on site a little before 5 am, but that was not quite early enough to avoid the crowds. Chris took off for his volunteering duties on his bike and I walked up to T2 to set up my gear. (This was the first race in a while that I used almost all the available time; note to self: get to KS 70.3 VERY early next time!)

I headed down to T1 and set up my stuff – inflated the tires, set out my shoes and socks and laid my helmet on the ground by my bike with my glasses inside. I checked the straps of the helmet just to be sure they hadn’t gotten dislodged like at Steelhead last year…. After a final trip to the portapotties, I put on my wetsuit and tried using a new (to me) spray-on silicone lubricant to be able to get it off.

Swim

The swim was a deep-water start. I discovered that I hadn’t taken off my wedding ring, so I quickly transferred it to my bigger middle finger, knowing it would not come off that way. The course was approximately 950 m out, 200 m left turn, 750 m return – very simple.

I felt pretty confident starting out. The water was in the mid-70s but I felt very comfortable in the wetsuit. The gun went off, and I started swimming, focusing on the stroke I’ve been working on. Everything seemed to be going fine for the first couple hundred yards. It was not super-crowded, but I noticed right away that I was having some trouble drafting. Shortly I wondered what the hell was going on with some super-kicker next to me. Then I thought maybe it was some annoying boat not too far from us. Then I figured out that that we were actually subject to much choppier water than we had realized. This seemed to get worse as we got out into the water. There were two effects for me. First, drafting was near impossible because of all the water-induced jostling of bodies. Second, it was just more “work” to make progress. The first leg felt longer than it should have. The worst section, though, was the short leg. The current/chop just was making progress much more difficult. It was a relief to turn back to shore and get back to “normal crappy” conditions. I was never scared or confused, but I wasn’t happy about the situation.

As I got out of the water, I glanced at my watch and, in horror, saw 40 minutes. I was really disappointed, and knew that was probably the end of my sub-5:00 day. I heard Chris yelling for me, and that cleared me out of my funk and got me going again.

Bike

Transition was relatively smooth. My wetsuit came off easily, so I’m going to use this silicone spray again. I whipped off my goggles and got on my glasses and helmet. Sock, sock, shoe, shoe, grab the bike and run. I did cheat to get a drink from a water bottle. Bad idea to do anything standing still, but I was quite thirsty. (Bad William! Bad William!)

It was immediately clear on the bike that the swim had cooked me more than I was used to. I hoped that everything would calm down fairly quickly, but the swim-fatigue lasted longer than I would have liked, maybe 20 minutes.

My original aggressive plan had been ~175 W for the opening of the bike, and as high as 190-195 W after that, based on a guess of a 2:30-2:35 split. However, that first 20-30 minutes didn’t feel very good, and the speeds I was able to get on the day with the hills made it clear I wasn’t going to get that 2:30ish split no matter what. I made an on-the-fly decision dropped my wattage goal to around 180 W, knowing I would likely cook myself if I went 195 W for 2:45. I had a small snafu with my Garmin that caused me to miss a small portion of the course and I cannot properly input into PowerAgent or WKO+, but in the end, it was clear that I met this goal based on the analysis I can do with GTC and Golden Cheetah.

During the bike course, I passed more often than I was passed, but I did notice a couple of guys in my age group that blew by me. I was using the even-power strategy, so over and over I got dusted up the hills only to catch people down the hill or on the flats. There were plenty of spots where I could cruise without pedaling with speeds in the mid 30s mph. There was this one guy that did this repeatedly with me during the course… he would repeatedly get out of his seat and destroy me going up a hill and I would catch him. There were a few guys from my age group that I thought I was keeping close enough to catch on the run, but I wasn’t going to kill myself on the bike to get them. I did catch a couple of friends (Nelson and Jass) who routinely out-swim me, but I was glad to see they seemed to be biking strong. I did not see a lot of drafting, and the course was not packed in my area, either.

