A morning that was very much the result of weeks of visualization started, predictably, 45 minutes before my alarm went off. Having slept about 4.5 hours by the time I woke up at 2:45 to pee, my first logical thought of the day was “that was easy;” I think I’m getting the hang of this whole actually getting some sleep before big races thing.
The next hour and a half was the predictable slog of eating my two sweet potatoes, filling my Rudy Project bag’s bladder with water & NUUN, putting on sunscreen and getting dressed. I missed out on an offer from another racer to hitch a ride up to transition when I went down to pay for another day’s worth of parking, but I was not ready to head up yet, so I had to let her go. Besides that, I was looking forward to the walk. I paid, went back up to the room to grab my bags and flipped on my Ironman Louisville! playlist just as I left the Brown Hotel, bound for transition.
It was dark and pretty sleepy leaving the hotel, becoming less so as I got closer to The Great Lawn. The walk was a nice chance to let my mind wander into a blither place, but it took far more time to cover the distance than I had budgeted for it. In due time, I made it to my bike, slapped on my bottle of Infinit and started to pump up my tires. I’d never tried to pump up my rear tire with my new “crack pipe” adapter for a disc wheel, and quickly tired myself out trying to do so. I gave up and walked my bike over to the bike techs, who were inflating tires with pressurized air guns. That done, I had two more stops: bike-to-run transition bag to pour water in my energy powder and to the porto-potty line. By this time, my playlist is about to finish and my phone is blowing up with messages from various friends and family members wondering where the f*ck I am.
I meet up with Marian and Denise and we walk to swim start. It’s a sea of lemmings, everyone simply following the person in front of him, and still hours before sunrise. Denise shoots some video of the walk and I give minimal effort to entertain the camera, while trying to maintain a sense of tranquility that has yet to really leave me.
We arrive at Tumbleweed about 6:00am, agree on a location to drop my bags and lawn chair and part ways. I find my friend and fellow racer Jonathan and his wife waiting in line and park up next to them. The next hour consisted of uneventful conversation and more laughter than I expected, which in turn made the wait more bearable. Besides that, a bathroom break apiece ate up about half of that hour. In due time, we heard (largely out of context) a 5 minute warning air horn, a gunshot to start the pros, intermittent screaming and a percussive cannon to officially start the race. By then volunteers had amassed and were taking charge, encouraging all family members to step out of line and allow the athletes to tighten up.
Within 10 minutes, Jonathan and I approached the dock, high fived and selected our line. Quickly reaching the end of it and crossing over the timing mat, I punched my Garmin to record the official start of Ironman 2010 and dove into the murky waters of the Ohio.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Ironman Louisville: The Swim
After several dozen sessions in the pool in which it did not happen, I immediately upon entering the water felt river water shoot into my right goggle. I wrestle with it for the first few hundred yards before cutting my losses and trying to ignore it. I then concern myself with nailing down my form early and finding my pace. The water, though measured at 83 degrees race morning, is cool against my body and in no way warmer, murkier or less comfortable than local Percy Priest Lake and I soon start to wonder what all the fuss is about.
The swim is a combination of a single loop and a point-to-point. You swim roughly 1,200 meters out until you reach a turn buoy, at which point you turn about 330 degrees and swim the remainder of the course down stream back towards transition. I split the swim up as such: warm up until I reached open water (out of the channel), pick it up a notch against the current, lock into a smooth pace and try to find feet after the turn buoy. There are swimmers of all sorts occupying space in the water; unlike mass start swims, the swimmers are seeded randomly, which causes far more time for the swimmers to sort themselves out. Not as intense as a mass start, but I still don’t prefer it.
Exiting the channel and heading towards the turn buoy, I reminded myself to keep my arm cadence high and to swim “smooth.” It was easy work doing so and I found myself largely with plenty of room around me. I check my watch at the turn; though I don’t know how far out it was, I was happy to see that I had made the trip in 26 minutes.
Making the turn and heading back, I was disappointed to see that there was still no established hierarchy of swim talent, making it much more difficult to find someone to draft off of. The trade off was that I was flying past 90% of the field without much effort. Clearly, the only logical choice was to go harder and I picked it up to more of a half-ironman swim pace. I kept looking for feet to follow and soon came to the realization that the only swimmers worth drafting off of would be ones who passed me. This happened twice, both times I kicked up to their feet and both times I couldn’t hold their slipstreams for longer than 50-100 meters. I was more or less content to continue at my smooth but rapid pace as I saw the bridges in the distance. I knew going into the swim that there were 3 bridges I’d have to swim under between myself and the swim exit. The problem was that you can see all 3 bridges after about 500 meters from the turnaround. As one might imagine, actually getting to the bridges was a process that seemed to take far longer than it rightfully should have.
As I neared the second bridge, I started sighting to my left to try to identify how much further then swim exit was. For a moment, I deduced that we had passed the Great Lawn and were in the finish line chute. Unfortunately for your naive author, I was at the time crossing the Great Lawn and quickly running out of gas. Passing under the second bridge, drawing ever closer to the third and leaving Transition area behind me, I really started to suffer. My arms started to burn and threatened to detach themselves from my body. I began to have trouble controlling my breathing and maintaining my form. I really, really, really wanted to see that big inflatable “Swim Exit” sign, but I had simply miscalculated the swim course and was starting to pay the price. What’s more, my efforts towards a more impressive swim split started to slip away as I watched 1:00, 1:05 and 1:10 slip away. I figured I’d be between 1:10 and 1:15, though I had hoped to surprise myself. By the time 1:10 had slipped by, we had made the turn past the Lawn and I could now clearly see the swim exit. I plugged away with whatever strength I had left and soon saw volunteers shoulder-deep in the water helping people up the steps; with good reason too, those steps were treacherous. The volunteer who helped me find my footing was nice enough to unzip the back of my speed suit, which helped me a lot.
Estimated Swim Time: 1:10-1:15
Actual Swim Time: 1:14:11
I climb out of the water, punch my Garmin and see that my swim split was right around 1:14. I’ll take it; still way better than last year. I wasn’t sure if it recorded my lap key, so I punch it again to be sure, remove my cap and goggles, pull off the upper part of the suit and begin my jog to transition through a wall of screaming spectators. It’s all par for the Ironman course and I don’t pay it a lot of mind. Nearing transition I hear Denise screaming, but don’t see anybody I recognize. My right foot is a bit tender as I gave myself the smallest of blisters under my 2nd toe in the days before walking untold miles in my minimalist Vibram Five-Fingers, but I make quick work of grabbing my T1 bag and heading into the change tent to the chorus of cheering spectators and my Garmin wildly alerting me that my heart rate is out of control.
Inside the tent is pretty crowded, horribly humid and featured no volunteer help. Volunteers were there, some of them helping athletes dress, but nobody so much as looked at me as I struggled to slap on my biking gear. I instead made small talk with a guy next to me and continue to dress quickly. Finishing up, I hand my gear bag and wet clothes to a volunteer and jog out towards my bike. Grabbing it and approaching the mount line, I see Amy and her camera as I jog past. I go to punch my Garmin as I get on the bike and am confused to see it say “T2.” Apparently it did read my lap the first time, and had recorded my transition time as my bike split. I have to stop the multisport, erase the memory and start another bike/run multisport workout before I can get it going again. Sill, though, within 15 seconds of mounting, I press the start button and begin my ride.
T1: 5:18
The swim is a combination of a single loop and a point-to-point. You swim roughly 1,200 meters out until you reach a turn buoy, at which point you turn about 330 degrees and swim the remainder of the course down stream back towards transition. I split the swim up as such: warm up until I reached open water (out of the channel), pick it up a notch against the current, lock into a smooth pace and try to find feet after the turn buoy. There are swimmers of all sorts occupying space in the water; unlike mass start swims, the swimmers are seeded randomly, which causes far more time for the swimmers to sort themselves out. Not as intense as a mass start, but I still don’t prefer it.
Exiting the channel and heading towards the turn buoy, I reminded myself to keep my arm cadence high and to swim “smooth.” It was easy work doing so and I found myself largely with plenty of room around me. I check my watch at the turn; though I don’t know how far out it was, I was happy to see that I had made the trip in 26 minutes.
Making the turn and heading back, I was disappointed to see that there was still no established hierarchy of swim talent, making it much more difficult to find someone to draft off of. The trade off was that I was flying past 90% of the field without much effort. Clearly, the only logical choice was to go harder and I picked it up to more of a half-ironman swim pace. I kept looking for feet to follow and soon came to the realization that the only swimmers worth drafting off of would be ones who passed me. This happened twice, both times I kicked up to their feet and both times I couldn’t hold their slipstreams for longer than 50-100 meters. I was more or less content to continue at my smooth but rapid pace as I saw the bridges in the distance. I knew going into the swim that there were 3 bridges I’d have to swim under between myself and the swim exit. The problem was that you can see all 3 bridges after about 500 meters from the turnaround. As one might imagine, actually getting to the bridges was a process that seemed to take far longer than it rightfully should have.
As I neared the second bridge, I started sighting to my left to try to identify how much further then swim exit was. For a moment, I deduced that we had passed the Great Lawn and were in the finish line chute. Unfortunately for your naive author, I was at the time crossing the Great Lawn and quickly running out of gas. Passing under the second bridge, drawing ever closer to the third and leaving Transition area behind me, I really started to suffer. My arms started to burn and threatened to detach themselves from my body. I began to have trouble controlling my breathing and maintaining my form. I really, really, really wanted to see that big inflatable “Swim Exit” sign, but I had simply miscalculated the swim course and was starting to pay the price. What’s more, my efforts towards a more impressive swim split started to slip away as I watched 1:00, 1:05 and 1:10 slip away. I figured I’d be between 1:10 and 1:15, though I had hoped to surprise myself. By the time 1:10 had slipped by, we had made the turn past the Lawn and I could now clearly see the swim exit. I plugged away with whatever strength I had left and soon saw volunteers shoulder-deep in the water helping people up the steps; with good reason too, those steps were treacherous. The volunteer who helped me find my footing was nice enough to unzip the back of my speed suit, which helped me a lot.
Estimated Swim Time: 1:10-1:15
Actual Swim Time: 1:14:11
I climb out of the water, punch my Garmin and see that my swim split was right around 1:14. I’ll take it; still way better than last year. I wasn’t sure if it recorded my lap key, so I punch it again to be sure, remove my cap and goggles, pull off the upper part of the suit and begin my jog to transition through a wall of screaming spectators. It’s all par for the Ironman course and I don’t pay it a lot of mind. Nearing transition I hear Denise screaming, but don’t see anybody I recognize. My right foot is a bit tender as I gave myself the smallest of blisters under my 2nd toe in the days before walking untold miles in my minimalist Vibram Five-Fingers, but I make quick work of grabbing my T1 bag and heading into the change tent to the chorus of cheering spectators and my Garmin wildly alerting me that my heart rate is out of control.
Inside the tent is pretty crowded, horribly humid and featured no volunteer help. Volunteers were there, some of them helping athletes dress, but nobody so much as looked at me as I struggled to slap on my biking gear. I instead made small talk with a guy next to me and continue to dress quickly. Finishing up, I hand my gear bag and wet clothes to a volunteer and jog out towards my bike. Grabbing it and approaching the mount line, I see Amy and her camera as I jog past. I go to punch my Garmin as I get on the bike and am confused to see it say “T2.” Apparently it did read my lap the first time, and had recorded my transition time as my bike split. I have to stop the multisport, erase the memory and start another bike/run multisport workout before I can get it going again. Sill, though, within 15 seconds of mounting, I press the start button and begin my ride.
T1: 5:18
Ironman Louisville: The Bike
I could already tell that things weren’t going according to plan; I could hear some kind of rhythmic clicking sound coming from my bike. After some deduction, I was pretty convinced it was my bottom bracket, which I had pulled off to clean and replaced. Maybe I did it wrong; I’ll have to stop by Pro Cycling and ask Alex. Add to that, my chain was not nearly as clean as I thought it was earlier in the week and was slippery on the gears. Finally, I went into the race knowing that my chain stay rubbed against the drivetrain-side wall of my disc cover, and generally was left with the feeling that I may have caused more harm than good to my race-day well being by attempting to go all DIY in the months leading up to the race.
Quickly into the bike ride, cyclists began to fly past me. I knew going into the race that I planned to swim well and ride VERY conservatively, so I did my best to take that as a sign of a good swim and keep moving. The stretch along River Rd wasn’t really all that nice for very long. What was a flat became a false flat climb that seemed to have no end. I’ve made trips up to Louisville to ride the loops several times; I was quite familiar and almost comfortable with the loops. But, I had yet to ride the 20-some miles from transition to the out-and-back on 1694, and was quite unprepared for it. Aside from the aid station at mile 5, there wasn’t a whole lot to think about; just the bumpy road, a constant stream of riders screaming past me and fighting myself to take in lots of calories to make up for the glycogen-depleting swim.
Whereas in training, I had programmed my Garmin to show me my current speed, for the race I had programmed it to read average speed and I looked forward to seeing my average speed creep up over the back half of the race. Unfortunately, where in all my training rides I was between 16 and 17 mph, I was looking down at around a 14 mph average through the first 10 miles to 42, and I’m still climbing this godforsaken hill I didn’t even know existed. About mile 12 the gradual climb ended and the course became gently rolling, which gave me some time to enjoy a downhill at least. I kept eating, drinking and waiting for the next aid station. No aid station at mile 10. Nothing at 12. The turn off onto 1694 was around mile 18. Still nothing. I celebrate being on familiar roads once more, but I’m running out of fluids. 1694 is flat for two miles, has a one mile plummet into a valley and then a climb of untold length to the turnaround. No aid station before the descent. No aid station, in fact, until the turnaround point at mile 22.5. That’s pretty s#itty to me. I just can’t for the life of me figure out why it remains so logistically difficult to have aid stations within a predictable distance of each other. “Every 10 miles” should mean “every 10 miles,” not “11 aid stations scattered haphazardly over 112 miles.”
I was pretty excited with myself to reach the turnaround and head back towards the huge hill because it meant that between practice rides and the previous 20 miles, I had seen every part of the course. Thus began the theme of the day: the heat. The sun was out in full force at this point and began to radiate down upon me. I was pedaling along wondering how long it would be before I reached the point where my speed would start to increase, but that point never seemed to get here. I managed to keep my heart rate within acceptable zones cresting the 1694 hill, which is the biggest hill on course, and looked forward to seeing my cheering section on 393. I’m still being continually passed by people and am starting to realize that something is terribly wrong with either my bike or my body. I simply am unable to put any kind of power to the pedals; something crucial is simply missing today.
Turning onto 393 and transversing the mountainous rolling hills, I simply looked forward to finishing up those 4ish miles and seeing my cheering section at the Police Station around mile 40. Finally reaching them, I notice it’s much smaller than I expected: only Marian and Denise are there. Shaking my head in defeated frustration, I yell at them “it’s not my day. It’s REALLY not my day!” And it wasn’t, to say the least. Off of 393 and onto 146, I forget about the festival in La Grange until I’m right on top of it. I was already in a pretty poor state of mind going into this section and was pretty unable to take in all the energy, but I was pleasantly surprised just how many people showed. It was very uplifting to see that many people, and made that half mile or so much easier, but by that point my motivation was already quite sucked out. Motivation was sucked out at mile 45. Oh… Crap…
Eventually, I finally reached the one hill on 393, the mile long plateau and the descent just before the turn onto Ballard School Rd. I took the descent as an opportunity to stretch my back and neck and generally relax for a while. I knew going into it that there was little sense in hammering that downhill because there was a hard left turn at the bottom. I will now cease narrating every unique characteristic about the loops, but will repeat once more that for the remainder of the two looped sections, I knew the course, their hills, descents and turns like my own backyard. I gave myself one more stretch break on the last descent on Ballard School, before the turn onto Old Sligo. The best-advertised aid station was on Le Esprit Parkway, so I grabbed some more water and continued my nutrition and hydration protocols. I felt like I was getting enough calories and at least adequate amounts of fluid, but regulating body temperature became increasingly difficult to do. I started the practice of putting ice in my helmet to help cool my body. It worked for a time, but the contrast of being so hot to so cold didn’t do any favors to my comfort factor. Besides that, the rate at which the ice was melting was absurd. A two-handful scoop of ice, roughly 24 ounces, was gone in 10 minutes. Water from the melted ice cascaded over my face and cheeks as if I had put a bag of water with a hole in it on top of my head. The temperature heated up seemingly without end. I can’t even tell you at what point it became an issue because I didn’t notice it myself; it remains simply the only logical explanation of my perilously sub-par performance.
The stretch along 42 was long, hot and awful. It’s 10 miles long with nothing to see and no aid station. It’s a net downhill, but there is no noticeable descent. Most crushingly, I can feel myself crawling along at a pace not any faster than 14 miles per hour. I see my average speed slide closer to 13.5 and it finally hits me. I had put off this realization as long as I possibly could, but there WILL be no redemption here. My speed is not down because of a hard first section, this is just what I showed up with on race day. A little over halfway down the stretch of 42, I reach the 56th mile of the bike and see my time is right around 4 hours. This all but makes me sick to my stomach. The humiliation; the indescribable humiliation. How is this even possible? How can I possibly be so much slower than in training on the same roads, with better course support, on faster equipment, after fully resting and taking care of my body to the absolute letter? This defies all logic. It was at this point that I started to wonder if I’d be able to even finish this race. It was also when I swore I was not going to write that race report I promised everyone.
Finally reaching the turn onto 393 and starting the 2nd loop, I very quickly changed my mind about the day. I planned to turn in a 3 hour 2nd half, good for a 7 hour bike split and a chance to limp home with a chance at PRing the race with a good run. I suspected this plan was still pretty half baked, but I needed something to shoot for. I looked forward to seeing Denise and Marian at the police station on 393 again. The thought of that got me over the hills one last time. They were still there and telling me how good I looked; all I could think is “Lady, you have no idea what good looks like.” Off I go onto 146. Going through La Grange again, I see that things have thinned out quite a bit. There aren’t many people still out on course, and most spectators have headed back downtown for the run portion. To my surprise, I see my mom and dad out there cheering for me. I didn’t see them at all on the first loop and barely noticed them the 2nd time around. That was pretty disappointing.
This is pretty much where it stops. As much as I like the little details and as much as I think the specifics of the race are what allow them to stand out in my mind, the 2nd lap is simply covered in a fog. I just don’t remember much. Things started looking soft. I was starting to go a little bit insane out there. Not that it didn’t happen on the first loop, but more so on the second loop there were cyclists all over the road lying in the grass. Helmets off, bikes on the shoulders, lying in whatever shady area they could find. Police, ambulances and sag wagons were overworked cleaning up the mess. Each one I passed, I saw dreams crushed. Still, each one I passed made doing the same look more and more like a good idea.
I had run out of Infinit about 10 miles before Special Needs, so I took on a bottle of Ironman Perform for calories and salt. Eventually, Special Needs comes and goes and I start taking Infinit again. I continued to shovel ice into my helmet and keep going. I use the ice pack I put in my special needs bag until it’s not cold anymore. I throw it away at some point, but can’t remember where; I hope I didn’t litter. The aid station before Le Esprit (I can’t even remember where it was) had run out of water. I had my aero bottle mostly full of hot water and a little bit of extra hot water, so I kept going without grabbing anything. After climbing one of the hills on Old Sligo, I see this mass of cyclists stopping near some trucks. I panic for a moment thinking it was a time cutoff, but soon find out that there are people giving away water. They claim the aid station on Le Esprit had also run out of water, so I went ahead and filled up. The next aid station did, in fact, have water, but it wasn’t cold and hot water did me no good at that point. I grabbed a bottle of Perform simply because it was cold and headed towards 42.
