The race report is coming – but don’t hold your breath.

Thanks to Reuben Krabbe for shooting this photo in pouring rain and what my Edge500 recorded as 12^oC. Official results are here… detailed splits to follow sometime later this week:

Sunday I’ll get my 10,000th km on the bike in 2010 somewhere near Keremeos

(never achieved this before November in one calendar year before)

Sunday I’ll run my 1000th mile of 2010 somewhere along the shores of Lake Skaha

(never achieved this before in one calendar year)

Sunday I’ll swim my 300th km of 2010 somewhere in Lake Okanagan

(never achieved this before in one calendar year)

I’ve trained in excess of 800 hours in the last year (since September 1, 2009). I set the target of 800 hours and am currently about 3% beyond that. Previous annual volumes for comparison: 2008 – 520 hours including ride across the USA. 2009 – 700 hours. At this time last year I’d ridden 33 century rides, run 12 half marathons, done three 50km run weeks, and had a life best weekly swim total of 8.9kms. Since then I’ve racked up 19 more century rides (20th on race day) including a personal record ride of 300kms in a day, doubled the number of half marathons in my legs (two more on race day) and 11 times ran more than 50kms in a week (another notch on race day), and 16 weeks of the last 52 I’ve swum more than my previous record weekly distance. I have put more kms on my second Cervelo P2 than I did on my first one prior to it’s demise only two and a half months ago.

I’m also feeling incredible pressure to perform well at the race. Some of it is from myself and some from other people and I don’t really mind their intention because it’s all in good faith (or so I hope, don’t bother letting me know if it’s not). I’m not really super happy with the fact that I feel much pressure from myself to do well. I choose to do this stuff because it generally makes for fun times. Even the times that aren’t so fun in the moment, like getting caught out in a hailstorm and getting pummeled by falling ice, running out of bloodsugar mid-ride and sleeping in a ditch for a couple hours to recover, riding the second half of a Calmar bakery trip with frozen toes and windburnt cheeks, and many times coaxing myself off my butt and into some shoes to run another hour after a ride when I’m aching and tired… all those times are pretty entertaining in retrospect. Why then, if I can have so much fun doing all the crazy stuff to get ready am I susceptible to get so nervous and uptight about whether or not I’m going to meet some general expectations of where people estimate my performance to be on raceday?

It’s because, or at least right now I think it’s because, to devote so much time, and effort, and money, to one thing means I’ve sacrificed a lot of time, and effort, and money that could have been funneled elsewhere, for this one race. When you take a general look all those sacrifices are for me to go fast in the race. Then to reap the reward for the discipline to do that, requires I get payback at the race, namely in the form of being a speedy-gonzales. When I take a moment though and consider the sacrifices, when I’m making the daily decisions to stay this course, I’m making them based on the incremental bits of enjoyment I get from a good run in the river valley, a huge negative split on a long training run, a beautiful ride out in the canola fields around Edmonton, and the satisfaction of laying in the sauna with aching arms after pulling off a record breaking 4000yard timetrial in the pool. Yet, the future task guiding what kinds of shenanigans I filled my weekends with, what kinds of things I quit doing, or started doing, was optimal performance at this race at the end of the summer.

Doing all this crazy sh!t means that in theory I am indeed all charged up for an optimal performance. And it’s not just a theory, I’m all ready to race, my HR response to exercise is indicating that I’m well rested, I feel incredibly strong when I’m clipped into the pedals or pulling long strokes in the pool or am floating down the road feeling light on my feet despite weighing in at ~190lbs. It’s time to race and I have no doubt at all that I can do this IM thing and finish it off and probably run the whole marathon like I want to, and that I’ll almost certainly enjoy every minute of the bike ride and most of the run, but suddenly there’s supposed to be a measure of “good enough” or more accurately and specifically “sufficient”. Is my swim performance going to be sufficient to stay ahead of the bulk of the pack? Am I going to ride sufficiently hard while retaining sufficient reserves for the run, will I eat and drink a sufficient amount on the bike based on prior calculations and practice? Have I prepared sufficiently for the run? Is my toughness and focus going to be sufficient to carry me through the rough patches? Can my body dissipate sufficient heat to avoid heatstroke under the conditions of the day? Do I have sufficient courage to push hard when I know the time is right or will I be uncertain and cautious?

Argh! Why can I create so much pressure? The race is just the task at hand this weekend. The rewards from all the sacrifices made have already been reaped. Look at the first half of this post. 10000kms on a bike – That’s about roughly 350 hours of my life spent doing the thing that I most like to do in the whole world. Each one of those statements has happiness and hours upon hours of enjoyment underlying it. So, when I pause and reflect on what I still need to do on this “Ironman project” I can calm down a bit and I recognize that here’s not much I need to do at the race but give myself and honest measure of what I can do on that day. It’s pretty calming, I’m going to swim hard and bike fast and run tough to measure it, and then start looking back on it with enjoyment. Maybe it’s enjoyment because I actually cover the 140.6 miles with some semblance of speed, or maybe it’s enjoyment more like the hailstorm, the ditch-bonk, the aching fatigue of my mega training week, or the mid-winter jaunt to go get a donut from 30miles away by bike.

That doesn’t mean there’s not pressure, there’s a lot of pressure, it’s entirely external though. I find pressure from other people is pretty easy to dismiss and so, whether or not next week they look at this Ironman endeavor as sufficiently successful is mostly a matter of their measuring technique and isn’t particularly relevant to my own.

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. – 2 Cor 12:9

Raceday is two sleeps away! – check back to this post on or before Sunday morning for details of how to track my progress on raceday.

