The race report is in three parts. The Swim (here) The Bike (here) and The Run (here). Results are below.

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 of the run showing my pacing are in the appropriate portion of the race report:

There’ll be more than 3000 people starting the race at 7am… a world record for an IM swim start. That’s bigger than the record set last year which looks pretty amazing:

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.

I’m racer #184 on August 29, 2010. To check up on my race splits as they occur you can input my racer number into the appropriate spot at:

At ironmanlive you’ll have to scroll down a bit and look for the link to “Subaru Ironman Canada” coverage because there are two races happening on the 29th, the other over in Louisville Kentucky, and then follow the link for “Athlete Tracking Tool”. Some other people that you might be interested in checking up on during the race are Stefan Schreiber, racer #298 (Friend and training buddy from the UofA Tri Club), and Sister Madonna Buder #3026 (who is trying to be the first 80 year old woman to complete an Ironman). You might also find it interesting to check out the pro races as they unfold. My picks are:

Pro Women:

1. Tereza Macel – Last year’s champ went on to fourth in Hawaii last fall. She was on the podium in Roth this summer and she slaughtered the competition at the hardest irondistance race in the world last weekend at Embrunman… but her coach is Brent Sutton and his athletes seem to be prepared to race well back to back… so let’s see if she can defend!
2. Heather Wurtele – Won at St. George this spring and is really making big improvements this season. Second place to Mirinda Carfrae at Calgary 70.3 a couple weeks ago. She’ll also likely be treating this as a “home” race which I think should be an advantage.
3. Tara Norton – She did “Epic Camp – Length of NZ” this winter. Enough said.

• I’m also expecting a good performance from Janelle Morrison last year’s AG champion at this race, and a sub 9:45 PR by training buddy Annett Kamenz which could put her in the top 5.

Pro Men:

1. Doe-Boy (Kieran Doe) – Won here in 2007 and hasn’t been back to defend, he had a smoking fast race at Calgary 70.3 4 weeks ago.
2. Petr Vabrousek – this is only his third IM this year as opposed to 2009 when he raced 8 times. Less racing seems to be paying off and he was second at Lake Placid last month.
3. Viktor Zyemtsev is here too, the dude has only ever run sub 2:50 marathons in Ironman… and will be clearly trying do do that for the tenth time in his career on Sunday (not counting a 3:29 explosion in Hawaii one year), look for him to come from behind a pick off a lot of people on the run. I don’t think he’ll make it all the way to the front though.

• Tom Evans – the 2004 champ… has got the local support behind him and will be pulling out all the stops in front of the hometown crowd. It would be sweet to see him on the podium but I’m not sure it’s really all that possible considering how stacked this field is.
• Matt Lieto is the guy I’m really rooting for but he’s spent so much of the season sick that I just don’t expect him to do so well.
• Stefan Vuckovic is also likely to race well (he was the silver medal dude when Simon Whitfield stood atop the podium in Sydney), although his fastest days are behind him he could be in the mix if conditions are tough.
• Scott Curry, while I wouldn’t consider him able to win, has had a great season this year and will probably be the fastest Albertan.

Race Day: I’ve also given access to my twitter account to my brother who will be tweeting my progress throughout the day whenever he can get a bit of internet access on the ipod. Who knows how often that will be, but I’ve included my twitter feed here for reference. If there’s anything new it will be there.

Last but not least if you’re wondering what the race is like, you can get a pretty good idea by having a look at the maps of the course. Swim, Bike, & Run. Stefan and I are staying at a hotel at Christie Beach in OK Falls, that’s at the run turnaround.

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.

Saturday Ride:

90 minutes of rolling hills prepped me mentally to tackle “the seven bitches” after Richter pass . It’s a tough deal to pace rolling hills well, but I was very pleased that I did this ride well, feeling good strong and efficient. Last year after riding the Ironman course I identified a need to get better at riding on rolling hills before tackling them in the race. The rolly section of IMC comes at a crucial point in the race. You’ve just had a little break coming down from Richter’s pass, you’re still less than 3 hours into the bike ride and are likely feeling strong. If you pace this section poorly by going too hard you’re going to get kicked in the face in about an hour either on the out and back section of the ride from Keremeos to Cawston when you cross into the start of your fifth hour of racing, or maybe a bit later on the gradual ascent towards yellow lake. If you ride poorly on either of those section you’re giving away a lot of time. The alternative of riding easy on the rolling hills is a nightmare when you consider what that does to your average speed. In my opinion this is a cruicial section of the race at IMC, and I’m confident that I’m going to ride it perfectly.