Hwy 42 was something I looked forward to for a while. Before the race started, I was looking to get to the last turn onto 42, around mile 80, before I could start to complain about the bike. I wanted to ride comfortably in my aero position up until that point, then just tough it out over the last 30. Not to say my pacing strategy wasn’t shot to hell hours before then, but I still looked forward to being able to bitch about it. I split up the rest of the course into 3 parts: 10 miles to 393, 10 miles to River Rd and 10 miles of downhill/flat to transition. It was hot, it was boring, it sucked. There’s nothing to say about it. It sucked ass. I was broken. It was over for me. Just try to get off the bike without being DQ’d.
Lacking energy or motivation, I limped in over the last 30 miles promising myself I’d rest some in T2. All those people lying down on the side of the road looked entirely too damn tempting, so I promised myself I’d do it in the changing tent. Coming into T2, I saw my mom and dad snapping pictures and cheering. Any other time that would have been great, but, ya know, it just wasn’t helping right now.
I drop off my bike and walk in no particular hurry to my run bag and the men’s changing tent. There are, at this point, more volunteers than racers and I still couldn’t get anyone to as much as look at me. Not to say that the volunteers are bad, they’re amazing; but compared to my experience in Madison, I really expected a little more interaction. After a couple minutes of laying down, I slowly change clothes, slowly slip my run nutrition into my pockets, slowly use the bathroom, slowly notice I’m sunburned, slowly backtrack and get sunscreened up and slowly start to jog towards the run out. As I’m jogging, I see a CUTE girl, about my age, who passed me on the bike about two miles from transition. We exit transition on the run about the same time, but she can’t bring herself to run. She makes some comment about how she “wishes she could run like that” and I respond by saying “yeah, we’ll see how long this lasts…” I really hope she starts running soon just so I have something to look at, potentially someone to talk to. All the same, I see some familiar faces as I cross the timing mat and lap my Garmin to start the 26.2 mile boulevard of fire between me and my medal.
Estimated Bike Time: 6:00-6:45
Actual Bike Time: 8:29:24
T2: 10:37
*Note* I programmed my Garmin to automatically lap every 10 miles. Here are my splits:
Miles 0-10 39:26;
Miles 10-20 42:08;
Miles 20-30 46:45;
Miles 30-40 45:34;
Miles 40-50 44:08;
Miles 50-60 44:14;
Miles 60-70 47:40;
Miles 70-80 50:35;
Miles 80-90 50:13;
Miles 90-100 46:17;
Miles 100-110 46:23;
5:08 for the last mile and change
Quickly into the bike ride, cyclists began to fly past me. I knew going into the race that I planned to swim well and ride VERY conservatively, so I did my best to take that as a sign of a good swim and keep moving. The stretch along River Rd wasn’t really all that nice for very long. What was a flat became a false flat climb that seemed to have no end. I’ve made trips up to Louisville to ride the loops several times; I was quite familiar and almost comfortable with the loops. But, I had yet to ride the 20-some miles from transition to the out-and-back on 1694, and was quite unprepared for it. Aside from the aid station at mile 5, there wasn’t a whole lot to think about; just the bumpy road, a constant stream of riders screaming past me and fighting myself to take in lots of calories to make up for the glycogen-depleting swim.
Whereas in training, I had programmed my Garmin to show me my current speed, for the race I had programmed it to read average speed and I looked forward to seeing my average speed creep up over the back half of the race. Unfortunately, where in all my training rides I was between 16 and 17 mph, I was looking down at around a 14 mph average through the first 10 miles to 42, and I’m still climbing this godforsaken hill I didn’t even know existed. About mile 12 the gradual climb ended and the course became gently rolling, which gave me some time to enjoy a downhill at least. I kept eating, drinking and waiting for the next aid station. No aid station at mile 10. Nothing at 12. The turn off onto 1694 was around mile 18. Still nothing. I celebrate being on familiar roads once more, but I’m running out of fluids. 1694 is flat for two miles, has a one mile plummet into a valley and then a climb of untold length to the turnaround. No aid station before the descent. No aid station, in fact, until the turnaround point at mile 22.5. That’s pretty s#itty to me. I just can’t for the life of me figure out why it remains so logistically difficult to have aid stations within a predictable distance of each other. “Every 10 miles” should mean “every 10 miles,” not “11 aid stations scattered haphazardly over 112 miles.”
I was pretty excited with myself to reach the turnaround and head back towards the huge hill because it meant that between practice rides and the previous 20 miles, I had seen every part of the course. Thus began the theme of the day: the heat. The sun was out in full force at this point and began to radiate down upon me. I was pedaling along wondering how long it would be before I reached the point where my speed would start to increase, but that point never seemed to get here. I managed to keep my heart rate within acceptable zones cresting the 1694 hill, which is the biggest hill on course, and looked forward to seeing my cheering section on 393. I’m still being continually passed by people and am starting to realize that something is terribly wrong with either my bike or my body. I simply am unable to put any kind of power to the pedals; something crucial is simply missing today.
Turning onto 393 and transversing the mountainous rolling hills, I simply looked forward to finishing up those 4ish miles and seeing my cheering section at the Police Station around mile 40. Finally reaching them, I notice it’s much smaller than I expected: only Marian and Denise are there. Shaking my head in defeated frustration, I yell at them “it’s not my day. It’s REALLY not my day!” And it wasn’t, to say the least. Off of 393 and onto 146, I forget about the festival in La Grange until I’m right on top of it. I was already in a pretty poor state of mind going into this section and was pretty unable to take in all the energy, but I was pleasantly surprised just how many people showed. It was very uplifting to see that many people, and made that half mile or so much easier, but by that point my motivation was already quite sucked out. Motivation was sucked out at mile 45. Oh… Crap…
Eventually, I finally reached the one hill on 393, the mile long plateau and the descent just before the turn onto Ballard School Rd. I took the descent as an opportunity to stretch my back and neck and generally relax for a while. I knew going into it that there was little sense in hammering that downhill because there was a hard left turn at the bottom. I will now cease narrating every unique characteristic about the loops, but will repeat once more that for the remainder of the two looped sections, I knew the course, their hills, descents and turns like my own backyard. I gave myself one more stretch break on the last descent on Ballard School, before the turn onto Old Sligo. The best-advertised aid station was on Le Esprit Parkway, so I grabbed some more water and continued my nutrition and hydration protocols. I felt like I was getting enough calories and at least adequate amounts of fluid, but regulating body temperature became increasingly difficult to do. I started the practice of putting ice in my helmet to help cool my body. It worked for a time, but the contrast of being so hot to so cold didn’t do any favors to my comfort factor. Besides that, the rate at which the ice was melting was absurd. A two-handful scoop of ice, roughly 24 ounces, was gone in 10 minutes. Water from the melted ice cascaded over my face and cheeks as if I had put a bag of water with a hole in it on top of my head. The temperature heated up seemingly without end. I can’t even tell you at what point it became an issue because I didn’t notice it myself; it remains simply the only logical explanation of my perilously sub-par performance.
The stretch along 42 was long, hot and awful. It’s 10 miles long with nothing to see and no aid station. It’s a net downhill, but there is no noticeable descent. Most crushingly, I can feel myself crawling along at a pace not any faster than 14 miles per hour. I see my average speed slide closer to 13.5 and it finally hits me. I had put off this realization as long as I possibly could, but there WILL be no redemption here. My speed is not down because of a hard first section, this is just what I showed up with on race day. A little over halfway down the stretch of 42, I reach the 56th mile of the bike and see my time is right around 4 hours. This all but makes me sick to my stomach. The humiliation; the indescribable humiliation. How is this even possible? How can I possibly be so much slower than in training on the same roads, with better course support, on faster equipment, after fully resting and taking care of my body to the absolute letter? This defies all logic. It was at this point that I started to wonder if I’d be able to even finish this race. It was also when I swore I was not going to write that race report I promised everyone.
Finally reaching the turn onto 393 and starting the 2nd loop, I very quickly changed my mind about the day. I planned to turn in a 3 hour 2nd half, good for a 7 hour bike split and a chance to limp home with a chance at PRing the race with a good run. I suspected this plan was still pretty half baked, but I needed something to shoot for. I looked forward to seeing Denise and Marian at the police station on 393 again. The thought of that got me over the hills one last time. They were still there and telling me how good I looked; all I could think is “Lady, you have no idea what good looks like.” Off I go onto 146. Going through La Grange again, I see that things have thinned out quite a bit. There aren’t many people still out on course, and most spectators have headed back downtown for the run portion. To my surprise, I see my mom and dad out there cheering for me. I didn’t see them at all on the first loop and barely noticed them the 2nd time around. That was pretty disappointing.
This is pretty much where it stops. As much as I like the little details and as much as I think the specifics of the race are what allow them to stand out in my mind, the 2nd lap is simply covered in a fog. I just don’t remember much. Things started looking soft. I was starting to go a little bit insane out there. Not that it didn’t happen on the first loop, but more so on the second loop there were cyclists all over the road lying in the grass. Helmets off, bikes on the shoulders, lying in whatever shady area they could find. Police, ambulances and sag wagons were overworked cleaning up the mess. Each one I passed, I saw dreams crushed. Still, each one I passed made doing the same look more and more like a good idea.
I had run out of Infinit about 10 miles before Special Needs, so I took on a bottle of Ironman Perform for calories and salt. Eventually, Special Needs comes and goes and I start taking Infinit again. I continued to shovel ice into my helmet and keep going. I use the ice pack I put in my special needs bag until it’s not cold anymore. I throw it away at some point, but can’t remember where; I hope I didn’t litter. The aid station before Le Esprit (I can’t even remember where it was) had run out of water. I had my aero bottle mostly full of hot water and a little bit of extra hot water, so I kept going without grabbing anything. After climbing one of the hills on Old Sligo, I see this mass of cyclists stopping near some trucks. I panic for a moment thinking it was a time cutoff, but soon find out that there are people giving away water. They claim the aid station on Le Esprit had also run out of water, so I went ahead and filled up. The next aid station did, in fact, have water, but it wasn’t cold and hot water did me no good at that point. I grabbed a bottle of Perform simply because it was cold and headed towards 42.
Hwy 42 was something I looked forward to for a while. Before the race started, I was looking to get to the last turn onto 42, around mile 80, before I could start to complain about the bike. I wanted to ride comfortably in my aero position up until that point, then just tough it out over the last 30. Not to say my pacing strategy wasn’t shot to hell hours before then, but I still looked forward to being able to bitch about it. I split up the rest of the course into 3 parts: 10 miles to 393, 10 miles to River Rd and 10 miles of downhill/flat to transition. It was hot, it was boring, it sucked. There’s nothing to say about it. It sucked ass. I was broken. It was over for me. Just try to get off the bike without being DQ’d.
Lacking energy or motivation, I limped in over the last 30 miles promising myself I’d rest some in T2. All those people lying down on the side of the road looked entirely too damn tempting, so I promised myself I’d do it in the changing tent. Coming into T2, I saw my mom and dad snapping pictures and cheering. Any other time that would have been great, but, ya know, it just wasn’t helping right now.
I drop off my bike and walk in no particular hurry to my run bag and the men’s changing tent. There are, at this point, more volunteers than racers and I still couldn’t get anyone to as much as look at me. Not to say that the volunteers are bad, they’re amazing; but compared to my experience in Madison, I really expected a little more interaction. After a couple minutes of laying down, I slowly change clothes, slowly slip my run nutrition into my pockets, slowly use the bathroom, slowly notice I’m sunburned, slowly backtrack and get sunscreened up and slowly start to jog towards the run out. As I’m jogging, I see a CUTE girl, about my age, who passed me on the bike about two miles from transition. We exit transition on the run about the same time, but she can’t bring herself to run. She makes some comment about how she “wishes she could run like that” and I respond by saying “yeah, we’ll see how long this lasts…” I really hope she starts running soon just so I have something to look at, potentially someone to talk to. All the same, I see some familiar faces as I cross the timing mat and lap my Garmin to start the 26.2 mile boulevard of fire between me and my medal.
Estimated Bike Time: 6:00-6:45
Actual Bike Time: 8:29:24
T2: 10:37
*Note* I programmed my Garmin to automatically lap every 10 miles. Here are my splits:
Miles 0-10 39:26;
Miles 10-20 42:08;
Miles 20-30 46:45;
Miles 30-40 45:34;
Miles 40-50 44:08;
Miles 50-60 44:14;
Miles 60-70 47:40;
Miles 70-80 50:35;
Miles 80-90 50:13;
Miles 90-100 46:17;
Miles 100-110 46:23;
5:08 for the last mile and change
Ironman Louisville; The Run, Part I
As I cross the mats and start my run I see my parents again. I tell them to meet me at the end of the bridge; I’ve got an important message to give them, but am currently more interested in talking to a friend of mine I didn’t expect to see out there. Mike Phillips, who posts on the Tri-Talk Forums with me and who also ran the Memphis Marathon with me, was volunteering most of the day and jogged with me for a while giving me encouragement and advice. In 2008, he did Ironman Louisville as his first Ironman, and ended up pretty much exactly where I found myself: humiliated, beaten up and questioning whether I could finish by midnight. He said he “never thought he’d be a 16 hour guy” and neither did I, so I was quick to take his words to heart. He told me to walk the bridge, eat, drink and run whenever I could. So, that’s what I did.
I hit the 2nd St Bridge and started walking. I was ready to take Mike on his word and knew my body needed fluids, salts and ice, but it also set me up for my biggest shock of the day: I really started to feel good. Coming off the bike was just horrific and I doubted heavily whether I’d be able to make it by midnight. After a quarter mile of jogging, I received a gentle reminder from my body that running, in fact, is not my weakness anymore. I’ve actually gotten quite a bit stronger at it, so this day might not end up being such a waste after all. Reaching to top of the bridge, I got to the aid station, sucked down some Ironman Perform and slipped ice in my hat and wrists. Then I started running. The bridge wasn’t nearly as bad as I had envisioned it would be, and I quickly found myself at the turnaround near the Indiana state line. Heading back towards the aid station, I passed that girl I wished would hurry up and run with me, but she was still walking; damn. Reaching the aid station, I repeated what I had done prior, laying the foundation of an easily repeatable pattern for each aid station on course and jogged down the hill looking forward to seeing my parents again.
This was a pretty crucial part of the race for me. Seeing my parents at the end of the 2nd St Bridge would be the last time I saw them until mile 14. Over the mind-erasing last 30 miles of the bike, one of my few conscious thoughts was what I would say to my mom as I ran by. Thinking about it made me tear up and shake with chills. It was all too obvious to me by that point that I had found myself in survival mode once more, and that I needed to start asking for God’s help to get me through the day.
So, jogging down the bridge, I see my mom taking pictures. I run up to her and ask her for a favor. She says yes, so I deliver to her the speech I had rehearsed on the bike. I take off my glasses, bury my head in her shoulder and ask her to pray for me, because I can’t do this by myself anymore.
Leaving her, I headed towards 3rd St and the start of the two loop, out-and-back marathon section. Heading down 3rd towards the turnaround point 6 miles up the road, I really did feel great. At that time of day, the only runners that were on that part of the course were the sorry souls who just escaped the bike cutoff, like me, and were largely physically broken by that point. So, from the very start of the run to the very end of the run, with few exceptions, I was flying past the entire field. The first 3 mile flew past without me really noticing it. Before I knew it, I was popping my first gel at mile 4. I passed Denise somewhere in there; I’m sure she said something encouraging, but I was in the zone. I kept going, kept eating, kept drinking, kept icing, kept running 10 min/mis between aid stations, walking the stations and kept praying that this high would last as long as possible. It did last a while, much longer than I’ve heard from fellow racers. Still, as I knew fully well, it did pass, around mile 8, and dumped me into the most painful low of the day.
I knew from asking another athlete that the turnaround was right around mile marker 8/20, so I didn’t waste valuable energy worrying about where it was. Coinciding perfectly with reaching the turnaround, my legs very quickly became heavy, my smile very quickly inverted and my body very quickly reminded me that it has put up with a lot of my shit today and that I shouldn’t expect this run to be easy. The Ironman shuffle sets in. My running slows. I can no longer run all the way to the aid stations and start walking as soon as they get in sight. I remember a tip I heard on a podcast that if you’re ever in a race and find yourself “running” slower than 12 minute/mis, then you may as well be walking and conserving energy, rather than “jumping up and down, without really getting anywhere.” All to say, my pace dropped pretty considerably. My Garmin auto-lapped each mile and showed me my split, so I was able to watch my average pace per mile drop from 11:30 to 12:30 to 14:00 to quite a bit slower than that. Reality was setting in, in a very painful way.
Similar to the end of the bike, the trip back downtown on the first loop is a haze of pain and self-doubt. My only entertainment is seeing my pace drop off severely, seeing racers all around me walking, sitting, lying down, being carted off by ambulances and on gurneys. It’s chaos. All I know to look forward to is the Ford Motivational Mile and Special Needs bags, both somewhere around the 12 mile marker. In the interest of space, I’ll skip over the hour and a half it took me to backtrack towards downtown; sufficed to say it was all blood boiling on hot asphalt in the summer heat.
Reaching the Motivational Mile near mile 12/24 meant that I was very near downtown and the halfway point of the marathon. I run over the mat, but do not hear the customary beep of the computer reading my chip’s information. Sure enough, I look up on the screen and see no motivational message bearing my name. I’ll have to be satisfied with the half-naked cheerleaders in cowboy hats dancing about, pretending they’re having a great time. I can’t help but wonder how much money they get paid to do that? They’re out there about 10 hours and never really seem like they get tired. Surely they rotate out.
Anyway, off to downtown, still suffering. The sun is finally starting to set and I don’t have to put such a premium on make sure I grab ice at every aid station. So much for my goal of being a daylight finisher; that’ll have to wait until next year. How many times will I have to put this off until next year? The end of the loop and the start of the 2nd half of the run isn’t until after mile 14, so there’s a bit more trudging back downtown than I would have rather done. I pass mile 13, pop my 4th gel and finally get to the special needs bags. I grab my pepto tabs, some more salt pills, and a half a flask of heavily caffeinated gel, which should provide me with the rocket fuel I need to propel me to the finish line in a huge hurry if it comes to that. My body is tired and perilously oscillating between dehydrated and hyponatremic. For the most part, I’m able to tell the symptoms apart and fuel accordingly at the aid stations, and am very glad to pick up some more salt tabs as I’m about out. What’s more, I see spectators start getting thicker and the noise starting to grow louder. I quickly lost count of how many athletes told me that I was “almost there.” All I could do was weakly respond
“not really.”
“First lap?”
“Yeah…”
“Well keep at it.”
Turning onto 4th St and seeing the finish line is harder than I thought; harder than I could have imagined it would be. I want to be finished so badly. The last 6 miles had been complete agony, and I had no reason to think that the next 12 would be easier. Upon that discovery, I looked at my watch to see how my pacing was. My first 8 miles had been very fast, very smooth, but I hadn’t banked as much time as I was hoping. I did the first 14 miles in 3:15, and it was 8:30, meaning I had 3:30 to finish the 2nd lap. I knew I was over halfway done, but it wasn’t until that point when I was able to give myself credit for being halfway there.
So, here we are: dehydrated, body threatening cramping, totally exhausted, still 12 miles to go, half of which is the last 10k of a marathon at the end of an Ironman Triathlon; and now, on top of everything, I have to start thinking about RUNNING FASTER or I may not be allowed to finish.
I’m fighting back the tears of utter panic when I pass my mom and sister heading back onto Third St. “It’s gonna be close,” I whimper hopelessly. “It’s gonna be really, really close.” “We’ll be here…” they respond.
Oh, God, please don’t let this happen to me.
Mile 1: 12:39;
Mile 2: 11:21;
Mile 3: 11:24;
Mile 4: 11:40;
Mile 5: 11:20;
Mile 6: 11:57;
Mile 7: 11:26;
Mile 8: 12:21; (turnaround)
Mile 9: 12:33;
Mile 10: 12:40;
Mile 11: 14:27;
Mile 12: 14:08; (motivational mile)
Mile 13: 16:22;
Mile 14: 20:17; (downtown)
I hit the 2nd St Bridge and started walking. I was ready to take Mike on his word and knew my body needed fluids, salts and ice, but it also set me up for my biggest shock of the day: I really started to feel good. Coming off the bike was just horrific and I doubted heavily whether I’d be able to make it by midnight. After a quarter mile of jogging, I received a gentle reminder from my body that running, in fact, is not my weakness anymore. I’ve actually gotten quite a bit stronger at it, so this day might not end up being such a waste after all. Reaching to top of the bridge, I got to the aid station, sucked down some Ironman Perform and slipped ice in my hat and wrists. Then I started running. The bridge wasn’t nearly as bad as I had envisioned it would be, and I quickly found myself at the turnaround near the Indiana state line. Heading back towards the aid station, I passed that girl I wished would hurry up and run with me, but she was still walking; damn. Reaching the aid station, I repeated what I had done prior, laying the foundation of an easily repeatable pattern for each aid station on course and jogged down the hill looking forward to seeing my parents again.
This was a pretty crucial part of the race for me. Seeing my parents at the end of the 2nd St Bridge would be the last time I saw them until mile 14. Over the mind-erasing last 30 miles of the bike, one of my few conscious thoughts was what I would say to my mom as I ran by. Thinking about it made me tear up and shake with chills. It was all too obvious to me by that point that I had found myself in survival mode once more, and that I needed to start asking for God’s help to get me through the day.
So, jogging down the bridge, I see my mom taking pictures. I run up to her and ask her for a favor. She says yes, so I deliver to her the speech I had rehearsed on the bike. I take off my glasses, bury my head in her shoulder and ask her to pray for me, because I can’t do this by myself anymore.
Leaving her, I headed towards 3rd St and the start of the two loop, out-and-back marathon section. Heading down 3rd towards the turnaround point 6 miles up the road, I really did feel great. At that time of day, the only runners that were on that part of the course were the sorry souls who just escaped the bike cutoff, like me, and were largely physically broken by that point. So, from the very start of the run to the very end of the run, with few exceptions, I was flying past the entire field. The first 3 mile flew past without me really noticing it. Before I knew it, I was popping my first gel at mile 4. I passed Denise somewhere in there; I’m sure she said something encouraging, but I was in the zone. I kept going, kept eating, kept drinking, kept icing, kept running 10 min/mis between aid stations, walking the stations and kept praying that this high would last as long as possible. It did last a while, much longer than I’ve heard from fellow racers. Still, as I knew fully well, it did pass, around mile 8, and dumped me into the most painful low of the day.
I knew from asking another athlete that the turnaround was right around mile marker 8/20, so I didn’t waste valuable energy worrying about where it was. Coinciding perfectly with reaching the turnaround, my legs very quickly became heavy, my smile very quickly inverted and my body very quickly reminded me that it has put up with a lot of my shit today and that I shouldn’t expect this run to be easy. The Ironman shuffle sets in. My running slows. I can no longer run all the way to the aid stations and start walking as soon as they get in sight. I remember a tip I heard on a podcast that if you’re ever in a race and find yourself “running” slower than 12 minute/mis, then you may as well be walking and conserving energy, rather than “jumping up and down, without really getting anywhere.” All to say, my pace dropped pretty considerably. My Garmin auto-lapped each mile and showed me my split, so I was able to watch my average pace per mile drop from 11:30 to 12:30 to 14:00 to quite a bit slower than that. Reality was setting in, in a very painful way.
Similar to the end of the bike, the trip back downtown on the first loop is a haze of pain and self-doubt. My only entertainment is seeing my pace drop off severely, seeing racers all around me walking, sitting, lying down, being carted off by ambulances and on gurneys. It’s chaos. All I know to look forward to is the Ford Motivational Mile and Special Needs bags, both somewhere around the 12 mile marker. In the interest of space, I’ll skip over the hour and a half it took me to backtrack towards downtown; sufficed to say it was all blood boiling on hot asphalt in the summer heat.
Reaching the Motivational Mile near mile 12/24 meant that I was very near downtown and the halfway point of the marathon. I run over the mat, but do not hear the customary beep of the computer reading my chip’s information. Sure enough, I look up on the screen and see no motivational message bearing my name. I’ll have to be satisfied with the half-naked cheerleaders in cowboy hats dancing about, pretending they’re having a great time. I can’t help but wonder how much money they get paid to do that? They’re out there about 10 hours and never really seem like they get tired. Surely they rotate out.
Anyway, off to downtown, still suffering. The sun is finally starting to set and I don’t have to put such a premium on make sure I grab ice at every aid station. So much for my goal of being a daylight finisher; that’ll have to wait until next year. How many times will I have to put this off until next year? The end of the loop and the start of the 2nd half of the run isn’t until after mile 14, so there’s a bit more trudging back downtown than I would have rather done. I pass mile 13, pop my 4th gel and finally get to the special needs bags. I grab my pepto tabs, some more salt pills, and a half a flask of heavily caffeinated gel, which should provide me with the rocket fuel I need to propel me to the finish line in a huge hurry if it comes to that. My body is tired and perilously oscillating between dehydrated and hyponatremic. For the most part, I’m able to tell the symptoms apart and fuel accordingly at the aid stations, and am very glad to pick up some more salt tabs as I’m about out. What’s more, I see spectators start getting thicker and the noise starting to grow louder. I quickly lost count of how many athletes told me that I was “almost there.” All I could do was weakly respond
“not really.”
“First lap?”
“Yeah…”
“Well keep at it.”
Turning onto 4th St and seeing the finish line is harder than I thought; harder than I could have imagined it would be. I want to be finished so badly. The last 6 miles had been complete agony, and I had no reason to think that the next 12 would be easier. Upon that discovery, I looked at my watch to see how my pacing was. My first 8 miles had been very fast, very smooth, but I hadn’t banked as much time as I was hoping. I did the first 14 miles in 3:15, and it was 8:30, meaning I had 3:30 to finish the 2nd lap. I knew I was over halfway done, but it wasn’t until that point when I was able to give myself credit for being halfway there.
So, here we are: dehydrated, body threatening cramping, totally exhausted, still 12 miles to go, half of which is the last 10k of a marathon at the end of an Ironman Triathlon; and now, on top of everything, I have to start thinking about RUNNING FASTER or I may not be allowed to finish.
I’m fighting back the tears of utter panic when I pass my mom and sister heading back onto Third St. “It’s gonna be close,” I whimper hopelessly. “It’s gonna be really, really close.” “We’ll be here…” they respond.
Oh, God, please don’t let this happen to me.
Mile 1: 12:39;
Mile 2: 11:21;
Mile 3: 11:24;
Mile 4: 11:40;
Mile 5: 11:20;
Mile 6: 11:57;
Mile 7: 11:26;
Mile 8: 12:21; (turnaround)
Mile 9: 12:33;
Mile 10: 12:40;
Mile 11: 14:27;
Mile 12: 14:08; (motivational mile)
Mile 13: 16:22;
Mile 14: 20:17; (downtown)
Ironman Louisville: The Run, Part II
It would be pretty irresponsible of me to say that I felt “better” on the way out. The cramping was still there, I was no less tired or worried about my impending DQ, but making the turn and heading back out on lap 2 granted me a shift in focus. I was no longer forced to look at the finish, knowing how eternally far away from it I was. More importantly, I had a VERY clear objective: I had 1:45 to get to the turnaround and 1:45 to get back. It’s hard for me to calculate what kind of pace per mile that is, so I will myself to stop thinking about it until the turn. I, once again, took comfort in the straight and narrow path with little to look forward to.
The panic of being downtown was all it took. I had come too far to fail now. Heading back towards Churchill Downs, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Clearly, I had come out of whatever low I had been in prior and the only thing I could think about was banking as much time as I possibly could. By that point, night had fallen in Louisville. The approaching blackness made the stoplights shine brighter by contrast. As much as I looked forward to caffeine supplementation at mile 19, there was no reason not to put in heroic efforts now. Worse case scenario, it may be the difference between a medal and a sympathetic shoulder to cry on; best case scenario, it may take the pressure off the last 10k. So, off I went, picking off stoplights. I would run to one intersection and walk to the next. I could feel my body accelerate. I can feel my running pace speeding up. I can feel my walking pace speeding up. I can see my mile splits coming down again. 20 minutes; 15 minutes; 13 minutes; 12 minutes. I’m hauling ass down 3rd St as if I’m running away from all the demons of the turnaround, all my hopes and fears and self-doubt. And I’m making pretty good time.
The nausea sets in about a mile into it. It doesn’t slow me down so much, but it does start to make me worried. My New Year’s Resolution was pretty well publicized this year, and I want so badly to keep it: do an Ironman Triathlon without throwing up. I’m pretty confident the task would have been much easier had I finished 2 hours ago, rather than finding myself with 3 hours still left. Using past experience, I know that sometimes it’s best to just puke and get it over with, so I start to devise a plan. I can’t risk throwing up vital energy, so I make my plan to vomit as soon as I see the mile 16 aid station. Mile 16 is the location of my 5th gel, and final non-caffeinated one. It’s best to throw up before I take it to give myself every opportunity to keep that one down.
I reach the aid station and stop off in the porto-potty. I say a quick prayer and prepare myself. This is it: this is going to happen now or not at all. I take a deep breath, lurch back and… burp violently. So long, nausea; let’s get moving again.
I take my final gel, toss the flask, pound some water and keep going. I’m starting to lose track of the time here, things are becoming a blur. I remember reaching Denise and Marian again and telling them to go downtown for the finish. I remember turning onto Southern Pkwy and being really bummed out that there were no more stoplights to pace my efforts. I started picking out light poles, roughly every other pole, and doing the run/walk thing with them. All I think about is getting to the turnaround. I feel like I’m banking time here, but I won’t know until mile 20. I left downtown at 8:30, so I have to be at the turn by 10:15. I keep going, keep digging, fuel minimally to stave off dehydration, cramping and bonking.
Getting to mile 19, I know I’m almost there, but I’m excited to take my next gel. The gel flask I picked up in Special needs has two gels in it, mixed with 200mg of caffeine. This is my secret weapon, the last little bit of stimulation that will push me over the final 10k. I play Russian roulette with my nausea again, and win again, so I pop the gel. I hate the way the caffeine makes it taste, almost spicy, but I get it down. I feel it almost immediately. I fight off what must be a placebo effect and wait for the caffeine to hit my system. The buzz soon comes, but it’s hard to tell if it really makes me hurt less. What I do realize is that it seems to give me a headache, so I’m conflicted as to whether I want to take this last one. Stomach’s holding and I’m still moving; this is a good thing.
Finally, I can see what looks like the turn. They’ve handed me a glow stick by this point, though my first one didn’t have a connector piece. I had to shove the stick in my pocket for a mile before I could grab another one to put around my race belt. As I reach the 20 mile marker and near the turnaround, I see a man walk up to a volunteer. The volunteer, seeing the man, says “Hey, it’s the Grim Reaper! Didn’t expect to see you here so early!” I make the turn and look at my watch. I can’t get over the conversation I just heard. I recognize this guy immediately. As I pass him after making the turn, I say “I didn’t think I’d EVER see you on a race course.” He laughs, but I’m frightened and want nothing more than to be as far away from this guy as I can. This guy works for the WTC. Ironman has cutoff points. One such point is at the 20 mile marker. You have to be past the turnaround and heading back downtown by 10:30, or the “Grim Reaper” throws up his hands and informs you that your day is over.
But, I look at my watch. I gave myself until 10:15 to get to the turnaround. It’s not 10:30. It’s not 10:15. It’s not even 10:00. My watch reads 9:50. I had ran that 10k in 1:20, and had 2:10 to run the next 6 miles. I’m overcome with relief. To see myself now: when the pressure was on, my body came through. I can walk every inch of 6 miles in 2 hours with time to spare. This race was over. All that was left was the finish. I thank God for that and tell myself that I only have to eat and drink enough to avoid total system shutdown and this was in the bag. I’m so happy. I’m telling everyone I see: “we’ve got 2 hours. Two hours to run 6/7 miles (depending on which direction they’re going). We did it guys, we did it!” For a while, everyone seems happy. Soon they start to get annoyed, so I stop bringing it up. I do my best to soak up every moment of this last leg, trying to remember all of it forever.
I remember at some point I found Mike Phillips again. I tell him about what’s going on so far and he has little to say other than to marvel at how much time I’ve made up so far. I mention to him that I’m battling nausea that comes and goes and immediately remember that I brought pepto tabs for this very reason. FML. I immediately take out two of them and pop them in my mouth. There’s no aid station anywhere, and they quickly coat my teeth and the inside of my mouth. I can’t swallow them without any water. FML, X2. He tells me that I’m making great time and if I can keep any semblance of that pace up that I should stop worrying about finishing and do it already. He says he’ll meet me at the finish line; I can’t wait to see him again.
The high I’d been riding since mile 15 stuck around for a very, very long time. I ward off bad thoughts until about a mile after the turn. I start to notice all the people going the other way. With as much time as I had remaining to go 5 miles, they had as much time to go 7. When I reached mile 22 and had only 4 left, they still had 8, and far less time with which to complete it. I start to say silent prayers for them, those valiant souls who must know deep down they have no chance of making it. It all comes crashing home for me when I see a familiar face. Somewhere around mile 22, I see that good-looking girl I saw coming out of T2 and on the bridge; the one who wishes she had the strength to run and the one I was wishing would run with me a bit. I saw her walking on my side of the road, walking in the opposite direction… wearing street clothes… with no medal. She may as well have had DNF stamped on her forehead.
Oh God, oh crap, oh damn, oh no, oh SHIT, oh FUCK, oh GOD, oh SHIT, oh DAMN, OH… CRAP… This is real, man. This is TOO REAL FOR ME. I want OFF THIS RIDE RIGHT NOW, MAN! This is NOT FUN ANYMORE!!!
Not only that, I’m starting to bonk. And hard. Harder than I’ve ever bonked before. Being so concerned with cramping, I hadn’t been taking in much other than water. With the realization that I had plenty of time to reach the finish by midnight, I thought the caffeinated gel was more risk than it was worth, so I tossed it without taking the last one at mile 22. So roundabout mile 22, I completely run out of blood sugar. My glycogen is gone. I’ve got nothing left. About this time I start walking next to another racer and we start talking. She’s from New York, or Chicago or Oklahoma or somewhere, I don’t know. Not that I’m not trying to listen, but I’m SUFFERING! It’s just so uncomfortable. It’s like running when you’re tired; everything about your body is telling you to just slow down. Problem is, when you’re walking you can only slow down to not moving at all, which is not getting me any closer to the aid station and getting sugar in me. I walk with my new friend in absolute agony, allowing her company to tow my sorry ass to the mile 23 aid station. I’m bitching and complaining every step of the way, mind-bendingly impatient. She puts up with me partly because she likes the company and partly because she couldn’t go any faster if she wanted to. We are necessary evils to each other.
After what seems like a month, we reach the mile 23 aid station, and I bid her farewell. I know once I get calories in me, I’ll feel well enough to start running again, but I’m going to be damned if I’m going to miss this station. I grab a fistful of cola and drink it down. I grab some Ironman Perform and drink on that. I take a cup of water and a Powergel and park up next to some spectators. Quickly explaining my predicament, they invite me to sit with them and offer me a beer. Everyone’s a comedian… I sit there, finish off my Ironman Perform and go to work on my Powerbar gel. Those who know me personally know I absolutely loathe Powerbar gels, so it’s not unlike doing shots of hard liquor getting it down the hatch. One of the spectators is talking to me about how upset he is they changed the on-course drink to Ironman Perform. I’m not really paying attention. Just eat and leave. Just eat and leave. I cut him off saying that I have a race to finish and they bid me well.
With a renewed energy, I grab a banana piece and continue running my lamp posts. I’m backtracking to the Ford Motivational Mile, interested to see what it says this time. I get there to find it completely shut down. Talk about a freakin’ buzzkill. Talk about people giving up on you. Just when you think that every spectator, every volunteer, every police officer will be there alongside you no matter how long it takes, you get to the one part of the course that’s supposed to give you the MOTIVATION to finish and you see them rolling up tarps and packing their computer. So lame.
There’s nothing to look forward to between now and the finish. 3rd St is cloaked in darkness and few people remain. I looked forward to running the stoplights again, but being that 3rd St is a one-way street, all the stoplights faced the opposite direction; I could not see them until I was right on top of them. Getting past mile 24, I knew I was getting close. I was inspired. I did a lot more running than walking. My walking became almost nonexistent. I continued to run past people just happy to get to the finish. Passing mile 25, I see that I have 10 minutes until 11:00pm. I try to run the entire mile, but only make it about a quarter of the way before I decide it simply isn’t worth the effort. I try once more and stop one more time before unleashing the final kick.
One volunteer tells me I’m two turns away, which inspires me even though the same thing could have been said three miles ago. Someone else tells me I’m 4 blocks away. That’s enough for me; I start to run and vow not to stop again. I pass Broadway, and glance less than a block down to see my hotel; I’d be there soon enough. I continue to run toward the turn onto Chestnut. My right arm starts cramping at the inside of the elbow. I extend it and run with one arm bent, one arm hanging at my side. I keep going. My right calf begins to cramp pretty severely. I drop my right hip to take off the strain. I’m running like a stroke victim (no offense to a friend of mine whose wife is a stroke survivor) down 3rd St when I turn off of it for good. I turn onto 4th St just two blocks away from 4th St Live! and all I can see is the spotlight. I make my way closer and notice that I’m all by myself, which is the only way I’ll have it.
I enter the wall of spectators. I can feel the texture of something other than asphalt under my feet for the first time in 6 hours. And I hear it. Screaming. Nothing even close to sensible. And I see Mike Reilly standing in the chute, having come down from his booth to salute the late finishers. I pump my arms. I roar at the skies. I slap high fives, giving Mike Reilly one personally. Ten feet from the finish, I stop and violently pump my arms three times, fully taking in the moment and the accomplishment. Upon the third fist pump, my right calf locks up completely and I almost fall face first across the line. I catch myself, stand up for the photographers and give them what has to be the worst finish line expression I’ve ever had.
It takes all of about 5 seconds for Mike Phillips to find me. He’s quick to hurry off the other volunteer, telling her that we’re friends and that he wants the honor. After grabbing my medal, hat and picture, we meet up with my cheering section for the typical empty-headed conversation about what an incredible experience the finish was. Mike bids farewell saying he hopes next year he doesn’t know anybody racing so he doesn’t have to stay up so late! I silently hope he gets what he wants, and we all (sans Mike) head to the Convention Center for food and to retrieve my Morning Gear Bag.
