Toss Back Tuesday - Timberman 2012

I found the race report I wrote for my experience at the Timberman 70.3 way back in 2012 that actually predates this blog. Without further ado, here's what I wrote about that then...

It’s been a long uncomfortable summer in New England.  When it wasn’t 90 degrees with 80% humidity it was 75 degrees with 100% humidity.  Training for my 5th 70.3 was an exercise in drowning in sweat 10 times a week.  Even the swims had me sweating as my body worked to shed the built up heat long after the swim had ended.  I chose a pretty aggressive training program for this race – 3 workouts a week in each discipline, plus a weekly bike/run brick, all at longer distances than I’d previously done in training.  The reason for all this sweat?  I was signed up for a race that has more than twice the elevation gain of the Pumpkinman (my previous best race), and a reputation as one of the hardest courses on the Ironman 70.3 docket.  I figured to show anything like a respectable time I needed to put in a lot of work.  So 119 days after the New Orleans 65.1(inside joke) and several demoralizing days spent riding mountains (oh so slowly…) it was finally time to put my work to the test and pit myself against the hills of Timberman.

My first hurdle came on Saturday.  As I was preparing my nutrition for the bike ride I discovered that I’d let myself get below my minimum required allowance of Perpetuem.  I only had 2 hours’ worth, and I was planning on at least 3 hours of riding.  After the blue streak got done leaving my mouth I decided I’d make do with what I had and make up the missing calories with some Chomps I had lying around.  I made sure to put them in my transition bag, stuck the bottles of Perpetuem in the fridge and went to bed.

As do most triathlon race days, Sunday morning came in at 3:30 AM.  It was an hour’s drive to the venue, and with transition closing at 6:45 I wanted to get there in plenty of time to get in my warm up run and swim.  It was dark as I rocketed up the deserted highways to Lake Winnipesaukee, and it was still dark as I sat in the (apparently infamous) line for parking at Ellacoya Park, but by the time I’d been directed to my spot (right by the swim start, about 4/10ths mile from transition) the sun was coming and showing a beautiful tranquil scene out on the water. 

The swim was a point to point course, laid out in 3 roughly equal legs - .4 miles out, .4 miles parallel to shore, then .4 miles back to transition.  Standing on the shore and looking at the yellow buoys marching out to the red turn buoy in the distance I was thinking “You mean you’re going to swim all the way out there, and then you’ll only be a third done?  What are you, nuts?”  The answer of course is yes, I am.  I must be or I wouldn’t be doing this for fun, right?

With my transition area all set up I took a 10 minute run down the start of the run course.  I was running at a pretty relaxed pace and was a bit surprised to see that I’d been hitting just about an 8:30 mile.  I wrote it off to adrenaline and the effects of the taper and more or less forgot about it.  I got back to my wetsuit just in time to hear the announcer point out that transition was going to close in 15 minutes and that all swimmers needed to be on shore within the next 25 minutes, so I pulled on the rubber suit and walked about half way down the beach towards the swim start.  I figured I’d strike out from there to the first of the marker buoys, but turned for shore after about 5 minutes and ended up with an uninspiring 10 minute warm up that only served to highlight my sore shoulder. 

After my last minute panic pee I stood around on the beach as the first 5 waves went off.  I chatted with a couple of my fellow age groupers, agreed that 140.6 is something only crazy people do (each of the three of us had a different discipline that made it seem ridiculous), and then it was finally time for the swim start. 

I had a hard time going straight in Winnipesaukee – I got pushed around by the waves, couldn’t see out of my goggles, and couldn’t tell where anyone else was going.  It turns out a lake that big gets some nice rollers like the ocean, but with shorter choppier waves, so I spent a fair amount of time trying to sight only to be tossed head first into the next trough.  Add to that the fact that I couldn’t seem to get away from one of my fellow age groupers who kept tossing water into my mouth as I was trying to breathe and it was not a stellar day for me in the water.  I was hoping to do better than my previous HIM PR of 42 minutes (in my mind I even whispered a sub-40 minute swim to myself), but instead I got out of the water at 44:30.  The good news is I beat 35 of my fellow age groupers.  The bad news is that I was in 140th place in my division at that point. 

T1 is always a mess for me, so I guess I’m not surprised it took 4:39.  Still, that didn’t include my usual post swim trip to the port-o-let, so it wasn’t as “fast” as it seemed.

I decided that I wasn’t going to let a poor swim leg spook me into trying too hard on the bike.  I figured that if I could get around the course in under 3 hours I was going to count myself fast and be happy with it.  My strategy was to maintain as close to a 90 RPM cadence as I could while not letting my heart rate get out of the 130s if at all possible.  The warm-up section of the ride went pretty well.  I was passing my usual complement of strong swimmers who can’t ride fast, watching some of the fast guys from later waves come by, and generally having a nice ride.  Of course both packages of Chomps that I’d brought slipped out of my shorts, and suddenly I was low on calories again.  Rather than stop and go back I decided to just take a gel from each aid station on the bike course.  That worked out fine.  I might work that into my nutrition plan for future races.

