See Luke Tri in Boulder

See Luke Tri in Boulder

6/15/2014




My Ironman 70.3 Boulder story really begins on the weekend before the race. That weekend we’d loaded up the Prius with kayaks and my bike and headed down to the Berkshires to visit family.  The plan was to start a brisket smoking before heading out for a last 3 hour ride on Saturday morning, do a short speed workout that afternoon, then on Sunday go for a lake swim while the rest of the family kayaked with my long run on that afternoon.  Very nearly none of that happened.  My wife Peggy had to go to the ER on Saturday morning for an infection in her finger, so she couldn’t tend the brisket (bike gone).  I did salvage most of my run workout that afternoon (8x1 minute lactate intervals), but it was hot and humid and I blew off the last repeat.  Then I burned the hell out of my hand on the grill, which precluded climbing into a mucky lake to swim, and I was just tired by the time we got home on Sunday, so I didn’t run either.

I woke up for Monday’s scheduled day off feeling like I really needed to salvage something of the weekend’s work.  So I headed out for an easy 11 mile run, just ticking along at an easy pace and letting it flow.  Eight miles in, I started feeling a lot of soreness in my right calf, which quickly escalated to a lot of pain.  Like, ALOT.  So I walked for a couple minutes and then started to run again.  I was able to limp home at a 9:30 pace, but my calf was so sore that I could barely walk. At that point I’m feeling pretty frustrated, but I figured I’d spin out the cramp, or knot, or whatever it was on my ride the next day and carry on from there.  Turns out that didn’t really help though – when I went to run on Wednesday I barely made it half a mile before I had to turn around and walk home.  At this point I’m seriously freaked out about my ability to compete on race day. I decide I’m pretty much shutting down all running until race day

Thursday was travel day.  Note to self:  don’t schedule a 6:00 AM flight – you have to get up at 1:00 in the morning to get to the bus to take you to the airport…

Thursday afternoon my friend David came to collect me at my sister’s house in Denver and we went for an easy 16 miles of urban riding at altitude.

Heart rate was a little high for RPE, and some up-hills left me feeling a little more out of breath than expected, but otherwise things didn’t feel too bad (not counting my sore calf complaining (a bit) on every down-stroke…).

Friday we decamped to Boulder and I got to the venue to get in a practice swim.  I was grasping at straws trying to keep my burn dry, but in the end decided I was just going to have to hope it would be fine. 

Saturday I rode my bike from the hotel to the venue and got checked in.                                                                                         

A little wandering around Boulder, fabulous dinner with David and his wife, and the run-up to race day was complete.  To this point it was the most fun but least helpful race week I’ve had for any of my HIM distance tris.  

I went to bed thinking I’d see how it went, but there was a strong chance that this would be my first DNF.

Race day morning kicked off (like they all do) with a 4:00 AM alarm.  Or rather it should have – Peggy woke me up at 4:15 as I’d slept through it.  

We had run into another athlete at our hotel the day before and she and her Sherpa had offered to carpool, so I had to be in the parking lot at 4:45.  That lost 15 minutes meant that I was a little rushed, which didn’t matter much until I realized that I’d left my breakfast in the hotel.  That blew Peggy’s chance at sleeping in (she had to bring it to me at the venue), but it did give me a chance to watch my competitors come streaming in.  

It’s quite a sight, watching a solid line of cars a couple of miles long flowing into the parking area.  It’s an amazing number of truly dedicated athletes.  

Into transition for pre-race activities.  Took my bike over to the mechanics’ tent to get the tires topped off and a little chain lube put on to counteract the overnight rain storm.  

Got on my running shoes and headed out for my traditional 10 minute warm-up run.   My calf hurt to start, and by the time I was done it hurt a lot, but I was able to grit my teeth and get through a hair over a mile without having to stop, but only barely.  Feeling just a bit heartened I pulled on my wetsuit and plodded down to the lake for a warm-up swim.  Then it was time to wait, and wait, and...  The downside to ageing up into the 45-49 age group is that I’m no longer in the first wave of age groupers to get in the water.  The pro men went off at 7:05, and my group didn’t hit the lake until 8:00.  On the upside I got to see the pro men and women get out of the water.  But I have to admit I’d rather be on the course than spectating.  

Finally the announcer calls for wave 12 to get in the water and it was go time.  Swim conditions were perfect.  The water was dead-flat calm, and slightly cool at about 68 degrees, perfect for wetsuit swimming.  
                                   

Prior to the start I was trying unsuccessfully to urge the uncomfortably large mass of men behind me to move forward, since I’m clearly not faster than, well, any of them.   No one wanted to admit they might be “worthy” of getting that close to the start line though, so when the gun went off I think I had at least 50% of the field go by me in the first 200 yards.  I found this a bit demoralizing, but not as disturbing as the one swimmer whose stroke caught me in a headlock and forced my head under water.  I know he didn’t do it on purpose, but he got a nice shove in the ribs for that one.  Anyway, I moved a bit away from the buoys and settled into what I thought was a pretty good rhythm.  After the first turn I started to catch some of the slower folks from the previous wave, and by the time I got to the end of the swim I was among swimmers from multiple previous groups.  This made me think I’d done OK, but checking my watch I saw that I’d actually gone a hair over 40 minutes.  Considering I was hoping for sub-38 I found this disappointing.  On the bright side, I did feel like I’d avoided spending too much energy and I was ready to hit the bike.

Swim result:  00:41:02, 02:07/100m pace, 88/151 division,553/924 men, 811/1528 overall

T1 was unremarkable.  Got out of my wetsuit, hit the port-a-potty and trotted out with the bike.

T1: 4:32 (meh)

I spent the first 5 miles or so of the bike trying to get my HR down in the face of a constant false-flat uphill.  Luckily I’d read some race reports from last year’s race, so I expected that I’d be slow through this bit, but an average of about 16 mph felt kind of lousy.  The next 23 miles seemed almost all downhill though.  I was able to spend a lot of time spinning along at 23-25 mph and got to the half-way mark at 1:21 (woohoo!!).  

                                                           
Since I knew for sure that I’d not be putting in a 2:40 bike split I figured that meant that there’d be some hills ahead, and I was right.  Surprisingly, the majority of the uphill portion of the bike course comes once you’re well out onto the Great Plains.  I managed to keep a nice steady rhythm to my pedaling, didn’t bother trying to hammer up the hills when they came, and pulled an unspectacular 1:29 for the second half of the bike.  Based on my training results and the fact that we were racing at altitude I was thinking I’d be lucky to break 3 hours for the bike.  Given that I was pretty much ecstatic to get a 2:50 result. The only faintly unpleasant note came from the woman who felt the need to yell at me when I launched a water bottle after hitting a bump.  If she’d have let me know she was back there I wouldn’t have dropped the bottle, so I blame her (obviously…).
  

Bike result:  02:50:37, 19.69 mph pace, 82/151 division, 503/924 men, 636/1528 overall

Note: After spending the last 6 years riding almost exclusively on the poorly planned and even-more-poorly maintained road-net in New Hampshire, the bike course for this race was a revelation.  It’s amazing how much more fun (and fast) it is to ride on roads where the shoulder is not crumbling and the pavement is actually smooth.  Even the bit where the road was being repaved and was ground down to grooves was nicer than what I’m used to.  Kudos to the Colorado highway department for the job they do.

In T2 I commented to the athlete next to me that the good part of my day was pretty much done, and now it was time to go DNF.  As I was in no hurry to go get on the run course I took my time changing shoes and took another pit-stop before heading out to see how far I could get before I had to abandon the race.

T2: 4:11 (I know, right? So slow…)

Out onto the run I went.  I’ve never been a big fan of off-road running, so when I found out that the run course around the reservoir is pretty much all dirt road and trails I was something less than thrilled.  It turns out, however, that the course surface actually felt pretty good underfoot.  It proved much more stable and provided significantly better traction than I expected.  There’s a stretch around the far side of the reservoir that’s a bit uneven, but there wasn’t a ton of loose dirt making my feet slip on each stride.  I was thinking even before I got hurt that running sub 1:50 on dirt was going to be challenging, but without the injury it may have been possible.  Of course with the sore calf a good result was out of the question, so I started run/walking right away.

My plan was to walk for two minutes after each mile marker, and to do my usual slow-roll through the aid stations, and I mostly managed to stick to that. I kept a close eye on my time over the first few miles and was discouraged to see half an hour roll by before I got to the 5K mark, but I seemed to be managing the pain ok.  I decided at that point that it was going to be silly to have traveled all the way across the country and put in all the time on race day to walk away from the day without a finisher’s hat. So I slogged my way through the remainder of the run, running when I could, walking when I felt my calf getting worse, and generally enjoying being outdoors on a glorious Colorado summer’s day.  

I ended up with my worst half-marathon since my disastrous first HIM, but I finished.  And on this day finishing felt like a major victory.

Run result: 2:22:28, 10:52/mile pace, 100/151 division, 588/924 men, 786/1528 overall

Total time of 6:02:50 means that if I’d gone sub 1:50 on the run as planned I would have been damn close to 5:30 for the day. I would have loved 5:30.  But, sometimes you just have to do what you can do with the body you have on race day.  The good parts were I finished feeling strong and fresh, without further injury, and more than ready to shift focus from HIM training to prepping for IMAZ 21 weeks further into the year.  For the record, this is now my new favorite race, and I full intend to go back in 2016.