It’s true, this isn’t a big swim. It’s actually a smaller than average swim. So why mention it? This is the last swim set that I felt like I mentally prepared for as part of my IM training for 2010. And so like the last focused run and last focused ride I’ll mark its passing on the blog here. There’s still some bits and pieces left to do, but they’re all just going to happen, I hardly have to think about them. After my rather un-nerving performance in that 4000yd TT two weeks ago we added another swim TT to the schedule as I led into the race, just as a progress check to confirm suspicions that a good chunck of the reason I swam slow was that I was super tired.

31:11 for 2000yds. This is pace for a 65:51 IM swim but I was only going half the distance. If you presume you fade 4% with distance doubling (pseudo-scientific if you presume I paced this perfectly and would pace the IM perfectly) I’d net myself a 67:51 which I’d say is likely a pretty serious overestimation. This is a significant improvement over two weeks ago where I was indeed quite clearly swimming tired and then only snuck under 69 minute IM pace. With a bit of draft, a wetsuit and another 10 days of tapering this is pretty much where I wanted to be swimming wise when I laid things out a year ago for how I wanted my skillset to develop over the course of the year. It’s not fantastic, but I never said I needed to be fantastic. I made a huge leap in my swimming ability since I returned to the pool after cyclocross wrapped up last fall.

Most importantly I have been feeling like I can crank out some serious effort on the pool in the last week or so. Once I started heading into the taper I’ve had some really satisfying swim sets. I swam a 15×100m set last Thursday, all of them felt fast and efficient and I brought the last one in at 91 seconds. Wow! I swam a set of 5×200yds on Tuesday and kept them all under 180 seconds, finishing #5 on 2:55, my open PR being a 2:44 and I think I probably drafted to get that. (Aside: I should probably get out of the habit of counting PRs where I draft the whole way) It’s really good to feel like you’re swimming strong, I haven’t actually felt this great in the pool since mid-April. I’m looking forward to a satisfying swim.

Gotta post the “lows” as well as the “highs”. I set out today to run 3 hours, the second hour at goal pace and the third hour was supposed to be faster than goal pace. I tried to do it when it was hot out. It was really hot out. I made a route that looped past my house twice so I could drink and reload on fuel, and I selected a course that was hilly for the middle third, just like the race-course in Penticton. There were some successes despite the obvious discrepancy between reality and where the “goal line” is indicating what my average pace should have done if I would have been running exactly 5:00min/kms after the first hour.

Successes on an unsuccessful day:

• I ran my second longest run of my life. (34.3kms)
• I had zero cramping whatsoever.
• I had a totally overwhelming urge to quit and lay down at 26.5kms. I had been really pushing it for the first 20 minutes of that third hour and was holding my splits under a 5:10 pace, which was already not on track for what I was supposed to be doing, but was at least relatively close. My HR was rising though and I was getting pretty close to total detonation. I am pretty proud to announce that I didn’t stop and lay down under a tree. I was able to negotiate myself into slowing down a bit, getting my HR back down closer to 160bpm for 2kms and feeling much better about my situation. The miracle here was that even though I felt like I was totally throwing the run out the window it was only costing me about 10 seconds per 500m split. From there I got back on track a bit better and did what I’d consider acceptable running through to the end. Giving up some time during that mini recovery section made all the difference and I got back on the bandwagon before the end of the run.
• DeSoto Coolwings work well when you can keep them wet, especially with cool water. They are a liability if you can’t keep them wet. And they’re about equivalent to having nothing if you’re pouring warm water on them. Luckily in the race, I have essentially unlimited access to water and ice to tuck into them.
• I was able to tell my body to run fast on the downhills during the middle hilly section. Despite not hitting pace on the uphills I was making up for it by cruising the downhills with good speed, these sections of the run probably are contributing the most to my post-run aches and pains, but I have the confidence to run fast downhill when I can, I don’t think I need to prove this to myself anymore before the race, but it was good to do so today. I suffer a lot lugging my 85kgs up the hills so I need to capitalize where I can use that weight to my advantage. I attribute this to putting a lot of focus on fast turnover this past year and often brick running at 0% gradient on the treadmill during the winter when I was forced to be inside.
• I could eat whatever I wanted despite the hot temperatures and high heart rates. I also noted that I can drink about 500mls in one go without making the stomach contents slosh beyond what is an acceptable level of uncomfortable. I didn’t run out of energy at all, or at least I was so preoccupied with being hot, and the high effort level to keep going that I felt like I had lots of energy.
• My hip flexors and quads were not phased at all by this run… historically they did the most complaining when I did big runs. This time it was the hamstrings that led the revolt after I wrapped it up.
• My racing shoes felt good up to 34kms so I’ll use them at Ironman instead of my more robust daily training shoes to loose a hundred grams off each foot. The longest I’d run in them had been 21kms previously so I wasn’t sure if I’d want the extra padding or not: I don’t.
• My chin wasn’t hot at all and I’m not cutting my goatee. I do need a haircut because my head was baking though.

