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?