The big reason for the bike trip was to make my way out to Penticton to sign up for Ironman for 2010. That is now done and on August 29, 2010 I’ll embark on what I can almost guarantee will be the most challenging day of swimming, biking and running I’ve ever done. I’m really looking forward to it. This blog entry is mostly notes for myself for next year, not terribly stimulating reading, so if you read it and get to the end thinking ‘what a waste of my time’, then don’t complain because you’ve been warned.

I was stationed in OK falls for the 2009 edition of Ironman Canada to be the support crew for two friends who would be racing on Sunday morning. They had a lot of tasks to do associated with race preparation and when they weren’t busy it was important that I didn’t try to distract them too much from their most important task in the days prior to the race: relaxing and letting all the fatigue drain out of their muscles. Despite having ridden almost continuously during my waking hours for the past 7 days I still opted to get out and make the most of the excellent riding terrain by doing another ride. I really wanted to ride the IMC course while there so that I could mentally log it in my head in advance of actually heading out on the course. I found that it is a huge advantage to actually ride courses prior to racing on them. I didn’t used to think this was terribly important but this spring when I started to do more mountain biking I realized the importance. Knowing what is coming up and having done the corners before makes it so much easier to ride with confidence. That makes a huge difference in actual speed when the course is technical and the experience lets you ride faster… on a triathlon course it’s probably not going to make a huge time difference but the confidence that it adds is significant in my opinion. I have an excellent mental image of the ride and know where I’ll likely feel strong and where I’ll likely need to focus hard to ride efficiently. If you ask me it’s completely reasonable to suggest that pre-riding the course this year made me 5 minutes faster on it next year. If I could train there on all my training rides I think I’d gain another couple minutes just by getting so familiar with the pacing demands of this course, irrespective of fitness. At an Olympic or sprint distance race the difference is likely only a matter of a few seconds, because there is only one pace – HARD… but for IM I think this is likely a significant advantage because the pace is never hard.

I had it in my head that I should leave the hotel in OK falls at around 8:30 pm so I’d be on the middle section of the course at the same time of day as I would be for race day. But being lazy in the morning was more important and so I took my sweet time to get out there, meaning I’d ride a bit more in the heat of the afternoon instead. I rode from the Penticton Beach down along Shaha and then up the short climb over McClean Creek and the fast curvy descent into OK Falls the previous afternoon. The start is just fine, quick and fast, the first climb is short enough that even though I probably won’t ride it in as controlled a manner as I probably should it’s not going to take a big toll on myself. The road is winding and the surface is less than ideal so it’s likely that the traffic on the course will cause some trouble here. I figure that if I can swim 70 minutes I’ll have had a good go of it, that would put 800 people ahead of me. Add only a couple minutes to that and I’ll have a thousand people ahead of me. It’s clear that I’m planning on hopping out of the water when the pack of triathletes will be at it’s thickest. The point all that is: by the time I’m at McClean Creek Road people will be settled in on their bikes and riding predictably and I’ll likely be ready to make some serious passes, maybe a hundred on this climb alone. I have reason to believe that I’ll be riding at a steady+ pace or high zone three here, getting through some of this crowd is going to probably help calm me down, it’s early in the course, not a long hill, and adrenaline is guaranteed to be high.

The roll south from OK Falls to Osoyoos was not dead flat like everyone describes. There were plenty of short rises along the way, I felt like they make this section of the course quite dangerous, not because they put you in any danger, but they offer a relentless barrage of opportunities to go hard for 30 seconds. If the mentality through this section is not well controlled it is completely possible that I get caught up with the huge number of cyclists who I’ll be tearing down the road with and just muscle my way up all those little hills. Deadpan flat would be fast and in one way would be dangerous because I’d feel like I had a significant advantage to push a big gear and use my momentum to my advantage, but this terrain is likely worse because each potential effort is effort is less than a minute, and each can be justified alone, but added together they present an opportunity to shatter your ability to run that afternoon. The key for this section is patience, probably the most here out of the entire course.