I booked a week off work at the lab last week with the sole purpose of giving myself an opportunity to give my body a massive aerobic overload while at the same time removing all of the rest of life’s stress to give myself the best chance of absorbing as much of the training effect from all the exercise as possible. I located myself at Crimson Lake near Rocky Mountain House for the week as it afforded a few important things:

• No internet connection
• A lake that would be warm enough to swim in with a wetsuit at any time of day or night without getting swimmers itch
• Good roads for cycling with some real hills when compared to the ‘fake hills’ around Edmonton
• Trails to run that would be easy on my feet and knees compared to running on asphalt
• No need to drive for hours on end to get there and back

I planned to station myself at the lake from Sunday afternoon through ’till Friday evening and basically do five things… swim, bike, run, eat and sleep. It worked pretty good. I led into it with one of the toughest rides of the year so far, an overdistance ride with Stefan at approximately race effort on Saturday followed by a brick run. Sunday morning I snuck in another easy 3.5 hours ride and then headed to the lake where I rode again and ran for an hour. Monday I logged an hour in the lake, four and half on the bike including quite a bit of IMeffort intensity, and a brick run. Tuesday kicked off with another hour in the lake, six on the bike and an hour transition run. Wednesday I took easy in the lake with a half hour splash, then ran a challenging 3×10km workout aiming to run race-pace for the final 10kms and see how it felt. I had been pretty scared of doing this workout while tired during my rides and runs on Monday and Tuesday and had gotten nice and nervous about it while I anticipated it and while I ran the first two 10km loops getting ready to unleash “IMpace” at the end of it. In the end it felt great and so did the 2hours aboard the bike afterwards to loosen up the running muscles. I had crossed halfway mentally in the week and had a couple tough rides left before I’d have to tackle another IMpace run on Friday. Thursday was to be a big day, I logged an hour of IMeffort swimming, hopped aboard the bike quickly and logged an hour of IMeffort riding and then continued on to net 190kms on the day including a little race against an impending thunderstorm placing another hour of IMeffort in at the end between 4.5 and 5.5 hours as though I were finishing off my ride into Penticton in four weeks time. I finished the day off off with an easy half hour jog after supper to make sure I hit all three sports in the day. Friday started out in the lake for an hour and then I netted four and a half pretty hilly hours on the bike with the last two at IMeffort where I racked up a total of 74.8kms when riding my rather tired body down the road. My heart rate wouldn’t come up like it should, an indicator that I had successfully tired myself out, but the speed was still good so I kept at it and hyped myself up on cola to keep trucking along. When I hit the transition run I sucked back some more coke for another caffeine boost and ran 12.4 kms in 60 minutes, a goal IM effort brick to wrap up the week. Pheuff, it’s tiring just typing it!

The effect of all these shenanigans was that I reached the highest Acute Training Load I’ve ever done in my life (50 units). I also got my 7day volume up to 45.5 hours at one point (shy of my 51.5 hour record). I also got my 7day bike distance over 1000kms which is a good confidence booster as well, I managed to ride my rear tyre all the way down through the rubber to the bare casing while I was at it. Somewhere along the way, I’m not certain exactly where, I acquired the confidence that I’m getting ready to race in Penticton and I think that’s really the main point of this blog post. I’ve got another couple weeks of working hard but I feel like I’m ready for them and then things are starting to back off as I taper for race-day.

Here are some cool graphs – the first is a meteoric rise in training stress (purple-acute, red-chronic) indicating I will race in Penticton in the best racing shape of my entire life (green-race readiness):

Thursday’s ride: (T=(0->1hour and 4.5->5.5hours at IMeffort)

Friday’s confidence boosting 1 hour brick run at IMpace after 2 hours IMeffort on bike:

The Great White North took a lot out of me. A lot. Compared with two weeks ago, Chinook amounted to one day of lethargy and a few days of feeling less than ideal with the muscles and strength. Following this most recent race, I had three solid days of somnolence and today I was onto my fifth day of my body still remembering that it raced hard on Sunday. This state of affairs isn’t really a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just what is. I feel like racing drained every drop of adrenaline out of my body, and now it’s taking a few days to get rebalanced.

Monday was scratched as I spent a solid 16 hours at the lab… well it included a break at dinner to write up a blog entry about the race. Tuesday morning I got in an easy spin on the road bike for an our and by late afternoon I could find absolutely no motivation to try and go swim so I didn’t and instead rolled over on my ‘cross bike to the Hardcore Fat Tire Tuesday race where I tried to count laps for the racers and get times. I only screwed up a bit but because everyone got a burger no-one complained that I botched all the ranks outside the top ten. Then I took a round-about way home and racked up another hour of touring the trails. Wednesday evening it was absolutely beautiful and felt that as I’d felt OK after my three short rides the day prior I would be OK to head out for a bit longer of an easy ride in the countryside. Well, I had no trouble doing so, and doing so with some serious speed. My HR was responding just as I would have anticipated it should and I pegged it in where I normally would expect to ride on a steady cruising along going no-where fast but not-lollygagging either kind of pace. Well after 2 hours of that I was totally cooked, and rather accidentally still an hour from home, I had only intended to ride for 2-2.5 hours. So, I went and got a sub sandwich and sat in a park in Spruce grove for half an hour and then mustered up my motivation to ride home with a rather beautiful sunset reflecting on the clouds ahead of me. Thursday I knew better than to kick myself in the head and took another self-imposed and partially coach sanctioned rest-day.

Friday was to be another crack at a bike ride, I recruited some company and headed out of town. We knew there was a giant storm blowing across the prairie but we all kinda resigned ourselves to the fact that we might get wet and headed out anyways. We could see the storm from even before we started moving and basically rode straight for it, and had the illusion in our heads that we might be able to skirt around it to the north as it approached us and then be able to let it pass us by and then roll nicely back into town after it having avoided all the wetness. Well, as we stood at the side of the road deciding on this plan of action we looked up at the bottom of the giant cloud which was right on top of us and it was thoroughly dimpled and had some very noticeable circulation. I’m no pro meteorologist but I’ve watched enough Discovery channel to know that circulation like that is certainly a warning sign for a tornado.