Estimated Run Time: 4:30-5:30, though I admit this was no-man’s-land and didn’t know what to expect
Actual Run Time: 6:02:36
Mile 15: 14:48;
Mile 16: 14:49;
Mile 17: 13:18;
Mile 18: 12:29;
Mile 19: 12:55; (caffeinated gel)
Mile 20: 13:57; (turnaround, and see Grim Reaper)
Mile 21: 14:24;
Mile 22: 13:56;
Mile 23: 17:54; (bonking episode)
Mile 24: 17:25; (no Motivational mile)
Mile 25: 13:25;
Mile 26: 12:10;
12:27 for the last little bit, of course forgetting to stop the watch immediately upon finishing
Estimated Total Time: 12:30-13:30
Actual Total Time: 16:02:06
So what is my opinion of Ironman #2? I’d be lying if I said I had a strong one. There are great things to be said about parts of it, sure. But this whole experience was just one huge punch in the stomach for being such a cocky asshole all year. It totally caught me by surprise, and I simply hope I never have to experience something like this again. I’ve got a long way to go still.
I’m happy with my swim, happy with my run and thrilled at my ability to reach deep enough to get the job done when the need arose. Other than that, I really, really want this to never come up in conversation again.
I get another chance in 10 months. Lots to do… Lots to do….
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Waxing Philosophic - Pre Ironman Louisville
At the suggestion of my only follower, and for the benefit of myself for subsequent Ironmans, I wanted to take a minute to reflect on my thoughts, feelings and expectations going into my 2nd Ironman triathlon. This information was compiled in the time period of 6-4 weeks pre-Ironman and is in no particular order, except for my obvious attempts at segmentation.
The addition of speed work and weight training to my training plan drastically changed the way I trained for this Ironman and the way I feel leading up to it. I've been using a 36-week pen-and-paper training plan written by Ben Greenfield, a triathlon coach and jack-of-all-trades fitness buff in Spokane, Washington. I began his Triathlon Dominator plan the week of Christmas and raced 5 times, 4 of which I wrote race reports for on this blog. Without going into too much detail, I PR'd every single race, won 3rd place in my age group in 3 of them and demonstrated a much stronger swim and run over all distances.
The Triathlon Dominator plan is not my brainchild. I purchased the plan online and have asked Mr. Greenfield for his clarifications along the way. Out of respect, I do not want to delve very deep into the contents of the plan. I will, with his permission, write a full report after Louisville about my feelings on the effectiveness of the plan. For now, very generally, my training week looks like this:
Monday: Weights morning; Bike (CNS) afternoon
Tuesday: Swim (CNS) morning; Run (CNS) afternoon
Wednesday: Weights morning; Bike (Strength/Power) afternoon
Thursday: Run (Strength/Power)
Friday: off, though I find myself often doing a Swim (long)
Saturday: Run (long); Swim (long) if I didn't do it Friday
Sunday: Bike (long)
CNS workouts are drills that typically don't tire the body. Strength/Power workouts are typically either hills or track work. Long days are logically periodized based on the time of the year.
Despite enjoying a lot of success over the short course, my long bike rides and runs did not feel easier or appear to be any faster than last year. I feel like I have more endurance than I had last year, experiencing the same amount of pain but deferred until later in the runs. That said, the summer this year has been sweltering, hotter than typical summers in Tennessee. When I run early enough and can keep myself cool, I run strong, in control and finish the workouts feeling relatively fresh. When I allow the heat to overcome me, I've found myself in several awful death-marches approaching 14:30 minutes per mile. This will be key for me on race day: I have to keep myself cool no matter how hot it gets if I expect to race to my potential.
-Expectations for race day-
I'm going into this race in the best shape of my life. I feel very confident in saying so, and my results earlier in the year have definitively proven that. I'm faster over the short course, have more endurance and have a much better idea of what to expect in all stages of the race. Training in the summer heat was a horrific experience for a very long time (~6 weeks) before I really felt like I had made noticiable physiologic changes, but I now feel as if I truly am acclimated, which should play to my strengths relative to my age group compatriots from the midwest.
- I expect to swim very competitively in my age group and put in time on my two friends who are racing with me.
- The bike will be a veiled test of my patience.
I plan to keep my heart rate in control the entire bike.
I plan to never exceed my lactate threshold heart rate (163 bpm), even on the hills;
as a result, I fully expect to lose a lot of time on the steeper climbs, slowing down to under 8 mph in some spots.
I expect to get to Hwy 42 on the 2nd loop (~mile 85) before I entertain internal complaints about discomfort and the desire to get off the bike. If those voices start talking on the first loop, I'm in trouble.
- The run will be a further test of patience.
I expect to walk every aid station, but otherwise run the entire course, which would be a first.
I expect to keep my heart rate in control until mile 20 and
I expect to gradually increase my effort from there.
I expect to average around 11 min/mi during the first 20 and to run as fast as 8:30 min/mi over the final kick.
I further expect to cry again when I finish. :-/
- Goals-
1) Complete the Ironman
2) Complete the Ironman without vomiting (my New Year's Resolution)
3) Become a daylight finisher
4) Run the last 13.1 miles of the marathon in under 120% of the time of the first 13.1
In a lot of ways, this race was much harder to train for than Ironman Wisconsin. Ben's plan included a lot more intensity work, both short and medium workloads at maximum sustainable paces, and not much in the way of sit-on-your-ass-and-recover... y. It also includes a nutrition plan, which changed my diet and my life: since starting the plan, I've pursued and completed a rigorous certification in sports nutrition. But that's a discussion for another day; certainly not on my race report blog! :-D
All that to say, the plan I've been on is radically different than to which I am accustomed. You can sit behind a computer and read research all day long, but the only evidence the athlete knows is personal. How will this plan prepare me for the unique challenges of Ironman? I can't bring myself to trust my results from earlier in the year. It would stand to reason that doing speedwork would make you faster over courses where you have the endurance necessary to run the whole time. Setting a 5k PR was all well and good, but I've never ran a marathon; I've never gone 26.2 miles without taking unscheduled walk breaks. I'm not wholly confident I have the necessary endurance to do so in isolation, much less after a 2.4 mile tempo swim and a 112 mile tempo bike. It's difficult trusting a new methodology that involves less long runs and more quarter mile repeats at 5k pace.
-Opinions of Louisville's course-
There's really only one thing to mention here; it's the heat. The heat scares me. I went into this operating under the assumption that training in Tennessee, about 120 miles closer to the equator, would prepare me to handle the heat. The only thing it has done is put a very real fear in me. I know more so than the mid-westerners what kind of carnage to expect if the mercury decides to creep up into the mid 90s. It's not making things easier.
Not only the heat scares me on that run course. Let's face it: I went into Ironman Wisconsin a virgin. I knew it would hurt and my only goal was to survive. I'd never wanted anything in life more so than to see that damn finish line, and I'd go as far as I had the capability to go to get there. By the end of the 15.5 hours I spent out there, I had discovered more about myself than I could have imagined existed. I saw places in my soul that keep me awake at night. I saw my body so thoroughly stripped down that I was willing to quit with only 8 miles left. If I could put it into words, I'd write a book about it. All I know to say about it is that the things I saw that day made me realize that there must be a heaven, because there certainly exists a hell. The main difference between this race and the last one is now I know what it looks like. And every fiber of me dreads going back there.
-Thoughts on my body-
I remember the end of training for Wisconsin and how I felt. I wish I could remember it more vividly but I did a pretty good job of blocking it out, almost remiscent of a trauma patient. Still, I have to believe this year is worse. The weather's hotter and there's more of training with less rest. I have felt my body slip further and further into the depths of overreaching. The only thing worse than the depression, the handicap all that effort brings, is the knowledge that I have to continue digging before I can start to crawl out.
"Thuder Road" Bruce Springsteen
"You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" Bob Dylan
"At the Bottom" Brand New
"Sex on Fire" Kings of Leon
"Lookin' Out My Backdoor" Creedence Clearwater Revival
"Ramblin' Man" The Allman Brothers
"Wonderwall" Oasis
"Free Fallin' " Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
"Come Sail Away" Styx
"I Gotta Feelin' " The Black Eyed Peas
"Born to Run" Bruce Springsteen
"Brick By Boring Brick" Paramore
"The Melting Point of Wax" Thrice
"All Around Me" Flyleaf
Thunder Road starts it off. It's the song I've listened to the most during the huge volume time period 8-5 weeks out. It's very rich in imagery and promotes visualization. This will get me into a transcendental mood, to look into myself and begin to gather inner strength.
You Ain't Goin Nowhere is simply a fun song with fun lyrics. It's a bouncy song that will just make me happy. At the Bottom is a more emotional (emo) song that will prevent me from being "too" happy. Sex on Fire will channel those happy and nostalgic feelings into a more focused and race-applicable version.
The next 3 songs, Lookin Out My Backdoor, Ramblin' Man and Wonderwall all sound good and will keep the good feelings going. They do signal a shift in focus: this is when I begin to ready my bike and equipment. These are songs selected for their music rather than their lyrics, so at this point I stop looking inward and channeling strength and begin to get everything race-ready. I will not be paying much attention to the lyrics at this point, just enjoying the instrumentals.
I should finish prepping somewhere around Free Fallin'. This and Come Sail Away are escape songs. They will allow a few moments to take me completely out of my body, out of the stresses of race morning and be somewhere else for a little while.
I Gotta Feelin' is the first of a block of pump-up songs. The way I see it is that Ironman presents a hard morning, a hard mid-day, a hard afternoon and a hard evening. More often that not, however, they lead to very good nights, so in that sense the song fits. Although criticized for it's lack of originality lyrically, I speak from experience when I say the only thing you think about in the last 10 minutes pre-race is "let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, Let's Do It, Let's Do It, LET'S DO IT, LET'S DO IT, LET'S DO IT, GO GO GO GO!"
Born to Run represents the bike course. There are obvious parallels between motorcycle riders and road cyclists, and the song is about departing into the unknown at the risk of self-destruction. It's about breaking free of the bonds of fear and public opinion. The end of the song greatly parallels the end of the bike course:
"The highway's jammed with broken heros on a last chance powerdrive. Everybody's out on the road tonight, but there's no place left to hide." I fully plan to pass people over the last 30 miles, people who wanted to act like heros on the first lap and blow themselves up, having to embarrasingly drag themselves back to T2.
"Someday girl, I don't know when, we're gonna get to that place where we really wanna go and we'll walk in the sun" Ironman finish line chute, having finished before sunset
"But til then tramps like us, baby we were born to run. Ah, honey, tramps like us, baby we were born to run. C'mon Whitney, tramps like us, baby we were born to run." End of the bike, 26.2 miles away from "getting to that place where we really wanna go."
Brick By Boring Brick is the ultimate focus song. It's the climax of the playlist, just as Misery Business was the climax of last year's playlist. It's features very percussive instrumentals and powerful vocals. Though it's relatively weak lyrically (as applicable to the race), the song is about running away from comfortable alternate realities and embracing life, which can be painful but is ultimately more rewarding. This song will bring every bit of excitement to the surface. It's a forceful song anyway, but it will be heard one week after seeing them live at the Honda Civic Tour in Nashville.
The Melting Point of Wax and All Around Me are both return picks from last year's playlist. They take the last two spots more out of tradition than purpose. The Melting Point of Wax, beyond inspiring me to push through the pain in pursuit of a greater glory, will make me think of my celebratory tattoo post-race. Going into the race, I plan to tattoo the lyrics "I will touch the sun or I will die trying" onto my back. Those 10 words, moreso than any phrase I've ever heard, perfectly sums up my opinion on Ironman triathlon, my body and what I plan to do in my life.
All Around me is all about the finish line. The song, written as gospel, details an out of body experience with Almighty God, and the indescribable high it gives. The feeling you get at the finish line of an Ironman, in my opinion, proves the existence of God and Heaven. That kind of feeling, that level of accomplishment and totality, simply is not meant to be experienced by the vast majority of people. It's the realization of God's promise to make good on all His promises if you are willing to follow His plan and suffer untold trials, countless setbacks, emerging doubt, often anger and put up with the pain associated with anything worth having. And more so than any emotional high I've ever experienced, it's a feeling you've earned.
-Post race emotion-
I didn't think I would cry at the end of Ironman Louisville through most of training. Seeing as how I'd already finished on and already knew what to expect, I didn't feel it would really mean much to me. Once the huge volume started, I began to beat up my body so completely every week and I began to celebrate simply finishing each workout, it became very apparent that all the same emotions would be there. I'm pretty sure it will all come pouring out once more; hopefully not for as long this time.
There are always more things to put. Things will come up, things will become unimportant. I still have not run my 20 miler, and I still have a long swim and a 75 mile bike before I'll get to it. The race taper is just over the horizon, and I know the weeks and days leading up to the race may well give me entirely new things to worry about. I hope to well document the pre-race and have others help me document the actual race. The only promises I'll give is that there will be a race report to come out of this. When, how long and what level of content is dependent upon too many variables.
In the meantime, keep the comments coming.
You can follow me online on race day at ironmanlive.com; bib number 919.
Physical:
-Training-
The addition of speed work and weight training to my training plan drastically changed the way I trained for this Ironman and the way I feel leading up to it. I've been using a 36-week pen-and-paper training plan written by Ben Greenfield, a triathlon coach and jack-of-all-trades fitness buff in Spokane, Washington. I began his Triathlon Dominator plan the week of Christmas and raced 5 times, 4 of which I wrote race reports for on this blog. Without going into too much detail, I PR'd every single race, won 3rd place in my age group in 3 of them and demonstrated a much stronger swim and run over all distances.
The Triathlon Dominator plan is not my brainchild. I purchased the plan online and have asked Mr. Greenfield for his clarifications along the way. Out of respect, I do not want to delve very deep into the contents of the plan. I will, with his permission, write a full report after Louisville about my feelings on the effectiveness of the plan. For now, very generally, my training week looks like this:
Monday: Weights morning; Bike (CNS) afternoon
Tuesday: Swim (CNS) morning; Run (CNS) afternoon
Wednesday: Weights morning; Bike (Strength/Power) afternoon
Thursday: Run (Strength/Power)
Friday: off, though I find myself often doing a Swim (long)
Saturday: Run (long); Swim (long) if I didn't do it Friday
Sunday: Bike (long)
CNS workouts are drills that typically don't tire the body. Strength/Power workouts are typically either hills or track work. Long days are logically periodized based on the time of the year.
Despite enjoying a lot of success over the short course, my long bike rides and runs did not feel easier or appear to be any faster than last year. I feel like I have more endurance than I had last year, experiencing the same amount of pain but deferred until later in the runs. That said, the summer this year has been sweltering, hotter than typical summers in Tennessee. When I run early enough and can keep myself cool, I run strong, in control and finish the workouts feeling relatively fresh. When I allow the heat to overcome me, I've found myself in several awful death-marches approaching 14:30 minutes per mile. This will be key for me on race day: I have to keep myself cool no matter how hot it gets if I expect to race to my potential.
-Expectations for race day-
I'm going into this race in the best shape of my life. I feel very confident in saying so, and my results earlier in the year have definitively proven that. I'm faster over the short course, have more endurance and have a much better idea of what to expect in all stages of the race. Training in the summer heat was a horrific experience for a very long time (~6 weeks) before I really felt like I had made noticiable physiologic changes, but I now feel as if I truly am acclimated, which should play to my strengths relative to my age group compatriots from the midwest.
- I expect to swim very competitively in my age group and put in time on my two friends who are racing with me.
- The bike will be a veiled test of my patience.
I plan to keep my heart rate in control the entire bike.
I plan to never exceed my lactate threshold heart rate (163 bpm), even on the hills;
as a result, I fully expect to lose a lot of time on the steeper climbs, slowing down to under 8 mph in some spots.
I expect to get to Hwy 42 on the 2nd loop (~mile 85) before I entertain internal complaints about discomfort and the desire to get off the bike. If those voices start talking on the first loop, I'm in trouble.
- The run will be a further test of patience.
I expect to walk every aid station, but otherwise run the entire course, which would be a first.
I expect to keep my heart rate in control until mile 20 and
I expect to gradually increase my effort from there.
I expect to average around 11 min/mi during the first 20 and to run as fast as 8:30 min/mi over the final kick.
I further expect to cry again when I finish. :-/
- Goals-
1) Complete the Ironman
2) Complete the Ironman without vomiting (my New Year's Resolution)
3) Become a daylight finisher
4) Run the last 13.1 miles of the marathon in under 120% of the time of the first 13.1
Mental:
In a lot of ways, this race was much harder to train for than Ironman Wisconsin. Ben's plan included a lot more intensity work, both short and medium workloads at maximum sustainable paces, and not much in the way of sit-on-your-ass-and-recover... y. It also includes a nutrition plan, which changed my diet and my life: since starting the plan, I've pursued and completed a rigorous certification in sports nutrition. But that's a discussion for another day; certainly not on my race report blog! :-D
All that to say, the plan I've been on is radically different than to which I am accustomed. You can sit behind a computer and read research all day long, but the only evidence the athlete knows is personal. How will this plan prepare me for the unique challenges of Ironman? I can't bring myself to trust my results from earlier in the year. It would stand to reason that doing speedwork would make you faster over courses where you have the endurance necessary to run the whole time. Setting a 5k PR was all well and good, but I've never ran a marathon; I've never gone 26.2 miles without taking unscheduled walk breaks. I'm not wholly confident I have the necessary endurance to do so in isolation, much less after a 2.4 mile tempo swim and a 112 mile tempo bike. It's difficult trusting a new methodology that involves less long runs and more quarter mile repeats at 5k pace.
-Opinions of Louisville's course-
There's really only one thing to mention here; it's the heat. The heat scares me. I went into this operating under the assumption that training in Tennessee, about 120 miles closer to the equator, would prepare me to handle the heat. The only thing it has done is put a very real fear in me. I know more so than the mid-westerners what kind of carnage to expect if the mercury decides to creep up into the mid 90s. It's not making things easier.
Not only the heat scares me on that run course. Let's face it: I went into Ironman Wisconsin a virgin. I knew it would hurt and my only goal was to survive. I'd never wanted anything in life more so than to see that damn finish line, and I'd go as far as I had the capability to go to get there. By the end of the 15.5 hours I spent out there, I had discovered more about myself than I could have imagined existed. I saw places in my soul that keep me awake at night. I saw my body so thoroughly stripped down that I was willing to quit with only 8 miles left. If I could put it into words, I'd write a book about it. All I know to say about it is that the things I saw that day made me realize that there must be a heaven, because there certainly exists a hell. The main difference between this race and the last one is now I know what it looks like. And every fiber of me dreads going back there.
-Thoughts on my body-
I remember the end of training for Wisconsin and how I felt. I wish I could remember it more vividly but I did a pretty good job of blocking it out, almost remiscent of a trauma patient. Still, I have to believe this year is worse. The weather's hotter and there's more of training with less rest. I have felt my body slip further and further into the depths of overreaching. The only thing worse than the depression, the handicap all that effort brings, is the knowledge that I have to continue digging before I can start to crawl out.
