Shawn Burke's Blog

Ironman Race Day is Different

Ironman-distance racing is a very special thing.  A good friend of mine recently completed her first Ironman and she did very well.  But after having done several half-Ironman distance races, she was struck by how much more challenging the distance is.

One thing that you learn upon doing your first Ironman is that there is simply no way to simulate race day.  There is no way, in training, to swim hard for 2.4 miles, jump directly on your bike and ride steady for hours on end with no stoplights, traffic, chat-breaks, etc., then jump off the bike and immediately start (hopefully) running for several more hours.  Add to this the anxiety and excitement of race day, and eating a huge breakfast at 4am, and you have a very unique experience. 

Many athletes have great Ironman preparation and say things like “well, I’ve been doing 5 hour rides and running for 90 minutes off of them at X pace, so I should be able to do that, on race day, right?”  Or they say “I’m a great runner, so I’ll cruise the bike then go lay the smack down on the run, right?”  The best answer is, well…maybe. 

See, the problem is that there are many things that you must do right throughout the day, and if any of them don’t go right, then the rest of them don’t matter.  We call them critical success factors because, as the name implies, they all must go right in order for the day to really go well.

The below applies to most of us.  For folks racing at the very top end of the sport, they shift a bit, but the idea stays the same.

The Factors

Below is a list of prioritized Critical Success Factors.  These are in order, meaning if one goes bad, the other ones just plain don’t matter. 

1. Race Day Nutrition

Nothing matters more in Ironman than nutrition during the day – fluids, calories, and electrolytes.  The Ironman day is so long and demanding that your body simply can not do it without getting nutrition along the way.  This challenge is made worse by race day factors such as anxiety, exertion level, and heat or humidity.  For many people (me included), being in aero for hours at a time doesn’t help digestion either.  All of these things make it more challenging for your body to take in what it needs to perform.  To make it even more difficult, it’s not only a problem of not getting enough, but possibly a problem of getting too much.  It’s a fine line and most people’s number one challenge on race day.   As one wise sage has said, “Ironman is mostly about running on tired legs with an upset tummy”. 

There has been much written about the number of calories a body needs during an Ironman, but sodium is often overlooked.  For many athletes who are not getting enough sodium, they slowly work themselves into a mildly hyponatremic state – that is not enough electrolytes.  When this happens, it can be serious, but usually it just means you have an epic meltdown on the run.  Power output drops dramatically, and mental clarity goes along with it.  This article by Jonathan Toker is excellent and should be read very carefully.  It helped me learn I was getting about a third of the sodium I needed, and since I’ve fixed that, my racing has improved dramatically, both in terms of performance relative to fitness but in enjoyment as well.  What I thought was calorie depletion was more about sodium depletion.  If you look closely at the tables in the article, you’ll see what happens around 8 hours, even with 400mg/hr of sodium (Na) – blood Na levels start getting out of range.  Most athletes aren’t even getting 400mg/hr, so it’s worse than that.  Remember that this number is sodium, not salt (NaCl) – don’t confuse the two.  Table salt is only 40% Na – check the label of those tablets you’re taking.

But calories are important, and the best you can do is practice your calorie plan in training as much as you can, even knowing that it may not work as well on race day.  Each body is different, so don’t rely solely on what others say.  Liquid fuel is great for most, but some folks do better on more traditional solid foods.  Some people have iron stomachs, some can’t handle maltodextrin.  You’ll only find out by trial and error.

2. Bike Pacing

Assuming you’ve got your nutrition situation pretty well sorted, bike pacing is the next thing you need to get right.  Again, there is a double edged sword here.  For almost everyone erring on the side of riding easier is the safe bet.  But being on the bike for longer has a cost of it’s own. 

But for the most part, athletes just ride too hard.  After being fatigued from training for months on end, they freshen up with a taper, then hit the bike course with fresh legs and adrenaline flowing.  The riding seems easy, so they go with it, not realizing they’re riding harder than they think they are.  It’s easy to pick out who is riding with a power meter in the first half of an Ironman, and who is not.  That guy standing up pushing the big ring up that climb?  It’s a pretty good bet that he’s not riding with power and that he’ll be one of those guys walking out of T2.  I’m comfortable saying “he” here because I see far fewer women making these kinds of efforts.  Women seem to do a bit better job of pacing on the bike.

There is a saying that an Ironman doesn’t really start until 2/3 of the way into the bike, and that’s about right.  So for most athletes, building into the day by taking the first 33%-50% of the bike at an effort level that seems somewhat easy is the right thing.  At that point, it might be OK to pick it up a bit, but remember there will almost always be time to “make up” any minutes here on the run.  Many people, upon spectating at an Ironman for the first time are shocked by the number of “fit” looking athletes that come walking off the bike.  It’s easy to get wrong.

112 miles is a long way.  Steady wins the day.

3. Mental Focus

At some point, something is going to go wrong on race day.  You’ll get a flat tire, or you’ll miss a bottle in an aid station, or you’ll get a little carried away on a climb.  It’ll happen, but the key to effective racing is to minimize these problems and quickly deal with them when they happen.

When something is starting to go wrong – say your stomach is upset – get 100% focused on addressing it.  Is it too many calories?  Too few calories?  Too much water?  Not enough?  All of us get “race brain” which basically means you’re running on 50% of your normal IQ, so be patient with this and keep going through what you know:  what am I feeling, what types of things lead to that, what can I try to address it?  It may mean not fueling for a bit to let your stomach settle, it may mean switching to something available on the course it may mean getting some extra fluids.  At Ironman Arizona in 2009, I was going well on the bike but my stomach was starting to bloat.  I decided that maybe I was overdoing the sodium with NUUN in my Aerodrink.  I had half of a water bottle on my back cage, so I decided to use that water to try diluting the mixture.  But the Aerodrink was almost full, so I started sucking fluid out of it, and spitting it out on the road.  After I got some out, I put the plain water in there to lower the mix.  It helped a lot, and confused the heck out of those riding around me, seeing me spit mouthfuls of water on the ground!

More importantly, things are eventually going to get harder.  And when they do, how you respond determines how your race day is going to go.  Athletes that are better at focusing and controlling how they respond to race stress, will perform better than those that don’t.  This is especially true on the run, where your body is really going to start yelling at you to slow down, and if you can focus properly, you can hold it off for quite a while. 

One of the techniques that I have found that works very well is to focus on the immediate moment.  Take a deep breath, relax your shoulders, and think about your running form.  Where are you carrying tension that’s not helping you move forward?  Let that out and then think “ok, this isn’t THAT bad, I can keep doing this”.  Coming back to this will help keep you focused on what you control.

4. Run Pacing

So you get out on the run, and you’ve gotten your nutrition right, and you’re feeling good.  For many athletes, the usual response is to start running well off the bike.  Contrary to what you might think, many athletes feel great off the bike, not having the “transition legs” common to shorter races.  So they run a few miles, looking at their fast splits and dreaming of laying down an amazing marathon split, faster than they’d ever imagined.  By a few miles into the race, this problem usually fixes itself and they slow down.  But the damage is done, and they’ll pay later.  With interest!

In most cases, if you get to the halfway point of the run in any real difficulty, you’re already in trouble.  Things usually get exponentially worse as miles 16-18 come along, and that’s where most people really start to struggle.

The best case in an Ironman marathon is an even pace throughout the run, with maybe some slower miles at the very beginning.  This gives you some room for error and lets you build into the run.  By the time you get to mile 20, it’ll take every ounce of your willpower to run at a pace that was easy at mile 3.

So what’s the best way to do this?  For most athletes, the Ironman run pace is about 30-45 seconds per mile slower than their typical long runs.  So take your long run pace, say it’s 8:30, and then add 30 seconds to it.  That puts you at about a 4 hour Ironman marathon, absolute best case.  And your best chance of getting there is to run every mile you can at an 8:50-9:10 pace, and just hold on as best as you can when it gets harder.   And again, this is best case.  Even that’s a lofty goal, but it’s important to realize what the limitations are.  Even if you were to execute that plan, and say you got to mile 16 and were feeling great, then you could pick it up that 8:30 pace and make up 5 minutes in those last few miles.  It’s not likely, but it could happen.

Some athletes think that they can run faster at the beginning and “bank” time to offset the slowdown at the end.  This simply does not work.  Using the example above, say you ran your 8:30 pace for the first 10 miles, and you’ve “banked” about 5 minutes versus your more-appropriate 9:00 pace.  Great – you’re a half a mile ahead.  But physiological costs are exponential, not linear.  Meaning, when you pay for that extra effort at mile 12 or 14, you won’t slow to a 9:30, you’ll probably slow to a 10 minute mile, then at mile 20, you’ll slow to an 11 minute mile, if you’re lucky enough to not be forced to walk.  So say you can hold onto 10 minute miles, which is a minute-per-mile penalty, which puts you 16+ minutes backwards for that 5 minutes at the beginning.  Picking up 5 and then losing 16 is not a good tradeoff.

Not only is your finish time slower, but you’re likely to have a pretty miserable experience.  It hurts to be in that state.  It hurts terribly and is just not any fun at all.

5. Run Fitness

Finally, you’ve gotten everything right and you’ve chosen your run pace properly.  Only now does all that run fitness matter.  The run fitness allows you to choose a faster steady pace for the run, provided you can use it.  And that’s the payoff.  You start out comfortable, your stomach works better, and you can spend the first 18 miles passing people, high fiving friends, and enjoying the day.

Things will still get hard, but it’s a pretty big difference for that to happen at mile 22 than mile 10!  But since you’ve gotten to this point, that run fitness is coming to bear and allowing you to leverage your mental focus to keep from slowing down.

But the important point here is that so many things have to go right before you can use your run as a weapon.  And if you can, it’s what counts.   A friend of mine is a pro triathlete, and he once said “well, guys that can swim an hour and ride a 5:20 are a dime a dozen, it’s the ones who can then run sub-3:30 that go to Kona”.  And even among those guys, it’s a lot more than just fitness, it’s executing the whole day.

Wow, it's been almost two years since I posted here. I never really decided to stop posting here, but two things happened that greatly decreased my motivation to do so. The first of which is that I've had some struggles since Ironman Arizona in November of 2009, which I'll discuss a bit below. The second is that some of the things I used to post here, like race reports, I've started posting for my friends group on Facebook. I think they work better there, but I'm going to try to do some more general posting here…we'll see how I do.