No. Sorry. This blog entry doesn’t wind up with us out-riding a tornado as no funnel cloud developed but very shortly after that quick confernce of “what should we do” at the side of the road we started to get wet, really wet. And the sidewind was nuts. I was doing my best with all 86 kg of myself to barely hold my bike in a straight line. And then without much warning it was suddenly impossible to ride. We dismounted and found ourselves standing at the roadside holding onto our bikes like they were kites as we scrambled into the ditch to get at least a bit out of the wind. The cut hay in the field across from us was rolling along in big chunks, suitcase size balls of hay and then sofa size heaps of straw… this was a serious storm. We also got ourselves a bit of hail, not much volume wise, but they were big, more than 1cm across for sure. Then almost as suddenly as it started it was over… and we found ourselves soaked to the bone, the wind having changed direction to ensure a headwind for the return trip and about 40kms from home.

The photos are a bit lousy but I think they still communicate the idea. Thanks to Darren for snapping them! All in all I’m actually really happy I rode this evening, it was a good time and it makes for an even better story. I’ll wrap up with posting this video. It’s kinda relevant to the sentiment I had at about 5pm before we got on our bikes when we knew with full certainty that there was a storm coming and there wasn’t anything to do about it, just decide what we were going to make of the situation.

Today’s post in three acts. There was also a prequel to this blog entry available here, which has all the graphy goodness so you don’t want to miss it.

Act 1 – A Story

Bring a steak knife to the carbo-dinner for Great White North 2011! The steak was great, but the flimsy knife given to cut it was not.

Simmon and I rolled out of Edmonton shortly before six with a mostly blue sky greeting us as we headed west towards the lake. Between the time we arrived and pumped up my tyres (running new tires on both front and back now… conti-podium on front conti-sprinter on rear) the cloud cover came in and by the time the race started it was a grey day. The weather was fantastically forgiving, not punishing you for making small errors in early pace judgement and inadequate fueling/drinking in the same way that blast furnace heat would.

Prior to the start I did my best to stay away from the large crowds of stressed out triathletes and was able to stay calm while 750 other people managed to seem to do everything but. No real start line was drawn but the waters edge was what I believed to be implied. With the 10 second warning there were people up to knee deep in the lake and arranged myself into what was a third row kind of position. The start was quick but not crazy and a general desire to not get punched in the face seemed to prevail amongst the melee of arms and legs so despite looking like an absolute washing machine every time I lifted my eyes to sight there was minimal actually hitting and kicking going on. The 400 meters to the first turn went by quickly with mostly 2 stroke breathing and the occasional 3 stroke to change sides with hopes of avoiding breathing in big splashes of water. Then we hit the brakes… and we hit the brakes HARD. 750 people all needed to make the turn at the first buoy and to do so people were slowing so quickly that I slid right up someone’s back as I was trying to glide coast into the traffic jam. Then zoom, sprinting out of the corner to clear the bunch. The drafting opportunities were fantastic and I took advantage of many of them as we progressed in to the beach and I was back to bilateral breathing for the rest of the way. The approaching shallows of the lake-shore were tasted before they were seen or felt. All the muck (muck is just a nice way of saying goose poo I’m sure) was churned up and I had a good laugh as I stood up and jogged around the buoy for lap 2. I hoped to swim the same perceived pace as the previous lap but this was easier said than done. Getting through a thick pack of swimmers is no easy thing, especially when there’s the occasional person swimming perpendicular to the generally perceived direction of flow. I had a good laugh inside on more than one occasion and placed myself in some very excellent drafts… but the effort level on lap 2 was lower than I would have liked, there wasn’t much I could do. I can’t really complain about the clowns swimming zig-zag all the way along the course, if I was a faster swimmer I wouldn’t have to deal with it… and that’s no-ones fault but my own.

T2 was pretty quick, I heard Steve King announce my name as I headed out of the lake and also heard him mention Travis Anderson at about the same time so I hoped to see him on the bike and wish him a good race. Tough luck, Travis’ transition was slower than mine and I wouldn’t see him until well into the run. I gave Glenn a big high five and he stripped my wetsuit like a real champion, one swoop and it was off, and then so was I. Helmet, shoes, number. Go! No fancy ITU mount for me today, the bike course started on an uphill with no room to coast so I put my shoes on at the bike rack and the executed a mount that any cyclocrosser could have been proud of. I think I probably passed 30 athletes in transition and another 5 at the mount line while I flew through the air before landing on my seat. Good thing too as I had been the 99th swimmer out of the water and I wanted as little traffic ahead of me as possible.

When I saw my HR for the first time on the bike it registered at 175bpm… which was only 2 bpm shy of the maximum it would see for the day which occurred somewhere in the process of my heroically fast transition and mount. I took it almost silly-easy as we rolled down the long gradual hill away from the lake towards town with a tailwind, I followed another dude at a legal distance as he did the job of shouting at everyone else that he was passing them on their left and I could just follow suit. This was nice and it saved me adrenaline, stress and lots of breaths. Once we turned south my HR had recovered back to a level were I felt like I should be allowed to start turning the pedals with any effort I passed the shouter as he had served my purpose and drove off. My HR was too high through town, 160bpm or thereabouts, and kept it easy as I waited for it to come down. Was it taking this long to recover from a hard swim? Was it just taking time to redistribute the blood through my body to the big movers in my legs? No stress, just keep riding easy, I unintentionally jettisoned a bottle of gatorade as we crossed the railway. I was evidently not the only person to loose stuff there as there were bottles aplenty lying in the curb. I didn’t really care about getting those calories or picking up other drink on the course as there were so many aid stations. Off I rolled.

By the time I passed Mike Downey (the fastest UofA Tri-club swimmer of the day @ 28:58 – huge props!) my HR had settled down to 155 with me starting to pedal with any effort. I wished him luck as I was now able to start riding a steady pace. I continued on at the steady pace adding in periods of moderate effort when we went up slight inclines through first a long crosswind and then a headwind section. I rolled through 40kms at 60:48 ride time and calculated myself to have an average speed of ~39.5kph. This was pretty slow but considering I’d basically coasted down the hill away from the lake and hadn’t done any work yet I wasn’t worried. It would pick up as I had now started to get into a groove and could ride as I felt I wanted to and had planned to. I soon saw Dave sporting his compression socks and saw he was riding with Kelly and Annette, whom I presumed to be the leading females. I chatted with Annette and then set off. I calculated Dave’s average speed through 40kms to have been between 38 and 38.5 kph presuming he swam 2 minutes faster than me, I figured he was having a good day and was happy for him as I started to enter lonely territory in the race. There was no-one around, more motorbikes than cyclists! I suppose that the marshals want to make sure that the leaders aren’t cheating, but the real issues are back in the packs, which would inevitably be forming without enforcement from officials. When I caught the next cyclist I realized why, it was the lead female, Kristina, to whom I relayed the info that Annette and Kelly appeared to be riding with eachother quite a ways back.

I eventually caught another mini-group of three cyclists just at the top of the hill near Genesee and was getting water and a banana as the leaders started to go the other way and I missed seeing who was who. I wasn’t planning on trying to take a split at the turnaround but I was interested to know which place Stefan was in, and where sat overall. I made the turn and rolled off back down the hill through the valley. Big gears, huge speed, then suddenly not enough gears and just coasting. I was focused on getting another banana eaten in the aero position on the descent, so I didn’t get to see where all my friends were ranked in the field. I noticed a couple as they whipped by my peripheral vision. I climbed the second time out of the river valley very reserved even though the plan had been to start picking up the effort here to moderate or even somewhat hard on the return. I was rolling well off the top of the hill with the sidewind and was going quick, I could feel the sidewind harder than it was before and was getting excited to drill it with the tailwind as soon as we turned right. Schooler passed me as I slowed for a bottle of water in the aid station, but I took some energy from the big crowd at the only reasonably spectator vantage point on the bike course and got up and put in a minute of hard effort to catch back up to Schooler (he was racing for a team so he was irrelevant but I was interested to see what kind of pace he would ride). I rolled along near him for a while and then took over in front when my steady effort was bringing me near to the end of his draft zone, eventually he would re-assume the pace setting. But when he slowed again and I went by I realized why he was no longer maintaining his speed. He couldn’t ride the aerobars anymore! I joked that if you want to race like a triathlete you’ve got to train like a triathlete. He smiled and complained about not being able to sit down anymore. When I went around the corner back into the sidewind I thought I could hear his carbon wheels behind me, perhaps though it was just the deafening sound of my disc going around the corner at 35kph. Off I shot into the sidewind. I waited until there were some trees along the road to lessen the sidewind so I could relieve myself into the ditch while coasting without getting blown over. I then set a new PR, for the fastest speed grass watering job I’d ever done. 40kph. By the end of the bike I’d consumed 1200 calories, although the number is a bit vague because I have to estimate how much HEED I took from the aid station to drink instead of the planned gatorade which got dropped. All in all this was a good amount and I was happy and confident with how it felt (well, the fact that it didn’t feel like anything!)

I coasted into T2 quite happy with my ride knowing that I’d kept it conserved enough to run fast but had still put down a satisfactorily quick ride, I waved to the crowd which gave me a great cheer and hopped off my bike. I had my bike racked and my socks and shoes put on quite efficiently and then was off.

Almost immediately I could tell that the muscles in my lower legs were tight. The most concerning spot was just on the outside of my right shin, Extensor Digitorum Longus, and it wasn’t happy. (Thanks to this great resource for the muscle ID and treatment suggestions: Athletes Treating Athletes) It wasn’t classic shin splits but it wasn’t nice. My goal was to try to just run at a 1:30 half marathon pace until 8kms and if my HR was low then it was just effort in the bank that I could spend on the second chunk of the run. I could see Cal Zaryski ahead and knew that he would be running closer to a 1:22-1:25 pace, so I told myself if he wasn’t putting time into me then I was going too fast. This likely sounds like a counterproductive racing strategy, but my goal is to make it to the finish line as fast as I possibly can, not to compete and so this wasn’t a hard pill to swallow at all. I was largely concentrating on trying to be able to run at all with the frustration of my lower legs and didn’t control my pace as well as I could have or should have. It took until about 4kms at which point I had finally got my pace dialed back. It was partly the fact that my HR had come up that helped slow me back down to goal pace, this is something that continues to need practice, not necessarily in general, but specifically in brick workouts: running patiently slowly with a low HR.

Pace/HR Chart

From 4kms through to 8kms I felt fine. I was increasingly frustrated as I passed through successive aid stations that did not have any gels on hand for me. This was frustrating and I tried to figure out how I was going to make up for the calories I’d planned to down from the gels which I had understood by the emails to have been promised at the aid stations. I tried drinking the flat coke, but it was flatter at some aid stations than it was at others. After a couple tries of that I wasn’t happy and switched to drinking HEED at each of the aid stations, this turned out OK. It meant that I missed the opportunity to try and feed on the run as I would have liked to have practiced for Penticton. Such is life.