Emotional
-Race Day Playlist-"Thuder Road" Bruce Springsteen
"You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" Bob Dylan
"At the Bottom" Brand New
"Sex on Fire" Kings of Leon
"Lookin' Out My Backdoor" Creedence Clearwater Revival
"Ramblin' Man" The Allman Brothers
"Wonderwall" Oasis
"Free Fallin' " Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
"Come Sail Away" Styx
"I Gotta Feelin' " The Black Eyed Peas
"Born to Run" Bruce Springsteen
"Brick By Boring Brick" Paramore
"The Melting Point of Wax" Thrice
"All Around Me" Flyleaf
Thunder Road starts it off. It's the song I've listened to the most during the huge volume time period 8-5 weeks out. It's very rich in imagery and promotes visualization. This will get me into a transcendental mood, to look into myself and begin to gather inner strength.
You Ain't Goin Nowhere is simply a fun song with fun lyrics. It's a bouncy song that will just make me happy. At the Bottom is a more emotional (emo) song that will prevent me from being "too" happy. Sex on Fire will channel those happy and nostalgic feelings into a more focused and race-applicable version.
The next 3 songs, Lookin Out My Backdoor, Ramblin' Man and Wonderwall all sound good and will keep the good feelings going. They do signal a shift in focus: this is when I begin to ready my bike and equipment. These are songs selected for their music rather than their lyrics, so at this point I stop looking inward and channeling strength and begin to get everything race-ready. I will not be paying much attention to the lyrics at this point, just enjoying the instrumentals.
I should finish prepping somewhere around Free Fallin'. This and Come Sail Away are escape songs. They will allow a few moments to take me completely out of my body, out of the stresses of race morning and be somewhere else for a little while.
I Gotta Feelin' is the first of a block of pump-up songs. The way I see it is that Ironman presents a hard morning, a hard mid-day, a hard afternoon and a hard evening. More often that not, however, they lead to very good nights, so in that sense the song fits. Although criticized for it's lack of originality lyrically, I speak from experience when I say the only thing you think about in the last 10 minutes pre-race is "let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, Let's Do It, Let's Do It, LET'S DO IT, LET'S DO IT, LET'S DO IT, GO GO GO GO!"
Born to Run represents the bike course. There are obvious parallels between motorcycle riders and road cyclists, and the song is about departing into the unknown at the risk of self-destruction. It's about breaking free of the bonds of fear and public opinion. The end of the song greatly parallels the end of the bike course:
"The highway's jammed with broken heros on a last chance powerdrive. Everybody's out on the road tonight, but there's no place left to hide." I fully plan to pass people over the last 30 miles, people who wanted to act like heros on the first lap and blow themselves up, having to embarrasingly drag themselves back to T2.
"Someday girl, I don't know when, we're gonna get to that place where we really wanna go and we'll walk in the sun" Ironman finish line chute, having finished before sunset
"But til then tramps like us, baby we were born to run. Ah, honey, tramps like us, baby we were born to run. C'mon Whitney, tramps like us, baby we were born to run." End of the bike, 26.2 miles away from "getting to that place where we really wanna go."
Brick By Boring Brick is the ultimate focus song. It's the climax of the playlist, just as Misery Business was the climax of last year's playlist. It's features very percussive instrumentals and powerful vocals. Though it's relatively weak lyrically (as applicable to the race), the song is about running away from comfortable alternate realities and embracing life, which can be painful but is ultimately more rewarding. This song will bring every bit of excitement to the surface. It's a forceful song anyway, but it will be heard one week after seeing them live at the Honda Civic Tour in Nashville.
The Melting Point of Wax and All Around Me are both return picks from last year's playlist. They take the last two spots more out of tradition than purpose. The Melting Point of Wax, beyond inspiring me to push through the pain in pursuit of a greater glory, will make me think of my celebratory tattoo post-race. Going into the race, I plan to tattoo the lyrics "I will touch the sun or I will die trying" onto my back. Those 10 words, moreso than any phrase I've ever heard, perfectly sums up my opinion on Ironman triathlon, my body and what I plan to do in my life.
All Around me is all about the finish line. The song, written as gospel, details an out of body experience with Almighty God, and the indescribable high it gives. The feeling you get at the finish line of an Ironman, in my opinion, proves the existence of God and Heaven. That kind of feeling, that level of accomplishment and totality, simply is not meant to be experienced by the vast majority of people. It's the realization of God's promise to make good on all His promises if you are willing to follow His plan and suffer untold trials, countless setbacks, emerging doubt, often anger and put up with the pain associated with anything worth having. And more so than any emotional high I've ever experienced, it's a feeling you've earned.
-Post race emotion-
I didn't think I would cry at the end of Ironman Louisville through most of training. Seeing as how I'd already finished on and already knew what to expect, I didn't feel it would really mean much to me. Once the huge volume started, I began to beat up my body so completely every week and I began to celebrate simply finishing each workout, it became very apparent that all the same emotions would be there. I'm pretty sure it will all come pouring out once more; hopefully not for as long this time.
There are always more things to put. Things will come up, things will become unimportant. I still have not run my 20 miler, and I still have a long swim and a 75 mile bike before I'll get to it. The race taper is just over the horizon, and I know the weeks and days leading up to the race may well give me entirely new things to worry about. I hope to well document the pre-race and have others help me document the actual race. The only promises I'll give is that there will be a race report to come out of this. When, how long and what level of content is dependent upon too many variables.
In the meantime, keep the comments coming.
You can follow me online on race day at ironmanlive.com; bib number 919.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Headfirst Performance Half Ironman
1.2 mi swim -> 56 mi bike -> 13.1 mi run
May 15, 2010
The day started at bit later, and a lot more stressed, than they typically do. I travelled with my buddy Johnathan to Taylorsville, Kentucky for this race, and our combined lack of planning and execution slowed things down a good bit. Having already seen the course and transition, we planned to get be out of our hotel at 6:30 and at race site at 7:00 when it opened. All told, we arrived at Taylorsville Lake around 7:20; 40 minutes before the gun.
I got a pretty decent warm up just frantically rushing through the pre-race necessities. Never getting truly worried I wouldn't have everything ready in time, it was a whirlwind of a half hour getting my race packet, setting up my transition area, putting on sunscreen, using the restroom twice, mixing and taking my energy drink and visualizing the day. Denise was there, of course, snapping pictures and looking more excited about the race than I was. I finished the tasks at hand about 10 minutes before race start, so I slapped on my wetsuit and headed down to the water for a warm up, albeit not much of one.
Having felt the water the day before, it almost felt a tad warmer, but still wonderful. The water was extremely high, flooding two parking spaces, a couple sidewalks and who knows what else that can typically be seen on the water's edge; promising a swim that would be longer than it should be. Over the course of my ~300m warm up, I noticed the sun rising in exactly the direction we would be swimming. Not knowing how much time I had left, I swam back to shore and just did some dynamic stretching to stay warm. The race director had a quick athlete meeting to discuss the course and the flow of transition and to answer the many questions racers had; the event website wasn't very forthcoming with pertinent information. He said the swim would be a mass start from the water's edge and that we would get started in 5 minutes. I continued to stretch, hop around and otherwise psych myself up for the day until I started to hear the countdown. I punched my watch with one minute left so I could have an accurate prediction of my swim time. One extremely long minute later, the siren wailed and I plunged into the water right at the front; where I'm now convinced I belong.
The start of the swim was pretty indicative of a mass start, with nothing but arms, legs and torsoes all around you. Punching, slapping, kicking and tugging abound, we sorted ourselves out in the most primal way we could. It took about 350m to get everything under control, at which point I found some feet to follow. I didn't think I would find anybody until the turnaround at 500m, so that was a good sign for me. With the sun in my eyes and swimmers still flanking me on all sides, it was very difficult to see how much further we had to swim. There wasn't much action on the first out pattern and I found the turnaround buoy in good time. I followed the pack around it, making the turn much tighter than my lead swimmer, and headed back down towards the dock.
The second 500 was the hardest one. I got pretty lazy on sighting and found myself drifting out into the middle of the lake a few times. The last time, on my second or third detour, I lost about 30m on the guy I was following. Wanting to catch him before the turn onto the second loop, I surged back towards the course. I maintained what I'd approximate to by my 100m TT speed (~1:25/100) for what seemed like 5 minutes pulling myself back in, just turning myself inside out to be back in a draft zone. I found myself behind some feet about 20m from the turn and vowed to not let that happen again.
Heading back out, I found myself sighting a lot more often. I leapfrogged my lead swimmer and grabbed onto a faster one; one I knew would I was stuck with for better or worse as the field was quite thin by now. Pulling myself and a swimmer next to me, the three of us took off down the familiar out stretch into the sun for our second and final lap. I had similar problems finding the turnaround buoy from a distance, but this time was able to sight when I was three buoys away. After making the turnaround, I found one last swimmer to carry me. Although this swimmer had a bigger kick that would make him much easier to follow, the guy was a pretty worthless pull because he kept swimming off course to the left. I found myself sticking close to the buoys and doing a lot of the work, waiting for him to find his way back. With about 100m left to the final turn, I dropped him and sprinted home, feeling like I'd had a good swim and interested to see my place overall in the discipline.
I'd seen the swim exit and knew exactly when to start dolphin diving and when to get out and start running, so I executed that well and headed up towards transition. Pulling my wetsuit halfway, I glanced at my watch and saw a very disappointing 41:XX on the display. I knew the swim was long, but how long exactly is just something we'll never know. Still, I felt like I'd had a good swim, that I was in a pretty good spot as far as swim time placement and that I had put myself in a good position to hold off some of the better bikers.
Swim time: 41:18 (2:04 per 100 yd, which is a crock of $#!+; 2/5 in AG, 47 sec back)
Transition was a tad slower than I'm used to, but after Rev 3, I didn't think it was a particularly good idea to roll without socks. Slapping them on and hopping on my bike, I shot out of transition not at all looking forward to the very hilly ride to come.
T1: 1:14
The bike didn't start out very well. In unVelcroing my left shoe, the Velcro strip came out of the hook and I had to stop completely to get that in place. Add to that the second steepest and most difficult climb of the day was at mile 0.1, spiking my heart rate and taking a lot out of what would be my average pace. Glancing at my watch, I was once again let down by the cheap Nike HRM I was loaned after the family dog chew my Garmin to pieces. Somehow water had seeped under the screen and fogged it up from the inside. If I stared at it for a second or two, I could make out my time (total time since the gun), but reading heart rate was impossible. Once again, I managed to find myself in the middle of an important race without access to heart rate data. I'm so f*cking glad I bought a new Garmin; the idea of having to do this for more races makes me want to hurt people.
After cresting the first big hill and catching my breath, I focused mostly on my other borrowed watch; Jonathan lent me his Garmin 301 as he had all the information he needed on his bike computer. It read everything (pace, distance, time) except heart rate, and it was a big help throughout the day. Turning off of Park Rd and onto Brair Ridge, I tried to stay aero and on the higher side of my aerobic threshold effort. Being a weak cyclist, it took about 40 miles to reach a point where people were no longer flying past me. I'd hoped to find some of them later on the run, but for the time being it's best to just race my race and shoot for the best overall time rather than trying to go with any packs. Not that I could if I wanted to...
Having driven the course once and the back half twice, I knew I could expect, for the most part, zero flat road and constant changes in pitch. Nothing in and of itself was particularly difficult, but the sum of the parts would be more than enough to steal a piece of my soul. I could remember the more notable climbs and their various landmarks, but didn't have much of a grasp on when they would arrive. I tried my best to chip away at the miles and wondered how long it would take Jonathan to catch me. I had guess 10 miles, but the pass was made about mile 12. He hanged back for a minute to chat about how long the swim was and share collective frustrations about the start of the bike before he rocketed off out of sight. I knew I had the first water station and the turn onto the out and back hill at mile 20, so I kept going and thought about that.
The turn off came a little later than expected, about mile 22, and I'd hoped that it didn't mean the bike course was going to be long as well. After heading down the 3 miles of steady grade and the one mile climb to the turnaround, I found myself having to pee pretty bad. The descent down the hill I just climbed was far too fast and dangerous to try it, but I gave it my best shot on the climb back up to Brair Ridge. I succeeded for a moment, emptying about half of my bladder before I had to start pedaling again, lest I find myself stopped and falling to the side. I hosed my leg off with water and eagerly plugged away at the next aid station in the same place as the last one, but 8 more miles into the ride; not only that, but the station sat at the halfway point on the bike. Splitting my time, I noticed I'd brought my speed up 1 mph over the last 10 miles. This was a good thing, no doubt, but only the difference between 15 and 16 mph, either way promising a pretty disappointing bike split.
There just wasn't many fun parts of the bike. It was constant up and down, open to traffic and extremely lonely, not to mention parts of it were very rough. There were two glaring exceptions to the following generality: turning right onto 55 in Bloomfield and turning onto 44 after going through Taylorsville. Other that those, the course was just monotonous, beautiful at points, but painfully boring. As far as I'm concerned, that sums up the bike pretty well. I was very ready to finish it around the long climb at mile 40 and had to exude some good ole' fashioned HTFU to slap out the remaining 16 miles.
My speed had increased quite a bit over the second half, but I accidentally split the time again, so I'm not really sure how much faster I ended up, if at all. I took in my second round of Delta-E at mile 45 and finished off my Infinit at mile 50. Looking for the final turn back onto Park Rd after mile 50, I was surprised to see it come a bit earlier than expected at mile 52. As soon as I turned, I saw Jonathan halfway through his first loop on the run and figured he had a pretty good bike. I shot down Park Rd knowing this ride was almost over and that I would finally begin the most anticipated discipline very, very soon. I knew better than to fly down the huge downhill leading into transition and very smoothly dismounted to a wave of self-satisfaction that I had finished the mentally and physically painful bike with a decent time.
Bike time: 3:18:30 (16.9 mph; 4/5)
Transition, again, was a tad slower than it would have been in short course. My shoes, visor and race belt went on well enough, but I stopped at the porto potties to let go of what refused to leave my bladder during the bike. Finishing that, I redressed, slipped my EFS flask into my pocket and crossed the timing mat, taking care to punch the start button on Jonathan's Garmin to give me a very accurate run split time once this all was finished.
T2: 1:20
I knew two horribly unwanted about the run course right out of the gate:
1) the same huge hill at mile 0.1 of the bike also served as the first part of the run
2) the run course was a three-loop out-and-back course along the first, and last, 2.5 miles of the bike course.
If it served as any consolation at the time, I knew two things that would work to my advantage when this was all said and done:
1) the very familiar huge hill would serve as a great springboard for a final kick should I need it. A great thing for me as I typically can out kick the pants off of guys who finish around the same time as me.
2) the boring, exposed and mentally draining run would be an extremely valuable simulation of Ironman Louisville's run course, which is a two loop out-and-back marathon course that gets very dull towards the end.
My heart rate does not spike as much as I thought it would have, nor as much as it did the day before when we checked it out on foot. As soon as I got to the top, I saw the first aid station and took notice of my distance: .5 miles. Good, a nice round number. As it turned out, Denise got wrangled into working the first aid station, so I grabbed a cup and some warm words and I set out on my predetermined pace. My strategy for the run was to hold aerobic threshold (roughly marathon pace) for the first 7 miles, bump it up to lactate threshold (roughly 10k pace) until mile 10 and then sprint just as hard as a damn well could over the last 5k. Hard to say at this point if my legs would hold, my GI tract wouldn't close up shop an hour too early or my mind would feel so inspired to crack the whip. Guess I'll have to wait and see. If you do long course racing long enough you become, at least in some aspects, a very patient person.
The three loop out-and-back course had three aid stations, one on each side of the 2 mile loops and an impromptu one sandwiched pretty close to the midpoint. So over the course of the run, you would encounter an aid station every mile at the half mile marker. Said another way, I could expect to get water at mile .5, 1.5 and 2.5 before I turned around and did that stretch another 5 times. My nutrition plan was to shoot a serving of gel, about 75 calories worth, at every turnaround, taking in my last hit at mile 10.5. So long as I got enough water in, I figured I'd be fine on both calories and salts. However, it was another aspect of my nutrition that seemed to be quite the bother for the first loop: I had popped a pair of Delta-E packets with 10 miles to go on the bike. It's not that it made me feel bad, it was just that it made me really gassy. Over the first loop, I probably stopped and forced a burp about 8 times. Not painful, but frustrating. I'll definitely need to look into that.
I didn't spend much time on the course before Jonathan caught me on his second lap. We talked a bit as he jogged past me, not much faster than I but faster than I wanted to go. I was happy to trot along and take in as many landmarks as I could. I had programmed the Garmin to split every mile, so I would be able to see how much my pace would fall off over the course of the day. My first mile (including the beastly climb) was just off 10:00. My second was 9:15. From there, I saw it slowly slide from the low 9s to the mid 10s over the course of my loops. I was feeling alright, body was responding well enough, but there wasn't a lot to do about it as long as I was holding myself back.
Getting to the turnaround at mile 2.5 was a nice feeling, because it meant I had seen every inch of the course and would be assured no more surprises. There were a few hills on the loops, but nothing that really required any additional effort or a change to my rhythm. I kept plugging along and increasingly noticed that it was getting pretty hot out there. The high for the day wasn't supposed to get past the mid 70s, but I think it got closer to 80. More importantly, the course was in one word: exposed. There wasn't a foot of shade to be seen from the road, not a grandpa with a garden hose nor a kid with a super soaker. I unzipped my tri suit all the way down, which helped considerably. Although it's never particularly reliable, Smyrna weather has forced me to do a handful of runs in very hot conditions, so I figured it would give me an advantage so long as it didn't push me straight over the edge.
I wasn't the only person who was hot. The way the course was laid out made it pretty difficult for runners to hide from each other, and I saw a lot of people with broken spirits. There was carnage everywhere, even on the first loop; people walking, people cramping, people double fisting water onto their head and chest. This weather should be pretty indicative of Louisville's weather, so it's best to try to figure out how best to deal with it. I kept at my pace, slowing though it may be, and kept things under control.
Seeing Denise at the turnaround to start my 2nd lap, I told her that I'd only want water over the course of the day to save me the conversation. Told her I was feeling "good so far," and that if I had to ask for HEED, that it was because I was cramping. We both expressed our hopes that it wouldn't happen and I took off on loop number two. I tried to take notice of the people on course, specifically ones in my age group. I recognized two guys that were probably in my age group, but were both ahead of me considerably; though one of whom was doing more walking than running. I file that information in a folder entitled "things to think about on the 3rd lap" and got back to business. I notice several other runners along the course, but only talk to a few. On that course, people are about the only thing to look at. Reaching the mile 5.5 aid station, I expressed my deep gratitude that the station existed; originally the course only had the two. Drinking my water and leaving the station, I knew that the next time I saw it (mile 7.5), it would be time to kick up the intensity a little; something I didn't know whether I should look forward to.
Seeing Jonathan for the last time as I headed out towards the halfway point was an interesting experience. Not solely because it's always good to see a friendly face on course, but I could see a noticeable change in his demeanor as the sun and the miles slowly ate away at him. Plugging away at the last 2.5 miles he had, he wasn't left with much other than to wave weakly; I would know that feeling soon enough. Turning the corner and heading back, I celebrated being exactly halfway through the course. One mile later, I knew it was time to go. I don't think I picked up my pace all that much. I couldn't read my heart rate, so I had to go by feel, and "feel" is an extremely subjective thing that late in a race. I saw my mile splits pick up slowly, but really just oscillated back towards the 10 min/mi mark. The end of the 2nd loop was the hardest mentally and the time when my mind spent the most of its time out of body.
Approaching Denise's aid station once more, I dropped off some useless equipment. If my watch wasn't going to give me heart rate, there wasn't much sense in wearing the watch or the chest strap. I dropped them off, drank some water and made some offhand remark to the effect of "this is gonna hurt" as I took off at a faster speed than I'd allowed myself to go to that point. Getting closer to being thoroughly overheated, I completely peeled off the top of my tri suit and ran shirtless; which actually helped a lot in my cooling mechanisms (but not much in the way of evening my tan).
Still feeling relatively together, adequately hydrated, fueled and mentally ready for more intensity, I started looking for my AG compatriot heading the opposite direction to finish up his 3rd and final loop. I knew the sooner I saw him the less chance I had of catching him. I stared down each figure round each corner in a panic until I was able to rule them out as the wrong person. I knew that once I hit the last turn, I'd pop my last gel shot and turn the heat up all the way for the last 2.5 miles. I managed to make it to the middle aid station without seeing him. My watch beeped at mile 11 and I still did not see him. Winding round and round, seeing dozens of runners too tall, too female or too different a stride, I continued my search. I felt relatively certain I didn't miss him and that he hadn't already finished. As I neared the last bend before the turnaround, I saw and passed him going the other way. I checked my watch to try to gauge how much time I had to put on him. I rounded the turnaround, shot some gel and water, and estimated I had 2.5 miles to make up 3:30 on him. Guess it was time to go. And when I say go, I mean GO!!!
My pace shot down to 8:30 and didn't fluctuate much from that other than on the slight hills I had remaining. I counted 7 or 8 people between him and I, and started counting people as I passed. Most of those still on course were pretty well broken down and I was flying, so the passes were quick and aplenty. 3 people go by. 5 people. I reach the aid station at mile 11.5. Pass 3 more people. Come up on another group. Mile 12. Where is he? Where IS he? And then I see him off in the distance. He's not going very fast. "If you see him, you can catch him." I cut into myself. I see nothing else. I slip my tri suit top back on and zip it up in preparation of the finish. We near the last bend before Denise's aid station. I'm gaining ground very quickly. I am Craig Alexander and he is Chris Lieto. In keeping with that analogy, he stops, walks and hangs his head. Oh, yeah. I've got him. The pass is coming; it's all a matter of whether he's going to try to come with me. I fly past him. I glance back. He's running again. But the gap is opening. It's opening...
I shoot up the road towards Denise. For the first time she doesn't have a cup ready, and for the first time I'm not in a position to wait on her. I fish out my gel flask and drop it at her feet. She smiles and makes some meaningless encouraging comment. I cut her off with a frantic "I think I have have him." "Huh?" I fly past her as fast as my legs will carry me, grab a cup of HEED on the table, and leave behind nothing but the words "THE GUY RIGHT BEHIND ME IS IN MY AGE GROUP!!!"
I hit the final downhill, open up my stride and pound away. I'm glancing back every 5 steps and see my self-declared rival still running, but slipping further and further away. He's passed by another guy trying to reel me in, but not only is he not going to catch me, he's easily identified as too old for me to care how fast he finishes. Rounding the last bend towards the finish stretch, I take one last glance behind me, pound me chest with my fist and head into the chute. I notice my time: 6:13:03. A PR!!! A ten second PR!!!
Run time: 2:10:38 (9:58/mi; 3/5)
Total time: 6:13:01.5 (an 11.5 sec PR; 3rd out of 5 in the male 25-29 age group, and what SHOULD have been an award!)
I give away my chip as Jonathan jogs up to me. I fill him in on the end of my run, my internal struggle to reel in the 23 year old, and my general good attitude towards the day. I get distracted several times, but eventually find myself headed down towards somewhere I wanted to go for the last 13 miles, the lake. I plunge into the cool water and struggle to breath for a little while. I allow my core temperature to drop down, wash my face and hair of all the sweat and enjoy being finished.
We eventually run into the race director and are informed that they are not going to post results anywhere, that they'd "be online soon." Add that to his comment that because "we're all winners" and that we all got "prizes" (a choice between a pull string bag and something even more worthless) they were not going to give away the awards they claimed on their website they would give away. No awards means no awards ceremony, which means I've got no reason to stick around. Changing clothes and packing the car takes a moderate slice of forever, but Jonathan and I eventually get everything ready to go, talk to every racer I cared to talk to, and mount up bound for Louisville. As far as I'm concerned the perfect way to end this day, a day that's little more than the best predictor for Ironman Louisville I could hope for, is to spend it looking at Ironman Louisville's swim, run, transition and first 20 miles of the bike.
I think I had a pretty good showing today. Despite a long swim, a hilly bike and a hot and mentally tough run, I managed to best my showing at last year's flat as an A-cup 70.3 New Orleans. I knew my fitness was better than last year, and find myself very happy that I finished 10 seconds on the negative side of last year's time, as compared to an equally possible finish on the positive. Being finished is a bittersweet feeling. I'm glad to be done with my early season A-race. I'm glad to have 6 months of training in the books, and to have already enjoyed huge fitness gains. I'm glad to be able to relax for a week and eat the foods I've been denying myself. The bitter brings to mind the realization of how much work is yet to come. How much July is going to hurt. How much Louisville is going to hurt. I'm certainly in no mood to want to race for a while. Thinking about the back half of the Louisville Marathon is unsettling me now. Still, it's mostly sweet. In the scheme of this year, this race means nothing. Louisville means everything. And at the end of the day, I think it's essential to realize that, to learn what lessons there are to be learned from this epic predictor race and to put that nose right back into the grindstone come June.
Bittersweet. Mostly sweet.
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep." - Robert Frost
*Editor's Note*
I published this RR in it's entirety before I recieved my split times. My times are now accurate, but I'm not going to edit my entire report to reflect my times as they were, compared to what I thought they were during the race.
One aspect worth mentioning: there was a mix-up during registration. I saw when I picked up my race packet that my age was listed as 24. Because this race was not USAT sanctioned, I assumed the "age up" rule was not in effect, and I'd race in the 20-24 year old bracket. As it turned out, I raced in the 25-29 and the guy I passed at the end was racing as a 24 year old, therefore NOT in my age group. Can you say BUZZKILL?
May 15, 2010
The day started at bit later, and a lot more stressed, than they typically do. I travelled with my buddy Johnathan to Taylorsville, Kentucky for this race, and our combined lack of planning and execution slowed things down a good bit. Having already seen the course and transition, we planned to get be out of our hotel at 6:30 and at race site at 7:00 when it opened. All told, we arrived at Taylorsville Lake around 7:20; 40 minutes before the gun.
I got a pretty decent warm up just frantically rushing through the pre-race necessities. Never getting truly worried I wouldn't have everything ready in time, it was a whirlwind of a half hour getting my race packet, setting up my transition area, putting on sunscreen, using the restroom twice, mixing and taking my energy drink and visualizing the day. Denise was there, of course, snapping pictures and looking more excited about the race than I was. I finished the tasks at hand about 10 minutes before race start, so I slapped on my wetsuit and headed down to the water for a warm up, albeit not much of one.
Having felt the water the day before, it almost felt a tad warmer, but still wonderful. The water was extremely high, flooding two parking spaces, a couple sidewalks and who knows what else that can typically be seen on the water's edge; promising a swim that would be longer than it should be. Over the course of my ~300m warm up, I noticed the sun rising in exactly the direction we would be swimming. Not knowing how much time I had left, I swam back to shore and just did some dynamic stretching to stay warm. The race director had a quick athlete meeting to discuss the course and the flow of transition and to answer the many questions racers had; the event website wasn't very forthcoming with pertinent information. He said the swim would be a mass start from the water's edge and that we would get started in 5 minutes. I continued to stretch, hop around and otherwise psych myself up for the day until I started to hear the countdown. I punched my watch with one minute left so I could have an accurate prediction of my swim time. One extremely long minute later, the siren wailed and I plunged into the water right at the front; where I'm now convinced I belong.
The start of the swim was pretty indicative of a mass start, with nothing but arms, legs and torsoes all around you. Punching, slapping, kicking and tugging abound, we sorted ourselves out in the most primal way we could. It took about 350m to get everything under control, at which point I found some feet to follow. I didn't think I would find anybody until the turnaround at 500m, so that was a good sign for me. With the sun in my eyes and swimmers still flanking me on all sides, it was very difficult to see how much further we had to swim. There wasn't much action on the first out pattern and I found the turnaround buoy in good time. I followed the pack around it, making the turn much tighter than my lead swimmer, and headed back down towards the dock.
The second 500 was the hardest one. I got pretty lazy on sighting and found myself drifting out into the middle of the lake a few times. The last time, on my second or third detour, I lost about 30m on the guy I was following. Wanting to catch him before the turn onto the second loop, I surged back towards the course. I maintained what I'd approximate to by my 100m TT speed (~1:25/100) for what seemed like 5 minutes pulling myself back in, just turning myself inside out to be back in a draft zone. I found myself behind some feet about 20m from the turn and vowed to not let that happen again.
Heading back out, I found myself sighting a lot more often. I leapfrogged my lead swimmer and grabbed onto a faster one; one I knew would I was stuck with for better or worse as the field was quite thin by now. Pulling myself and a swimmer next to me, the three of us took off down the familiar out stretch into the sun for our second and final lap. I had similar problems finding the turnaround buoy from a distance, but this time was able to sight when I was three buoys away. After making the turnaround, I found one last swimmer to carry me. Although this swimmer had a bigger kick that would make him much easier to follow, the guy was a pretty worthless pull because he kept swimming off course to the left. I found myself sticking close to the buoys and doing a lot of the work, waiting for him to find his way back. With about 100m left to the final turn, I dropped him and sprinted home, feeling like I'd had a good swim and interested to see my place overall in the discipline.
I'd seen the swim exit and knew exactly when to start dolphin diving and when to get out and start running, so I executed that well and headed up towards transition. Pulling my wetsuit halfway, I glanced at my watch and saw a very disappointing 41:XX on the display. I knew the swim was long, but how long exactly is just something we'll never know. Still, I felt like I'd had a good swim, that I was in a pretty good spot as far as swim time placement and that I had put myself in a good position to hold off some of the better bikers.
Swim time: 41:18 (2:04 per 100 yd, which is a crock of $#!+; 2/5 in AG, 47 sec back)
Transition was a tad slower than I'm used to, but after Rev 3, I didn't think it was a particularly good idea to roll without socks. Slapping them on and hopping on my bike, I shot out of transition not at all looking forward to the very hilly ride to come.
T1: 1:14
The bike didn't start out very well. In unVelcroing my left shoe, the Velcro strip came out of the hook and I had to stop completely to get that in place. Add to that the second steepest and most difficult climb of the day was at mile 0.1, spiking my heart rate and taking a lot out of what would be my average pace. Glancing at my watch, I was once again let down by the cheap Nike HRM I was loaned after the family dog chew my Garmin to pieces. Somehow water had seeped under the screen and fogged it up from the inside. If I stared at it for a second or two, I could make out my time (total time since the gun), but reading heart rate was impossible. Once again, I managed to find myself in the middle of an important race without access to heart rate data. I'm so f*cking glad I bought a new Garmin; the idea of having to do this for more races makes me want to hurt people.
After cresting the first big hill and catching my breath, I focused mostly on my other borrowed watch; Jonathan lent me his Garmin 301 as he had all the information he needed on his bike computer. It read everything (pace, distance, time) except heart rate, and it was a big help throughout the day. Turning off of Park Rd and onto Brair Ridge, I tried to stay aero and on the higher side of my aerobic threshold effort. Being a weak cyclist, it took about 40 miles to reach a point where people were no longer flying past me. I'd hoped to find some of them later on the run, but for the time being it's best to just race my race and shoot for the best overall time rather than trying to go with any packs. Not that I could if I wanted to...
Having driven the course once and the back half twice, I knew I could expect, for the most part, zero flat road and constant changes in pitch. Nothing in and of itself was particularly difficult, but the sum of the parts would be more than enough to steal a piece of my soul. I could remember the more notable climbs and their various landmarks, but didn't have much of a grasp on when they would arrive. I tried my best to chip away at the miles and wondered how long it would take Jonathan to catch me. I had guess 10 miles, but the pass was made about mile 12. He hanged back for a minute to chat about how long the swim was and share collective frustrations about the start of the bike before he rocketed off out of sight. I knew I had the first water station and the turn onto the out and back hill at mile 20, so I kept going and thought about that.
The turn off came a little later than expected, about mile 22, and I'd hoped that it didn't mean the bike course was going to be long as well. After heading down the 3 miles of steady grade and the one mile climb to the turnaround, I found myself having to pee pretty bad. The descent down the hill I just climbed was far too fast and dangerous to try it, but I gave it my best shot on the climb back up to Brair Ridge. I succeeded for a moment, emptying about half of my bladder before I had to start pedaling again, lest I find myself stopped and falling to the side. I hosed my leg off with water and eagerly plugged away at the next aid station in the same place as the last one, but 8 more miles into the ride; not only that, but the station sat at the halfway point on the bike. Splitting my time, I noticed I'd brought my speed up 1 mph over the last 10 miles. This was a good thing, no doubt, but only the difference between 15 and 16 mph, either way promising a pretty disappointing bike split.
There just wasn't many fun parts of the bike. It was constant up and down, open to traffic and extremely lonely, not to mention parts of it were very rough. There were two glaring exceptions to the following generality: turning right onto 55 in Bloomfield and turning onto 44 after going through Taylorsville. Other that those, the course was just monotonous, beautiful at points, but painfully boring. As far as I'm concerned, that sums up the bike pretty well. I was very ready to finish it around the long climb at mile 40 and had to exude some good ole' fashioned HTFU to slap out the remaining 16 miles.
My speed had increased quite a bit over the second half, but I accidentally split the time again, so I'm not really sure how much faster I ended up, if at all. I took in my second round of Delta-E at mile 45 and finished off my Infinit at mile 50. Looking for the final turn back onto Park Rd after mile 50, I was surprised to see it come a bit earlier than expected at mile 52. As soon as I turned, I saw Jonathan halfway through his first loop on the run and figured he had a pretty good bike. I shot down Park Rd knowing this ride was almost over and that I would finally begin the most anticipated discipline very, very soon. I knew better than to fly down the huge downhill leading into transition and very smoothly dismounted to a wave of self-satisfaction that I had finished the mentally and physically painful bike with a decent time.
Bike time: 3:18:30 (16.9 mph; 4/5)
Transition, again, was a tad slower than it would have been in short course. My shoes, visor and race belt went on well enough, but I stopped at the porto potties to let go of what refused to leave my bladder during the bike. Finishing that, I redressed, slipped my EFS flask into my pocket and crossed the timing mat, taking care to punch the start button on Jonathan's Garmin to give me a very accurate run split time once this all was finished.
T2: 1:20
I knew two horribly unwanted about the run course right out of the gate:
1) the same huge hill at mile 0.1 of the bike also served as the first part of the run
2) the run course was a three-loop out-and-back course along the first, and last, 2.5 miles of the bike course.
If it served as any consolation at the time, I knew two things that would work to my advantage when this was all said and done:
1) the very familiar huge hill would serve as a great springboard for a final kick should I need it. A great thing for me as I typically can out kick the pants off of guys who finish around the same time as me.
2) the boring, exposed and mentally draining run would be an extremely valuable simulation of Ironman Louisville's run course, which is a two loop out-and-back marathon course that gets very dull towards the end.
My heart rate does not spike as much as I thought it would have, nor as much as it did the day before when we checked it out on foot. As soon as I got to the top, I saw the first aid station and took notice of my distance: .5 miles. Good, a nice round number. As it turned out, Denise got wrangled into working the first aid station, so I grabbed a cup and some warm words and I set out on my predetermined pace. My strategy for the run was to hold aerobic threshold (roughly marathon pace) for the first 7 miles, bump it up to lactate threshold (roughly 10k pace) until mile 10 and then sprint just as hard as a damn well could over the last 5k. Hard to say at this point if my legs would hold, my GI tract wouldn't close up shop an hour too early or my mind would feel so inspired to crack the whip. Guess I'll have to wait and see. If you do long course racing long enough you become, at least in some aspects, a very patient person.
The three loop out-and-back course had three aid stations, one on each side of the 2 mile loops and an impromptu one sandwiched pretty close to the midpoint. So over the course of the run, you would encounter an aid station every mile at the half mile marker. Said another way, I could expect to get water at mile .5, 1.5 and 2.5 before I turned around and did that stretch another 5 times. My nutrition plan was to shoot a serving of gel, about 75 calories worth, at every turnaround, taking in my last hit at mile 10.5. So long as I got enough water in, I figured I'd be fine on both calories and salts. However, it was another aspect of my nutrition that seemed to be quite the bother for the first loop: I had popped a pair of Delta-E packets with 10 miles to go on the bike. It's not that it made me feel bad, it was just that it made me really gassy. Over the first loop, I probably stopped and forced a burp about 8 times. Not painful, but frustrating. I'll definitely need to look into that.
I didn't spend much time on the course before Jonathan caught me on his second lap. We talked a bit as he jogged past me, not much faster than I but faster than I wanted to go. I was happy to trot along and take in as many landmarks as I could. I had programmed the Garmin to split every mile, so I would be able to see how much my pace would fall off over the course of the day. My first mile (including the beastly climb) was just off 10:00. My second was 9:15. From there, I saw it slowly slide from the low 9s to the mid 10s over the course of my loops. I was feeling alright, body was responding well enough, but there wasn't a lot to do about it as long as I was holding myself back.
Getting to the turnaround at mile 2.5 was a nice feeling, because it meant I had seen every inch of the course and would be assured no more surprises. There were a few hills on the loops, but nothing that really required any additional effort or a change to my rhythm. I kept plugging along and increasingly noticed that it was getting pretty hot out there. The high for the day wasn't supposed to get past the mid 70s, but I think it got closer to 80. More importantly, the course was in one word: exposed. There wasn't a foot of shade to be seen from the road, not a grandpa with a garden hose nor a kid with a super soaker. I unzipped my tri suit all the way down, which helped considerably. Although it's never particularly reliable, Smyrna weather has forced me to do a handful of runs in very hot conditions, so I figured it would give me an advantage so long as it didn't push me straight over the edge.
I wasn't the only person who was hot. The way the course was laid out made it pretty difficult for runners to hide from each other, and I saw a lot of people with broken spirits. There was carnage everywhere, even on the first loop; people walking, people cramping, people double fisting water onto their head and chest. This weather should be pretty indicative of Louisville's weather, so it's best to try to figure out how best to deal with it. I kept at my pace, slowing though it may be, and kept things under control.
Seeing Denise at the turnaround to start my 2nd lap, I told her that I'd only want water over the course of the day to save me the conversation. Told her I was feeling "good so far," and that if I had to ask for HEED, that it was because I was cramping. We both expressed our hopes that it wouldn't happen and I took off on loop number two. I tried to take notice of the people on course, specifically ones in my age group. I recognized two guys that were probably in my age group, but were both ahead of me considerably; though one of whom was doing more walking than running. I file that information in a folder entitled "things to think about on the 3rd lap" and got back to business. I notice several other runners along the course, but only talk to a few. On that course, people are about the only thing to look at. Reaching the mile 5.5 aid station, I expressed my deep gratitude that the station existed; originally the course only had the two. Drinking my water and leaving the station, I knew that the next time I saw it (mile 7.5), it would be time to kick up the intensity a little; something I didn't know whether I should look forward to.
Seeing Jonathan for the last time as I headed out towards the halfway point was an interesting experience. Not solely because it's always good to see a friendly face on course, but I could see a noticeable change in his demeanor as the sun and the miles slowly ate away at him. Plugging away at the last 2.5 miles he had, he wasn't left with much other than to wave weakly; I would know that feeling soon enough. Turning the corner and heading back, I celebrated being exactly halfway through the course. One mile later, I knew it was time to go. I don't think I picked up my pace all that much. I couldn't read my heart rate, so I had to go by feel, and "feel" is an extremely subjective thing that late in a race. I saw my mile splits pick up slowly, but really just oscillated back towards the 10 min/mi mark. The end of the 2nd loop was the hardest mentally and the time when my mind spent the most of its time out of body.
Approaching Denise's aid station once more, I dropped off some useless equipment. If my watch wasn't going to give me heart rate, there wasn't much sense in wearing the watch or the chest strap. I dropped them off, drank some water and made some offhand remark to the effect of "this is gonna hurt" as I took off at a faster speed than I'd allowed myself to go to that point. Getting closer to being thoroughly overheated, I completely peeled off the top of my tri suit and ran shirtless; which actually helped a lot in my cooling mechanisms (but not much in the way of evening my tan).
Still feeling relatively together, adequately hydrated, fueled and mentally ready for more intensity, I started looking for my AG compatriot heading the opposite direction to finish up his 3rd and final loop. I knew the sooner I saw him the less chance I had of catching him. I stared down each figure round each corner in a panic until I was able to rule them out as the wrong person. I knew that once I hit the last turn, I'd pop my last gel shot and turn the heat up all the way for the last 2.5 miles. I managed to make it to the middle aid station without seeing him. My watch beeped at mile 11 and I still did not see him. Winding round and round, seeing dozens of runners too tall, too female or too different a stride, I continued my search. I felt relatively certain I didn't miss him and that he hadn't already finished. As I neared the last bend before the turnaround, I saw and passed him going the other way. I checked my watch to try to gauge how much time I had to put on him. I rounded the turnaround, shot some gel and water, and estimated I had 2.5 miles to make up 3:30 on him. Guess it was time to go. And when I say go, I mean GO!!!
My pace shot down to 8:30 and didn't fluctuate much from that other than on the slight hills I had remaining. I counted 7 or 8 people between him and I, and started counting people as I passed. Most of those still on course were pretty well broken down and I was flying, so the passes were quick and aplenty. 3 people go by. 5 people. I reach the aid station at mile 11.5. Pass 3 more people. Come up on another group. Mile 12. Where is he? Where IS he? And then I see him off in the distance. He's not going very fast. "If you see him, you can catch him." I cut into myself. I see nothing else. I slip my tri suit top back on and zip it up in preparation of the finish. We near the last bend before Denise's aid station. I'm gaining ground very quickly. I am Craig Alexander and he is Chris Lieto. In keeping with that analogy, he stops, walks and hangs his head. Oh, yeah. I've got him. The pass is coming; it's all a matter of whether he's going to try to come with me. I fly past him. I glance back. He's running again. But the gap is opening. It's opening...
I shoot up the road towards Denise. For the first time she doesn't have a cup ready, and for the first time I'm not in a position to wait on her. I fish out my gel flask and drop it at her feet. She smiles and makes some meaningless encouraging comment. I cut her off with a frantic "I think I have have him." "Huh?" I fly past her as fast as my legs will carry me, grab a cup of HEED on the table, and leave behind nothing but the words "THE GUY RIGHT BEHIND ME IS IN MY AGE GROUP!!!"
I hit the final downhill, open up my stride and pound away. I'm glancing back every 5 steps and see my self-declared rival still running, but slipping further and further away. He's passed by another guy trying to reel me in, but not only is he not going to catch me, he's easily identified as too old for me to care how fast he finishes. Rounding the last bend towards the finish stretch, I take one last glance behind me, pound me chest with my fist and head into the chute. I notice my time: 6:13:03. A PR!!! A ten second PR!!!
Run time: 2:10:38 (9:58/mi; 3/5)
Total time: 6:13:01.5 (an 11.5 sec PR; 3rd out of 5 in the male 25-29 age group, and what SHOULD have been an award!)
I give away my chip as Jonathan jogs up to me. I fill him in on the end of my run, my internal struggle to reel in the 23 year old, and my general good attitude towards the day. I get distracted several times, but eventually find myself headed down towards somewhere I wanted to go for the last 13 miles, the lake. I plunge into the cool water and struggle to breath for a little while. I allow my core temperature to drop down, wash my face and hair of all the sweat and enjoy being finished.
We eventually run into the race director and are informed that they are not going to post results anywhere, that they'd "be online soon." Add that to his comment that because "we're all winners" and that we all got "prizes" (a choice between a pull string bag and something even more worthless) they were not going to give away the awards they claimed on their website they would give away. No awards means no awards ceremony, which means I've got no reason to stick around. Changing clothes and packing the car takes a moderate slice of forever, but Jonathan and I eventually get everything ready to go, talk to every racer I cared to talk to, and mount up bound for Louisville. As far as I'm concerned the perfect way to end this day, a day that's little more than the best predictor for Ironman Louisville I could hope for, is to spend it looking at Ironman Louisville's swim, run, transition and first 20 miles of the bike.
I think I had a pretty good showing today. Despite a long swim, a hilly bike and a hot and mentally tough run, I managed to best my showing at last year's flat as an A-cup 70.3 New Orleans. I knew my fitness was better than last year, and find myself very happy that I finished 10 seconds on the negative side of last year's time, as compared to an equally possible finish on the positive. Being finished is a bittersweet feeling. I'm glad to be done with my early season A-race. I'm glad to have 6 months of training in the books, and to have already enjoyed huge fitness gains. I'm glad to be able to relax for a week and eat the foods I've been denying myself. The bitter brings to mind the realization of how much work is yet to come. How much July is going to hurt. How much Louisville is going to hurt. I'm certainly in no mood to want to race for a while. Thinking about the back half of the Louisville Marathon is unsettling me now. Still, it's mostly sweet. In the scheme of this year, this race means nothing. Louisville means everything. And at the end of the day, I think it's essential to realize that, to learn what lessons there are to be learned from this epic predictor race and to put that nose right back into the grindstone come June.
Bittersweet. Mostly sweet.
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep." - Robert Frost
*Editor's Note*
I published this RR in it's entirety before I recieved my split times. My times are now accurate, but I'm not going to edit my entire report to reflect my times as they were, compared to what I thought they were during the race.
One aspect worth mentioning: there was a mix-up during registration. I saw when I picked up my race packet that my age was listed as 24. Because this race was not USAT sanctioned, I assumed the "age up" rule was not in effect, and I'd race in the 20-24 year old bracket. As it turned out, I raced in the 25-29 and the guy I passed at the end was racing as a 24 year old, therefore NOT in my age group. Can you say BUZZKILL?
Monday, May 10, 2010
Rev 3 Olympic Triathlon
1.5 km swim -> 40 km bike -> 10 km run
May 9, 2010
It's not my style to talk about the trip or the experience of the event outside of the race itself, but I think this race should involve a small but significant exception. The Rev 3 Triathlon series is in its infancy, but they've been busy writing a lot of checks with their mouths; state of the art timing systems, live athlete tracking, family- and children-focused environment. Most importantly of all they put up 5 figures of prize money to tempt the best pros in the world to come compete. And come they did. Over the weekend, I was able to snag pictures with Matty Reed, Chris Lieto, Torenzo Bozzone, Bjorn Andersson, Jordan Rapp, Julie Dibens, Mary Beth Ellis, Pip Taylor and race director Heather Gollnick. Check 'em out on Facebook!
Despite a late and enjoyable evening with old friends, I got a pretty decent night's sleep (~6 hours) and woke up relatively refreshed. Trying to be quiet and not wake up Jenna (my very accommodating friend who has put me up this weekend and every time I come to Knoxville in the last 4 years), I got my breakfast down, everything finished up and headed down to race sight about a half mile away at about 6:15. The pros left at 7:45 and my wave was closer to 8:30. I walked down (bikes racked the night before) to Transition, housed in a parking lot just across Neyland Drive from the Tennessee River.
While I was getting things ready, a guy recognized the tattoo on my leg. In any other triathlon that would have meant my M-dot and the line of questioning would have involved which Ironman I did, how many I've done and which one I plan to do next. This time was about my Pi Alpha tattoo. Turns out the guy and his buddy were Pi Kapps from Virginia Tech who came down to race. Not only that, they were both Pi Alphas. We talked for a bit about our respective trips before I left them to finish getting ready. It was real bummer running into them in transition less than an hour before the gun went off, or I might have been privy to a wonderfully nostalgic conversation. All the same, I wished them well and got back to business.
*If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, google Push America. Pi Alphas are alums of Push America events. If you want to donate to the cause, let me know; I know several guys who could use some help in their fundraising goals.*
I usually don't race the Olympic distance, which provided me with a number of conundrums. First of which was a conflicted feeling of foot care. The race seemed too short to want to put on socks for the bike or the run, and simultaneously too long to attempt to slug it out with no lubrication. This day, I went with Vaseline. I lubed up the walls, heels and toe box of my biking and running shoes with (generic brand) Vaseline and hoped for the best. My warm up run left my toes feeling a little hot and bothered, so I slapped some more in there as the announcer was barking at us stragglers to get out of transition and head up to the swim start. Very similarly to my last point-to-point swim race (70.3 New Orleans) I mosey out of transition confident that everything would be in its place when I finished the swim. I slip my wetsuit on halfway, mix up my energy drink and walk along the path up to the start of the swim. Counting down the minutes to my wave getting in the water, I down my Delta-E energy drink, pop my GU Roctane (which I got several samples of during the expo) and watch the other waves do their thing.
Sooner than expected, I got the call to head down to the water. The official temperature was 69.4 degrees, though I didn't know that at the time. All I did the previous day was dip a toe in to feel the temp and thought it a bit chilly. I was wondering how comfortable the entrance would be. To my excitement the water felt all but ideal not only jumping in, but would feel great the entire swim. Not to mention the water, which had been dammed upstream, was flat as glass. So I swam over to the start corral, did that thing you do to warm your wetsuit up, and waited for the siren. I punched my watch at the 90 second notification so I wouldn't have to fumble with it at the gun. Positioning myself immediately behind the first line of swimmers, I treaded water feeling ready for a great race. At the siren, I got to experience once again the wonderful chaos of a deep water swim start, albeit a bit subdued with only about 100 people in there.
I could tell right away that the swim was going to go well, but I had no idea what to expect time-wise. My PR for a 1.5 km swim was unknown, but I could recall that it was set during my only other fair Olympic distance race. I've done 2 Olys in my 3 previous years, and one of them was literally in a hurricane. My first Olympic went well for the time, but it was only my 4th triathlon and at the end of my first triathlon season in 2007. Whatever my time was, it certainly wasn't indicative of what my time should be for this race. (It was 36:42)
In any case, it was very easy to draft for the first part. The course was a hybrid between and clockwise rectangle and a point-to-point. You swam for ~500 yards into the sun, turned around and swam the remaining yards, past the starting dock and down to a further dock just across from transition. On the first out, there was more jockeying for position that there was actual swimming. So long as I had feet in front of me, I was content to let the first part serve as a warm up, since we weren't allowed one before the race. The swim was directly into the sun, so I scarcely had any idea how much further we had to go. Gradually, the field thinned and we passed the giant boat that served as my only landmark; the turn buoy should be just beyond that. Eventually we turned, my vision returned and it was largely open water from here on in.
Feeling strong in the water, I hunted around for some fast feet to carry me to a decent swim. I've never really tried to draft in a race before and wasn't sure the best way to go about it. Luck was on my side, tho, as there were a handful of stronger swimmers in front of me throughout the last 1,000. My effort resembled a lot less that steady state effort I've been doing in the pool for years and more like the interval work I've been doing recently. I'd see a swimmer up in front of me and sprint to get up to him. Once I was on his feet, I'd relax and catch my breath. Soon after he'd drop me and I'd surge again, catching either his feet or someone else's. This continued until I found myself with nobody left to carry me across the final 300 meters. I could tell the swim exit was close, but didn't really see the dock until I was right up on it. I wished I had gotten in the water the day before so I could have known the course's landmarks better. Still, the swim felt very fast and I was interested to see how my time would end up.
I exit the water and have a bit of trouble getting my suit off. I eventually wrangle it off of me and glance at my watch; it reads 23:xx. I double take. There's no WAY I did the swim that fast! I am floored. I didn't know what to expect, but figured 30 minutes was a nice round number to shoot for. I'm VERY happy with my swim time and already start to look forward to bragging about it. Transition was smooth and I soon mounted my bike to screams of Denise and Marian on the sidelines. My day was already going light years above what I expected and I was interested to see how I'd handle the rest of it.
Swim time: 22:28 (1:33/100 m; 9/31 in AG, though I was 8th out of transition)
T1: 2:01
I knew two things going into the bike: my fitness, time goals and, subsequently, expectations were a lot higher for the swim and the run than the bike. I just didn't feel like my bike fitness was really where it needs to be. Add to that the fact that I'd driven the bike course twice and had seen firsthand just how HILLY it was. So, my goal was to do the fastest bike my body felt like giving me that day, but more focusing on coming in off the bike fueled, hydrated and brimming with enough energy to lay down a smoking 10k PR.
Having seen the course not only in the days prior, but racing much of it over years of TriDeltathon races, the first 4-5 miles around campus were uneventful. Eventually, we exited UT on the opposite side of campus and headed out towards rural south Knox county for the meat and potatoes of the ride. As we crossed the Henley St bridge, one of the coolest parts of the bike course, I got to witness the pro men coming back into town. I saw Bjorn Andersson in the lead, Lieto quite a bit back, and a string of noticeable pro men behind him, namely Torenzzo, Matty Reed and TJ Tollakson (why didn't I get a picture of TJ? Gah, I WANTED to! Never saw him. More on that at the end).
Leaving town and heading out to the hills, I started taking my calories on board. I didn't know what to expect out of the bike, so I didn't know how much fuel to take in. I ended up with 3 scoops of Infinit (~450 calories, ~110g of carbs) mixed heavy and put in a gel flask. I figured I'd nurse on that, possibly not even finish it, but take my last little squirt before I got back into campus. As it turned out I found myself with less than half a flask by mile 8. At that point I switched to mostly water, trying to keep my mouth moist but I suppose not really DRINKING a ton. I managed to overdo it a bit on bike hydration, though. I found myself having to pee really bad in the last 3 miles. I was wondering how it would affect my ability to run, but knew there was no way I was stopping!
I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the idiosyncrasies of the bike. I'd seen it enough the days before to know what to expect. There was a lot of climbing. The terrain was mostly rolling with some flat, and a handful of climbs that never really seemed to come down. There were two climbs of note, each lasting about a mile. They both looked like absolute quad-shredders from the car, but ended up not being so horrible when it came down to it (no Nasty Grades!). The descents on the back end of them were very fast, quite winding/technical and pretty cold. Some of the roads were extremely bumpy and uncomfortable, some were plushly flat and well paved. All in all, the bike was about what I expected, easier than I feared it could have been. It made evident that I need a new bike fit, tho. I experienced a lot of discomfort on the bike.
I noticed the 10 mile marker was placed entirely too early in the ride. Approaching it, I estimated it had been about 50 minutes into the ride. My mind was a blur of images. This was way faster than I thought I was capable of doing (and it was). I didn't see another mileage sign until I was headed back into town, but did watch the numbers on my race watch creep higher and higher and higher, systematically removing any possibility of excessively lofty bike splits.
I noticed I had lost my heart rate about 45 minutes into the bike. Despite my best attempts, I never really did get it back. I was more than comfortable going by feel on the bike, and I suppose I would have been okay doing so on the run, but to have this happen just infuriates me. Why is it asking so much that a HRM measure HR?
Eventually the hills ended, the loop took us back through the familiar roads of the Henley Bridge, through campus and back to Neyland. I halted any more accelerations in lieu of spinning my legs out, trying to prep them for the run. Seeing the runners dot the street gave me a better idea of where the run would take us and I was quite ready to see how my body would handle the unique blend of intensity and endurance that the 10k presented. I hopped off my bike to hear Denise grab the mic from the announcer and (still screaming) cheer me on, which made me smile. I felt an interesting sensation as soon as I dismounted and started to run barefoot; there was excessive pressure and soreness in the balls of my feet from all the churning and burning along the bike course. Hopefully that wouldn't affect my run stride. Though the transition area wasn't well marked, well known or well announced to athletes actually in there, I figured out where the exit was and took off down Neyland, hoping for a fast end of the day.
Bike time: 1:35:38 (17.38 mph; 9/31 in AG)
T2: 1:28
I glanced at my HRM a dozen times over the course of the run, but I never did get HR data again. I was very thankful for the way my training plan was laid out, otherwise I'm sure my pacing would have been off. I do quite a bit of track work repeating miles at 10k pace (or slightly faster), so I got to be pretty proficient at knowing what that pace feels like. Having adequately fueled and hyper-hydrated on the ride, I was glad to fuel pretty minimally during the run. At each aid station, I splashed a cup of water into my mouth, getting between 2-4 ounces in there and the rest on my chest. This kept my mouth moist, gave me enough water without being too much and sufficed as my only cooling mechanism; it was a mild day, but over half of the run was in the sun.
The run course, like the swim course, was a bit of a hybrid between an out and back and a point-to-point. You ran just short of 2 miles on Nayland Drive, hopped on the Greenway for a little bit, turned around at mile 2.8, headed back to transition (to make 5.6), ran past transition and up to the finish. I knew there was a big climb past transition heading up to the finish, but had no idea what the run course was. It was very poorly marked the days before the race, so I wasn't able to see it. I had to just trust that it was as flat as people said it was.
I spent most of the initial out patter measuring my split times. I did my first mile in 8:XX, but was unsure of the precise moment where transition ended and the run began, so I couldn't be sure. The 2nd mile was 8 flat and I'd hoped to make the 3rd mile at least that fast. My pacing plan was to hold LT until the turnaround, pick it up about 10 seconds per mile on the way back, then all out sprint up the final hill and into the finish. At mile 2 was the end of Nayland Drive, so my focus turned to the hidden entrance to the Greenway. As I neared the turn, the volunteers cautioned me to be careful going down the steps. Oh, you've got to be kidding me! There were about 8 steps that began what was about a quarter mile sharp descent into the Greenway. This was going to be a lot of fun going back up...
I took notice of the mile marker signs on the Greenway and was able to give myself smaller checkpoints. I saw James near the end of the out and back section and motioned to him. It was cool to see him there; I knew he was a run course marshal, but thought he was going to be further up in a section only the people doing the half ironman would see. Making the turn at the turnaround, I kicked it up just a tad and tried to focus on my breathing, knowing it would be completely flat until the mammoth climb back to Nayland. When it came, I focused on shortening my stride, increasing my turnover and pushing through my toes, but I could feel my body screeching to a near standstill. On top of the hill, you get a little downhill heading back to Nayland to catch your breath, so that's what I did.
