One thing that is good about writing a race report is that you can go back and review what your thoughts were and how things turned out in the end. In 2007, I did the MedExpress Mountaineer Triathlon to check my fitness as I got into my final days of Ironman Wisconsin training. A very similar situation to what I did this past weekend with the Cardinal Harbour Triathlon. Here’s a quote from my Mountaineer report:
The race went as well as I could have expected. After all, I did have a personal best at the half iron-distance (4:58:56). I also knew that the bulk of my training over the past 18 months has not been focused on having half-iron speed, it has been focused on having Ironman endurance.
I’ll be honest and say that I walked away Saturday morning with a little concern about how my cycling is coming around. My expectations this year were to finally focus on becoming a more capable cyclist and have dramatic improvements. After the race Saturday I was questioning what needs to happen to finally get that improvement? I see some improvements in my training but I still seem to lose a lot of race time out on the bike leg.
Looking at my after race thoughts from the Mountaineer allows me feel a lot better. Why? Because I understood back then that half iron speed doesn’t always push out to Ironman performance. (That’s a whole topic itself.) I also know that by using the knowledge I gained from the Mountaineer, I trained appropriately the final period going into IMMoo and had a great race.
So let’s get to all the race details this Saturday:
Pre – Race: The race was in Louisville, so I decided to just wake up early and drive over. The transition and check in didn’t start until 6:30am and the race didn’t start until 8:00am, so I didn’t have to wake up much earlier than normal. I had all my gear ready to go and was up at 4:00am and out the door by 4:30.
Once at the race, I was pretty relaxed. The nice thing about these races is that they don’t have an incredible sense of pressure and feel more like a fun event (which isn’t that what they are all suppose to feel like? Ton of very serious folks in our sport!). I think that feeling probably comes from Todd and Cynthia Heady (the race directors) and their approach to hosting an event. They are actually the people who put on the first Iron Distance triathlon I ever did back in 2006, the Runovia Triathlon.
One thing that I did notice quickly though was that the race brought in a lot more people this year than it did last year (it sold out with 300 triathletes). And there were some fast folks lining up to start, including Max Longree, last year’s Ironman Louisville winner.
The swim: I had borrowed a skin suit to wear and practice with in preparation for the IMLou swim, but the water temperature was 77 degrees on race morning. While I wanted to practice wearing the skin suit, I decided that the wetsuit was a better choice because I already give up enough in the water. The swim was in the Ohio River, so it was nice to get a feel for how the current might impact the swim. It was pretty amazing to feel the difference. Swimming out (which I was later told was against the current) felt like a tremendous struggle. Luckily I didn’t completely freak out or kill myself trying to “make up” what seemed to be a lot of lost time.
Once we turned around and headed back to the dock, it was not nearly the struggle and it felt like I flew back in. I think this is a good sign looking towards Louisville as the swim is mostly downstream, with only a portion against the current to begin.
My average heart rate for the swim was 160bpm. That’s pretty high as I normally like to swim around the 140 to 145bpm range to remain comfortable. I was a little anxious and excited to get the race started according to my heart rate too. When I looked at it just before we took off, it read 142bpm (and I was treading water).
Lesson for Ironman Louisville: Easy is probably a little above steady effort at the beginning of the swim when I’m all jacked up about the race. Anything that feels at or just above steady effort, is likely a huge mistake and may come back to haunt me, because if it feels a little above steady – it is probably closer to lactate threshold with all the other hormones mixed in.
swim time: 36:08
The bike: I knew coming out of T1 that I would need to settle things down on the bike. So I started out fairly easy, got my feet into my shoes and just rode for a few miles. Even riding easy I was passing a few people here and there. As I turned off Rose Island Road and onto Hwy 42, I looked at my heart rate and saw it was around 170bpm.
That first little bit of Hwy 42 had a decent little climb, so I really backed off my perceived effort and just tried to be steady. My heart rate obviously didn’t come down much as I rode up the climb, so I decided to make an attempt to get into a “comfort zone” that would allow me to ride better the second half of the bike.
That comfort zone turned out to be around 160 to 163bpm. On the climbs it would creep up to 165bpm and it would drop pretty quick on the downhills. The course was on some of the same roads that Ironman Louisville is on, so it was nice to be on them in a race situation. While there is nothing significant to the climbs, there are very few completely flat sections. A lot of rolling hills, but unlike Ironman Wisconsin, the rolling hills allow you to maintain your momentum and there is little technical aspects to the riding. It took me around 15 miles to completely get into that comfort zone, which is a lesson I think I’ll carry forward.
The middle 25 miles of the bike was pretty uneventful. The one thing that I’m very proud of myself for is my descending ability. I mentioned after the American Triple T that my descending ability really cost me a lot of time on the bike. It came up again during our training camp the last weekend of June, so I’ve made a significant attempt to improve that ability. Interestingly enough, those improvements have not come from spending time descending on my bike, but from my effort to re-frame my mental imagery related to descending on my bike. This work has paid off! I won’t go into details about that right now because I’m almost finished with another blog post to share those ideas.