At around 8kms I was hoping to switch to HR based running and lift it up to 162 bpm. It took me a while of just observing the HR before I decided I had actually better close the gap between the HR I was running and the target I had set. I came across an intersection where Ben and Lindsay were volunteering and they gave me the extra boost to make the change. Ben’s voice sounded really encouraging when I saw him and I believed him when he said I was running well, from there on I ran well, then a long stretch of tailwind pushed me along for a while and I kinda tricked myself by thinking the wind would push me like it does on a bike… it doesn’t really, but it makes you feel better about your running and I ran well. Then into the headwind I paid the price for cheating my brain into thinking the headwind had previously helped and was now hurting. I ran hard into that headwind, and when I got out of the wind I ran even harder. Once I was within 5kms of the finish I made the dangerous calculation of how fast I’d have to run to still meet the goal of a sub 1:30 run. The answer was 4.8 minutes (That information is dangerous, it could have slowed me down if I was not feeling good) but the motivation continued as I was quite regularly seeing other members of our club. The traffic on the path through the one final stretch and I had to do some cross country to get around the big clumps. With a mile left I broke out into an uphill headwind section and things weren’t pretty but I stuck with it, and then inside the last kilometer there were people watching… you have to run fast when people are watching!

I didn’t realize that there was a clock for me to see at the finish line until I was almost under it at which point I had to make a mad dash to get in under 4:14, which I did. Not that I had to sprint the last 10 meters, because I’d beaten sixth place by more than 6 minutes! After the finish I was really dizzy just like Chinook two weeks prior. This time it lasted an uncomfortably long time and I just lay on the pavement waiting for it to go away. Once I got up and walked over to sit in the golf cart and drank a bunch of calories was able to stand up again without feeling so bad, I’m not sure what to make of it.

Act 2 – Race Plan Execution

Stay calm at the start, stay away from groups of over-stressed people. Permission to be nervous but stay calm.

Just an on-shore warmup like I normally do before getting into the pool. Line up near the front, second row in center for the beach start. Run in to get going quick, don’t spike HR with a sprint.

Go hard for up to 200m if I can tell that there are feet around I should be catching. Hopefully something is found and I’ll settle into a moderately hard effort on someone’s feet or the same thing if I have to swim on my own. Hopefully I’m ahead of people who will be swimming faster than me so I can pick up some feet as they come around. Don’t redline for too long.

Keys to swimming well: long strokes, quick transition from hand entry to vertical forearm, don’t let legs snake after the torso through the water. Finish the strokes.

Aim to swim the second lap at same perceived pace as the first. If I’m alone, key is to find a rhythm and sight well to stay on course.

Goal: No specific goal set for swim other than to do my best. Aim for a slightly higher effort level than Chinook, anticipate that with an accurate course a 32-33 minute swim is possible.

Not able to go too hard off the start due to immediate congestion. Probably wasn’t close enough to the front, the wide start also meant that fast people were likely spread very widely. The bottleneck was going to happen anyways though. Did same or lower effort than Chinook Half and hence the reason I was a tad off my target time with the swim.

Bike General Strategy: Reserved effort on the flats to start, settle in and ride fast and efficient. Work harder through the rolling hills by the bacon farm and the two climbs in the middle of the course, maintain harder effort on the way back. Sight off of the remaining cyclists ahead of me and reel them in, don’t race to T2, but begin racing for the finish line with about 40km to go on the bike, meaning ~2.5 hours left in the race. Stay on track for ~1100 calories minimum.

Total food: 2×24oz bottles of Gatorade = 350 calories. three half bananas = 180 calories. 2 tube shot bloks = 400 calories, 3 gels 3×110 = 330 calories. If I want bananas then I don’t eat the gels, grab water along the way, ensure I drink minimum 1 bottle, 2 if hot.

Do not pace off of other cyclists, they are likely going too slow. Enjoy the ride, say hello to team-mates that I see while on course. . When passing stronger cyclists especially near the front of the race, take a drink first as a regulatory measure so that I know I’m not breathing that hard and then go past with sufficient speed that they’re not generally going to feel confident to come with me.

Let HR gradually rise towards 150bpm rather than hammering to get it up there. Fast cadence in headwind, run the big gears in tailwind with slower cadence, keep the power output smooth and my body aerodynamic. Aim to conserve momentum.

Once back into the smaller streets on the way back into town remain cautious, sprinting corners is only going to induce cramping so might as well be gentle here.

Goal: Average HR > 150bpm. Mentally pace bike to begin racing home from Genesee.

Incorrectly anticipated I’d be starting the bike with a HR that was going to need to come up to 150bpm instead of a HR that needed to come down to 150bpm. I think I made the right decision taking it so easy on the bike, if I were to have raced with no HRM I definitely would have been faster through this stretch, whether or not it would have cost me though is an open question… My heart rate wouldn’t have come down unless I took it easy, so I would have been faster but it would have been at the expense of doing it… and then likely the rest of the bike at an even higher effort. Nailed the goal with 152bpm on the bike, able to ride aero the whole time without any issues of muscular discomfort in glute-med or lumbar back, although I did find the shorts less comfortable today than at Chinook, likely because this course is only out of aero position for a grand total of 11 corners and optionally on two hills. Whereas Chinook has bum-shifting opportunities at less corners but more climbs are relatively notable durations out of the saddle. At the end of the race I thought about switching shorts for IM but on sober second thought IMC has a course with more opportunities for ass-relief than GWN so I’ll stick with what I’ve got.

Run General Strategy: Gradual start to the run, reserved on first out and back, 4:16 pace cap until the school, then with about 2/3 of the run remaining aim to pick it up through final hour, building pace.

first 8kms: focus on breathing, want feeling like I’m running easier than during a MAF test, notably short of breakpoint of deep breathing. Keep it capped at 1:30 half marathon pace, MAF HR cap. Let people get away from me if they are going to get away from me, self control.

On the way to turnaround, Run efficiently. Picking up pace from first 8kms slightly, goal to run 4:10kms or MAF HR whichever is faster. HR cap at 172bpm.

On the way back from turnaround Go Hard! MAF Pace is target, MAF HR is the absolute floor of acceptable effort. Keep lifting knees and picking up my heels, maintain proper running stride even if tired

Final mile back from junction: keep it flying! No need to sprint unless I’m contesting a position as this will exasperate recovery.

Nutrition: Gels at the aid stations, 3 miles, 6miles, 9miles. HEED at all aid stations. Water on body and ice if available and heat warrants it.

Goal: Run sub 1:30

As discussed in Act 1, I struggled with quite a bit of discomfort and then was focused on doing what it took to run and experimentation with how that felt, it meant that I didn’t have the mental focus on getting the pace quite right. I was able to dial it back as I was aware that I was going too fast but it took a while to reel myself back sufficiently. Picked up to MAF HR nicely once I tried and got in a groove, I found the pace feedback every 500m to be variable due to aid stations etc so paid less and less attention to it as I went because I knew that it was acceptable. Ran harder in the last mile than I needed to but I was seizing the opportunity and having a blast doing it, so if it means I hurt more the day after then that’s fine.

Act 3 – The Club

Stefan put in a good effort on the day, he really pushed it on the bike hoping that he could win the “fastest bike” prime which he did and then still managed to run well. Dave also had a great performance, he didn’t look like a champion when he rounded the last bend and came into view but, with 100 meters to go he pulled his form back together and ran across the finish nicely inside 4:30 which is really a great performance. Darren passed Andrea on the run which I wasn’t totally sure if he’d manage when I saw them go by in the other direction, but I’m sure makes him secretly super happy! The womens team wrapped up a win in their division with a swim that was more anticipated than any other swim in the history of triathlon, a bike ride from Shari that showed everyone who was boss with the 6th fastest female bike split of the day, and a personal best half marathon to wrap it up. Travis rounded out a great swim and frustrating bike ride where he struggled to feel good about putting food down with a run that is much more respectable than he gives himself credit for. Then came two big surprises. Or perhaps they weren’t surprises, just well guarded secrets regarding the performances that they knew they had it store but weren’t willing to divulge? Mike Downey made his HIM debut in 5 hours (if we give him the 30 second benefit of the doubt just like the Boston Marathon, which of course, we will) with the aforementioned swim a quick bike and a good run. The rumour from the spectators is that he needs to work on his transition though! Then Lesley cruised across the finish line with a mighty fine “crash course in last minute training” performance, breaking her PR from last year on this course with a notably improved bike leg. While she seemed to be chalking it up to “I don’t know how”, I think the consistency of training through ‘cross season and through the early winter when the majority of people do nothing of substance, and she maintained consistency did a wonder of good, combined of course with chasing Travis around on some challenging bike rides. Michele cruised across the finish in her debut performance having suffered a rather lengthy flat tire pit-stop on the bike putting together a run within only a couple minutes of her open half marathon performance in April, which has got to make her happy. Not far behind, Jen Moroz cruised in with a full trio of times that I believe she will be happy with, having also made her debut at the distance. Anita chopped an enormous 23 minutes off her time from last year, greatly improving both her ride and her run. Aisling also scored her first finish at the HIM distance and was quite pleased with it all things considered at the finish.

Thanks to Becky for not getting mad at me when I stole some photos of the race from Facebook without asking her

I’ll recount the day shortly… but ’till then here’s some statistics of my race:

Run Splits and HR: [Click for larger]

• Swim 33:29
• T1+Bike+T2 2:12:59 (Map & HR Data Link)
• Run 1:27:31 (Map & HR Data Link)
• 99th fastest swim (includes some teams), 2nd fastest bike, 5th person to T2, 8th fastest run
• Overall: 2nd M18-29 and 5th Overall

There is also a sequel to this blog post as promised.

Better late than never:

Pigeon Lake was to be my debut in category 3 at least as far as mass start racing is concerned (Cat 3 TTs are just like Cat 5 TTs) and we rode south with the Hardcorians. The sun was shining, it was going to be nice and hot, and the field was all full of smiles as people ran around to get their spare wheels ready and sign on, and do all their pre-race rituals etc. etc. We set up the Hardcore tent, pulled out the lawnchairs and sat down and shot the breeze while we watched the goings on. Peter and I loaded up on sunscreen, L’Oreal of course, because we’re worth it, and started to get excited.

As I got dressed to head out for a warmup, I noticed that my cassette wasn’t quite right, I was missing one of the spacers that should have been in there when I swapped it over from my other set of wheels and instead of doing a whole ton of fiddling with the derailleur I opted to go fetch my spare from the car, put it back on and race with a race-wheel on the front and a training wheel on the rear. All the running around cost me time to do a warmup and as soon as I stepped out of the toilet names were already being called for the start. Everything would be OK, likely there’s not going to be anything crazy right off the start anyhow. The lineup included myself, Peter, Andre and Mark representing the green Hardcore colours along with quite a few other people I know, including fellow cyclists from the Penticton camp: Greg and Masa from Bicisport and Bruce from ERTC as well as Stefan repping the Fiera Race Team solo.