Basically, I started having achilles problems right before IMAZ in 2009. It got pretty bad right before the race, and I was hesitant to walk around much race week. But racing seems to be a magical analgesic for all sorts of things, and while I definitely felt the problem during the race, it didn't slow me down much. And after a hard 2009 season, I'd planned to take a solid month completely off after the race anyway. Plenty of time for pretty much anything to heal up, right?

Well, not so much. In fact it got worse and I did no running and almost no riding from the race until mid-May 2010 - about 6 months. This was not a happy time for me, but things finally came around and I got back into training for Ironman Canada 2010. I knew I wasn't going to set any records, but things were coming back together and I thought I'd have a decent go. In my prep for this race, I had a bike incident in July of 2010 that seemed minor at the time but led to some new problems. I held it together (things were improving) and had a good day at IMC and thought my troubles were behind me. Unfortunately, some leftover issues managed to cause some downstream problems. Things seemed OK but when I tried getting my running going again, I kept having some mystery issues and had to stop running again in early December through into April.

But after hearing every, uh, theory of every medical professional in the Seattle area, with no improvement, I'd had enough. I had signed up for Ironman South Africa, but had to withdraw from that race. But being there watching it was a bit tough. That was April 10th, 2011, and I had worked up to running about 20 minutes every other day. It was progress, but still shaky, and I learned some things about my body and what was going on with me through some trial and error. That day I told myself that I was done being injured and I was going to figure out a way to get race-ready for Ironman Coeur d'Alene on June 26, 2011. I was not going to DNS two Ironman's in a year. No way.

And it worked. Progress was shaky, and there were bumps in the road. Between November 22, 2009 (IMAZ 2009) and IMCdA 2011, I had run over two hours exactly twice (IMC in August 2010, and at a training camp in Boulder a few weeks prior). I had run over 90 minutes about 3 times, and over an hour maybe 5 or 6 times, total, over the course of those 19 months. In years prior, I would typically do that amount of running in 2-3 weeks.

Which brings me to the point of this post. This process has been an amazing testing ground for some ideas that I'd had in my head but were tough to put any data behind. Of course, this is still N=1, but there's something to be learned.

Here is what I've learned:

• Fitness comes back fast. If you've got a few years of consistent training under your belt, the majority of it comes back fast. Scott Jones has said "at any point you're 10 weeks from race fitness", and I've basically gone from zero-to-race twice in about that amount of time. Now, I'm not saying you'll be at you're all-time peak but you can get respectable in that time for sure. It depends on the type of layoff, I suppose.
• Race experience is worth a lot. My time at IMCdA a few weeks ago was almost 15 minutes faster than my time on the same course in 2008, when I was doing big volume and was highly fit. My swimming improvements account for a chunk of that time, but they've also changed to a new, slightly harder run course as well. But racing is like anything else - the more you do of it, the better you get at it. Being injured, and racing with questions about my fitness have forced me to focus on execution and to be more efficient and smarter on race day. Right now I'm racing much better than I ever have before. Not all of my results are as good, but my performance relative to my fitness is way better.
• Proper pacing trumps optimal fitness every time. I've done a lot of races where I was very fit but had it all go sideways, usually because I was over enthusiastic. For long course racing, especially Ironman, figuring out the proper pacing and sticking to it elicits much better results than trying to do a pace you "should" or "want" to be able to do. The classic example of this is folks that run fast off the bike and try to "bank" time for the fade later in the run. To you guys in my AG - yes, please keep doing this. Between everyone else and me - it's a sucker's bet.
• Some time off won't hurt you. I used to be obsessive about getting in every last workout, and was terrified of the fitness I'd lose if I couldn't train for a few days for a trip or whatever. And it's easy for me to fall back into that, but it's clear to me now: as long as you're consistent with your training over time, a little gap here or there just isn't going to matter that much. Most people don't race their fitness on race day anyway, it's something else that's the limiter (nutrition, pacing, mental focus, etc).

Last weekend, I went out and did the Seafair Olympic Distance Tri here in the Seattle area, almost exactly 2 years since my last non-Ironman race, which was also an Olympic. I had by far the best short-course race that I've ever had, so I finally feel like things are really coming around. The last 18 months have been hard - really hard - and it seemed hopeless at times. And so for any of you out there battling chronic or not-well-understood injuries, keep on it. Keep trying new things, keep talking to new people, keep trying to find a way to get better. It can be done, sometimes it takes quite a while, and one thing I've definitely learned is that you need to really own making it happen. If you can do that, then you'll find a way.

My plan is to write more posts drilling into some of the above in the coming weeks. Hopefully this is interesting. :)

I really, really wish I’d gotten more focused on race-day nutrition earlier in my long-course career.  It’s been a long road of trial and error for me, as it is for most people, and I’m still working at it.  What most people don’t realize is that nutrition is by far the biggest factor to your race day success.  I’m a slow learner and didn’t really understand this fully until about my 4th Ironman.  Hopefully I can save you some of that trouble.

Ironman racing is a different ballgame than other distances because of two things. 

First, it is nearly impossible to simulate Ironman racing conditions in training.  You’re simply not going to be able to train continuously for 8+ hours without taking a huge recovery cost.  This isn’t true for the Half Ironman distance, for example.  A 5-6 hour training day isn’t that uncommon for many athletes. 

Second, the duration of the event forces you to get a bunch of things “right” that you don’t have to get right at a shorter distance.  In a Half, if you’re a little off on your calories, fluids, or salts, you can often soldier through.  Or just have a few rough miles at the end of the run.  Not so in Ironman.  If you get it wrong, you may be in for a long, sad walk.  Or worse.

In my case, getting the proper amount of calories down, particularly on the bike, has been a big challenge.  In most cases, my stomach would start rejecting fuel about half way through the bike and I’d get pretty unhappy.  It wasn’t until this year that I really drilled into it, and if you’re someone who has struggled with this, below is the framework that I used to address the problem. 

There are four key components to Ironman nutrition.  Basically these are the things that affect your gut’s ability to process.

1. Calories
2. Fluids
3. Sodium/Electrolytes
4. Pacing

I’ll focus on calories here and tackle the other two at some point down the road.

Race Morning

But first, let’s talk about what we’re eating before the race.  In my case, the worst part of Ironman for my first few races was eating a big breakfast at 4:00 in the morning.  I’d push down 1,000 calories of eggs, toast, peanut butter, and bananas, then lay on the couch in agony until it was time to go to transition.  This always worked itself out, but the extra anxiety of feeling so full didn’t help.  I always had visions of how terrible it would be if I laid down a “breakfast slick” at the swim start.  I understand that kind of thing is frowned upon.

So, here a few hints here that have helped me a lot.

One thing I did was try to pre-make what I could so it was ready to go when I got up. This allowed me to start eating right away rather than burning 15 minutes getting stuff ready.   It also allows you to spread the eating out a bit over a longer period of time, which helps avoid that bloaty feeling.

Another is to get up a few minutes earlier and take a quick warm shower.  This seems to help get the blood flowing and let your body know it’s time to get to business.

But the real key for me was to move to a smoothie recipe.  Basically it’s rice milk, carbo pro, honey, banana, and peanut butter all blended up.  It tastes pretty good and comes out to about 1,000 calories.  There are lots of ways to do this, but it’s nice because it clears the stomach pretty quickly with little effort.  And in my case, I’ll start getting hungry again and take a gel on the way out to the swim start, about 10 or 15 minutes before the cannon. 

Between breakfast and the start of the race, I’ve found that plain water or water with something like NUUN in it works best.

Fueling on the Bike

This is where I’ve had real problems. I tried everything. Gels, Maxx Endurance, CarboPro, Accelerade, Schlitz Malt Liquor, Cliff Bars, Hammer Bars, you name it. In every long race from Lake Stevens 2006 through IMC 2008, I had the same thing happen. Upset tummy, inability to get calories in. Prior to 2009, I don’t think I have ever succeeded in getting 1,000 calories down in an Ironman on the bike – or even close.  And I see from people’s race reports that I’m not alone.

This year it was clear to me that I needed to get this problem fixed as it was my major limiter. I’ve been using CarboPro and trying to remember to work through it steadily. But I’d get a few hours into the race and…blech…I just couldn’t handle it any more. I thought maybe that was just how I worked and that I had something about my makeup that didn’t allow calorie processing at effort.

Earlier this year, I had a great conversation with Brian Grasky and Bill Daniell about this, and their advice was to start from scratch. 

Here’s the protocol I used to get it figured out:

1. Stop worrying about how many calories you “should” be taking in, and get focused on what you “can” get in.  Start with a small number and see if you can handle that. Say you’ve got a 4 hour ride. Build 2 300cal bottles, and try to get through them over the 4 hours.  That’s 150 cals an hour, which is not typically enough (depending on our size and intensity level), but it’s a start.  Along with your calories, take a bottle of plain water.  So only take in water and your calories and see how that works.
2. Get an Aerodrink or a similar hydration system. More water will solve A LOT of your problems. You’ll drink more with a straw in your face. I recommend the new Aerodrink with the cap valve thing instead of the older ones with the yellow sponges that you see all over the roads at races.
3. Go to the store and get yourself a $30 Timex Ironman watch. Go to Timer mode and set it to repeat at some short interval.  I’ve been doing 6 or 8 minutes. At 6 minutes, I’m fueling/drinking 10x an hour – do what seems right for you, and experiment with it. When it’s time to start your fueling, start that watch. When it beeps, push the button to stop the annoying noise and take a swig of water, a swig of fuel, and a swig of water. Find a way to attach it to your handlebars; I was able to put it between my stem and my aero bars.  If your stomach starts feeling sour, just skip a feed interval and/or just take in some water.  Since you’re bringing it slowly, usually by the next interval, you’ll be good to go.
4. Start gradually working up the number of calories in each bottle on training rides and see where you can get to.
5. If things are going well, experiment with adding some electrolytes to your fuel so you can get them in that way – NUUN, Endurolyte powder, Thermolytes, etc.

My results?

First, I now understand why I was having problems – it was just too much at a time. I’d get busy racing, get behind, try to catch up, and my stomach would rebel on me. In the meantime I was bonking and getting dehydrated in the process. Seems obvious now – yep, slow learner over here.

Second, it appears that I’ve now trained my stomach to perform better under stress. I used to feel like I had to be super careful to avoid having issues. In training, at least, I now no longer feel this way. Basically, I’m to the point where I build about a ~700 calorie bottle (haven’t tried more) and I’ll easily get through it in training in 1:45-2:00 without any problems. Then I’ll eat a snickers bar, then do another 700 cal bottle, then maybe throw down a gel or something. Yes, big, big difference. I’ll have little moments where my stomach lets me know it’s feeling overworked. Some water, a few minutes off, and all is OK again in Tummytown. It’s easy to feather it.

With better nutrition, you’ll also find that you can ride strong for your entire long rides, run better off the bike, and finish the day without feeling completely wrecked.  It’s a big difference and improves the amount of volume you can absorb.  That’s the goal, after all!

At Ironman Canada this year, I had no problem getting calories down.  In fact, I overdid it and ended up taking in almost 2,000 calories on the bike.  That, plus way too much fluid and not enough sodium caused me problems on the run.  But less calories is an easy problem to solve so I’ve made good progress.

Note that for rides of 3 hours or less, I don’t really bother with this – I’ll bring a bottle of Gatorade and a gel or two. However, for Half IM, I do follow it. I got 800-900 calories in at the Troika Half Ironman, got off the bike feeling just wrecked because I'd ridden so hard (and because I’d come right off of several huge training weeks), but still ran better than the prior year on a much hotter day. And felt fine after the race. The calories made a big, big difference.

Obviously this is tailored for liquid calories, which I think are the way to go for most cases. But you could make it work with gel or solid food with some tweaks.  But solids are tough at higher intensity levels, and you really need to get your fluids right.  Most people really think that liquid calories should be your predominate fuel source on race day.

Fueling on the Run

My experience is that it’s tough to count calories on the run. The cups of Gatorade or Coke you get on the run are filled to randomly different levels, and most of it ends up not going in your mouth anyway.  Gels are easier to monitor, but in many cases your stomach will not be able to handle much maltodextrin (or other longer chain carbs) out on the run. In addition, everyone’s tolerance for sweet decreases throughout the day so it becomes harder and harder to get things like gels down the pipe.  This is where something like pretzels or the chicken broth can be a great respite, later in the run.

My strategy on the run is to take in as many calories as I can manage to keep down. I purposely keep my stomach just on this side of “unhappy” and then will tactically skip something here or there if it needs a break. In an Ironman, this means Coke and Water at every aid station, and then a Gel every three miles or so. With the gels, I grab them at the station and stick them in my pocket, then pull them out about 2/3 into the next mile and nip of them with the goal of finishing as I arrive at the next aid station so I can chase with water.   Unfortunately in my last two Ironman’s, I’ve gone over the edge, so this isn’t bullet proof.

But the key on the run is to keep the calories coming in smoothly.  Your stomach is generally not going to feel great on the run of an Ironman.  That’s part of the gig. But those calories are critical. 

I typically do something like the following:

• Water at every aid station.
• Every third aid station, I grab a gel and put it in my pocket.  About 2/3 that mile, I take it out, open it, and start nipping at it.  As I approach the next aid station, I finish it right before I get to the water, then wash that down.
• Coke at every aid station where I’m not finishing a gel.
• Every other mile, I take two Endurolytes or a Thermolyte or whatever.
• If it is mid-80s or higher, I’ll walk the aid stations to make sure I get my fluids in and to put ice in my hat and/or down my shorts, etc.

But this can be a tough one – it’s highly dependant on many other factors and it has a dash of luck tossed in.  In my last two Ironman’s, I’ve had my stomach go sideways on the run.  At Ironman Arizona this year, I think that I had picked up a stomach bug earlier, so I don’t how much my protocol had to do with my difficulty keeping things down later in the run.  The fact that I had trouble keeping food down until the following morning points to something else going on.

In any case, in my next race, I’m considering holding off on the coke until the last half of the run and just going on gels and water for the first half, then switching to coke and dropping the gels in the second half.

The above is a general framework that may or may not work for others, but it’s served me well as a basis that I’ve continued to tweak on.  Trial and error, trial and error, trial and error.

Fueling After the Race

After the race, there will be food available, but it’s usually pizza and fries and stuff, which may not be all that appealing.  I typically have my family bring me some chocolate milk for right after the race, which is a great way to get some protein and carbs in.  I’ll do that and drink water and have some chicken broth. 

That usually gets me over the hump and then I can move on to proper post-race nutrition:  a burger, a beer, a milkshake, and whatever else I can manage to get down.  My tummy usually doesn’t really start liking food until the next day.

I’m back.

This has been quite a year on the triathlon front.  After some good gains last year, I really started to see some big changes this year in my ability to train at higher intensities, my ability to recover, and my ability to execute on race day.  I’ve had a pretty-much injury free year and my main target for the year was Ironman Canada in August.

I had an early season running focus where some faster running was introduced into my running with the race target being a hilly half marathon on Mercer Island in March, with a goal of sub-1:30.  About half way through the run, a girl came by me and I decided to match her pace even though it seemed a little fast for me.  It turned out great and we ran shoulder-to-shoulder and footstrike-for-footstrike for the second half of the race without ever saying a word.  I ended up coming in at 1:29 and after the race, it turned out both of us were running at a pace above what we thought was doable.  It was an important lesson that you can often go harder than you may think.

So that’s 2009, a solid year for me and a nice way to roll into the Thanksgiving Holiday. 

Another season draws to a close and it's time to once again evaluate how things have gone this season and consider what my goals and reasons are for the time I spend in athletics.

It's become very clear to me that training is a very core part of my life.  Before I got back into this stuff, I dabbled in this and that but I always felt restless and unfocused.  It's not that hard to figure out looking at my history, but I now know that I don't do "balance" well.  I'm much happier doing a few things at 110% than a bunch of things at 30%.  It's not for everyone, but that's how I'm wired. 

On the Thursday after Ironman Canada, I was back at the pool for an easy swim.  I love those easy workouts after an Ironman.  It feels good to get the blood flowing a bit, and even better to be able to go easy and quit whenever I damn well please.  But I walked into the pool area and see Rhae Shaw, who was just getting into the meat of her Kona prep (note Rhae had *the fastest* female age-grouper bike split at Kona...sick).  Anyway, Rhae says to me "WTF are you doing here?  Dude, you suck at not training." Guilty as charged.

So, what to do with this Off-Season thing?  If I look at my season, I made some great improvement this year.  But I see some things are still holding me back.  My swimming has improved massively, but if I want to be competitive, I need to notch it up a bit.  My power on the bike is much better, and if I have an improvement on par with what I had this year, I'll be in good shape.  But that's going to take some work.  And running - well, I just need to run more!

With that in mind, my focus is "Fundamentals".

I've started swimming with Ben's group.  He's heavily technique focused, and as an essentially self-taught swimmer, there's some things I need to correct.  Once I get some technique issues sorted, hopefully I'll be able to add more volume and really pull it together.

My plan is to hit another Jan/Feb marathon and try to qualify for Boston.  If I can a few months of 40-50 mile weeks under my belt, I think that'll really continue the gains I've seen on the run.

And then there's the bike.  Once thing I've been doing is some Cyclocross racing (pictured above).  This is mostly about fun - and it is a hell of a lot of fun.  I suck at it.  It's liberating not to really care how I do.

Finally, I decided to give PowerCranks a try. These bad-boys are pretty controversial, but I'm just looking for a little different stimulus to force some new adaptations.  PowerCranks are clutched on both sides, so you have to operate each crank independently - see how they hang down in the pic.  That's right, single leg drills, with both legs, the whole time.  I call them the HumbleCranks because they are effing hard for the first month or so.  I'm just getting to the point where I can ride them for any amount of time.  We'll see what happens, but I'm starting to see some interesting power numbers off my 3 hour ride this weekend, particularly climbing.  The jury is still out but I'm optimistic so far.

Six weeks ago, I could ride them for 15-20 minutes at a time on the trainer.  So you start from scratch.  I think I'm on the regular progression which is:

1. To begin with, you can go short periods of time, only in very big gears.  And you get tired very fast.
2. After a week or two, your cadence comes up
3. After another week or two, you can ride for longer
4. After another week or two, you can get out of the saddle for a few strokes at a time
5. After a few more weeks, you start to get really comfortable on them and start to see power increases at lower heart rates
6. According to the marketing - after 3-4 months, it "clicks" and you're a whole new person, with higher power numbers, a brighter outlook, and more attractive to the opposite sex, more popular with animals and children, and disease free forever.

Stay tuned for details.

Oh, and get out and Vote, people.  Seriously.

AKA "John Wayne Pioneer Trail", the Iron Horse State Park is something I've only been vaguely aware of during the 15 years I've lived in the Seattle area.  It just happens to have the word "Iron" in it too.  Nice!

I've always wanted to ride from Seattle up to Snoqualmie Pass, but could never find a way to do it.  Unfortunately, there really isn't a route (that I know of) that isn't on I-90.   A few weeks ago, I picked up a Fuji Cross Comp Cyclocross bike at Performance.  Owen happened to pick one up the following day.  Since then I've been taking advantage of the last bits of summer and riding it to work almost every day.  If I had any idea how much fun I would have with a bike like this, I would have bought one years ago.  It is literally the most fun I've had on a bike since I was a kid.  My commute to work has been different almost every day as I concoct new routes that allow me to hit a little bit of trail on the way in. 

Cyclocross (CX) is a flavor of bike racing that is basically a cross between mountain bike racing and road racing, though CX predates mountain bikes by many decades.  Anyway, a CX bike looks like a road bike but it's got knobby tires, a beefier frame, and cantilevered brakes.  So they work pretty well on the road, and just as well off of it.

Soon after getting the bikes, I realize that we could use them to ride the Iron Horse Trail.  It's something I've always wanted to do, but had completely forgotten about.  The trail is a converted railway line that runs over 100 miles from North Bend, WA, through the Cascade Mountains, all the way to the Columbia River.  Owen and I hatched this plan a few weeks ago and I have been SO excited about it since.  We were considering a ride later in September, but the weather has been perfect for the last few weeks so we moved some things around to make it happen when it was sunny.  I'm happy to report it was everything I'd hoped.

We got up to the trail head around 11 am and got our stuff ready and rolled out up the trail into the sunshine, setting a sensible pace up the steady railway grade up to Snoqualmie.

Before long, we come to the first bridge and it's just gorgeous.  The pictures say far more than I could ever write.  Click 'em for larger versions.

We continue on up the climb.  The road surface is pretty good - just a few spots of loose gravel.  Some parts are completely under the forest canopy and cool in the shade, some are out in the sun.  It made for good variety.

Finally we get to the main attraction, which is a two mile tunnel that goes right under the Snoqualmie Pass ski resort.   The tunnel is completely dark - no internal lighting - and pretty chilly to boot.  Both Owen and I have lights (though his does the heavy lifting) so we can see well within the tunnel.   There are quite a few people out there.  In the first picture, the lights you see in the tunnel are people on foot and on bikes deep in the darkness.

It's creepy in there and very odd riding along at 15-20 mph with only a few feet of visibility.  The road surface was very smooth but there were quite a few places where the tunnel leaks and water is coming in.  Finally we reach the end and emerge back into the sunlight.

That puts us out at Hyak and we stop for some water at the parking lot.  At this point, we're about 20 miles and 2 hours (including stops) into the ride.

There's lots of people out at Hyak.  One thing that surprised me was the number of people walking that tunnel.  Even on a bike, I was ready to be out of there.  A long walk in the cold and the dark seems like the kind of thing that's a good idea for just a few minutes.

If you've been to the Summit ski resort there, the tunnel comes out just below the Hyak runs at the far East end of the ski resort.  I suspect it's pretty well covered with snow in winter time.

We continue on Eastward.  On the top of the Pass, the road is pretty flat for quite a while before you start to descend down, but even then it's not as far.  The West side of the state starts at sea level, while the east side sits about 1000-1500 feet up.  The pass is only at about 2500 feet.

The tunnel was the most novel part of the ride but there was still plenty to see.  Not long after Hyak, we come to Lake Keechlus, which is the lake you drive by as you go along I-90.  Our plan is to ride to the far end of the lake, then stop and eat our sandwiches.

The lake is a natural lake, but a dam raises it's level significantly, leaving al the exposed stumps during the summer low season.  The landscape is really surreal. 

We scrambled down a bank off the trail and make our way across the plain (middle picture) above to the water along a dried creek bed.  As we make our way down towards the water, the creek's reveene gets deeper and deeper.  We're seeing lots of animal tracks, and as we get close to the water, I see one that's different than the others.   I point it out to Owen and he wisely suggests that we get out and walk along the top so we don't scare something at the water's edge.

So we eat lunch by the lake.  The water is incredibly clear and not nearly as cold as I'd suspected.   A quick swim is tempting, but not quite tempting enough.

We finish lunch, get back to our bikes and head back down.  The way back is naturally much faster - not just because of the downhill.  We moved with a bit more purpose on the way home..  After being on bumpy dirt roads for the better part of 5 hours, I was more than ready to be done.

But what a great day.

There are things that happen in your life that you immediately know will be remembered forever.  Things that you will look back upon with fondness for the rest of your days.   We all have them, and they're special and unique to who we are.

I was fortunate to have experienced one of those this past Sunday. 

My first Ironman was Ironman Arizona in April of 2007.  My dad came down to Tempe to see Deb and I race, and it was great to have him there.  The day after the race, sitting by the pool at his hotel, he had some interesting thoughts about the day.  He basically said that he didn't "get it" until he saw it happen.  Only then did he see that it wasn't so much a race as a celebration of life and an opportunity for people to prove to themselves that they are capable of something extraordinary.  I think what really impacted him was seeing so many people in their 50s, 60s, and some 70s, finish the race.  That seemed to shift his perspective in a fundamental way in respect to what's achievable.

Motivated by this, he got a bit more active through 2007 but it never really stuck - he had some knee problems and never really got going. 

If you've read my running post, I am a firm believer that distance running is something that most people are well capable of.  Assuming you don't have a specific injury that prevents you from doing it, of course.  But most people just plain do it wrong and don't give themselves the right amount of time to do it.  Most of the how-to out there - books, magazine articles, personal trainers - is just flat wrong and leads to injuries and other poor outcomes.  People have unrealistic expectations of how fast they'll improve and they just run too damn fast before they're ready, it's that simple.

Anyway, we started him on a program of running.  All easy running, starting very small and building up slowly and consistently over months.  He took to it well and in April, he completed Bloomsday, a challenging 12K race in Spokane.  We were off to a good start, and with that done, we looked for a half marathon as the next goal.

At this point, most of his training was in the high 10-to-low-11-minute-per-mile pace.  I found a few race options, and the best one seemed to be the Skagit Half Marathon.  It was a good option because it was flat and about an hour from where I live.  The problem is that it was only two weeks after Ironman Canada.  Being pretty familiar with my recovery curve, that's cutting it very close, but I figured I could manage 10:30 miles at that point (my IM race pace is usually around 8:30) without much trouble.

Dad took to the training very well and made just amazing progress.  He fell in love with it and before long was getting up and over 20 miles/week.  What was especially good to see was how much he was enjoying the training.  It's been great to watch.  He started asking for more miles at a faster pace even.  Nope, sorry, we're sticking to the protocol.

In early August, I started to become concerned.  But not for him - for me!  See, as his mileage increased, so did his pace.  All of as sudden he was running miles in well under 10 minutes on a regular basis.  Oh shit!  I knew that if he got much faster, it was going to be a challenge for me to run with him.

Well, he got even faster and stronger.  I scheduled his longest training run - 1 hour and 45 minutes - for race day at IMC.  He went out and ran the IMC run course while I was on the bike.  Afterwards he told me it was no problem.  He was ready.