The last section of the bike (once we tuned back onto Hwy 42 and headed home) I decided to give myself permission to ride a little “uncomfortable”. What I found was that by riding just a little uncomfortable, I was able ride quite a bit faster (and I believe we had a little head wind heading home?). I also realized that what felt “uncomfortable” the last 16 miles was just about what felt easy/comfortable those first 5 miles on the bike. Another lesson noted.
Lessons for Ironman Louisville: 15 miles is too long to mess around getting under control. That is approximately 45mins of time that could be used to hydrate, fuel and just be smart. Digging a deficit that early in the bike could make miles 80 to 112 feel really rough, not to mention the run.
Fuel on bike: 3 bottles of Infinite (275 kcals/bottle, 500mg sodium/bottle)
bike time: 2:47:54, 20.0 mph / average heart rate 161bpm, max heart rate 176bpm
The run: I’m often confident in my run, so I decided to just get settled into the run early and run the loops. I knew that I would run:walk, but decided to be agressive in my approach and only walk 20seconds per loop.
I started out wanting to get my cadence and turnover established, so I paid a lot of attention to the sound of my feet. I also did a few rounds of footstep counting to help me get things established. I basically just count each footstep for 15 strides and then repeat that for 3 or 4 rounds. How do I know the number of beats per minute? I don’t know exactly, but I have a “feel” for what is right. I guess it is one thing I’ve carried over from all those years of percussion and marching band.
Once I got things established and I made it to the first loop, I checked in on my heart rate – 177bpm! Yikes. What should I do? I never train at these intensities and I still had 11 to 12 miles to go. “Just go” is what came out. It was nice to feel so strong and despite the high heart rate, I felt really comfortable. I had carried a bottle of coke with me to the first aid station (b/c they didn’t have any on the course) so I drank a little more and dropped it off at the water stop.
Out on the loops (we did 3 loops) you really got to see a lot of people so that was nice. I tried to pick out some of the guys that I knew where up a lap on me and tried to either: A – make up a little ground on them or B – hang even with them. The one person that I really paid attention to that first lap was Max Longree, I lost some ground to him. (ok, more than some ground).
As I turned off the last loop and headed back to the finish, I was pretty excited to see that there wasn’t a train of folks up the road. But it also left no one for me to try and catch. That was a good thing because I felt like the wheels were slowing down. Around 11.5 to 12 miles the wheels just about stopped! There were only 2 guys that passed me on the entire run and they both happened in this section of the race. I assumed that they were both in my age group, but it didn’t matter because I couldn’t lift my effort at all to hang. It was over as far as my output was considered. The nice thing about my running is that I’ve been in enough situations where it’s been over and still been able to manage something. In fact, a lot of my racing in 2008 was done to purposefully make mistakes on the run. (Which left me dry heaving my soul out at the Great Illini where I still managed a 3:38 and second best run of the day.)
The really tough part about this run was the last 3/4 of a mile was on some pretty thick grass. As hard as I would try, I couldn’t lift my feet high enough to clear my feet. It was miserable! I ended up giving 2 minutes of time back to the age grouper who pasted me at 11.5 (Brian Teller, nice guy from WV).
Lessons for Ironman Louisville: I am really excited to see how well I ran for 11.5 miles. There weren’t any mile markers so I couldn’t fully tell you what my paces were at the beginning versus the end, but I’m guessing I went out not much over 6min/mile pace. And that last mile was probably 8:30 to 9:00. Multiply that mistake by 14.7 miles and you get 40mins to 1.5 hours of run time problems. IF you’re lucky that equals 40mins to 1.5 hours added to your run, if you are not lucky and the heat is there you might be looking at 2 to 4 hours of humility.
run time: 1:26:52, 6:38/mile, 175bpm ave heart rate, 187bpm max heart rate (to be fair, I think the course was a little short?)
Final Thoughts: So this weekend I found out what my “top end” is for long distance triathlon. One way to use the numbers I obtained was to use my average heart rates from the disciplines as caps for my effort at Ironman. This would put my cap for the bike at 161bpm and my cap for the run at 175bpm. Looking at those numbers as objectively as I can, I think they are a bit high. I know that trying to run over 170bpm at any point during the marathon outside the last quarter mile (or closer) might be playing with fire.
From training, I would think that my bike effort should be sitting in the mid 140’s with a cap of 155bpm, hitting >160bpm should be a sign to really watch my motivations and thought process. I feel like the run should be around 150 to 160bpm, with the first half of the marathon close to 150 and pushing it up near 160 for the 3rd 10k.
So how much time / pacing / speed do I lose by going from my top end to my bottom end? Well, the great news is I’m not “losing” all that much. I did an 80 mile ride on the IMLou course the week prior to this race and with an average heart rate of 145bpm I was about 1.5 mph slower than this race. There were some factors that influenced that ride some, including a riding partner that I rode with, traffic lights and 2 short water stops.
On the run, I don’t fall much either. I’ve been bench marking my 145bpm and 160bpm paces over my last several run tests. I had a run test on Tuesday (July, 14th) and in the 85 degree heat I ran approximately 7:20/mile on the UK track.
Granted my training ride and my run test were not done in a race setting and neither of them were done after a swim, but they are benchmarks that I can begin to use as I set up my Ironman Louisville race strategy.
We are 6 weeks out. Feels good to feel this good!
