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.