I followed the ride up with a progressive 90 minute run where I was aiming for race pace through the second half hour and aiming to push it a bit in the third half hour. I found myself absolutely flying along and worried that if I’d actually push it a bit I’d be spending fitness I want to save for Ironman so I just gave the effort a nudge instead of a push. Consistent splits around 4:30/km are certainly not bad for just a little ‘nudge’ of effort.

Sunday Ride:

Sunday’s ride gave me an opportunity to fit in some final climbing practice into my schedule as well as to do my last long IMeffort intervals. I was given 2×30min at IMeffort and 4×15min at HIMeffort to fit into the long ride. I opted to get in the first IMeffort section on the ride out to Banff, then ride Norquay twice, approximately 20 minutes each and aiming for HIMeffort, and finish with a climb up to the Nordic Center in canmore, modifying the 4×15min into approximately a 3×20min to suit the length of the hills I had at my disposal. I really cruised on the IMeffort intervals, evidence that I’m in good shape and once rested I’ll be fast on the bike. The IMeffort intervals netted me 37.7kph into a gentle headwind at 136bpm, and 40.7kph with a gentle tailwind at 137bpm. The hill climbs were nice as well, I felt very strong on them, balanced the seated and standing well, had no aches or pains, and suprised myself with good climbing times at Norquay considering the fact I was averaging a pretty conservative hill climbing effort. The Nordic Center hill proved to be far shorter than I anticipated, or I was just too fast, the jury is still out. Sunday’s ride was cut short due to the scheduling need to get everyone home to Edmonton. I followed up the four hour car ride with another hour and a half of steady but controlled riding once out of the car to refresh the legs.

GPS data from wednesday’s stress reliever ride: Two hours of podcasts. 101bpm average heart rate.

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.

65:10 for 4000yds. This is pace for a 68:49 IM swim. This leaves a sizeable gap between here and my PR over 4000yards of 61:47 set back in April when I put together a really good swim that I was super proud of, a real personal best. I got in the pool and was not feeling energetic or fast or anything, even if I was super fast I knew it wouldn’t be a best effort even before I started, maybe that was part of the problem. I was taking my own splits for the duration so only took them on 500yard intervals so I could focus on swimming, thus the choppy graph. I mostly just swam instead of really being able to try and swim fast. I don’t know exactly what it was but I couldn’t swim hard for more than about 100 yards before I was back at a steady swim pace, zoned out, technique reduced to mediocre. My brain was shutting off and going into cruise-control mode way too easily. I swam the entire thing without accumulating any lactic acid in my shoulders or arms, there was no burn, which is basically like saying I didn’t try… which in retrospect is kinda embarrassing to say because I didn’t want to not try, I just couldn’t “try”.

I was way quicker at Great White North where I also didn’t feel like I swam very hard, the wetsuit probably helps a bit, as well as a draft that helps a lot while I’ve got it. I’m also not a fast turner in the pool so these things stack up against me, 68:49 minutes should be a “floor” for my swim time in the open water at a race. No-one transitioned at IMC in less than 1:11 so I’m not going to be out the door aboard the rocket ship if I swim this fast in less than 70 minutes. 70minutes was the goal set back in November last year for Swim+T1. In 2009 there were 175 people out of the water in less than an hour… and another 300 made it out of the water an through transition within the next 10 minutes. I figured that I didn’t want more than 500 people up the road from me to have to pass on the bike so I’d need to swim and transition faster than 1:10:20 for that to happen. Let’s just say I can’t waffle in Lake Okanagan if I want to meet the goal, I need to swim well, not crazy hard or make any big gains in swimming in the next month, I also don’t need a life best swim as that’ll knock me back on my heels for the rest of the race, but I do need a good swim, better than this.

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: