Race Report 2010

• No HRM… I’m stupid and left it at home
• No spare tubular… I’m stupid and left it at home
• Swim. COLD!
• Bike. No fun
• Run. Totally incredible

There’s basically all you need to know… but I’ll record the day for posterity sake, I’m sure one day someone will want to remember it even though today I don’t really.

Tapered my running after completing 40 runs in 40 days on June 9th, big bike weekend prior and consistent swimming during race-week. Rested up enough to get TSB back definitively on positive side for the first time in 36 days. Still tired on Thursday, felt good Friday and felt physically great on Saturday morning despite being mentally not so great… impacted by some forgetfulness (see preamble).

Swim: Goal was to practice drafting in the open water as much as I could but keep to a moderate effort. Started front row and with a little beach run I was way off in front of the pack, got off to a moderate effort start, no need to hammer as people were just gingerly getting going due to the cold this all seemed really weird to me, then things started to pick up at maybe 300m, at which point people started to pass me, I tried a few sets of feet as they went past and held some for a while each but eventually lost them all. By 500m I had picked up a good draft and held it until maybe 800 feeling just steady. At this point I got pretty dizzy, not because of waves I don’t think, probably a cold head, but I just grimaced and dealt with it, trying to focus on three stroke breathing until the end of the first lap. I passed 5 people on the beach run and caught some feet upon re-entry but quickly lost them and swam by myself at a steady pace till 1500. At this point I got a draft and held it to the finish again. Got a bit dizzy through the same section, this was the shaded part of the lake so that’s why I’m pretty sure it was a cold-induced dizziness. 19th/120 on the swim.

35:48 – distance was supposed to be 2km but everyone seemed to think it was a bit long. I swam totally within myself but did think that I had swum a very straight line and had kept the pressure on. I thought for sure this was going to be closer to a 33min swim until the results went up. Disappointed but not surprised based on a recent 1 hour swim TT last week where I managed only about this pace.

T1: Hands were a wreck in T1, luckily the strippers got me out of my suit and I was on my way. I decided to run hard to try and warm up at least a bit before mounting the bike. In retrospect I do think this was a good decision, I did get on the bike relatively quite a bit warmer than leaving the lake.

Bike: Race plan was to average 150bpm, having no HRM (see preamble) I was going to just try and average an RPE of 14/20 and 16/20 on the big hills, which would likely get me around 150bpm under race circumstances. Out the start I felt like the bike was all a strange muscular effort and breathing/HR was low… Did not feel like I was strong on this bike at all… I’m strong on the road bike right now, the TT bike was not feeling great. Eating and drinking got underway and was doing OK, pulling in lots of people and I’d worked my way into fourth. I was certainly not feeling strong on the bike, searching around through different cadences and not able to find something that felt good and strong and fast. Similar trouble to early May on the TT bike for the first time in the season, just couldn’t get in a powerful groove.

Flatted my rear tyre at about 30kms. Very frustrated with myself and had a big internal debate about what to do, kept riding while I would decide but focus was lost. Dad was parked maybe 5km up the road and I opted to stop, and put my training wheel on the rear at 35kms and accept a DQ for the race for accepting outside help and then get going. Did the swap, and spent the next 10miles not focusing well, not riding hard, not doing anything right. Got more frustrated with myself, sad, angry… etc. At halfway I tried to turn things around a bit but struggled to do so. Average pace picked up due to general downhill and sections of tailwind, this was probably deceiving as I felt a bit better about it but wasn’t really making up as much time as I could have been. I caught myself dropping into easier gears when I probably shouldn’t have been, certainly not having fun at this point. Then started to get an achy lower back… race plan was to avoid having this happen as I anticipated it meant I was going too hard. When it happened I backed off the intensity, this was the wrong choice as I was already going too slow, I was likely just out of practice on the aeros and should have kept pushing. Wrapped up the effort with 1km to go and rolled into transition in third place off the bike.

Last minute announcement that they’d be serving HEED instead of gatorade despite posting otherwise on the website. I had tried HEED before and know that I do like it so this wasn’t going to be an issue except that they’re slightly less calorie dense and I didn’t know what size bottles we’d get. (Aside: Oh well, this is what athletes deal with when corporate multinationals decide to adopt targeted marketing campaigns… do you think this makes me want to buy more Gatorade now? Honestly, what kind of marketing genius thought this policy up?) 340 calories gatorade. 300 calories HEED. 260 calories powerbar and a banana ~120calories. No gels. = 1020 calories. Ate two hammergels, raspberry was nice, and drank HEED on the run at every aid station where I could get a volunteer to pay any attention to me, this was not a majority of aid stations unfortunately.

2:38:10 96 km. Second overall, 7 minutes slower than last year. 6 minutes slower than fastest cyclist on the day. Map (started at about 2.5 km into ride).

Run: My plan was to run a strategic combination of MAF heart rate governed pace and tested MAF pace from two weeks ago. This was ambitious, and became more ambitious when the heart rate strap was left at home and I was now basically going to have to run purely according to pace and RPE (goal 16/20 – cap 17/20). Brick was super and I felt great going out onto the run, felt fresher than in any transition run in training, highly motivated to try and redeem my day with a good run split as I had done a lousy job on the bike and was going to get DQ’d after the race anyways due to the wheel change and I knew it (because I planned to request it). Split the first 500m in 2:02 (exactly MAF pace) and was mighty proud of myself. Ran through to 4kms basically all at MAF pace except for the aid station where congestion (with Olympic race) caused trouble with me trying to get what I wanted, ran myself into second place, soon caught by Jeremy in third, we ran together from 5km through until 10.55km (halfway). I felt like I was taking it easy here and just cruising along next to him despite logging a couple splits below 4:00 pace here. As we passed transition I ducked in where I took a quick pee and he got maybe 80m up the road. I subsequently lost a bit of time to him through kms 11-16 despite lifting the effort level. I struggled to run 4:15-4:20 pace and got a bit worried when I split one at 4:30 pace. I pulled my socks up then and started to focus on the finish line and my pace improved. I actually started to gain back on Jeremy through the fourth quarter of the run meaning he faded even harder than me, which is what I anticipated based on his breathing when running side by side, but his fade started quite a bit later and in the end he ran the fastest split of the day so who am I to suggest otherwise. Kudos to Stefan for the win, good bike ride and good run, when you get both right you typically have a good day, and he got both done quite nicely indeed.

Splits: Green is up heartbreak hill, which has been re-landscaped and re-paved and is nowhere as steep as it was last year. Blue is the pee break.

1:30:09 Placed second overall in run, goal was to run within 2% of my open half marathon PR, which I certainly did, only 22 seconds slower that my PR, and considering a porta-potty break, this is totally impressive.Map.

Overall: 4:44:06. A hair over 2 minutes off my time last year. Similar swim, 7min slower on bike, 9 min faster on run. I went and talked to the race director afterward and told him that he needed to DQ me for outside help, he wasn’t really sure that he wanted to do that but in the end that’s what he and the other official decided. This was a very costly mistake, mentally it cost me on the ride a lot, and cost me some really good data from the run, what was my HR actually doing during the third quarter of the race?

Lessons learned:

• I need to log a lot of time on the TT bike in the next 2 weeks, even if it’s all easy, riding that bike allows me to feel powerful on that bike and that’s what’s necessary for me to ride to my potential. I also think I’m going to experiment with raising the seat up a bit to de-stress the quads slightly. I also think I should probably try to almost ride in the aerobars by a large majority until Ironman, or at least never go a week where I’m not logging at least some serious time on it.
• Swim frequency needs to stay higher than it has been. 4 day weekends between Thursday nights and Tuesday nights have caused some trouble I think, it means the Tuesday swim is almost always a write-off in terms of getting in some quality swimming as it’s hampered by re-familiarization with the water.
• Run – I’m doing well. Hopes are high for continued development, but some tougher run sessions lie ahead, when I lifted the effort level in the third quarter I actually dropped in speed slightly. Negative splitting my longer runs should become a strategic plan.
• I discussed how to avoid costly mistakes like forgetting gear with my mom, there is no easy answer. I had everything packed, and then double checked, and then left one bag on my bed when loading the car. I have a checklist, but these things only work when things go according to your plan. The best laid plans are only plans. What do you do?

Chinook is behind me for 2010, and I’m looking forward: two weeks until the GWN. I will be mentally stronger on July 4 than I was on Saturday, I’ll also be considerably less rested, faster? who knows, but it will be fun to mark myself up against Paul Tichelaar’s anticipated sub 4 hour time. To wrap up I’ll re-post a quote that I scooped from the EnduranceCorner website today:

“Feelings are a choice.” – Scott Molina

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:

Friday (Map)
Saturday (Map)
Sunday (Map)

Full gallery available: here

While I like to say that my triathlon racing strategy is “Swim, Fly, Run”, in reality it’s quite a bit more complicated, it’s terribly hard to output “fly” quality cycling at a moment’s notice, especially when you’re out there in variable weather conditions on variable road surfaces and most importantly on varied terrain. Unless you’ve got the dough to throw around for a power-measuring widget for your bike you’re stuck measuring an unreliable output: speed. The alternative to measuring output is to measure input, and I think that learning the difference between the two took quite a while for me to really learn. It might actually be the case that I only when started to track outputs (pace) vs. inputs (effort) in the pool, where things are very standardized, that I got to really learn the difference between inputs and outputs on the bike.

So, to introduce, I’ll start by sticking with the input/output comparison in the pool. I’ve learned pretty well how hard I can go for a 25m sprint, a 50m sprint, a 100m sprint, a 200m sprint, a 400m swim, a 750m swim, a 2000m swim and a 4000m swim. The keen observer here will note that along the way I switched from sprint to swim, that’s a mental input. Do I think I’m sprinting or do I think I’m swimming? I also have a pretty good idea of how fast I can go for each one of these efforts… read the other blog posts on swimming if you’re keen to find that out. The result in swimming is that the inputs are tied to the outputs. In basically all circumstances with a few exceptions, really choppy water, really cold water, wearing a wetsuit, etc. I know what effort-input it takes to result in what kind of pace-output.

In cycling the effort levels are generally not tied to the outputs via much of any calculation. For example. I did a 20km TT two weeks ago during training at an average HR of 154bpm (input) and netted an average speed of 40.94 kph (output). The next weekend I did a 40kmTT, and for the sake of comparison, I’ll just compare the halves, also each 20km efforts. I averaged a HR of 173bpm (input) and only netted myself 31.76 kph (output). In the second half. I netted myself 46.01kph (output) for 169bpm (input) during the second half. Now, there’s a few things to note here:

1. The wind was headwind for the first half and tailwind for the second half, lending to the obvious discrepancy between speeds. The input was similar on both halves of the ride but the output was very different.
2. The net result of the 40kmTT was a 171 bpm average giving me only ~37.6 kph. Does that seem right? Well, maybe the hills make me work harder and the wind makes me go slower. But really? an extra 15bpm of input and I get a massive 4kph slash in output? Something is wrong… it’s called riding with a flat tyre. Once again, inputs are not tied to outputs.
3. Both of these inputs come in the thick of training. The resulting output is less than it would be if I were to apply the same input when freshened up. Arguably this is a modification of input levels between heavy training and fresh racing, I’ll accept that, but when the indicators of effort are generally perceived with the exception of heart-rate (which is only an indicative variable), then you’re best to work with the shifting perceptions as your inputs.

All this being said, the point isn’t really so much that I could have been a lot faster in the 40kmTT as it is that how fast you go in a 40kmTT is unfortunately pretty arbitrary. The inputs and outputs in cycling are kinda bunk, but that’s OK so long as you don’t use outputs all the time to train and race. If we go back to the “Swim, Fly, Run” strategy for triathlon, there’s still a matter of how hard you’re flying, and that should be something that’s dependent on distance and the demands of the race. So here’s my breakdown, perhaps you find the markers to be similar, perhaps you find them to be different:

