Here are the basic stats:
Overall Place: 204 / 2353
Age Group Place: 36 / 266
Overall Time: 10:42:15
Swim Overall Place: 579
Swim Time: 1:15:17
Swim Pace / 100 Meter: 1:57
Bike Overall Place: 592
Bike Time: 5:51:27
Bike Pace mph: 19.1
Run Overall Place: 84
Run Time: 3:27:10
Run Pace min/mile: 7:55
Pre Race
Nikki and I woke up early to get our nutrition in a few hours prior to the race start. So we were up and I was drinking my bottles of Fortify at 4:15am. I had a little coffee and my usual 3 trips to the bathroom. I tried to lay in bed as much as I could, but I wasn’t resting well, so I decided to get up and moving a little earlier than I wanted. We ended up leaving our hotel to make the walk down 4th street and to the Great Lawn around 5:30am.
It was interesting walking right by the finish line on 4th street on our way to the start. Knowing that at some point during the day I would be running (hopefully) through the finish line that was so abandoned and empty was a little poetic. I prayed that this feeling was a foreshadow to being a part of something great. Not only for myself but for thousands of other athletes and family members that were on their own Ironman journey. I had a little visualization of finishing strong.
We made it to the transition area at 6:00am and as soon as we walked into the area we heard them start calling out that the transition area would be closing in 15mins. It was very comforting to see so many friends in the transition area that morning. Jeff, Neely and Casey were all there to help us. Tyson was there to prep his stuff too.
The amazing thing for me was that I never had too much anxiety the couple days prior to the race or on race morning. I attribute a lot of that to taking the time to write out my last post: Perspective, Priorities and Racing Ironman Louisville. When you are willing to take a step back, it can really change your approach to something as simple as a race. I also think that seeing other people completely freaking out made it easier on me to realize that I didn’t want to spend my emotional energy in that way.
Swim
We ended up getting in the start line next to Ron Shashy. He and Nikki swam the 2.0 mile open water swim at Cave Run together, so they were a pretty good match to try and stay together during the swim. Once the race got started, it was amazing how fast people started moving. I got my goggles on just in time to run on the deck to try and stay in line and jump off the dock. I thought that a time trial start would create less of a crowd in the water, but I had a lot more issues swimming around-into-over people during this swim than I did at Ironman Wisconsin in 2007.
The first segment of the swim is done against the current, but I’m not sure how much it slowed us down? It didn’t feel like the current was too strong, but I was struggling to find a straight line to swim more than I was worried about the current. Directions I was given by Gordo after the Cardinal Harbour Race in July were:
A – increase my Monday and Friday swims so that I was swimming 4400 meters during each workout
B – Float the swim at Ironman Louisville
I continued to think about that as I was headed out to the turn around. Not too far from the turn around I saw other athletes walking in the water. It seemed a little odd because the Ohio River is not a small river and it should be pretty deep where there where at. Not too many seconds after that I hit a log in mid stroke that stopped me cold. I guess they must have been walking across the log.
After the turn around I put myself as far out into the river as I felt comfortable and could maintain my bearings. The swim back in was fairly uneventful. I tried to catch a few people’s feet but that wasn’t working out too well, so I used random feet from time to time, as long as I felt like I wasn’t working too hard to stay there.
T1
As I exited the water, I saw that my swim time was 1:15. Not exactly the start to the race that I was hoping. I thought that 1:10 to 1:15 was reasonable depending on the water conditions, so at least I was within range of what I thought was acceptable.
Jeff and Neely were again in the transition area. As I ran my bike out to the mount line, Jeff yelled “Nikki’s about 3mins ahead of you. She needs some encouragement!” This was a piece of good/bad news for me to know. The fact that I was within 3mins of Nikki coming out of T1 was either really good news for me, or fairly bad news for Nikki. I chose to make it good news for me… thinking that it must have been a tough swim for everyone. (BTW, Nikki swam 1:09. I’ll let her tell her story).
Bike
The bike starts out on a very flat section of the course. Nikki and I talked on Saturday about using the terrain as a way to get our effort levels where we needed them to be, opposed to getting caught up in the race and start thinking about riding “fast”. One sign that I knew things were going my way was when I looked at my heart rate and saw that it was below 150bpm. This was such a good sign to see because at Cardinal Harbour I spent a lot of time on the bike trying to get my effort levels under control.
Knowing that my efforts were in order, I worked on getting comfortable and drank some water to clear out the Ohio River’s deisel fuel taste. I also started paying attention to the power meter (that I had thanks to Alan Hawse) to cross check if my heart rates were providing the same feedback that the wattage was saying, it did.
After you get out of Louisville and onto Hwy 42 the terrain starts to become more rolling. You are also very early in the ride when you start to encounter these hills, which can bring about bad things if you don’t have discipline and stay under control during this segment. One of the advantages that I had was that I had been in many discussions about how to approach the race day with my athletes and Nikki prior to the race. It was interesting to see how all the things we talked about not doing, I saw hundreds of athletes doing.
I’ll admit that it is very difficult to slow myself down climbing hills so much all the time. Being such a light weight guy (136 pounds 2 days prior to race day), it’s pretty easy to climb some hills. But I continued to cross-check my heart rate monitor and the power meter to keep things under a “lid”. What was the lid?
Heart Rate – 155bpm. I did a great job all day of not getting over this cap. I don’t ever remember a time that I saw it over this level. I rode between 144 and 148bpm pretty much all day. There were brief periods that my heart rate dropped below this while I descended but it bounced back.
Watts – 210 to 220. I was told that I should consider having a “FIRM” cap of 210 on the bike. So when I saw the watts go over 200 I took notice, when I saw it go over 210 I would back off a little, if I saw it over 220 I did everything I could to get it back down. Here’s the link to my trainingpeaks account the powertap file from the bike ride: Gary’s IMLou Bike
After riding about 75 miles I decided to look at my average pace to see how things were going. It said, 18.7mph. Bummer! But I knew that I was riding my race and the speed was what it was. The one thing I also knew was that I felt really good still and felt much better than I did last year at the Great Illini and at Ironman Wisconsin. The boost to my bike came after the last turn onto Hwy 42. There must of been a good tailwind because at the same heart rates and watt output I was flying. It also felt nice to actually pass a few cyclists, opposed to the normal routine of watching people come by and dissappear into the distance.
Power Summary:
First Half – 158watts
Second Half – 156watts
VI – 1.08
I really like this bike course. I also really appreciate the effort and time I have spent to learn how to descend more comfortably. If we could find a course that was all uphill, I might enjoy Ironman even more. The only thing about the loops that were not appealing was the big Ironman painted in the road with a large “don’t” sign painted over it. Apparently someone doesn’t appreciate the bike traffic.
The other thing that made me nervous on the bike were all the flats. Just after the second turn onto Hwy 42 that leads you back to Louisville (about 33 miles left), there were a ton of flats. It made me nervous because I had a hell of a time getting the tires on the Zipps earlier in the week and I knew if I had to do it on the road, already fatigued, I might not get it done. I have heard people say there were tacks on the road, but I can not confirm or deny that information. If there were tacks, I guess I was just a lucky guy.
T2
Again a pretty quick and uneventful transition. The only difference this year was that I changed out of my tri shorts and put on my RaceReady running shorts so that I could carry gels in the pockets.
Run
The great thing about being able to run well and using a conservative race strategy is that you get to the run and feel excited about what lies ahead. As I started running, I was pretty confident that it was going to be a good day. The weather was perfect and my legs had no sign of fatigue.
But this good feeling also made me think back to the Great Illini last year and Cardinal Harbour six weeks prior. In both situations I had some pretty serious break downs on the run. So even though I felt great and was moving past some athletes pretty quickly, I kept a constant look at my heart rate monitor.
I had an early cap of 160bpm on the run. Even with this cap, I went through the first mile in 6:58. “Yikes, that’s too fast!” So for the next couple miles I really backed off the effort and my heart rate was sitting in the 150 to 155bpm range. The second mile was even faster – Huh? I’m pretty sure that the mile markers early on were not properly placed?
By now, many people know that I’m a big believer in the run:walk method (Episode 172). And I had a plan to run:walk this marathon – so I did. Here was the final plan:
first 10k : walk 30sec every other aid station
second 10k : walk 30sec every aid station
third 10k : walk 40sec every aid station
fourth 10k : walk 40sec every aid station or until I felt confident to rip to the finish
That’s also what I did. I’m pretty proud of how well I stuck to the plan early on in the run because everything felt so easy. I did allow my heart rate cap move up to 165bpm once I started walking every aid station. What I noticed was this:
1. The longer the run went on the less my heart rate dropped during the walk portion
2. The middle of the run my heart rate would get back up to the cap pretty quick
3. The last 10k I didn’t have to worry about the heart rate cap, because I needed to work pretty hard to push it up to 160bpm… but it was possible, which wasn’t the case at Ironman Wisconsin.
4. I walked only at the aid stations. At Ironman Wisconsin and Great Illini, I used a run:walk method, but by the end of the run I was fatigued enough that I either had to walk longer during the aid stations (GI) or take more walk breaks (IMMoo).
Here are my run splits:
FIRST RUN SEGMENT - 3.38 mi. (22:47), 6:44/mile (again, there’s no way this is right)
SECOND RUN SEGMENT - 8.25 mi. (37:10), 7:37/mile
THIRD RUN SEGMENT - 13.1 mi. (38:38) 7:57/mile
FOURTH RUN SEGMENT - 15.33 mi. (18:17) 8:11/mile
FIFTH RUN SEGMENT - 20.19 mi. (40:17) 8:17/mile
SIXTH RUN SEGMENT - 25.04 mi. (40:32) 8:21/mile
FINAL RUN SEGMENT - 26.2 mi. (9:29) 8:10/mile
Again the run was where I gained on a lot of people. I came off the bike in 500th place and finished in 204th place. Being able to run well at the end of the Ironman is a good feeling, but I still believe that there’s more in my run. Doing the Ironman Run under 3:15 is something I feel is very doable.
Final analysis:
I love the Ironman distance. Triathlon is a lot of fun, but Ironman is what I really enjoy. Maybe because it allows me to never really get good at the swim/bike portions and still do ok. I have no idea when I’ll be able to do another Ironman, but I found myself looking at the 2010 schedule the other day. Maybe 2011 or 2012?
What do I need to do in order to continue improve my ability to race with people faster than me? I have been told:
My hunch is that in terms of your development from here you could benefit from a run focus. For a smaller athlete there is even more upside to devoting energy to the run. However, at the paces you’re running now, you’re probably getting to that point that pure running fitness may be limiting your ability to ‘hold back’ for the marathon. While it is tempting to assess your splits in relation to the rest of your AG, it makes more sense to assess relative to others with similar body type. Generally it pays to play to your strengths.
And
The swim will be a key part of getting you up into the Top 20 in the AG.
The interesting thing as I look at people in front of me (203 of them), only 4 of those 203 people had a bike split that was slower than mine and even those times were close to mine. I guess this just means I need to continue to improve across the board – swim, bike and run.
Good thing I love to do all three (well… swimming is a part time love).
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
nice job gary!!!!!!!!
don’t slow down! go for top 100 next year!!!