Because of the mild weather, I had opted to put all my nutrition in a single bottle and drink water from the course. I had a 500 calorie bottle of InfiniT and made sure to drink some about every 15 minutes. I didn’t finish any of my water bottles completely before any of the aid stations, but exchanged for a full one each time.

As the bike was approaching the 2:00 or 2:15 mark, I was pretty sure I could come in somewhere around 2:45. I had hoped to go faster, but I knew I didn’t have anything much faster that day. Mentally, I resolved that I would just live with the result. I was pretty spent and knew that I hadn’t had 2.5+ hours worth of harder riding in me that day. I think the swim bothered me more than I would have liked. I decided to play the run in a very “normal” strategy, not being super-aggressive to try to catch anybody, taking risks for places. I thought I was too far back for it to make much difference, and I figured I could put up a decent run and be happy with a good, if not killer, day.

As I pulled into the end of the bike, I took note of the amount of my calorie bottle that remained. It appeared that I had only consumed about two-thirds of it, i.e., around 300, maybe 350 calories. I decided I needed to be careful about nutrition on the run.

Run

I came into T2 smoothly and found my spot. I took off my helmet to find that I had done the whole bike with my swim cap on! I quietly and quickly wondered how much that had cost me, but there was nothing to do about it. Got on my shoes, grabbed my stuff, and went. At the first aid station, I popped a gel and got some water to wash it down.

My super-aggressive goal had been 7:30 for 3 miles and then as close to 7:00 as possible for the remainder of the run.

I resolved not to look at my Garmin for half a mile so I wouldn’t get all upset that I was going too slow coming off the bike. I looked finally and found myself going along at around 7:15. I deliberately slowed down to the easiest pace I could bring myself to go, which was right around 7:30. The geography of the course was generally mild with some slight gradients, excepting one big dip/hill. In the end, that geography put me at around 7:15 for the first three miles. The hill was too steep to run fast down it but it would definitely cost some time going up. By this point, I was aware that I was making progress through the crowd. I saw several EN and TRIracer friends, which is always great. The turnarounds were long enough that it was hard to judge about any progress from one to the next. Crowd and teammate support was awesome. It is so cool to get a boost from seeing folks.

After the 3 mile mark, I tried pushing closer to 7:00 for a little while, but it felt too hard. I was feeling good near 7:15 and decided just to stay in that range, and if there was a lot left, use it in the last 5K. I realized that this has been the pattern of my good HIM runs. Instead of running the first three miles as slowly as I’d like, I tend to find an intermediate pace that feels very easy. Then I tend to keep the pace constant, but it just feels harder and harder.

The one concession I made to speed was that I came to a walk for 5-10 steps to get my nutrition at the aid stations. I never felt close to a bonk or anything, but I knew I was going on the low end, so I felt like I had to be sure I got something down. I believe I took the “Gatorade” (PowerBar brand…) 7 times. That would mean 125-150 calories at 3-4 ounces on average, plus 100 calories from the gel, for a total of about 225-250 calories total on the run and under 600 during the whole race.

The KS course is two loops, so there are people coming onto the course at the same time at the I’m starting my second loop. Some of them look pretty good; some are suffering already. I will admit to getting a private chuckle from passing a few people who clearly had no idea I was a full lap ahead of them when they said something about good going. I was always as polite as I can manage.

From mile 3 to 9 or so, the run was pretty uneventful except for a near-constant mild abdominal stitch. I was starting to want to see the miles tick off as it got notably tougher to keep the pace. I had to start looking at the Garmin to assure myself I was going as fast as I needed to. The fatigue was definitely muscular, not bonking.

The last 5K was an exercise in following through what I started and giving pretty much everything I had, even if the splits of 7:20-something do not show I was working so hard. I got into the beginning of the very long chute, and Chris yelled at me to hustle as there was someone behind me. It took an incredible distance to accelerate to my top available pace, but I finished as hard as I could and held off the guy behind me. I knew I had given my best, at least on the run.

The race-based splits were way off. Accounting for the race geography, my splits ended up about as even as they could possibly be, with a few seconds per mile fade at the end. But not more than a few seconds. My final run time was 1:36:35, a PR by a little over a minute at the HIM distance.

That was it. I was spent. I just put my head down on something (about a 4 foot stack of water bottles) and stood there for quite a while. Someone came over to ask me if I needed medical assistance, but what I needed was time to recover.

Post Race

After the race, I spent most of my time standing, as I was sore all over. It felt like every muscle I had was sore. I saw friends and Chris and got to check in with everyone. I thought I had PRed the run, but hadn’t seen an official time. Finally I got my phone and Cynthia had texted me to tell me I got sixth and I almost started to cry; I couldn’t believe it. I checked and she was right.

Before the race, I had written “I will NOT fall asleep on the swim. I will ride steady at first and hold hard in the last half hour. I will show discipline in my run and I will have nothing left at the end.” Aside from the mental compromise I made with myself about where “riding steady” was, I have to think this was a success.

As the statistical measures below will show, the lesson I really need to take from this race is that I should not get discouraged from my mid-race numeric results. I need to just bear down and stick with the plan or improvise as need be…but focus on doing the best I can and let things sort themselves out in the end.

Some technical/statistical notes

Transitions

We can’t all swim as fast as Andy Potts or run as fast as Rini. But we can try to be as fast at transitions. I’ve tried to go minimalist, with the exception that I generally put on socks and shoes before mounting my bike.

T1 had a pretty normal setup, but my tactic had been to be as sure as I could where it would be. I was far from the bike exit, but it was paved, so I figured I could run with my cleats pretty easily. I still spent an extra 10 seconds finding my bike, and I cheated by taking a drink, but otherwise, it was at least OK.

At T2, I had a very minimalist setup. A pair of shoes and a ziplock bag. Inside the bag was my hat and a can of sprayon sunscreen. I dropped my helmet (and swim cap!!!), slipped on my shoes, and picked up the bag. Before hitting the exit (again, the long way from where I was), I was jogging/running, had my hat on, and had sprayed my arms, ears, and neck. I was lucky that Chris was at the exit, so he kept the sunscreen, but I had been prepared to just toss it in the garbage on the way out.

So let’s see how I did compared to some random pro, like, say, Chrissie Wellington:

• T1: Chrissie 1:28, William 2:51. Ouch. That whole glasses and shoe thing clearly costs me. She’s also probably better at getting off the wetsuit. I can improve.
• T2: Chrissie 1:09, William 1:08. OK, that’s better. J

Statistical measures

Swim:

• 2011 KS, 41 min , 437^th, 70.3^rd percentile overall, 79^th percentile AG;
• 2010 Steelhead, 34 min, 542^nd, 70.0 percentile overall, 85.8 percentile AG
• 2009 KS 38/5 min, 722^nd, 67.5 percentile overall, 73^rd percentile AG
• If the larger events grow mostly in the middle, not at the top, I am improving. If they grow in a “flat” way, my progress is minor. This is my worst event in terms of placement, no matter what.

Bike:

• 2011 KS, 2:45 290/1476 overall, 17/124 in AG
• 2009 KS, 2:45 484/1487 overall, 41/156 in AG
• Clearly enough, the conditions must have been a bit tougher in 2011. I still wish there had been a more measurable time improvement, but clearly enough I moved up within the cohort by holding the same time.

Run

• 2011 KS, 1:36:35, 189/1476 overall and 5/124 AG
• 2009 Ks, 1:39:12, 484/1487 and 27/156 AG
• In 2009 there were 16 male 45-49 runners under 1:40 and there were only 11 in 2011. Again, this indicates at least anecdotally that the race was a little slower in 2011. So this represents my best improvement. This is ironic in that it was already my strength. Maybe, though, it represents better management than actual run improvement; hard to say for sure.

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.