• Racing cyclocross I often could average 176-178 bpm for a 40-55 minute race. Cyclocross is a rather full-body version of cycling with lots of punchy-climbs out of the saddle and run ups off the bike etc. Doing that kind of HR on the bike when just using legs is more like a 5-10 minute best effort. If I can average above 170bpm while on a bike, I’m likely climbing out of the saddle at a HARD pace or really killing myself on the bike in an interval set, or drilling myself into oblivion in a TT. I usually can get it to spike up to there on almost any given day if I decide I really need to. I basically never can get it above 185bpm, although when doing VO2 testing I have managed to break 200bpm each time I’m on the bike, and have two people yelling in each ear not to quit yet.
• The following are Triathlon specific intensity zones. What’s appropriate for road racing is generally what it takes to do what you want to do with the peloton. You don’t get to decide, and as such I don’t need to describe.
• I treat Olympic effort as, mouth open breathing hard, need mental reminders more than every minute to keep the pace up. I also feel like I can taste it when I’m going hard enough. Perhaps this is psychosomatic, it might also be that once the blood lactate level gets up your taste and smell receptors do indeed start to pick up on it. It could also be that you’re breathing out a high concentration of CO2 and somehow you pick that up. In any case, I do use that taste marker as well. When TTing at that kind of effort it’s all upper leg limited strength it seems, and glutes, if I really go hard towards the end of the hour I can get a bit tight in my lower back. Calves always feel like they’re getting a free ride when going this hard. Observed HRs are 160-165bpm.
• Half Ironman effort is basically where I’m at if I decide to go hard but don’t feed myself those mental reminders every 30seconds to keep pushing the pace. It’s a focused effort, I like to mentally focus on trying to ride as though I’m trying to maintain momentum at this pace. Keep the hard pressure on the pedals so there are no lapses in putting out the good power but I don’t need to be trying to incessantly accelerate. Last summer during my HIM races I made a point of taking note of how I felt at halfway, if I was on schedule with nutrition I gave myself permission to work a bit harder on the second half so long as I didn’t get a sore back. HIM effort for me is an eating threshold: meaning I can put stuff down my esophagus and it gets digested, or at least it definitely doesn’t come back up. I could maybe eat stuff when going at Oly effort if chewing it didn’t disrupt my breathing ability. When at the training camp in Penticton this spring I was often heckled for getting to the top of a climb and starting to peel a banana or open a bar to eat before we went down the other side. They thought I was showing off that I wasn’t going hard, I was just generally hungry. Some people will put their eating threshold down at a lower effort level than this, but this is where mine is. Just like the taste marker I use for Olympic type effort, the eating threshold is a personal preference of mine for Half Ironman effort. It works well for me so I use it. Observed HRs are usually around 150, capped at 155. (20kmTT average HR was 154bpm, came after 90kms into the ride. the output here – although I just told you not to use it – of ~41kph is an approximate Half IM bike pace, and being at the top end of the spectrum it would be a fast one!)
• Ironman effort. This seems like a full balanced leg effort, upper and lower legs, little to no strain through my lower back. Try to stay relaxed in my oblique abs and disconnect the upper body from the lower body to stay calm. I’d characterize the effort level as what I could chat with someone with one sentence at a time. Not a full discussion. Can close my mouth and breath through my nose if I’m chewing for a while without getting out of breath. Maintaining enough mental focus to keep the pressure on the pedals at all times but devoting mental attention to peripheral details like staying relaxed through my shoulders and upper arms, keeping my head in an aerodynamic position (I basically never ride with my aero helmet on but I often pretend like I am so that when I do put it on it doesn’t go sideways into the wind.) HR 135-140. I can’t climb a hill out of the saddle at this HR. It’s impossible unless I get a triple chainring. If I’m going up a considerable hill the HR comes up, guaranteed into mid 140’s. The physicist in me says it’s OK to work a bit harder on the uphills than on the flats. The extra effort is more favorably being translated into moving me forward faster rather than pushing air harder, so the return on investment is favorable.
• Long ride average HRs wind up around 115-130bpm. 130bpm only if I’m by myself and not sucking a draft at all. Minimum HRs while riding my bike (should probably call it sitting on my bike and turning pedals… hardly call it riding) is 100bpm. I’ve scored a couple rides below 100bpm this year already, they’re not useless, they’re enjoyable, and when the primary goal is to have fun I find it ridiculous to say that I shouldn’t do them.

There’s 5 inputs here, and that’s enough for triathlon in my opinion. There are a couple more input levels necessary to race well at cyclocross and race well in road racing, both of them are on the top end, they’re needed to train for the start in ‘cross, mashing gears to climb the barely climbable, running the sandpit, and for periods of the road race where a selection is being made. None of these things happen in a traditional non drafting on the road triathlon, and aren’t so necessary to distinguish, not that they don’t happen during training, for example on group rides, but they are used sparingly.