I headed up to the front of the pack after about 5kms and took a good long pull on the front down a long gentle hill, got things fired up a bit with my legs and did my warmup while the whole peloton drafted me along the road. Kinda fun. After I felt ready and had brought my HR up and got my legs loose I declared myself ready to respond to an attack or put out some good power if the situation warranted it. I quickly dove for the cover of the peloton and sat up in the draft and watched the goings on as we began the first of 4 laps of the Sundance loop. Relatively early on a break went off the front with 4 people. It included Andre from our team and I was quite pleased as it gave us free license to draft without mercy and contribute nothing to the success of the peloton: what fun! Peter got it in his head at one point that he wanted to bridge up to the break, but couldn’t get off the front of the peloton and clawed back a bit of time from his own team-mate in the break. We heckled him about it later. Stefan did quite a bit of work to pull the first break back and by the middle of the second lap they’d rejoined the peloton. Basically everyone toned it down again to wait and see what was going to happen. Some toned it down way more than the others and three people found themselves off the front including Stefan, we were doing maybe 30kph when the gap formed so I’m pretty confident that none of them intended in getting in the break. Eventually though they decided they were going to make a go of it and the gap started to grow. It went out to 30 seconds quite quickly and then kinda hovered there before starting to balloon past the minute mark and I wasn’t keen to see it grow much further.

In the leadup to the biggest climb on the course on the previous lap there was some serious slowing with our group, the general consensus being that we didn’t want to arrive at the bottom of the hill tired. The break wasn’t going to go for that though and they’d be gaining more time if we took another breather. I decided I’d go to the front and ride tempo to the bottom of the hill. It worked and the gap didn’t grow but I suffered on the hill as a result moving from first wheel to last wheel between the bottom and the top.

I took it easy on the fast long ride down the other side and when we turned south towards the gas station we decided we collectively really needed to pick it up. I went to the front and drilled it for a while. The pace came up and the peloton strung out into a long thin line. The gap started to fall and I really buried myself on the front. I took some seriously hard pulls and was riding a few people off of my wheel on the front and had to stay a bit more reserved to keep the peloton coming along. As I was doing it I just kept thinking to myself, that I hoped Peter had a good draft back there. He was our man for the uphill sprint at the finish and the other three Hardcorians were all up front pitching in on the chase. By halfway on the last lap we’d pulled them back having done a few good stretches on the front between 45 and 48kph.

The last hill was pretty tough but after that the peloton collectively decided that we were going to finish with a group sprint. I chatted with Peter and things seemed good, I got in what I thought was a decent position and hoped he would be on my wheel. As we came in towards the finish and things started to speed up and I should have been going towards the front I was pretty toasted already and couldn’t really move up very much. Things were tight and fast. Peter did well for himself without much help in the run in to the finish from his team-mates and wound up second overall. Mark and I crossed the finishline together in the mid twenties I think. Not great, but that wasn’t the point.

A quick note on nutrition for the day, we did 111kms in slightly under 3 hours, this was the timeline I anticipated and judged I’d drink two tall bottles and one short bottle of fluids. I made a good guess, but as it was hot I probably would have liked three tall ones instead. One was gatorade mixed pretty strong, one was two thirds coke, and one third water with some extra salt, the small bottle was just water. Along the way I ate 300calories of coke-bottle candy, a clif bar of 240calories, and a gel 100 calories.

The other news from the day was from a bad crash in Cat 5. The peloton got itself all excited in the run-in to the finish and someone went by Simmon with his bike waggling all crazylike between his legs and clipped Simmon as he went by. The result was Simmon taking a hard crash, breaking a clavicle, removing a load of skin and taking out his bike in almost it’s entirety, apparently the pedals might be salvageable. He was transported via ambulance to Edmonton and pulled through with a remarkably fine attitude on the whole thing despite the majority, or entirety, of his triathlon season getting a pretty big kick in the pants.

Chinook is now less than a week away and with a newly acquired membership into the 300 Club I’m ready to start the specific leadup towards the race this coming Saturday. When updating my training log I did a little fiddling around to display what the plans laid out for the coming week are likely to do to me fitness wise.

The first figure of note is what would be likely to happen if I were to sit on my butt all week long and rest in anticipation of the race in 6 days.

I would be pretty much guaranteed to drain all of the fatigue out of my body in time for the race, and I would be relying on my previously earned fitness to not disappear before race-day. Besides the fact that I might find myself a bit unfamiliar with the feeling of efficient swimming, cycling or running I would probably perform alright, my form would have crept up above my chronic training stress in time for race day, not by a ton, but relatively significantly, and I would be operating on a training stress level as low as I had during the height of my obligations with organization of the Spring Thaw Triathlon. To compare, the alternative to rest, I’ll pretend that I did this coming week the same thing that I did last week. I’d be building some serious fitness, and piling on the acute stress (fatigue, aches in muscles, need for sleep, etc.)

In short, the result of more hard training would be an improvement in long term fitness. In that case however, one week from now I’d be even more haggard than I am today. Not great news if I wanted to race well, so there’s a tapering protocol employed designed to let the acute stress drop off without having me rest up too much in anticipation of more hard training to be done the week after the race. All this resting is not good training in the long run, so you’re spending a bit of your potential fitness, in exchange for a good race result. Instead of trying to keep building up the chronic training curve (red) we put it on pause and hold it level this week, rather than rest too much and let it fall. The result of the plan is to try and trace this curve up until race morning:

At which point I race, incur some serious training effect, and by the end of Saturday the charts should look kinda like this: