Fort Dodge Half Marathon Race Report

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/301184247

My first race of the 2013 season was the Fort Dodge Half Marathon, run on April 21, 2013.  I ran this race at the conclusion of my Winter Training mainly as a check to see how my run was coming along.  I wanted to be a little rested in order to have a good run, but it was not a major "A-race" or anything of that sort.

This year I started my focused training on Jan 1, again with the Endurance Nation group, on a 14 week high intensity cycle ending April 7.  The next week was strictly low intensity running and riding plus swimming, with my first longer rides the weekend of April 13-14.  I pumped up the intensity again for the first half of the week of April 15 because I knew I would not get my long ride in.  To be rested enough for the race, Friday was swim-only and Saturday was off.

Weather predictions for the race were rather dicey.  It looked as if it could be 40 degrees and raining.  Ugly.  By early race morning, we upgraded from "definitely ugly" to "might be ugly".  So that was a step up!  

I got up about 5:15 am to get out the door at 6:00.  That would get me to the race site by a little after 7:00.  The race was to be a point to point affair, with a shuttle running every 30 minutes to the start.  I needed to pick up my packet, so I wanted to be sure not to have any difficulties and I gave myself plenty of time.  The race was to start at 9:00.

As it turned out, the drive and shuttle worked out with ridiculously good timing, so I ended up being one of the first racers there.  I got my number without incident and was very happy that we got to wait inside a school cafeteria instead of standing outside.  By now, it seemed that the rain would stay abated, but it was pretty darn breezy and fairly cold.  Waiting outside for 90 minutes would have been painful.

The race was fundamentally a "test" for me, so I wanted to adopt a pretty sensible strategy that would give me a good time, but also be fairly low pressure.  I wanted to make a real honest effort, but not trash myself completely.  Given my 5K times in the 19:30ish range during the winter, I wanted to run sub-90.  I had been doing a 12-16 mile run once a week consistently, so I wasn't concerned about endurance, per se, but it was going to be a question of whether I could hold the Vdot pace at the longer distance.

I resolve to run the first 4-5 miles mainly by RPE and heart rate, knowing that a "solid" race would require me to keep below threshold.  I knew the best I could reasonably even hope for was a 6:45 pace or so, so for the first few miles, I would also be keeping an eye to make sure I wasn't abusing that.   But I wanted to run as close to even splits as I could.  Nothing fancy on a reverse split, and no heroics trying to save something that was fading fast.  I figured the middle miles would take care of themselves, and I would allow myself to go over threshold for the last 5K or so as necessary.

The course is shown on my Garmin output.  It was basically flat or very gently sloping except for one depression and corresponding hill near the half way point.  It ran through open areas for the first few miles, then mostly suburban residential, and then along a trail through and then along the edge of a park.   The wind was shifting direction, but generally from west-and-south. In park areas, it wasn't noticeable at all, except the last few miles along the park edge.  Surfaces were sidewalk, road, and well-groomed trail.  I dislike trail running generally because I don't like the uneven surfaces.  However, the trails here were well maintained...just a little slower than running on a road.

I warmed up about 25 minutes before race time to make sure I gauged the temperature and got over that initial horrible out-of-breathness that I always get if I just start raw.  That worked out well.

The race got off at 9:03.  I didn't know how many people were there at the time, but it was obviously well under 100.  It wasn't too hard to guess who were the serious runners likely to win.  I didn't see any women that looked like they would beat me, but you never know.  There were about 10 men that looked like they were pretty serious and 2-3 who I was pretty darn sure would dust me.  Sure enough, at the very start of the race, a pack of about half a dozen took off.  I could have kept up with them, but I was pretty sure I couldn't for the whole race, so I let them go.  I was content to be the guy behind the first pack who would pick off anyone who fell off its back...or at least so I rationalized.  :-)

I ran in tights, under armour top, hat and gloves.  The first mile (going east) was really into the wind, but everyone (including me) was pretty excited, so the pace was pretty quick despite this.  I ran 6:42.  The second mile retained most of this early excitement and I ran about 6:37 with the wind at least partly at our backs.  

By about 10 minutes in I decided to double check that the heart rate was under control and start thinking consciously about how fast I was going.  The pack up ahead was still there, although it was spreading out a little.  My HR was around 160-161, and I thought my threshold was about 165, so this was fine.  It was time to just run smart and wait for a little rough spot...and get through it.

As I write this report, I cannot remember why mile 3 was as fast as it was, but looking at the map, it appears this was the most open area going north, so my guess is that this was a tailwind issue.

On the race map, there is a big left turn just short of the 4 mile mark.  This is where "local race" came into play.  The girls staffing the water table were chatting away, and directed me into someone's unpaved driveway instead of the park trail.  Fortunately, the driveway was short. :-)

During mile 4, I spotted my first "victim" from falling off the pack.  I could have just run by, but I resolved to stick at my pace, and it was PAINFULLY slow to catch up with him.  After turning left at the mile 4 mark, the wind was pretty much a non-factor as I remember.  Mile 5 was my first kind of rough spot.  It passed, as I talked myself into believing it was from the unpaved surface.  At about the half way point I was passed by a guy apparently in his early 20s.  He would be my foil for the rest of the race.  He blew by me fast enough that I couldn't understand how he was behind me to begin with.  We passed another guy falling off the back before we exited the park.  We traded back and forth a couple of times, but it always seemed to me that it was I who was going steady and he was erratic.  In retrospect, the data bear this out.

The half way point was marked by a very nasty hill in a suburban neighborhood after way too much turning.  According to Garmin, it was only 80 feet up, but it was really tough.  Mile 7 is what killed any chance I had at my PR, too.  Going up that hill and then recovering it cost me.  7:20.  Ugh.

At that point, I actually got kind of worried.  As stated before, I didn't want to absolutely shred myself, but I wanted to do well.  23-year old guy kept stopping and walking and then running by me again.  I resolved to pick it up and experiment with a balance of pace, RPE, and HR and settled down by the mile 8 marker...and this basically worked out to a 6:50ish pace for the remainder of the race.  After mile 8, I was just focused on getting to the next mile marker without going slower than 7:00 and without spiking the HR.  And if I could get 6:45 again without really hurting myself, that's what I wanted.  

As it turned out, there would be no more 6:45 miles.  It was a 6:50 world and I was living in it.  A modest hill here and wind in your face there, and that made it a 6:55 world a couple of times.  But I was very much in "just grind them out and count them down" mode.  I caught one last guy - a high schooler.  I'm sure he could run a 5 K minutes faster than me, but he didn't have the endurance to make it all the way through 13.1.  Mr. 23 stop-and-go got his act together and stayed ahead of me.

In the end, though, this was a very satisfactory race.

• HR was 161 2 minutes into the race.  At the 10 mile mark, it was 164.  Over the last couple of miles it bumped up into threshold range, and I finished in the upper 160s.  Almost perfectly as planned.
• Final time was 1:29:31.  (I forgot to hit my Garmin for a little while).  This was less than a minute short of my PR from a couple of years ago.  That was on a nearly perfect day on an entirely blacktop course with no single big hill.  So the PR still stands, but I have to think this was a nearly equivalent effort.
• Cadence was essentially constant at 91 ± 1 except for that hill.
• There was a positive split, but ignoring the big hill mile, it wasn't really that bad...maybe not perfect but ok by me.
• According to the Vdot tables, a 1:29:31 half marathon corresponds to a 19:31 5K.  Spot on.  Run training validated.

Here are the mile splits:

1	6:42.3	1.00	6:42
2	6:36.6	1.00	6:37
3	6:34.7	1.00	6:35
4	6:43.8	1.00	6:44
5	6:46.3	1.00	6:46
6	6:43.1	1.00	6:43
7	7:20.0	1.00	7:20
8	6:50.9	1.00	6:51
9	6:54.6	1.00	6:55
10	6:51.6	1.00	6:52
11	6:54.6	1.00	6:55
12	6:57.6	1.00	6:58
13	6:51.7	1.00	6:52
14	:55.7	0.11	8:22

The guy that won the race was one of the two or three middle aged men you would pick out of the crowd for sure.  He was 49 but looked every bit the part of "fast runner guy".  The next two were my 23 year old foil and another guy his age.  Then me.

Race results here: http://www.truetimeracing.com/results.php?id=3123

As I write this, it's two days later.  I am a little disappointed with how sore my legs remain, but I am optimistic that I will still be ready to go by next weekend.  I can always swim. 

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.

Ironman Wisconsin 2011 Race Report

Quick statistics:

• 73:51 swim (4 minute PR on course)
• 6:54 T1 (1:46 PR)
• 5:46:52 bike (2 minute PR)
• 2:29 T2 (2:34 PR)
• 4:12:53 run (34 min PR)
• Total 44 min PR vs 2009
• 22/271 age group starters; 22/237 age group finishers; 253/2243 finishers
• 2243 started/2449 finished = 8.4% DNF

Executive summary:  I am basically pleased, though I had hoped for a better time.  Run and bike went well.  I gambled on the run and paid for it; the last 2/3 of the run was very, very painful.  Overall, a B+ for doing well at parts of the race and gutting out the run.

Prerace

In the week before the race, there was an unfortunate confluence of many things happening in my professional and family life, and I didn’t have the ability to sleep or mentally prepare as you would like.  Nonetheless, I resolved to make due and get everything done Friday before the race as much as possible to at least give myself Saturday to rest and mentally prepare.  Cynthia was not thrilled with the idea of leaving for WI at 5:00 a.m. on Friday, but we got out the door (also with my mother) and made our way to Madison.  Friday morning, we met up with the EN crew for a bit and got a friend his wallet who had left it home the day before.

Check-in was smooth, except for my weigh-in.  They put me down for 158 lbs, which I knew to be crazy.  I had not weighed myself for the last week of taper, but I had been 143-145 lbs up to that point.  Give it 2-3 lbs for time of day, maybe another 2-3 in water weight from taper, and 5 lbs for clothes, but this still seemed crazy high.  Not that this mattered, but it comes up later… (Other people in line who used the same scale also thought their weight was quoted high to them.)

The rest of Friday and Saturday went pretty much as planned.  I managed to sleep well on Friday night and even got a Saturday afternoon nap.  Lunch was the last big meal.  At dinner with TRI racer friends, I had a small pizza that I removed 90% of the cheese from, so it was basically bread with tomato sauce and a bit of cheese and spices.  I drank quite a bit of G2 throughout the day.

Saturday evening, I showered and shaved and put on a thick layer of Bullfrog sunscreen before bed.  At 2:00 a.m., I got up and chugged two Naked Juice smoothies (about 750 cal) and was able to go to sleep again until 4:00.  Another thick layer of sunscreen, get dressed, and drink more G2 for the rest of the morning….

The big excitement of the morning getting to the race was that the car wouldn’t start!  Fortunately, we carry a backup battery in the car, and this also went fine.  I got to transition, and pumped up my tires, only to find I had not brought my electrical tape to close up my “gap” on my disc cover.  Oh well.  I tried to just let it go.  Evidently most of my friends had already been in and out of bikes by the time I got there.

I stayed in transition area until it started getting light because I need my glasses.  At that point, I handed them off to Cynthia.  There was no line at the helix, so we just walked down.  Getting into the wetsuit was leisurely and there was plenty of time.

Swim

I wanted to beat the crowd into the water, so I went in very shortly after they started letting folks into the water.  I made my way past the ski jump and hung out between there and the buoy line.  This also enabled me to do a brief warmup.  As people came in – closer to the gun time – I just looked for a less-dense area in that range. 

My swim goal had been to be “strong” and not get lost behind the churn in such a way that would cost me 10 minutes or something.  I had predicted 75 min time, with 70 minutes as a dream time.  I lined up 5-10 people back from the start, and when the start came, I was off.

I was fortunate that my choices worked out.  The swim was crowded, but not crazily for me.  There were long stretches where I was able to tactically draft.  I did have a bit of a delay at the first turn, but nothing that caused me to actually stop swimming.  I cannot overemphasize how I love the knowledge of this swim course being 800/200/800/200 and the buoys so easy to follow.

I got to the end of the first loop finally, wondering how I was doing, so I looked at my watch, and saw 35 min.  Awesome.  On the third 800, something not-awesome happened…I got an abdominal cramp.  I decided that there was nothing to do about it but keep swimming, but I knew I was going a little slower.  After 10-15 minutes, it resolved itself and I felt a lot better.  My watch said 73:40 when I got out of the water.  I figured that between the cramp and the extra time to get back to shore, this was a good result for the second lap.  I left the swim pleased.  Not extatic, but pleased.

T1

Another big plus from the swim was that I was not exhausted or incoherent.  Out of breath?  Yes.  But unable to run up the helix? No.  I have a 2-minute improvement in T1 in part because I exited the swim in better shape than I did in 2009.  I had to get and dump out my own bag, but this is not a big delay.  A volunteer delayed me maybe 15 seconds trying to mess with my number.  I had worn it under the wetsuit, but the low quality paper had scared me, so I had stashed the second race number in my T1 bag in case my number got ruined on the swim.  The volunteer (understandably) got confused and was trying to put on the number, blah blah blah.  However, he paid me back by letting me leave without stashing my wetsuit.

Bike

I had predicted a 5:45 bike time, thinking 5:40 would be my miraculously good time and anything under 5:50 would be fine.  Statistically, my bike came out almost perfect with my work goals:

• ·      163 W NP (target 161)
• ·      153 W AP (target 155)
• ·      NP 1.07 (high due to judicious coasting in certain places, not spikes)
• ·      IF 0.71
• ·      TSS 270-278, depending on which software I believe.

My display had current W,  lap average W and total average W, among other things.

I took the first “stick” easy, between 5-10 watts down from targets.  I had a bottle of InfiniT and a bottle of water, plus 2-3 gels in my bento.  I was riding fine, mostly getting passed.  Once I got to the loop, I decided it was time to get going, and cranked up to my target.  Always looking for a current W in the low 160s and keep the lap average power near 155.  I took laps about every 30 min after the first 45 min.

My first mistake on the bike came on a very early aid station (first or second).  I tossed both my home-brought bottles…the water was almost empty, but I had not yet started to eat much.  It was a water-only exchange!  Ouch!  After this, I wisely decided to take a gel at most of the aid stations whether I needed it or not, just to have some on board.  This turned out to be good, because I got one bottle of Perform that had a faulty lid (or at least one I could not get to stop leaking all over me) and had one bounce out at a railroad crossing.

Aside from this, I simply spent the bike trying to do it as wisely as possible.  I kept my max watts down and kept drinking and eating.  After things settled down a bit, I almost got to the point of laughing at a handful of guys who kept beating me up hills and letting me catching them going down.  I had learned the ride well enough that I knew where to apply some good downhill watts to get back up hills.  This worked great except for a spot where an oncoming semi took up almost 2/3 the road….

I very much enjoyed seeing Cynthia on the bike course.  I kind of wondered where my mom was, but figured she was just standing back, since Cynthia didn’t say anything.  There were some funny signs, and I ran into a couple friends along the way.  Other than fighting the water bottles that didn’t fit the cages and the railroad crossing that bumped anything out of them, my only problem was some hot-foot on my right side that I knew would be relieved by lowering pressure on the sole.  I loosened the strap on the front of the shoe and this helped but did not quite solve the problem.

I made a judicious decision in the last hour to let off the gas a bit on the downhills when there weren’t up-and-down features to get over.  I was feeling strong, but definitely the wear of 100 miles was there, so I was trying to preserve my leg strength.  However, I did make one mistake.  My GPS had my bike split a couple of miles too long, and I “checked out” too soon.  I probably rode 3+ miles with my feet on top of my shoes.  Was there even a full minute of time lost?  Probably not, but it was frustrating and a little mentally unbalancing to think you are almost done when there are 2-3 miles left.

I knew I had reached the end in good shape when going up the helix was almost fun.  However, this is where I made my second, and more critical mistake.

I knew the temps would be near 80, and that my “ideal” run time would be around 8:30 pace for the opening and 8:00 after.  But I felt great and did not feel hot, so I decided that instead of backing that down as I should have, I would start at 8:30 and see how it felt…if we were lucky on the temps and I kept myself cool, maybe I could hang on to 8:30 for the whole time.  This decision – and not knowing that it was hotter than 80 degrees (or shortly would be)  - undid my run.

T2

T2 was very uneventful and fairly quick.

Run

The IM splits tell the whole story:

RUN SPLIT 1: 8.9 mi	8.9 mi (1:15:22)	8:28/mi
RUN SPLIT 2: 13.2 mi	4.3 mi (39:40)	9:13/mi
RUN SPLIT 3: 21.95 mi	8.75 mi (1:29:34)	10:14/mi
RUN SPLIT 4: 26.2 mi	4.25 mi (48:17)	11:21/mi

My first 8 miles or so didn’t hurt that bad, and 8:30 was pretty easy.  I managed to feel cool (or at least not too hot) by keeping ice in my shorts.

But I had cooked myself.  My groin and the lower medial muscle attached to my knee (next to quads) started to SCREAM. I was in a lot of pain.  I managed it by running whatever pace I could go, then taking 20 steps, then starting again.  I never walked more than that, with the exceptions of Observatory hill and one other short hill, but I ended up taking the breaks more frequently.  The 20 step discipline, though, was key.  No “until the bush” or whatever.  I did not count my steps at aid stations, but I decided this was a necessity, since they were not as well organized as I had hoped.  Sponges were often warm; drinks came in different orders, etc etc etc.  But I never walked more than a couple of steps past the aid station either.

My mile-to-mile splits just kept getting slower and slower.  My shoes were sloshing with water from all the ice and sponges.  My young son delights in the image I told him of being in the big burlap bag with the Big Man With The Stick hitting you.  Well, unfortunately, that was where I was.  As poor as my run was, I am proud of the effort I put in on it.

Post race

As I crossed the line, I knew I was in bad shape because of all the suffering I had done on the run.  I got taken to the med tent and re-weighed.  Although I had been drinking constantly and never felt thirsty, they declared me to be over-dehydrated because my post race weight was in the 140s.

You may recall that my pre-race weight seemed crazy high.  Maybe this worked to my advantage.  I got a liter of IV fluid and felt a lot better.  Oh yeah, and 3 bottles of Perform, and felt like never drinking anything again.  They sent me home, which was too bad, because I didn’t get to watch some friends finish, but it was probably for the best.

Analysis

I give this race a solid B+, even though I thought I was in shape to break 11:00

• I was in shape and good weight.  My bike and run fitness were solid and had not fallen dramatically.  My swim fitness was peaked for sure.
• I executed the swim well.  I might have taken a couple more minutes off from a harder effort.  I definitely would have taken less time without the cramp.  That, however, is racing, and I am completely satisfied.
•  My bike season has been an odd one.  It has been a season of consolidation rather than gains.  I did not have any bike PRs at the half distance.  However, what fitness I did bring, I extended its distance-worthiness effectively.  I did not feel at any point terribly strained on this bike ride.  I executed as planned.  No miracles happened.  I made one very good decision (getting gels), one modestly bad one (underestimating the remaining distance of the leg), and one terrible one (underestimating the temperature).  For the bike leg itself, again, I feel good about the effort.  The VI looks high at 1.07, but this is partly a function of my relatively low FTP of 230 W.  I just can’t get up some of those hills at all without putting out 200+ W.  Again, I am satisfied that I did the best I could with what I had that day.
• I blew my race on the run with hubris.  I knew I had a good day going and I bet on pushing it for a statistically very good day.  I will never know what would have happened if the temps stayed around 79-80, but even then, I was probably too ambitious.  I managed to FEEL fairly cool in my white top and with the ice and I did not know what was happening with the real temps.  This said, I live with my decision.  I would advise myself against it doing things again, but I won’t beat myself up about it. I am pleased with my mental strength.  If I had known I was 30 seconds behind a couple more guys in my AG, maybe I could have caught them to get into the top 20.  But I did not and I did not.

This race probably fairly reflects where I am as a racer.  Pretty good.  Definitely above average…but having to have a perfect day to get into the sub-elite.  That didn’t happen for me.  I still put together a good overall performance, if not quite the one I was capable of, even on the day.  (I think I would have netted a faster run by slowing down more at the beginning.)  But it was close enough for me to feel good about it, and I know that – the one critical bad judgment aside – I left absolutely everything I had on the run course, given the pain and psychology of the day.

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.