Once through Osoyoos, Richter Pass is exactly like everyone describes. It comes in four stages, each being about the same grade with either a downhill roll or flat stretch between them. There is tons and tons of room on the road here and taking the climb easy is no problem. Likely ride each section seated and finishing out of the saddle before trying to get aero and crank the speed back up on the flat sections interspersing the climb. Descending this pass is fantastic, it’s a straight shot down the back and 80 kph is basically guaranteed in the aero position with deep wheels. Immediately out of this descent the infamous rollers begin and they’re what makes this bike course hard. Again, the opportunity to go hard here is dangerously readily available; luckily each hill is long enough that you’re not likely to do so (hammer) accidentally. I’ll be doing the same drills all spring and summer that I did this year to improve my efficiency on the rollers. Seated climb into standing climb, get aero on the top and get up to speed, soft pedal the downhill in a big gear and recover, ride through the gears on the beginning of the ascent making sure I don’t push any of them too hard and settle in on the climb at a moderate pace. This is a tough section to ride and saying that I’m going to actually take it easy here is impossible, or I’m just lying. Taking this section actually easy means you’ll be here all day. I do need to try and take it as easy as possible though. That means I really have to work on riding rollers for the 2010 season, it needs to become a strength of mine. I am great at riding blazing fast on the flats already at 80rpm for hours at a time but I need to continue to develop my skills on the short climbs at variable cadence. I don’t need to get fast on the equivalent of the Great White North Half Ironman course, I need to get efficient on the IMC course.

After the rollers end the rest of the ride really plays to my strengths. There is a long and flat stretch all the way to Keremeos, the focus here is staying aero and likely pushing a big gear. Keeping it totally controlled I’ll be allowing myself to ride relatively fast contingent on the conditions that I am keeping up with nutrition and feeling like this is an easy effort. The out and back isn’t as flat as the first traverse of the valley but it’s generally flat. Many people get bored here according to reports. That’s not something I typically deal with while riding and if I stay focused here I can imagine that I’ll be riding my way past some more quick swimmers in this section especially if there is some wind to contend with that will make the non disciplined triathletes loose focus and perhaps get out of the aerobars.

The course leaves the valley it was in and heads up towards Yellow Lake. It’ll be dangerous to think of the climb having started as soon as the turn is made, it doesn’t. The grade isn’t flat anymore but it’s probably best to think of it as just a hillier section of the out and back until I pass the turnoff to the Green Mountain Road. At this point there is a climb on highway 3A that lasts three miles and it’s a real climb. To think of Keremeos to Yellow Lake as one long 20km ascent will absolutely shatter any positive thoughts you had going for you, the real climb is short and only 5% and I’m sure it’ll be loaded with spectators. Riding that 3 mile section at a moderate effort is A-OK but not the entire 20 km. I’ll maintain my out-and-back race plan through to the beginning of the steep section, stay focused and ride steady. Hitting the top of the short climb it’s time to load up my bottle cages with all the weight I can scavenge from the volunteers handing out gatorade and water because it’s a long fast descent. I’ll probably try to eat a pseudo-meal at this point in the ride. It’ll be sometime around noon and I have 25km or half an hour left to go on the ride. I’m thinking somewhere around 500-700 calories at this point including an entire bottle of gatorade and then follow it with just water on the run down to Penticton. It’s a stress free ride down that hill and I can give my digestive system some time to work. I’ll definitely run an 11 tooth ring here and it’s an easy cruise, low cadence, take it easy and have some fun.

What I learned about the Bike course on Saturday by riding it I feel like I learned about the run course on Sunday by watching it. That’s not to say I know everything there is to know, but I learned so much about Ironman running by watching this race that it felt like I was ready to give it a try. Looking at the faces on people leaving transition it seemed obvious who was headed out there with mostly just hope of running 26.2 miles, those who knew they were going to run 26.2 miles, and those who were already considering the possibilities of not finishing or walking a huge stretch of the run. The difference quite clearly was not who looked fresh and who looked tired, no-one looked fresh and everyone looked tired. Ironman marathon running has basically nothing to do with marathon running in my opinion. The only thing that’s the same is that you have to run for 26.2 miles. I learned basically that I am going to be starting that run feeling tired and that it wasn’t a matter of maybe getting 15 miles into the run and having to run 10 miles tired. Marathon running in my experience is all about 20 miles of warming up and taking it easy and then 10 kilometers of a real push through to the finish. I had guessed that maybe this would be the same deal except the hold-on section of the run would just be way longer. It’s not like that at all, not the first part nor the second part. Everyone was starting with the look of fatigue in their faces and no-one has the potential to jus run hard for 3+ hours. This was true for people getting off of their bikes after a 1 hour swim and 5 hour ride almost to the same extent as for people getting off their bikes after 90 minutes in the water and 7 or 8 hours on the bike, you start the marathon tired. This is a fact.

