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).

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!

Today’s workout was a race simulation brick:  6hr ride / 30min run.  To do this workout, I used a course that I have used the past couple years.  I posted a workout on motionbased last year from the course (2 loops of the course):

Motionbased chart of Race Simulation Loop

Just for a little more information about the loop, I did an analysis of this loop versus the loop at Ironman Wisconsin:

Ironman Wisconsin Route Elevation vs. Race Simulation Route Elevation

The key element regarding the loop that we use for race simulation is that the elevation gain for 1 loop is 2,926ft (36.2 miles).    Looking at motionbased entries for the Ironman Louisville course we get a few different numbers, but it appears that approx 8,000 to 8,500 ft of elevation gain is common for the full 112 miles.  That appears high compared to what I’ve been told, so I’ll have to dig a little more.

Ironman Louisville, Motionbased downloads

Now that we know what today’s course looks like and a glimpse at IMLou’s course, let’s look at my data from today:

Today’s Workout:

Distance    Time             AveHR     MaxHR      AveSpeed
36.17 mi       02:16:10       123              189                15.9 mph
36.22 mi       02:08:33       131              156                16.9 mph
36.15 mi       02:04:26       138              165                17.4 mph

The parameters that I put on these loops were as follows:

loop 1 – cap heart rate at 140bpm
loop 2 – cap heart rate at 145bpm
loop 3 – cap heart rate at 155bpm

If you look at the data then it appears that I failed this objective.  I don’t think that it was as bad as the data appears.  The first loop was really easy and I know the the 189bpm max is not accurate.  For one, I was never working even moderately hard.  And two, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen my heart rate at 189bpm on the bike (maybe in the lap 8 or 9 years ago?).

I personally believe that I did an excellent job maintaining those objectives for the 3 loops, but there is one climb during the loop that peaked my heart rate every time.  So those max heart rates were likely for 30secs to 2mins out of the 2 hours, as I tried to calm myself down each time I came to the hill.

An interesting comparison is to compare today’s workout with my Race Simulation #2 in 2007 as I got ready for IMMoo:  Race Sim and Nutrition 2007 #2 That workout was 6 weeks out from IMMoo.  Today’s workout looks very similar.

The one difference is that I appear to be running stronger right now!

Run Data:

1.00 mi      00:07:46     157     165       07:46/mi
1.00 mi     00:07:52      161      167      07:52/mi
1.00 mi     00:07:23      164      170      07:23/mi
0.12 mi     00:00:53      164      169      07:35/mi

Nutrition Review:

All I can say is that today was really poor!  I made a big mistake before I even started the workout:  I didn’t order my Infinit Nutrition refill soon enough.  So I was left using what we had at the house:  gatorade, gu’s, egel’s, luna moons, ale 8, salt tabs and water.

Needless to say, that was too much stuff to try and take in on a pretty hot (88F) day.  Especially when I’m not used to using any of those items right now.

What ended up happening was I was mixing things a little too much and ended up having some serious stomach cramps by the end of the second loop.  For the 3rd loop, I used water, 2 bottles of ale8 and salt tabs and things got back to normal.

My order of Infinit should be here Monday (those guys are fast!).  And I should have enough to get me through until the Ironman.

All in all, I was pretty happy with the workout.  I keep waiting for this sudden jump in cycling performance and it will come.  Patience is a key to success in ultra endurance events, but a highly uncommon trait to those that are attracted to this sport.  Master patience and humility and you’ll be above the normal curve come race day… that is what I continue to believe and coach.

img by : retrofuture, click image to see at flickr

Training Anxiety:

I’ve had a lot of anxious days with my training over the last few weeks. Most of the anxiety is not over what I’m doing or how my training is going but with my analysis of what I’m doing and what is “optimal”.

A few weeks ago I got really anxious about my personal workouts as I started thinking about the optimal way to train for an Ironman. Specifically, the most effective way to train for an Ironman to reach the goals I have set out to accomplish this year. The interesting thing for me as a coach is that many of the same anxieties that I have about my own training are shared by the triathletes that I’m coaching.

The truth of the matter is that my anxiety had less to do with my knowledge of how to train for Ironman, then it did with being 100% accountable for all of my personal workouts and training analysis. As I sat down to write this training phase for the Ironman Louisville group I followed the steps that I normally follow:

1. look over the annual training calendar and review what our training goals are for this phase
2. review the benchmarks or fitness tests that were most recently completed by the athletes and see where they are at and if they are ready to move on (I do this for swim, bike, run)
3. review conversations that I’ve had with the triathletes and see if I pick up on training issues that maybe going unnoticed: tired too often, consistently poor nutrition choices, stressed at home or work, etc
4. take the key workouts for the training phase and put them on the training calendar
5. complete the training schedule to fulfill both psychological training needs and to continue improving the triathlete’s fitness and physiological / metabolic profile to meet the Ironman’s requirements

What I found was that while I could sit back and answer these questions for my Ironman triathletes, I was having some difficulty answering them for myself?  It was difficult to be objective and honest.  It was impossible to be unbiased.  As I looked at the answers I was emailing and discussing with those triathletes that I coach, I realized it was sometimes the opposite advice I was incorporating into my own training.

Here are some of the inconsistencies I saw:

• I’d tell my athlete to “be patient” and trust in their developing fitness, but I’d tell myself “you need to start running faster on this run every week”
• I’d tell my athlete to “recover well and eat well” when they felt tired, but I’d tell myself that I “didn’t have time to rest up this week” (really bad the 2 weeks I had a cold)
• I’d tell my athletes to remember what our goal is this year – Ironman Louisville, it is 26 weeks away (at the time) and we have several months to continue to develop fitness before we get into specfic Ironman Louisville prep.  But I told myself, “You’re not in the best shape of your life right now, how are you going to be your best at Ironman Louisville”.

In the end analysis, I had convinced myself that somehow my training needs were different.  I was different.  When in reality what I needed was an objective voice, a voice of reason.  What I needed was the ability to step back and review my own benchmarks and training history and realize that I too needed:

• Pateince
• Humility
• Faith
• Rest, Nutritious Food and Stress Relief

In order to help me get this done, I hired a coach.  It has been a very positive step for my training and I believe that it will be a very positive step for the athletes I coach too.  I ended up using the EnduranceCorner coaching services, primarily because of the respect that I have for Gordo’s approach to the sport and lifestyle.  I used to learn a lot from his triathlon forum back when it was alive at gordoworld and I enjoyed learning from his clinic at the Olympic Training Center back in 2006.  He also has perpective that I would like to draw upon; he went from a working “Joe” doing triathlon to a professional triathlete.  While I have no dilusions of going pro, I think that this experience is worth drawing from.

Data Analysis and Training Anxiety:
Here’s a lesson that we all can learn from

If you are not doing the training, it doesn’t matter what the analysis of the training data says, you are not setting yourself up to succeed.

I have to admit that starting in January of 2008 I began falling for this data “entrapment”.  This began with the greatest gift I’ve received from an athlete I coached in a long time – my Garmin 305.  I love that thing.  But with the Garmin 305 came a new level of data responsibility.

Prior to the G305, I used a basic Polar Heart Rate Monitor that allowed me to get an average heart rate, max heart rate and time (not even laps).  After a workout I would enter that information into my training log (at workoutlog.com which I had used since 2003).  But after the G305 the process got more involved, I had to connect the watch up and download the data.  I started using the Garmin Training Center only for the data download and then would try to manually enter the info into workoutlog.  This became too much so I decided to just use the GTC, until one day in June when I went  to load my data and notice that all the data is gone?

Frustrated I search the data, thinking that my daily auto back up of my computer would have saved it.  It didn’t!  Ironically I felt like all the running and cycling that I had done for the year was erased.  Almost like somehow because I couldn’t produce some chart to post on my blog or share with other friends/athletes my body had lost all that exercise and training benefit.  It was really that ridiculous.

I moved onto using Motionbased and GTC, and then on to a new traininglog website that allowed me to also coach my athletes.  The new site became as much of a job trying to maintain and use as my job of coaching was, so I just recently moved some athletes back to workoutlog.

The anxiety about all of this came back into my own training program when Gordo asked me “what kind of weeks have you been putting in over the last 10 weeks or for all of 2008″?  OMG – Where’s my chart!  So I spent 4 hours Sunday trying to recreate a training log to share what I’ve been doing.

I’m not saying that having data isn’t important.  It is a very useful and important tool.  As a coach it is difficult, if not impossible to assist someone or help them without having the data.  But as a coach, If I had to choose between someone who completes their runs regularly and logged occasionally or ran occasionally and logged obsessively, I’ll choose the former.

That being said, to cut down on this anxiety and get the information I need, I’ve chosen to use the following procedure:

1.  upload my G305 data to workoutlog after each workout / swim times just manually enter (workoutlog now has a very clean user experience when the G305 has been downloaded)

2.  weekly upload my G305 data to my WKO+ software to get the deep down analysis it offers

Alan over at EnduranceCorner has had a couple good posts recently discussing some of these topics:

• Benchmarks and Forecasting
• WKO+ for Simpletons

The Positive Side of this data displacement and anxiety:

1.  I don’t have solid records of run/bike/swim from January to mid June 08, but I know this:  I set a personal best at the Iroman distance on Sept 6th (11:00), I then rode over 300 miles commuting from Illinois to Indiana and on Sept 13th ran a fairly decent 3:17 marathon.

2.  I set a personal best at the half marathon just 10 days ago, running 1:21:53.

Racing has a way of showing us “The Truth“…. training logs and charts often lie if we’re not careful or if we don’t have an objective eye to look them over also.  That is one of the best services I can provide as a coach.

Well it finally feels like we are starting to put winter behind us.  That’s motivation for me to get more serious about my training.  That and realizing that TTT is only about 14 weeks away.  January was a good month for cycling.  I logged over 28 hours on the bike, most of it on the trainer.  I decided to keep up my ride everyday challenge through February and I have over 15 hours logged for Feb as well.  I did get to go outside a few times this week which was nice, but I realized that trainer riding doesn’t totally relate to the roads.  My bike fitness is much better than it has ever been in the winter, and I am seeing mph numbers higher than I usually see (even for summer/fall) so I am really happy with that.  The things that get me outside are the wind and the hills that I just can’t simulate on the trainer.  My RPE and HR when I’m going into the wind and/or uphill are higher than I would like them to be, but I know that will come with more time spent outside.  The steady state baseline fitness is there, and I am glad to have that during these cold icy months.

Swimming is coming along.  I have started swimming twice a week which is a huge improvement on my zero times a week.  Swim fitness usually comes fast so I am not as worried about my times right now.  I’m just ready for summer so I can swim outside.

Running is coming along very very slowly.  I have maxed out at 3 miles and I am really trying to take care of my hips.  The right one actually feels really good and that is the one that blew up before during and after the Chicago marathon.  However, now when I hit 2-3 miles on a run I start to feel a bit of a sharp pain right on the greater trochanter of my left hip.  I usually stop and not try to run through it because I can’t afford (physically and financially) to go through what my right hip went through.  I think the pain might have come from the overcompensating for my right hip.  I’m being good and foam rolling and stretching like mad.  I’m sure it will be ok, but I just would like to be running as much as my IMLOU teammates right now!

Alright, off for a little jog with Gary and Kelty!

If you follow my twitter page (twitter.com/ditschfitness) then you’ll know the basics as Nikki sent some out during the race. This report will fill in my emotions and feelings for the race, but first the basic stats:

Great Illini Results -

swim: 1:17:48
t1: 2:00
bike: 6:00:40 (18.6mph)
t2: 1:14
run: 3:38:51 (8:21/mile)

total: 11:00:34

Swim – as the horn sounded things were a little rough in the beginning. I’m not sure if I was not anxious enough; therefore unprepared to get moving or if I just needed a little time to get into a rhythm? It didn’t take long though as I felt incredibly efficient in the water. I had zero kicking going on and felt like every pull was really getting some work done. I kept thinking to myself, “pull yourself through the tube.” Which is a visualization that my coach/professor at UNL shared with me when I was learning to swim.

My time ended up being around 5 minutes slower than last year at IMMOO, but that is what I expected. I didn’t swim one time from Sept 9, 2007 to June 9, 2008. And once I started swimming in June I made it to the pool only a couple times a week (a few weeks I got three swims in). The one thing I did do this year that gave me a little confidence that I could get out there was the Cave Run 1.5 mile swim that the YMCA put on at Cave Run Lake.

Bike – the bike training this past year was also not specific to Ironman. If you have been following my blog for awhile, then you’ll know that I just wanted to take a different approach this year. I didn’t want to train for any specific event, but try some races out, if I felt they were possible. (And you’ve seen what kind of brainstorming occurs when I don’t have events picked out!). That philosophy of training for this year left me with few specific race rides. In fact, I did zero race simulation rides this past year and only had one brick (bike/run) workout this year at all (last weekend with Jeff).

All that being said, you can imagine how pleased I felt to see that I rode 13 minutes faster this year than I did at IMMOO. I realize that you can’t compare different races and courses, but that is a positive that I’m going to take away from this race.

I actually felt really good most of the bike. There were periods that the wind had me moving at what felt like a turtle’s pace, but I just tried to push on. The biggest issue I had on the bike was my back. I did most of my rides on my road bike this year, in fact, I think the longest ride I did on my triathlon bike was 50 miles (again last weekend with Jeff). My gluts and lower back were in pain pretty much the whole time, but with the wind I didn’t want to stand too much. Occasionally I would stand and just spend a couple minutes in my big chain ring and ride hard standing up to relieve some tension.

The other positive that I’m taking away from this ride is that I even split the 2 loops. I rode 3:00 on the first loop and 3:00 on the second loop. Can’t be bummed about that.

The one lesson that I’ll take away from this is that I need to learn to ride the bike faster. I was the only athlete in the top 10 that rode under 19mph. (The top two rode 22mph or over!) Training to ride faster and learning how to race that way would leave a lot less work to do on the run for me.

Run – The run training was very similar to my bike training. I did nothing specific, but I also never stopped running through out the year. The one thing that I always feel is true, if I run consistently, is that my run will not abandon me.

When I got to the run, I felt really good and started out pretty quick. My leg turnover was good and my pace was too fast but at a comfortable effort (6:40ish). As I approached the first aid station I asked for coke or gatorade. They said they had, “water and ecaps”. SH*T. That was my first thought. I had some egel’s with me, but my stomach was not willing to take any more of those. So I took some water and used a couple of my Succeed Salt Tabs.

As my usual plan of action, I walked 30 seconds at every mile.

As I approached the second aid station, I asked the same question. Again they had nothing but water and ecaps. I saw a pattern here and was getting nervous. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to run the marathon if all I had to use for aid was ice water and salt tabs.

On the return section of the first lap (we ran 4 laps) they finally had some coke available at mile 5. I took a can of coke and was able to drink a couple drinks. My stomach was pretty messed up at this point, but even more scary was that I was starting to feel really dizzy, my fingers tingled and I felt light-headed. If you listened to my last podcast (hydration and the role of sodium) then you’ll understand where my thoughts were going. I started to say some multiplication tables to myself, hoping that the answers wouldn’t allude me: “1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 2 = 4, 4 + 4 = 8″ … ok, you’re not there yet.

Around mile 7, I thought it was over. I stopped at the aid station and began to sweat heavily. I started to dry heave pretty heavily but couldn’t get anything to come up. My head was spinning and my legs felt like jello. To be honest, it felt like I had been at the bar a little to long on a Nebraska Football Game day. The aid station workers were standing there not sure what to do, they asked if I as alright, when I said “no”. He turned around and walked away like “oh boy… that isn’t good”. They offered me some bananas, but that wasn’t going to happen, so I asked for some coke again. At this point all I really wanted was a ride back to the start. Without different aid on the course I was worried that I couldn’t get what I needed to recover at any point. I also wasn’t excited about putting myself in a place to risk my health and ruin my chance of riding my bike this week and doing the marathon next weekend.  I guess the one positive about the several minutes that I stood there (I’m guess 5 to 6 minutes), was that despite the violent dry heaving, I didn’t actually puke fluids up.  Had I began to lose fluids with every attempt (which I saw happen to one guy), I’m not sure I would have been able to get moving again.

After I took the coke I started walking again. In the end, I think my ego and anger pushed me forward. Looking back, I am happy that I didn’t DNF at that point, but I’m not sure that being propelled by ego and anger is the place I want to be in life, even during a race.

After I got my mind settled down, I began running again. I’m not sure how it happened, but I actually ran ok once I was running. My body was still chilled (in the sun). I craved water, but everytime I tried to drink any I felt like I would throw it up.

Around mile 18, I finally got a bottle of Gatorade Endurance. Magic. While my pace was decreasing to 8:30/mile pace, my thoughts finally cleared up. I didn’t have the “lost in space” feeling as bad and that gave me confidence to try and push home and at least try and break the 11 hour mark.

It didn’t happen. As you can see above, I missed it by 34 seconds. 34 seconds is a tough pill to swallow after 11 hours.

Final Thougts:

I feel pretty darn happy as I come away from this race. It is 12 minutes faster than I went at IMMOO last year and while it’s difficult to compare courses, I’m happy with the way things turned out. While I am a little bummed about how my run ended up, it was still the 2nd or 3rd fastest of the day (I think the 2nd fastest on the results page is a relay team?). And I guess when I am at the point that running 3:38:51 for the marathon in a Iron-distance race is a bummer, I have more to be thankful for than I have reason to complain.

Now — learn how to swim and bike!

I also learned that you need to be very aware of the race course nutrition. The Great Illini website said this:

“The 26.2 mile run course will be divided into 4 6.55 mile loops. Competitors will have the opportunity to access their run course special needs bags every 6.55 miles. There will be aide stations and porta-johns every mile of the run course. The aide stations will be stocked with fruit, Hammer Gels, E-Caps, water, Heed energy drink and much more.”

I knew that I would need Gatorade Endurance and Coke to get me through the run.  I should have had Nikki’s Fuel Belt full of Endurance and used it, with some extra bottles for the fuel belt at the special needs bag.

That is why we do races like this, to practice and learn.  The great thing about this race is that usually I have a year to sit around and think about what happened before I get another shot.  This time I get to ride my bike around Illinois and Indiana for a week and then give the marathon another go around at the Lake City Marathon!

I can’t wait for Ironman Louisville next year though!

The race is now a little over a week in the past so it is time to wrap up my thoughts on the race. There are already two posts, one about the experience and a second about facing mental challenges on the bike. This post will be dedicated to a report on the race. How did I do? How do I feel about how I did?

The swim.

There wasn’t much doubt about my swim fitness going into the race – I didn’t have any. That happens when you swim 1 time a week on average over the summer. (Not that I swam more prior to that because I didn’t. I only swam a couple times over the winter months.) There wasn’t much anxiety about the swim despite my lack of training. I had been able to develop a pretty good acceptance of the fact that my only swim goal was to get through the swim.

Walking onto the beach after my second loop I realized that adding some swim workouts to my schedule would be important for 2007. I made my little comment to Nikki and headed to the changing room.

The one thing that I noticed while in the water, but didn’t realize the impact until I started changing was how cold the water was. I was shivering so much trying to change my clothes that getting my wetsuit off wasn’t exactly easy. Neither was getting on my cycling jersey.

Later on in the race, I was able to talk to Dean Hewson while running. It made me feel better when he told me that his swim time was about 10 minutes slower than his IM UK time that he had just completed five weeks earlier. A small consolation anyway.

Swim time: 1:27:21

The Bike.

The bike was somewhat similar to the swim, in that I knew I had to be conservative with my riding approach. The difference with the bike was that I had been training and riding consistently over the summer. The key words though are “over the summer”. Due to many factors, prior to the Horsey Hundred in May, I had not put in more than a few hundred miles total since September of ‘04. So even though I had been riding a lot this past summer, I didn’t feel like I should expect to ride an outstanding ironman bike leg – “Save it for the run”, was my motto.

I’ve already posted about the mental challenges I faced on the bike, but in the transition area heading out to the run, I felt extremely positive. “That was the best 112 mile ride I’d ever had”, I told myself. (Actually my bike computer said 113.x, so I wasn’t sure how far it was.)

The course was a challenging course, but not impossible. From the elevation chart you can tell that the terrain was rolling throughout the entire ride. The greatest thing about the bike course was that the road we did most of our riding had just been paved that week. That made the roads feel fast. Jeff, Beth and I rode a loop of the Ironman Wisconsin course the Saturday before the IMMOO, which was two weeks before Runovia. The courses seemed very similar in difficulty, although Wisconsin’s course had more turns and twists where Runovia was pretty much straight ahead.

Bike time: 6:40:17

The Run.

This is the one leg that I was ready for, mentally and physically. But to be honest, once I showed up to the race and saw the course, I made some adjustments to my expectations.

I have completed 7 marathons over the years and only one marathon course compares to the difficulty that this course presented – The Tecumseh Trail Marathon. Yep – a trail marathon. The Runovia run course made the Derby Marathon and The Flying Pig look like a track meet, but the key to facing the challenge for me was knowing how fit and prepared I was for the run.

If you look at the elevation chart you can see that the run begins with a two mile climb. For those of you Todd’s Road Stumblers’, the climb was very similar to Pit Bull. I’m not sure how long Pit Bull is, but the the grade was similar. There wasn’t another two mile climb on the course, but there was definitely more hills. And we had to run each one 5 times!

The great thing about doing 5 laps was that for the first time during the race, I actually got to see some people and talk to someone. Dean (the race leader) was a couple loops ahead of Brad and I, but we were all running about same pace, so I had a couple conversations. What a relief!

Even though the course was challenging, I felt good on the run. There was never a moment of despair or fear, just feelings of strength. What a great way to feel during my first irondistance triathlon run leg. Of course my time was slower than I anticipated, but I still believe in the training principles I used to prepare for the run portion of this race. I was also uplifted by Nikki’s comments regarding the run course. I’m also thankful that she didn’t share those comments with me after her Saturday run. I knew the run would be a challenge. But having known how much it slowed her down prior to doing it myself might have made the bike even more challenging mentally.

Run time: 4:14:32

My last thoughts about Runovia

I am incredibly happy that I completed the distance, especially with all the reasons and excuses I could have come up with to not do the race. As the excitement of the race wears off and I begin to plan for 2007 (49 weeks to IMMOO), I know to be a better long distance triathlete, I have to:

1. make swimming a part of my schedule
2. continue to build my endurance on the bike
3. improve my ability to maintain an “upper-steady” effort on the run
4. spend more time on the mental characteristics that are required
5. improve my overall nutritional intake (i.e. eat like Nikki – less junk)

Links:

- Todd’s (race director) Race Report
- Runovia Full Distance Results
- Runovia Half Distance Results

There area a lot of mental traps that endurance races allow you to encounter. One of the big traps that I sometimes face and that I see some of my friends and clients struggle with is self doubt.

On a training ride this summer, I was talking to Jeff when he explained to me that around mile 80 on the bike (IM FL ‘05) he started to have feelings of doubt. For a moment, he didn’t know if he was going to be able to finish.

This past weekend I had the same doubts run through my mind and I wasn’t even to mile 30! Actually, I started having doubts the moment I stepped out of the water and said to Nikki, “That was a lot harder than I expected”. Though the more pressing demons were there shortly after I started riding the bike.

Here are some thoughts I have on approaching this situation.

Don’t let self doubt become a snow ball rolling downhill!

There were a few thoughts that I kept having that seemed almost obsessive the first 30 miles. They went like this: “I’m only at mile ‘x’, how am I going to ride 112 miles?” “My legs feel tired now. Remember how they felt at the end of the Horsey Hundred? How can I run a marathon after this?” “Those last few miles of the Derby Marathon were pretty challenging, will I be able to run today at all?”

As you can see, the initial negative thought became another negative thought. The second negative thought became a third, even worse, negative thought, and so on.

Solution: You have to practice positive self talk while training to combat the demons that will arise.

One of the positives that I’ve focused on this summer was my fitness level tests. So one of the positive self discussions I had was this:

“Those last few miles of the Derby Marathon were pretty challenging, will I be able to run today at all?” “Gary! You ran a 3:08 in Louisville, it may have been tough, but you ran well. Today you are in way better running shape then you were in on that day! Be smart on the bike and you will be able to run.”

Don’t be defined by the result

This is easier said then done, but it is a huge characteristic of success in endurance sports. This idea was also a suggestion on the financial tv show, Jim Cramer’s Mad Money the other day. Jay Feeley, the kicker of the New York Giants was on to discuss financial planning tid-bits, but also talked about kicking. An answer that Feeley gave to one question went something like this:

“You can’t let your results define who you are.”

Who would know this better than a kicker in the NFL.

I found myself calculating various splits and results throughout the day this past Sunday. But I also found myself asking questions like, “What will xxx think if I can’t run under 4 hours?” Yuck!

Solution: Allow your race to be dictated by the factors you can control. I found that my heart rate monitor saved my bike leg. If I started worrying about results and felt like pressing the pace, I looked at the HRM. What did it say? The other variable that I could control was my nutrition. If I felt down, I reverted back to my strategy and focused on getting in as many calories as I needed. I will say, from a nutritional view-point, the Ale 8 One that I had around mile 75 was a savior. Emotionally, it was the best nutritional products I used all day!

Solution 2: Live in the moment. Why else would you compete in an endurance event if you weren’t concerned about testing yourself? The race is one time where you can let all things go and just live in the moment. Feel. Experience. Live. These things take practice too. The best season I ever had with this experience was 2003. It is not a coincidence that my spiritual life received as much attention as any other area of my well-being during that time period.

Final Thoughts

I would like to say that I never have any self doubt. But I do, quite a lot. Managing these thoughts in daily life can be challenging, but effectively managing these thoughts in a race is essential.

The best athletes in the world that I see have an incredible ability to manage adversity. Think about Tiger Woods and the way he was able to respond this year to losing his father, or Alex Rodriguez and how he has to handle the pressure and lack of respect he commonly gets, despite being one of the best players today. Now replay the image of Norman Stadler dealing with his second flat tire at last year’s Ironman Championships.

I’m way closer to Norman than Tiger. But I’m working on it.

A little sidenote

A professor I had at the University of Nebraska that I respected a lot helped athletes use biofeedback as a method to learn mental control. I never was up close to any of his stuff in this area (I took his graduate level health course) but some of his work maybe worth checking out. Wes Sime – here’s his UNL bio page