The 2nd stretch down Nayland was just painful. My body was responding extremely well, I wasn't cramping and my energy felt fine. It was just the accumulation of mental and physical pain the day had brought. I zoned out a few times trying to ignore it and just let me mind go blank for a while. I couldn't find the mile 4 marker, but knew I wouldn't hit my quite optimistic goal time of 45 mins, largely because of the unexpected hill and crucial break in my rhythm. Eventually, I passed the one mile marker (going to other way), and knew I'd be in transition in less than 8 minutes, which made me feel a lot better.
Taking in my last shot of water and running alongside transition, I knew my day was almost done. I could hear spectators and volunteers cheering, but my vision was starting to go and all I saw was furry, white and out of focus. Getting to the otherside of transition and approaching the hill I told myself that this is the place where I was "either going to go or not." I decided I could handle a little more suffering, so I kicked it up another notch and went deeper into the redline. Cresting the hill and heading back down it towards the park, I opened up my stride and really plugged away at it. I approached the finish line chute with very real and not often experienced levels of lactic acid coursing through every vein in my body. A good finish line kick got me across the line and gave me a chance to catch my breath and enjoy the end of a pretty good race.
Run: 49:35 (8:00/mi; 9/31 in AG, see below)
I left T2 in 9th place, passed one guy by the turnaround, and was passed again by the finish
Total time: 2:41:11
9th out of 24 finishers in my age group
Post race was pretty uneventful, and a little bit distressing and confusing. After all the bragging they had done about their new advanced timing system, the times were screwed up when I checked them. A mysterious 5 minutes had been added to my swim time, completely negating the breakthrough swim I had and throwing my mood for a loop. I was pretty confident that my watch did not mysteriously read my swim 5 minutes fast and that they had just messed up the timing of the waves (they did and changed it eventually). Additionally, they had only measured my run time to the turnaround, so at first glance it said I had finished sub 2:20. Yeah, I wish...
The food was a huge disappointment and there wasn't really anything to do post-race that wasn't already there for the expo. I checked out the pro's awards ceremony and snagged another picture or two. It seemed as if something was amiss when the ceremony ended. It took a while for me to realize that TJ Tollakson was nowhere to be seen; I would have liked to get a picture with him. He ended up 11th, just off of the leaderboard, and I couldn't find him in the ocean of people stretched out across the lawn. I left without much of a search as I was pretty ready to head back to Jenna's to wash off the sweat and river, get some lunch and knock out this annoying little 3 hour drive back to Smyrna to spend at least a little time with my Mom. Probably not the best thing to do, screwing around all day in Knoxville on Mother's Day.
In all fairness, I'm a little deflated looking at my bike time. I know it isn't as bad as it looks, but it looks like I slowed down a lot. Their splits were at odd times, giving one after 12.4 miles, after another 3.4 miles and at the final marker in transition. At a glance it looked like I slowed down severely at the end, but a lot of that can be accounted for by the towering climb on Neubert Springs, the rough roads just outside of downtown, the 2 steep climbs on Cumberland and Volunteer and the spinning towards the end.
I would have like the run to be 2-3 (or a breakthrough day at 4-4:35) minutes faster, but that was under the assumption that the course was flat. Seeing the plummet into the Greenway, the subsequent climb out of there, and the tenth of a mile of breathlessness thereafter, I knew that was far out of reach. Don't think my split times were lost on me: I averaged 8 min/mis exactly to the turnaround and 7.99 min/mis over the last 3.4. I wished it had been closer to 7:45s, but to see such an even split was a pretty cool sight. Couple that with the knowledge that BOTH climbs on the run course were over the back half.
All in all, I see this race as a crazy breakthrough in the swim, a decent bike and a solid run. I could feel my body was well nourished, well fueled, well trained and just firing on all cylinders even late in the race, which is certainly the best omen of all.
May 9, 2010
It's not my style to talk about the trip or the experience of the event outside of the race itself, but I think this race should involve a small but significant exception. The Rev 3 Triathlon series is in its infancy, but they've been busy writing a lot of checks with their mouths; state of the art timing systems, live athlete tracking, family- and children-focused environment. Most importantly of all they put up 5 figures of prize money to tempt the best pros in the world to come compete. And come they did. Over the weekend, I was able to snag pictures with Matty Reed, Chris Lieto, Torenzo Bozzone, Bjorn Andersson, Jordan Rapp, Julie Dibens, Mary Beth Ellis, Pip Taylor and race director Heather Gollnick. Check 'em out on Facebook!
Despite a late and enjoyable evening with old friends, I got a pretty decent night's sleep (~6 hours) and woke up relatively refreshed. Trying to be quiet and not wake up Jenna (my very accommodating friend who has put me up this weekend and every time I come to Knoxville in the last 4 years), I got my breakfast down, everything finished up and headed down to race sight about a half mile away at about 6:15. The pros left at 7:45 and my wave was closer to 8:30. I walked down (bikes racked the night before) to Transition, housed in a parking lot just across Neyland Drive from the Tennessee River.
While I was getting things ready, a guy recognized the tattoo on my leg. In any other triathlon that would have meant my M-dot and the line of questioning would have involved which Ironman I did, how many I've done and which one I plan to do next. This time was about my Pi Alpha tattoo. Turns out the guy and his buddy were Pi Kapps from Virginia Tech who came down to race. Not only that, they were both Pi Alphas. We talked for a bit about our respective trips before I left them to finish getting ready. It was real bummer running into them in transition less than an hour before the gun went off, or I might have been privy to a wonderfully nostalgic conversation. All the same, I wished them well and got back to business.
*If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, google Push America. Pi Alphas are alums of Push America events. If you want to donate to the cause, let me know; I know several guys who could use some help in their fundraising goals.*
I usually don't race the Olympic distance, which provided me with a number of conundrums. First of which was a conflicted feeling of foot care. The race seemed too short to want to put on socks for the bike or the run, and simultaneously too long to attempt to slug it out with no lubrication. This day, I went with Vaseline. I lubed up the walls, heels and toe box of my biking and running shoes with (generic brand) Vaseline and hoped for the best. My warm up run left my toes feeling a little hot and bothered, so I slapped some more in there as the announcer was barking at us stragglers to get out of transition and head up to the swim start. Very similarly to my last point-to-point swim race (70.3 New Orleans) I mosey out of transition confident that everything would be in its place when I finished the swim. I slip my wetsuit on halfway, mix up my energy drink and walk along the path up to the start of the swim. Counting down the minutes to my wave getting in the water, I down my Delta-E energy drink, pop my GU Roctane (which I got several samples of during the expo) and watch the other waves do their thing.
Sooner than expected, I got the call to head down to the water. The official temperature was 69.4 degrees, though I didn't know that at the time. All I did the previous day was dip a toe in to feel the temp and thought it a bit chilly. I was wondering how comfortable the entrance would be. To my excitement the water felt all but ideal not only jumping in, but would feel great the entire swim. Not to mention the water, which had been dammed upstream, was flat as glass. So I swam over to the start corral, did that thing you do to warm your wetsuit up, and waited for the siren. I punched my watch at the 90 second notification so I wouldn't have to fumble with it at the gun. Positioning myself immediately behind the first line of swimmers, I treaded water feeling ready for a great race. At the siren, I got to experience once again the wonderful chaos of a deep water swim start, albeit a bit subdued with only about 100 people in there.
I could tell right away that the swim was going to go well, but I had no idea what to expect time-wise. My PR for a 1.5 km swim was unknown, but I could recall that it was set during my only other fair Olympic distance race. I've done 2 Olys in my 3 previous years, and one of them was literally in a hurricane. My first Olympic went well for the time, but it was only my 4th triathlon and at the end of my first triathlon season in 2007. Whatever my time was, it certainly wasn't indicative of what my time should be for this race. (It was 36:42)
In any case, it was very easy to draft for the first part. The course was a hybrid between and clockwise rectangle and a point-to-point. You swam for ~500 yards into the sun, turned around and swam the remaining yards, past the starting dock and down to a further dock just across from transition. On the first out, there was more jockeying for position that there was actual swimming. So long as I had feet in front of me, I was content to let the first part serve as a warm up, since we weren't allowed one before the race. The swim was directly into the sun, so I scarcely had any idea how much further we had to go. Gradually, the field thinned and we passed the giant boat that served as my only landmark; the turn buoy should be just beyond that. Eventually we turned, my vision returned and it was largely open water from here on in.
Feeling strong in the water, I hunted around for some fast feet to carry me to a decent swim. I've never really tried to draft in a race before and wasn't sure the best way to go about it. Luck was on my side, tho, as there were a handful of stronger swimmers in front of me throughout the last 1,000. My effort resembled a lot less that steady state effort I've been doing in the pool for years and more like the interval work I've been doing recently. I'd see a swimmer up in front of me and sprint to get up to him. Once I was on his feet, I'd relax and catch my breath. Soon after he'd drop me and I'd surge again, catching either his feet or someone else's. This continued until I found myself with nobody left to carry me across the final 300 meters. I could tell the swim exit was close, but didn't really see the dock until I was right up on it. I wished I had gotten in the water the day before so I could have known the course's landmarks better. Still, the swim felt very fast and I was interested to see how my time would end up.
I exit the water and have a bit of trouble getting my suit off. I eventually wrangle it off of me and glance at my watch; it reads 23:xx. I double take. There's no WAY I did the swim that fast! I am floored. I didn't know what to expect, but figured 30 minutes was a nice round number to shoot for. I'm VERY happy with my swim time and already start to look forward to bragging about it. Transition was smooth and I soon mounted my bike to screams of Denise and Marian on the sidelines. My day was already going light years above what I expected and I was interested to see how I'd handle the rest of it.
Swim time: 22:28 (1:33/100 m; 9/31 in AG, though I was 8th out of transition)
T1: 2:01
I knew two things going into the bike: my fitness, time goals and, subsequently, expectations were a lot higher for the swim and the run than the bike. I just didn't feel like my bike fitness was really where it needs to be. Add to that the fact that I'd driven the bike course twice and had seen firsthand just how HILLY it was. So, my goal was to do the fastest bike my body felt like giving me that day, but more focusing on coming in off the bike fueled, hydrated and brimming with enough energy to lay down a smoking 10k PR.
Having seen the course not only in the days prior, but racing much of it over years of TriDeltathon races, the first 4-5 miles around campus were uneventful. Eventually, we exited UT on the opposite side of campus and headed out towards rural south Knox county for the meat and potatoes of the ride. As we crossed the Henley St bridge, one of the coolest parts of the bike course, I got to witness the pro men coming back into town. I saw Bjorn Andersson in the lead, Lieto quite a bit back, and a string of noticeable pro men behind him, namely Torenzzo, Matty Reed and TJ Tollakson (why didn't I get a picture of TJ? Gah, I WANTED to! Never saw him. More on that at the end).
Leaving town and heading out to the hills, I started taking my calories on board. I didn't know what to expect out of the bike, so I didn't know how much fuel to take in. I ended up with 3 scoops of Infinit (~450 calories, ~110g of carbs) mixed heavy and put in a gel flask. I figured I'd nurse on that, possibly not even finish it, but take my last little squirt before I got back into campus. As it turned out I found myself with less than half a flask by mile 8. At that point I switched to mostly water, trying to keep my mouth moist but I suppose not really DRINKING a ton. I managed to overdo it a bit on bike hydration, though. I found myself having to pee really bad in the last 3 miles. I was wondering how it would affect my ability to run, but knew there was no way I was stopping!
I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the idiosyncrasies of the bike. I'd seen it enough the days before to know what to expect. There was a lot of climbing. The terrain was mostly rolling with some flat, and a handful of climbs that never really seemed to come down. There were two climbs of note, each lasting about a mile. They both looked like absolute quad-shredders from the car, but ended up not being so horrible when it came down to it (no Nasty Grades!). The descents on the back end of them were very fast, quite winding/technical and pretty cold. Some of the roads were extremely bumpy and uncomfortable, some were plushly flat and well paved. All in all, the bike was about what I expected, easier than I feared it could have been. It made evident that I need a new bike fit, tho. I experienced a lot of discomfort on the bike.
I noticed the 10 mile marker was placed entirely too early in the ride. Approaching it, I estimated it had been about 50 minutes into the ride. My mind was a blur of images. This was way faster than I thought I was capable of doing (and it was). I didn't see another mileage sign until I was headed back into town, but did watch the numbers on my race watch creep higher and higher and higher, systematically removing any possibility of excessively lofty bike splits.
I noticed I had lost my heart rate about 45 minutes into the bike. Despite my best attempts, I never really did get it back. I was more than comfortable going by feel on the bike, and I suppose I would have been okay doing so on the run, but to have this happen just infuriates me. Why is it asking so much that a HRM measure HR?
Eventually the hills ended, the loop took us back through the familiar roads of the Henley Bridge, through campus and back to Neyland. I halted any more accelerations in lieu of spinning my legs out, trying to prep them for the run. Seeing the runners dot the street gave me a better idea of where the run would take us and I was quite ready to see how my body would handle the unique blend of intensity and endurance that the 10k presented. I hopped off my bike to hear Denise grab the mic from the announcer and (still screaming) cheer me on, which made me smile. I felt an interesting sensation as soon as I dismounted and started to run barefoot; there was excessive pressure and soreness in the balls of my feet from all the churning and burning along the bike course. Hopefully that wouldn't affect my run stride. Though the transition area wasn't well marked, well known or well announced to athletes actually in there, I figured out where the exit was and took off down Neyland, hoping for a fast end of the day.
Bike time: 1:35:38 (17.38 mph; 9/31 in AG)
T2: 1:28
I glanced at my HRM a dozen times over the course of the run, but I never did get HR data again. I was very thankful for the way my training plan was laid out, otherwise I'm sure my pacing would have been off. I do quite a bit of track work repeating miles at 10k pace (or slightly faster), so I got to be pretty proficient at knowing what that pace feels like. Having adequately fueled and hyper-hydrated on the ride, I was glad to fuel pretty minimally during the run. At each aid station, I splashed a cup of water into my mouth, getting between 2-4 ounces in there and the rest on my chest. This kept my mouth moist, gave me enough water without being too much and sufficed as my only cooling mechanism; it was a mild day, but over half of the run was in the sun.
The run course, like the swim course, was a bit of a hybrid between an out and back and a point-to-point. You ran just short of 2 miles on Nayland Drive, hopped on the Greenway for a little bit, turned around at mile 2.8, headed back to transition (to make 5.6), ran past transition and up to the finish. I knew there was a big climb past transition heading up to the finish, but had no idea what the run course was. It was very poorly marked the days before the race, so I wasn't able to see it. I had to just trust that it was as flat as people said it was.
I spent most of the initial out patter measuring my split times. I did my first mile in 8:XX, but was unsure of the precise moment where transition ended and the run began, so I couldn't be sure. The 2nd mile was 8 flat and I'd hoped to make the 3rd mile at least that fast. My pacing plan was to hold LT until the turnaround, pick it up about 10 seconds per mile on the way back, then all out sprint up the final hill and into the finish. At mile 2 was the end of Nayland Drive, so my focus turned to the hidden entrance to the Greenway. As I neared the turn, the volunteers cautioned me to be careful going down the steps. Oh, you've got to be kidding me! There were about 8 steps that began what was about a quarter mile sharp descent into the Greenway. This was going to be a lot of fun going back up...
I took notice of the mile marker signs on the Greenway and was able to give myself smaller checkpoints. I saw James near the end of the out and back section and motioned to him. It was cool to see him there; I knew he was a run course marshal, but thought he was going to be further up in a section only the people doing the half ironman would see. Making the turn at the turnaround, I kicked it up just a tad and tried to focus on my breathing, knowing it would be completely flat until the mammoth climb back to Nayland. When it came, I focused on shortening my stride, increasing my turnover and pushing through my toes, but I could feel my body screeching to a near standstill. On top of the hill, you get a little downhill heading back to Nayland to catch your breath, so that's what I did.
The 2nd stretch down Nayland was just painful. My body was responding extremely well, I wasn't cramping and my energy felt fine. It was just the accumulation of mental and physical pain the day had brought. I zoned out a few times trying to ignore it and just let me mind go blank for a while. I couldn't find the mile 4 marker, but knew I wouldn't hit my quite optimistic goal time of 45 mins, largely because of the unexpected hill and crucial break in my rhythm. Eventually, I passed the one mile marker (going to other way), and knew I'd be in transition in less than 8 minutes, which made me feel a lot better.
Taking in my last shot of water and running alongside transition, I knew my day was almost done. I could hear spectators and volunteers cheering, but my vision was starting to go and all I saw was furry, white and out of focus. Getting to the otherside of transition and approaching the hill I told myself that this is the place where I was "either going to go or not." I decided I could handle a little more suffering, so I kicked it up another notch and went deeper into the redline. Cresting the hill and heading back down it towards the park, I opened up my stride and really plugged away at it. I approached the finish line chute with very real and not often experienced levels of lactic acid coursing through every vein in my body. A good finish line kick got me across the line and gave me a chance to catch my breath and enjoy the end of a pretty good race.
Run: 49:35 (8:00/mi; 9/31 in AG, see below)
I left T2 in 9th place, passed one guy by the turnaround, and was passed again by the finish
Total time: 2:41:11
9th out of 24 finishers in my age group
Post race was pretty uneventful, and a little bit distressing and confusing. After all the bragging they had done about their new advanced timing system, the times were screwed up when I checked them. A mysterious 5 minutes had been added to my swim time, completely negating the breakthrough swim I had and throwing my mood for a loop. I was pretty confident that my watch did not mysteriously read my swim 5 minutes fast and that they had just messed up the timing of the waves (they did and changed it eventually). Additionally, they had only measured my run time to the turnaround, so at first glance it said I had finished sub 2:20. Yeah, I wish...
The food was a huge disappointment and there wasn't really anything to do post-race that wasn't already there for the expo. I checked out the pro's awards ceremony and snagged another picture or two. It seemed as if something was amiss when the ceremony ended. It took a while for me to realize that TJ Tollakson was nowhere to be seen; I would have liked to get a picture with him. He ended up 11th, just off of the leaderboard, and I couldn't find him in the ocean of people stretched out across the lawn. I left without much of a search as I was pretty ready to head back to Jenna's to wash off the sweat and river, get some lunch and knock out this annoying little 3 hour drive back to Smyrna to spend at least a little time with my Mom. Probably not the best thing to do, screwing around all day in Knoxville on Mother's Day.
In all fairness, I'm a little deflated looking at my bike time. I know it isn't as bad as it looks, but it looks like I slowed down a lot. Their splits were at odd times, giving one after 12.4 miles, after another 3.4 miles and at the final marker in transition. At a glance it looked like I slowed down severely at the end, but a lot of that can be accounted for by the towering climb on Neubert Springs, the rough roads just outside of downtown, the 2 steep climbs on Cumberland and Volunteer and the spinning towards the end.
I would have like the run to be 2-3 (or a breakthrough day at 4-4:35) minutes faster, but that was under the assumption that the course was flat. Seeing the plummet into the Greenway, the subsequent climb out of there, and the tenth of a mile of breathlessness thereafter, I knew that was far out of reach. Don't think my split times were lost on me: I averaged 8 min/mis exactly to the turnaround and 7.99 min/mis over the last 3.4. I wished it had been closer to 7:45s, but to see such an even split was a pretty cool sight. Couple that with the knowledge that BOTH climbs on the run course were over the back half.
All in all, I see this race as a crazy breakthrough in the swim, a decent bike and a solid run. I could feel my body was well nourished, well fueled, well trained and just firing on all cylinders even late in the race, which is certainly the best omen of all.
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