People who likely were going to end up walking looked in really rough shape, no surprises. The difference between people who look like they’re likely to be successful and those who are maybe going to be successful is all about efficiency and focus. Some people look to be running along in fine form but their faces just look like they’re shell shocked, they were looking scared, eyes wandering all over the place at the crowds, fiddling with their fuel belts. adjusting and re-adjusting their racing clothes. I think a lot of them have thoughts going through their heads like ‘the end of Skaha is a long ways away from here’… followed shortly by ‘oh man, that’s only halfway’. The people who looked like they were on track for success were focused and just running. Many of them had smiles on their faces and it seemed to me that their focus was down the road, not to the end of the valley, they were blocking out all of the unnecessary stimuli. When the first AG athletes started to come back into town they looked exactly the same as they did when they went out. Their motion was unbelievably efficient and their focus was identical to how they looked on the way out. These were the people who managed to hop off their bikes and do exactly the same thing for 3 and a bit hours. It wasn’t about starting out, running a ways and then pushing really hard to the finish, these guys started out and were consistent for 26.2 miles. They were successful because they didn’t have to slow down and that’s it. The guys who came back into town two or three hours after that likely weren’t lacking as good of a race plan or pacing or likely even fitness. What separated them was the fact that they did not have the durability in their legs to set out and do exactly the same thing for 3.5 hours, which was run at a reasonable, even and controlled pace. Running was hard from step one until they got to the finish chute, but the ‘hardness’ was all difficulty and never effort. Marathon running has an effort level that necessarily picks up at the end to hold that ‘best physical limitation’ pace through the finish, from my observations Ironman running has a mental effort level that necessarily picks up at the end to just keep going.

Nutrition for Ironman no longer seems terribly complicated. Nutrition for the bike in my opinion is all about keeping enough calories in my stomach that I am forcing my stomach to absorb as much fuel as it possibly can. This means eating as much as it takes to keep me on the edge of starting to get full. In my experience that’s 400-450 calories per hour, no problem. I’ll eat a bunch at the top of yellow lake and let my stomach work through that for the last half hour on the bike mostly because I know I’ll be doing more than 50 kph for much of the descent and am unlikely to eat well, I finish off without having depleted myself and not a full stomach, but likely still some food in there. Getting on the run it’s going to be so hot that I can likely drink and drink and drink. Lots of that is going to be coke and gatorade, some gels in the mix if I am also drinking water which at the moment I think is probably unlikely, I’ll just be chugging gatorade. Nutrition on the run is actually pretty simple once I realized that to be successful the goal is just to hang in there and not slow down. That formula means: do what it takes not to slow down, stay cool, drink, run, drink, run, eat if I can, drink, run, stay cool, run, run, run. I’ll easily be getting 300 calories per hour on the run just by drinking if it’s hot, there is nothing complicated here. This was a relief to observe, figuring out nutrition has been of great interest to me thus far during my triathlon involvement and it’s something I’m pretty good at. Also note that what I might think is actually really simple is not super straightforward, the point being though that fueling during Ironman is guaranteed not to be more complicated than anything I’ve done before which is what I was expecting. I thought I had a big learning curve and the answer is no. Now that I know this, I think the only thing more complicated than what I’ve already done is nutrition for RAAM. No plans are set yet!

Going fast at Ironman actually seems simpler than going fast at a half Ironman. At the half distance the idea is to try and shave off just enough of your speed at each event from their stand-alone PB times that when you put them together you get to the finish as fast as you can. That means that you have lots and lots of things in the balance. You’re going pretty hard on the bike so you’ll get stomach aches if you try to eat too much. You can deal with cramping on the run because you really stressed your muscles on the bike to move fast. At Ironman, you swim, then you go for a slow bike ride during which you have to stay focused on the task at hand but never need to move quickly, you can eat lots of whatever you want because you’re not going too hard. Then you get off the bike, you’re tired and you have a long ways to go. What makes you fast is that you start out of the gates doing what you can do for the entire run, likely by the time you’re a few aid stations in you’ve got your pattern down and you do exactly that for the rest of the day. The concept of performing at the edge of your physical capacity does not look to be a component of Ironman success whatsoever. Ironman success is based on consistency, durability, focus, determination, self control. On race day that’s about all you need, and lots of those things don’t require training, they require learning. The one training based component, also the thing that I think has the potential to make me relatively quick is durability. I don’t have durability for Ironman running yet, I’ve got Ironman durability on the bike but no humanly possible bike ride can make up for slowing down on the Marathon and needing to walk a few miles. I also recognize that the durability that I’ve developed is not heat-proof. I need an asbestos coated durability for Penticton. So that’s all I’ve got to do in training: learn how to be a durable runner. Then do some fun stuff in training (on the bike or on bike-run bricks) that forces me to come face to face with my ability to stay focused, my determination to complete hard workouts, and self control to stay reserved in my efforts. That’s the recipe, if it bakes a good cake, then this blog post might be more interesting than I had first guessed it might be.