I had one bad moment where I passed a guy heading into a corner, only to find out it was a MUCH shaper corner than I expected.  I jammed on my breaks and had the outstanding sensation of my front wheel slowing faster than my rear (yes, I got a bit sideways).  Happily the other guy was both paying attention (he didn’t hit me as he very easily could have) and very forgiving (he didn’t call me any of the nasty names that had to have been going through his head).  I spent the rest of the day being very courteous about corners.  About a mile later I heard everyone’s favorite warning on the bike “that bad hill is coming up.”  

The Marsh Road hill on the Timberman course is also sometimes knows as the Marsh Road wall.  It’s steep.  Really steep.  And kind of long.  But the good news is that it’s early in the ride, and the hardest part is not miles long (I’m pretty sure it’s less than half a mile really).  So it takes some hard work, but wasn’t nearly the crippling effort that I’d feared it would be.  Of course that guy who was off the bike and walking up the hill would probably disagree, but I guess I’d put in enough time in the hills to make it doable.  The fun part about that kind of uphill is that there’s usually a nice downhill to go with it.  Unfortunately there were a lot of people on the downhill ahead of me, so I had to ride with one hand on the brake and was only able to get up to about 37 mph (I suspect I’d have been over 45 on that hill on my own). 

Getting over that hill put us in the next valley over.  From there it was about 16 miles of going 25 mph downhill, and that was awesome.  At just about the turn-around point I started looking for the next aid station because the port-a-potty stop I’d skipped in T1 was making itself increasingly apparent.  I put in a 2 minute biological breakdown, grabbed some additional clear water for my bottle and got back underway. I lost track of the turns, so for a while I was trying to figure out when we were going to join the stream of cyclists on the other side of the road.  It finally occurred to me that I must be on the return leg, and that the others were folks still outbound.  I was mostly surprised because I was expecting the trip back up to the lake to be a long uphill grind (after all that downhill), but really it didn’t seem bad at all.  Sort of a false flat, but not really a punishing slope.  Getting back over the hills was unpleasant, but there wasn’t the one really big hill.  Of course there was that one hill that made me say bad things when I saw it, but it wasn’t as bad as it looked.  The back side of that one had me hitting 46.3 mph and yelling "left" as I scooted by a couple of really fast guys.  They caught me on the next uphill, and I never saw them again, but that was fun.

The final run into T2 included about a mile of downhill in a “no passing” zone (where one guy just HAD to pass me).  Then it was a turn into the park and a straight shot into transition.  I looked at the clock and couldn’t believe it, so I checked the Garmin – bike split was 2:54:40, a 19.25 mph average.  With almost no trying.  I was completely flabbergasted and extremely happy with that effort.

T2 was another mess, and this is not usually the case.  I may have to do that ridiculous workout where I do transitions 8 times in 3 hours again before my next race.  Bike to run transition 3:15

My goal in all my training and race strategy was to run a sub-2 hour half marathon off the bike.  I felt like my energy level was great, my legs felt fresh, and I was able to settle into a nice relaxed effort almost immediately after starting the run.  I know I only checked my speed on the downhills (or something), but each time I looked the Garmin was reporting right around an 8 minute mile.  Probably the best part of the run was the crowd support.  The course goes through a nice neighborhood, and there were lots of neighborhood kids to high five.  If the first rule of endurance sports is to never pass up an aid station, then the second is to high five all the kids (so I did).  There was even a local hockey club doling out a snow drift they’d been stockpiling.  Yes, I ran about 3 miles with snow under my hat in August. The miles beeped by at a steady 8:30-8:40 pace for the first loop, and then started to slow on the second.  By the time I’d hit the far point of the course on the second loop I was getting pretty tired.  I popped the last of my electrolyte caps and started hoping I could hold on to a decent pace without cramping for the last 5K.  I could feel a couple of muscles thinking about seizing up, so I took the cautious route and walked up the last bit of the last big hill, and then just flowed down the rest of the course with only one small calf cramp right before the finishing chute.  The total time for the run, 1:56:38.  This annihilated my previous best by nearly 15 minutes.  

Overall I have to say I’m delighted.  It was a great race, on a perfect day, and I beat my previous best at the distance by nearly 7 minutes.  This on a course where I was going to feel really good if I missed a PR by “only” 10 minutes.  After my lousy start I managed to catch 60 men in my division and ended up 79th of 175 and in the top third of men overall.  I’m disappointed in my swim and also in my transitions, so I’ll have to work on that, but I definitely have to say that I raced the best race I could on the day in question.  Total time 5:43:42  

Ironman Boulder 2015 Race Report: See Luke Tri for 140.6

Wait, what? Boulder?  What happened to IMAZ?  And…why is this, like, a year after the last update?  These are good questions, interesting questions.  And one of these days maybe I’ll write a post about that.  But this is about Sunday, finally getting to the start line, and what happened next.

This story really starts in 2004 in Tucson, with Peggy telling me that her friend Aimee and I were going to start running together (my beer-drinking, couch-potatoey-self thought that sounded like a terrible idea).  Or maybe it was in 2005 when I was gently cajoled into training for my first sprint tri.  But that’s probably too far back.   So, fast forward through 10 years and a myriad of sprint tris, a fist full of Olys, 8 half-Ironman distance races, and two abortive attempts to get to the start of a 140.6, and land on the morning of Friday July 31,^, 2015.  After 6 months of Ironman specific training, it’s finally time to head to Boulder and get to racing.

Friday

The bike had been carefully taken apart and boxed.

Eek, hope it goes back together OK...

Add my transition bag with all the other tri gear and a (really) small suitcase with 4 days’ worth of clothes, and I was ready to head to the airport.

The trouble with flying out of Boston before 7:00 AM (not counting having to leave NH around 3:30…) is that the bar on the concourse isn’t open yet.  The nice part is, you can get a pretty nice view of the city on the way out

The trip to Denver was pretty uneventful, if unreasonably long (cheap flights lead to random connections…). After grabbing my gear from the baggage check and picking up my rental mini-van, the first stop in CO was Boulder High for check-in and packet pickup. I was already pretty stressed and anxious about the race, but coming around the corner of the school and seeing this got me all choked up…

Got my packet, picked up some (ok, a lot of) gels and a couple of CO₂ cartridges, and headed up to the hotel to check in and take stock of what I’d been handed.

It turns out that after many years of trying to get lots and lots of athletes through 140.6 miles the Ironman race organizers have things honed down to a pretty good science.  There’s a place for everything, and, assuming that the participants can get everything in its place, there’s a limited chance that things will go badly because something’s been forgotten.  Of course, for us rookies this leads to the question “what the heck am I supposed to do with all THIS?”

Happily, a little bit of reading and thinking about it later, I had my bike and run gear packed into the proper bags, and had my bike and run “special needs” bags started (with a shopping list for what I wanted to add all squared away).  A little time spent with my level and some Allen wrenches got the bike put back together

Putting my race number on the bike was a little surreal.  I spent a lot of time last weekend not quite believing I’d made it to the start line

A quick nap and it was time for dinner with my Aunt Mary and Uncle Phil.  Spent lots of time carbo-loading Friday and Saturday, but dinner at The Gondolier was particularly good.  Probably a result of the excellent company as much as the food.

Saturday

I figured most of Saturday was going to be spent with my feet up doing nothing – turns out I was wrong.  I started the day with a quick spin on the bike down Boulder Canyon (with the resulting grind up-hill back to the hotel), just to keep the legs moving and make sure I’d gotten my fit right when putting it back together.  The remainder of the day was scheduled for me by the race organizers.  Went back to Boulder High to drop off my run gear bag at T2 and catch the course talk. 

Ended up with about 2700 run gear bags laid out on the track

The course talk was fairly standard fare (don’t draft, don’t litter…), but there was the rather ominous moment when we were told that the Boulder Reservoir was pretty warm (hovering right around 76 degrees) and there was about a 50/50 chance that the swim would be “wetsuit optional.” This was a concern not because I might miss out on a chance at a podium spot and a ticket to Kona (I’m not that fast…), but rather, because I’d brought only my full wetsuit along, and I was instantly concerned that I might have issues with heat management in the swim.

With that rattling around in my head I set off to drive to the swim venue to finish getting my gear drop-off done and take my first look at T1.  Turns out that T1 was a LONG walk from where they had us park

Parking out of frame to the left...

Dropped off my bike gear bag by the exit of the swim course

That's it there - the white one with the blue stripe

Got my bike racked

And headed back to the hotel. 

Altogether, between the walking I did at the Res, wandering around Boulder, and going to meet my friends David and Dawn for dinner I ended up walking about 6 miles the day before my Ironman.  I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly recommended procedure for these long races, but I can’t really think of how I could have avoided any of it.

Sunday (Race Day!!!)

I went to bed about 8:30 and actually slept fairly well.  But I was still up well before my 3:30 alarm went off

All of Saturday’s activities had pretty much eliminated the need for me to do anything on Sunday morning (which, I suspect, was the point), so I concentrated on getting a good chunk of the baguette I’d bought eaten (with some super-fancy organic Nutella knock off to make it go down better).  I got my Gatorade and potato packets out of the fridge, grabbed my morning clothes bag (where I’d stashed all my swim gear) and special needs bags, stuffed a couple bananas in my pocket and headed out to catch the shuttle from T2 to the Reservoir.

Making sure I didn't forget my timing chip like last time...

Despite my getting out the door a little after 4 AM I was far from the first one to the buses.  As I walked from the parking garage to the race venue I joined an ever-thickening stream of people all filled with an infectious nervous energy.  Everyone from the first timers (“I should just puke now and get it over with…”) to the seasoned vets (“I don’t care about my position in this race, I’m going to Kona on the Legacy program”) was friendly/supportive/awesome.  One of my favorite things about triathlon is the quality and character of the people who participate in it. 

The swim (2.4 mile, single loop course)

As I was getting my bike loaded up with my potato packs and a couple bottles worth of Gatorade, the race announcer came on the PA to tell us that the water temperature that morning was officially 78 degrees, and that the swim was now wetsuit “optional.” Since I hadn’t swum in open water without a wetsuit all year, this officially meant two things to me: I was out of the running for any age group awards, and my shot at Kona was going to have to come from some other race. More personal concerns were that, with the wetsuit wave not lining up in a time-seeded order, my plan to draft slightly-faster-than-me swimmers was probably out the window, and also that such a warm swim might lead me to overheat and have real trouble finishing the distance. Stress level goes from 10/10 to a Spinal Tap style level 11.

It was actually a relief when the announcer told the non-wetsuit folks “Go, go, go.”  As the folks in front of me started piling in the water and swimming off into the invisible distance (first turn was almost a mile out and couldn’t be seen from shore…), I was able to get a grip on myself, make a few wisecracks to the people waiting around me, and settled my mind to race as I’d trained.

As it turned out, I’d put myself pretty close to the front of the wetsuit wave.  If my guess that half of the racers chose to wear wetsuits is correct, then I think that at least 1200 people were lined up behind me.  Since I’m pretty-much a middle of the pack swimmer, I was guessing that meant at least 500 people were going to try to go by me over the course of the race.  I think that this probably contributed to my trying too hard (or, at all) for about the first 300 meters or so.  By the time I’d gotten to the third buoy I was feeling the heat build in my suit, and my breathing had turned to sucking in water about a third of the time.  So I stopped, pulled my neck open to let a little water into the suit, caught my breath and gathered myself before striking out at a much more relaxed effort.  It was still a warm swim, but I was no longer redlining.  

It’s just possible that 500 people DID go by me, but it’s a wide enough lake that I only wrestled with about 7 or 8 as they tried to pass inside my stroke range.  It got pretty chaotic out there at the turns though - the field really compresses towards the buoys at those points, and there’s a fair amount of what can only be called “combat-swimming” there.  The half-way mark (where the buoys changed from yellow “outbound” to orange “inbound”) seemed to take forever to arrive.  Oddly though, the second half seemed to go much more quickly.  I suspect that in the actual event my two halves were pretty evenly split, but I think that getting out of the chaos that was the swim start and getting a chance to just settle in and stroke made the last 1.2 miles much more pleasant.

Swim result: 1:21:59

105/371 division, 675/2041 men, 833/2765 overall

T1

Out of the water, checked my watch, was happy with the result.  This race had wetsuit strippers, and the couple that helped me were pretty aggressively nice.  They insisted I allow them to do everything for me and got my suit off in a jiffy.  Relieved of my neoprene wrapper I ran into the changing tent, pulled off my swimsuit, got myself geared up for the bike and headed out.  A quick stop at the port-o-let for a biological and it was off on the bike for a 112 mile spin

T1 result: 11:36 – I’d have been happier with under 10:00, my plan had been to be on the bike at about the 1:30 point, so at this moment I was about 0:03:30 behind my projected schedule

The Bike

The bike course consisted of two loops around a 41 mile course, with a 30 mile third loop that would take us back to Boulder High for T2.  The overarching theme for the bike? It was hot.  Really hot.  And way more humid than I thought Boulder would be.  Happily there were lots of aid stations on the course and I was able to drink to thirst for the whole distance, which helped a lot.

The first 5 miles or so of the bike course is a false flat with a fair amount of elevation gain despite there not being a much of a visible hill in front of you.  I found myself having a fair amount of trouble getting my heart rate down post-swim – the climb to the top of the first big hill was spent with an HR in the 150’s.  I like to blame it on the hill and the effort of the swim, but it’s as likely that I was just pushing a little too hard in the heat of the race. Even when I got the chance to go downhill I was still pushing 140’s.  Considering that my long rides had all been spent trying to keep things under 130, I was starting to worry that I was setting myself up for real issues later in the day.  As it was I just kept spinning along at what I thought was the correct RPE, but I didn’t get to what I thought was a reasonable HR until about the 90 minute mark. By this time we’d gotten past the first iteration of the notorious Nelson Rd. hill climb and the road turned pretty much flat and fast for the return to the start of the second loop.

The first 19 miles of the second loop, culminating in the slog to the top of Nelson Rd, took almost 10 minutes longer than it had the first time, which is probably a testament to how much harder than plan I had come out of T1 (well, that and I had a SAG stop to take care another biological and took the chance to wash the Gatorade off my aero-bottle and arms).  In spite of the slowdown I had made it to the 60 mile point right around the 3:30 mark and was still feeling strong and fresh.  The descent back to the flat land and spin back to the start of the third loop felt like it took almost no effort at all, and I was looking forward to getting those last 30 miles out of the way to get on the run.

The thing that might not be obvious from the elevation chart though, is that the actually nasty climbs on this course are all on the third loop.  Nelson goes on for a long time, but it’s not steep.  So it slows you down, but doesn’t really hurt much.  On the third loop the course climbs over the same ridge twice (going east and then coming back west in to town).  On the first traverse you can see the hill coming from at least a mile away as you descend towards it from the top of a lesser hill.  I told another of the cyclists “The ones you can see coming are never as bad as they look.” I was almost right. It wasn’t AS bad as it looked, but still required a pretty good effort to get to the top.  Lowest gear, mashing away at the pedals got me over it ok, but I could tell it had taken something out of my legs.  The second traverse (up Lookout Rd.) was worse.  It came after 95 miles of riding in the heat, and was both steeper and longer than the first time up.  Getting to the top was pretty much pure misery, and I could definitely feel a bonk coming on.  Happily, there was a snow-cone station at the top of the hill.  I gladly took one from the volunteer, and after a quick bite to make sure it wasn’t full of syrup I dumped half onto my neck and the other half down my pants.  That went a long way towards fixing my body temp, and definitely revived me.  The last 17 miles were pretty relaxed.  A lot of downhill riding at high cadence and low HR, trying my best to relax and set up my run.

Bike result: 5:51:41  

101/371 division, 593/2041 men, 688/2765 overall

Somehow I’d managed to pull out a 19.1 mph bike split.  I have no idea how that happened.  Through my training I was hitting 112 miles at about 17.5 mph, and that was without anything like the same elevation gain.  While I was happy to pull into T2 under 6 hours, I was more than a little worried about how I was going to run with that effort in my legs.

T2

Got off the bike at the dismount line and ran with it a fairly long way to the school track where I’d dropped my run-gear bag the day before. 

That's me in the blue - very snazzy

Handed off the bike to a volunteer, ran down the track to the grab my bag, and out the other end of the stadium into the men’s changing tent.  Only thing of note was, it turns out that A+D Ointment turns liquid if you leave it out in the sun all day.  So I ended up greasing up with a runny liquid rather than a thick paste.  In the end it didn’t seem to matter, so that was OK.  Yet another visit to the old port-a-potty and it was time to go see how an Ironman marathon felt (quick note about the port-a-johns – those things are great morale builders, because no matter how bad it is outside, coming out of one always makes the day seem better…).

T2 result: 13:24 – I have no reasonable explanation as to why this should have taken almost a quarter of an hour.  However, my original plan called for me to be on the run around the 8 hour mark.  Even with this slow transition I hit the run course at about the 7:40 mark, so I had a solid 20 minutes in the bank.

The Run

The run course for Ironman Boulder is on a walking/biking path that runs through a park along the Boulder Creek (mostly).  It’s a really nice shady place to run, though some folks likely find the concrete pavement to be hard on the legs.  It’s also pretty flat, not counting all the spots where it dives to go under roads.  Oh, and the little trip up into Boulder Canyon is a bit of a grind.

This looks bad, but it's not as bad as it looks (well, for the first lap)

My strategy for the run going in was to take it easy and just run to the next aid station, slow to a walk to make sure that I get all the food and drink I want into my mouth, repeat 25 times.  The first half this went pretty much great.  I was running at 9:00-9:30/mile and my slow roll through the aid stations was pulling my average pace down to around 10:00/mile.  My biggest concern at that stage was heat management, so I carried on with my snow-cone routine – ice in the hat, ice down my shorts at every aid station. 

 The second half (or, really, the last 14 miles or so) things went a little sideways.  The half marathon mark seemed to take forever to come along, and I felt like I’d never seen a less happy sight than the sign that said “Keep right to finish, keep straight for lap two.” My energy level was pretty good, but my quads really started to hurt, especially going down the sharp little underpasses – I spent about the last 7 miles just walking down all but the shallowest hills.  In order to keep my motivation level up I started noticing which runners I was passing repeatedly (mostly because I would take longer than them in the aid stations).  I made it my goal to try to get those guys dropped.  I don’t know any of their names, but the guy in the green Pearl Izumi tri kit, the guy with the Steelhead 70.3 gear, and that one doctor from Nevada (the only one I actually talked to…) really kept me going.  I finally dropped the PI guy somewhere around the 16 mile mark.  Steelhead’s run turned into the Ironman shuffle with about 10K to go and he fell to the rear, but the good doctor and I kept a running banter as we’d pass each other for about another 4 miles.  At about the 24 mile mark though he went by me as I was slowing to go down another hill and I couldn’t respond.  I have to admit that I felt a slight twinge of defeat at that instant.  I thought for sure I was going to be the stronger of us two.  Still, with less than 3K to go to the finish I was feeling like I was probably going to make it. 

As it turns out, the sign that said “Keep right to finish, keep straight for lap two” was only an unhappy sight once.  The second time around it meant 2/10ths mile to the finish, and that was a very happy thought.  I climbed the last steep little hill out of the park and out into a regular maelstrom of cheering.  I can’t say enough about the spectators who came out for this race.  From the small towns out on the Great Plains that clearly treated the race as a chance to have a town party, to the folks who thronged the park to yell encouragement at a stream of total strangers, to the amazing number of people lining the finishing chute to cheer home us middle-of-the-pack finishers, the people of Colorado seem to have really embraced this race.  I can’t remember feeling much happier than I was running down the last bit towards the finish line, high fiving all the kids who had their hands out.  In spite of all the worries I’d had, it turned out that really I’d had an almost completely perfect day. 

Run result: 4:38:46

76/371 division, 418/2041 men, 495/2765 overall

Turns out I’d run past about 7% of my division, 9% of all the men, and 8% of the total race.  I had gone into this thinking I could run 10:00/mile while secretly hoping I could get to 9:30.  My actual pace turned out to be 10:38, which is a hair disappointing, but I have to say I was happy with the effort that got me to that pace. 

Total race time

12:17:26

76/371 division, 418/2041 men, 495/2765 overall

The plan had been to get to the run at the 8:00 mark and then see where I landed after 26.2 miles.  My initial thought was that I’d be able to finish right around the 12:30 mark, with a worst case scenario of 13:00.  So, despite my faintly disappointing run and my rather lengthy transition times, I have to say I’m delighted to have finished at 12:17.  The things that surprised me the most were: how fast I was on the bike, how long the run felt, how quickly the second 1.2 miles of the swim went by, and, most surprising, how much I really enjoyed doing the race. It was hard, it hurt towards the end, but it really encapsulated the idea that you get out in enjoyment the work you put in in training.  It made all the hours of workouts worthwhile.

So, for next time (oh, crud, there’s going to be a next time…?):  I need to spend more time on the hills – both on the bike and when running, I need to practice Ironman transitions (full change) – I really shouldn’t be spending 22 minutes in the changing tents, and probably I should spend some time at Masters swim between now and the next round of IM training – no point in carrying on being a poor swimmer if I can help it.  If all that comes together and I can have another similarly perfect day, then maybe sub-12:00 is in sight.

Ironman Arizona Training update: Week 11

I ran half a mile yesterday, and it hurt.  A lot.  But I was happy to be able to do it.  It happened like this...

When last we visited I had just finished week 7 of my training program and was feeling pretty good about my level of fitness (notwithstanding certain challenges in getting in some of my longer workouts).

Week 8 was recovery week for Base 2 of the training program.  Backed off a bit on my distances (though not the intensity).  The highlight of the week was Saturday's 1:30/0:30 brick - got in 30 miles at 19.5 mph on the bike (time was 1:32) and just a hair over three and a third miles on the 30 minute run (an 8:45 pace).  Swam that evening, and got in a nice relaxed 7 miler Sunday morning to round out a very pleasant weekend of training.  Helping Peggy with her homework pushed my Sunday swim into Monday, but that turned out fine.  The only bad part was that I noted that I'd not recovered my speed in the pool.  I need to be more consistent in getting into the water and getting my work done.

Week 9 started out pretty nicely, up at 4:00 on Tuesday so I could get in 1:45 at high aerobic on the bike ahead of work.  Got 16.5 miles on the outbound leg of my out-and-back, feeling slightly annoyed at what felt like a pretty slow pace, but confident that I'd pick up my average pretty quickly.  Sure enough, after averaging a hair under 18 mph to the turn-around point, I was up to 24 mph almost instantly heading back to town and was keeping a pace fairly close to 30 mph as I tried to keep my heart-rate up in spite of riding downhill.  Then at 1:04:37, disaster struck.

Ugh, so slow.  Woohoo, getting better.  Oh, crap...

Just south of the traffic light in Farmington there is a gas station that always has crap hanging out into the bike lane.  Most of the time it's a flag that says "Open" or "Welcome Bikers" or some such.  But this year I've been successfully dodging a reflector pole that was bent down into the bike lane pretty much since the end of winter.  I don't know why, but on this day it snuck up on me.  I was lost in my head, humming along at about 28 mph, thinking about whether I could make it to the base of Rochester Hill in another 15 minutes, and came up on the hazard unexpectedly.  I did manage to swerve to avoid it, but I lost control of the bike and went down.

Looks a little defeated, doesn't it?

Happily, this time I hadn't crashed in the middle of nowhere with no one to see, and I had a nurse and a volunteer firefighter on top of me almost before I finished shedding strips of skin across the pavement.  They successfully kept me from getting up before the ambulance arrived, and the VFF very kindly offered to take my bike with him to work at the tire shop so that I didn't have to worry about it while I was at the emergency room.  I called Peggy to let her know I was being transported to the hospital from the back of the ambulance.  First time I'd ever been in an ambulance.  I'd be fine with it being my last.

Peggy met me at Frisbee where we spent most of the day being ignored by the ER staff (in fairness, probably in favor of people who needed more urgent care).  The upshot of a series of x-rays was that my thumb was NOT in fact broken as I suspected it might be, but that I did have displaced fractures of 4 ribs.  Happily the ribs weren't bent in so far that I needed surgery to keep them from puncturing something important, but unhappily it's made things very uncomfortable for the last three weeks.

Plus, you know, road rash...

The rest of week 9 was dedicated to figuring out how to get out of bed without moving my rib-cage at all (a comical looking maneuver that involves using my leg as a counterweight while rolling over to the opposite side and levering myself up from shoulder to elbow to hand).  Week 10 I did essentially nothing.  All week.  Well, I did get to do a lot of 2500 mL repeats on my incentive spirometer to stave off any potential pneumonia.  It...sucked.  But not as bad as week 9 since I was able to move around a little bit.  We went to Portsmouth for dinner on Friday night, but that turned out to be a mistake.  I shouldn't have been sitting up unsupported for that long, and I was definitely achy by the time we headed for home.

Incentive spirometer.  Turns out deep breathing is HARD

So, week 11.  Two weeks to the day after my crash I decided I should put the bike on the trainer and see how long I could ride.  Turns out the answer was a very discouraging 20 minutes.  My breathing felt OK, but my ribs became increasingly sore from the stress of my arms holding up my torso, and I eventually abandoned the ride in favor of allowing additional time for healing.

Nobody finds this impressive.  Not even a full episode of OITNB

Wednesday I stayed still all day.  Then on Thursday Peggy had the excellent idea of having me walk to at least get back to moving.  I put in 2.6 miles (and managed to run a couple hundred yards (ouch, fuck, too soon... )).  Friday I did the same walk, only without the trying-to-run part.  These two walks went a long way towards clearing the bruised feeling from my chest and lung.  Then Sunday I headed out for something over 3 miles.  After half a mile I was feeling pretty good and relatively pain-free, so I figured I'd try to run again.  I made it almost a half mile, down Rocky Hill Rd, past the farm, and up the steep steep hill to Otis.  But running up that hill made me breathe very deeply, which pulled at my ribs.  And running downhill on Otis started jarring at my side, so I stopped running and just kept it at a moderately fast walk (~16 minutes/mile).  I made it 3.5 miles averaging just over 15 minutes/mile when including that half mile of running.  Progress is good.

See that hump on the left?  That's actual running :)

Next week I'm hoping I can put in some actual time on the trainer, and maybe actually run a bit rather than just walking.  It feels like I'm going to be able to get back to tri-ing pretty soon, and I don't think that IMAZ is in jeopardy.  With 90 days to go until race day I have time to get my aerobic base back, and have a shot at a reasonably good race-day.  It's not going to be as fast as I was originally planning, but I'll assess where I am as I get closer to race day and formulate a plan to get me across the distance.

More to come...

Ironman training recap: week 7

Week 7? What happened to weeks 1-6??  We'll, here's what...

Week 1 of IMAZ training (24 weeks out from race day) was really the start of my taper into IM 70.3 Boulder. Which means week 2 was race week (which you can read about elsewhere).

Week 3 was recovery from Boulder. I pretty much laid low, not counting my long ride on that Saturday. I had intended for that to be a "triumphant" reentry into training, but managed to pull a spoke out of my rear wheel 5 miles from home. Happily it was on the home bound leg of the ride, so I got in a good workout, but 68 miles would have felt a bit better than the 63 I did.

Week 4 was recovery week for the first month of my training plan. It provided a nice *actual* reentry point for my training without being too overwhelming in terms of the work.  I did see a slight uptick in my average cycling speed as I was forced to ride my racing wheels.

Week 5 actually saw me average over 20 mph for nearly 30 miles on a flat ride.

20.2 mph over 29.5 miles, to be exact

The next day I got my new training wheels and I lost about a mile/hour on the bike.

Mavic Ksyrium Elite S - so pretty 

That Saturday I put in a 72 miler.  It was windy and I felt slow, but spent the time in the saddle and worked on my Ironman base.  The next day's run was a pretty thoroughly unpleasant 12 miles, but it did give me some confidence that I could run on tired legs.

Week 6 saw Summer really kicking in some unpleasant weather.  It was hot and muggy and pretty much gross.

Sweaty? Check. Gross? Check. Hot? Not so much

Peggy and I got out to Leigh's Mill Pond on Wednesday evening so I could put in an OWS, but I ejected after only 1 lap of the rock - the water is too warm for a full wet-suit.  The old 2XU sleeveless is going to have to make an appearance this year.  Saturday's brick was pretty nice, but hot on the run.  I backed off my running pace to try to keep my HR down, but still ended up working harder than I should have.

Probably the most notable thing about the first 6 weeks of IMAZ training was all the things that went wrong. Starting with the calf strain that killed my time in Boulder it's been pretty much a litany of ills. There have been the mechanicals:  I broke my wheel, ran into a road that was being repaved, broke my aero-bottle (well, to be fair, it committed suicide after I hit one too many bumps), used too much carbon compound on my base bar and ended up with a freely (vertically) rotating cockpit (which is bad...).

Pretty - right up until it collapses

There have been the environmentals:  wind, rain, heat, the goddamn humidity, hot water in the pond if you can believe it.  And there've been the behavioral:  too much booze, too much cheese, and not nearly enough swimming.

Did someone say "Drinking?"

If skipping swims were an Olympic sport I could probably medal in that.  Especially if you include cutting workouts short.  A friend pointed out that in Ironman training everything that can go wrong will.  So far that's been almost completely prophetic.  I need to get those things I can control under control, because the rest of it has been silly.

So, week 7 (this post is about week 7, right?):

Monday I decided I needed to get in the long base interval I was scheduled to put in on Sunday.  When I checked the workout it turned out to be a 1650 yard time trial.  So I hopped in the pool, warmed up and started flailing away trying to go fast.  "Trying" is pretty much right - turns out I'm a solid minute and a half slower over that distance than I was a the last time I did one of these a few months ago.  Note to self:  taking about 6 weeks off of regular workouts will not make you faster in the pool.

Tuesday was good (mostly).  I got in a 90 minute foundation ride before work, and not even the sticky humidity or left-over-rainstorm-damp grit that sprayed all over the bike can mess up the feeling from a solid workout to start the day.

Gritty bike, pre-hose

Tuesday evening Peggy and I went to the club for a swim.  Ended up there at the same time as the masters' class, so it was pretty rough, but it was a solid workout and felt pretty good.

Wednesday morning was a fartlek run.  A hair over 5 miles in 45 minutes, with solid effort but not sprinting through the uptempo bits.  Just about drowned in the humid air (yes, it's a theme...).  I thought I might hang out in the garage until I stopped sweating so I could avoid dripping all over the house.  After a few minutes of my sweat-rate increasing as my body slowed down I decided I'd just shower downstairs instead. That was a better idea.  Wednesday evening I was supposed to swim, but let Peggy talk me into going on Thursday evening instead.

Thursday morning was a 1:30/0:30 brick.  This is a fun combo for me - just long enough to be a good workout, but not so long I can't try a little on the run.  Spun my way up over Rochester Hill and out Route 11 on the outbound leg of the ride and was averaging a measly 17.7 mph at the turn-around.  Somehow managed to salvage a 19 mph average for the ride though, so the inbound leg must have been moderately fast.  The run was really good.  The relaxed ride set me up beautifully for the transition to running, and I was able to hold an 8:22 pace through 3.5 miles while keeping my heart rate in high Z2/low Z3.

Who's ready to go run off the bike?

Thursday evening's swim was going really well right up until the dying-foot-cramp hit.  Nothing chases me out of the water faster than that tendon at the bottom of the foot feeling like it's shriveling to half it's intended length.

Friday morning I did short hill repeats on the bike.  Twelve times up and down Otis Road is just exactly as interesting as you think it would be.  I think I need to find a better hill though - I was over 17 mph in the uphill segment on all 12 repeats, which means it was probably way too easy.

Did get the old heart rate to jump and dip though

Friday afternoon I skipped my swim workout to go buy a birthday gift for our granddaughter and go for dinner at Christopher's Third Street Grill.  Note: neither of these things REQUIRED that I skip my workout, so it's pretty much just end of the work week laziness.

Saturday was scheduled for a 4:15 long bike ride.  Since we were going to my step-son's for our granddaughter's birthday party we decided that we'd leave the house (ridiculously) early, drive out to Western MA, and I would do my ride in the middle of the day in the mountains.  This seemed like a good idea in theory.  As it turns out we had a blizzard of family drama on arrival in the Berkshires, and my 4:15 bike ride turned into a drive back home instead.  Pretty much a wasted day.  I figured that a recovery run after not riding didn't make a ton of sense, so I blew that off too.  Went to La Corona for Mexican and got in scads of cheese and tequila instead.  Not EXACTLY the day I had planned...

Given my very *relaxing* Saturday, I figured I'd be able to get in a strong run on Sunday (instead of the 2 hour death march that would have followed a 4:15 ride the day before). I decided I'd try to make up for my missed ride by running some extended hill climbs.  So I headed out through the road construction in downtown Somersworth and ran out to Rochester Hill Rd.  The eponymous hill is about 180 feet of climbing over 1.75 miles on each side, with a nice sharp kick right at the top to make you feel like you've put in some effort to make it over the summit.

Up and down, up and down

Getting to the top twice in succession on an out-and-back felt like a pretty solid running achievement. Plus, I finally made it back to 13.1 miles.  Solid 2 hour run.  After spending a good chunk of the rest of the day helping Peggy with her Financial Statement Analysis class I got started on dinner, thinking that I'd get things more or less ready to go and then go swim.  As it turns out I got things all the way ready to go and ate instead. This week's long base swim interval bleeds into the next week's rest day  (again...).

What did I learn this week?

1. I'm getting into pretty good aerobic shape.  I'm hitting a reasonable pace on the bike and on the run without having to work very hard.
2. Controlling those things under my control includes not getting lazy just because the end of the week rolls around. Go swim, then go pig out.
3. Mid-day workouts never work out.  Breakfast, workout, then...whatever, but trying to fit "whatever" in ahead of a workout almost always means I don't get it in.
4. Swim, then cook

Week 8 is recovery week.  A little recovery will be much appreciated.