Finally his race day came.  We were treated with a just perfect, glorious fall day in the Northwest.  We drove up to Burlington for the race, got our stuff ready, and headed to the start line.  The gun went off and we started cranking out miles.  It's normal for the first few miles to be a little to fast, and this was no different.  I had an idea of how fast I thought we could go without getting into trouble and so we did most of our miles at 9:45 pace.  He was comfortable at this pace, and so was I.  Barely.  By mile 9 he was talking about how great he felt, and we even picked it up a bit in the last mile or so, clocking an sub-9 final mile.  He finished so strong.  I was worked. :)

At 58 years old, less than 6 months from starting running, he comfortably finished a Half Marathon in 2:05, a time that was well faster than his goal.  Now we're talking about "what's next."  Amazing. 

So the title for this post.  The whole day was an absolute highlight for me in so many ways.  I was so happy for him to have such a great experience out there and to share it with him and to have helped get him to the starting line.   Something I won't soon forget...

Executive Summary: Welcome to the suffer.

Pre Race

I was really excited to get back to Penticton this year.  We carpooled up with Owen and Polita which not only saved a bunch of gas but made the trip a lot more fun.  The weather was sketchy the first two days as some storms blew through, but got nicer as the weekend approached.  My last few workouts were good and, just like last year, I was amazed at how great the swimming is in Lake Okanogan.  The water is warm and very clear, and the way the beach is set up gives swimmers a protected 2/3 of a mile lane, about 100y offshore.  You just can't beat it.  The days leading up to the race were very relaxing and filled with lounging and spending time with friends.  It was great to run into someone I knew, almost everywhere we went.

The Race

For breakfast I had a smoothie (2 bananas, 2 scoops carbo pro, 2 cups rice milk 2 tbsp honey, bit of peanut butter) and a half a bagel.  Compared to prior IM breakfasts, this was great.  Went down pretty easy and I never felt bloated or sick. 

We got to transition a bit earlier than usual.  The long lines for body marking last year taught us this lesson and it was nice to have lots of time to chat with friends and get things situated.  We’ll make this extra time a habit from now on.

Headed out to the swim start, my stomach felt great so I took a gel and a little bit more water.  The pre-start of an Ironman is a special thing that’s worth savoring a bit.  Everything seems to move in slow motion but there is electricity in the air.  It's hard to describe.

This race was especially fun with so many friends racing.  Owen and Polita were doing their first Ironman, Mark and Ann were both ready for break through races.  I said goodbye to Deb on the beach and went up front with Owen and Polita for the start.

For the swim, my plan was to swim comfortably from start to finish, skipping  the stress and lactic acid surge at the beginning.  I wanted to make this as much like my training swims as possible.

The cannon went off and the first  few minutes were typically crowded and I worked my way to the inside of the buoy line - all the time focusing just on breathing and being relaxed until I got into open water.  This worked just awesome as I was able to easily move from the draft into open water when I felt like it.  My navigation was pretty good, I swam right at each buoy, actually going under several of them. That made the swim kind of a fun game.  Really, the whole swim went by quickly and I felt solid the whole time.  In the last 1000 yards or so, I spent more time drafting and just following feet as I started to tire a bit.  But I never really had to push or struggle at all - after all of that, I ended up a full three minutes faster than last year, on much less effort. A great start to the day.

One thing that was cool was that I found Polita about ¼ of the way into the swim.  See, for some reason they didn't hand out nice neoprene chip straps, like they have at the other three races I've done.  They were trying to get you to buy them, which I thought was lame, given everyone has a drawer full of these at home but reasonably expected them to be provided.  Anyway, Polita was using her Road ID as a chip strap.  It was blue and I noticed it during the swim, looked up and saw that I recognized her wetsuit as well.  I swam at her feet for a bit before losing track of her.  Talking with her after the race, it turns out she'd spotted me as well!  The swim is, for the most part, a mass of anonymous goggled competitors all wearing matching wetsuits so finding someone in the mix was cool. 

I will note, though, was that I found people to be more violent than other races.  During the swim, I thought maybe it was because I was up with faster and more aggressive swimmers, but I don’t know if that's the reason.  For whatever reason, people were reacting very strongly to being touched or nudged in any way and I got pretty well beat up.  In one case, early in the swim, someone from behind pushed my feet, sending me into another swimmer.  His response was to give me a donkey-kick to the gut.  Fortunately wetsuits are very slippery and cushioney so no real harm done.

Out on the bike, I gave myself 30 minutes easy to get warmed up.  By the time we got to OK Falls, I was in my groove and moving along well at the high end of my wattage targets.  I was moving through the group well and was focused on getting up and out of the traffic.  Most of the first 40 miles was spent hop-scotching from group to another and going on up the road - I really don't like riding with that many people around me, it's just asking for trouble. 

Near Osoyoos, I came past Owen, asked him how his swim was and gave him a grin.  My legs were feeling great and my stomach felt good but before long, I was already starting to reject my calories.  I pushed them in as best as could, and it was clear that sitting up helped my digestion so I took it a bit easy on the climbs.  Overall the rest of the bike was solid as I continued to move up through the group.  At the out-and-back, I was pleased to see that I was only 6 or so minutes down on guys like Chris Whyte and Bryan Urakawa, given they were probably out of the water about 5 minutes ahead of me.   On the approach to Yellow Lake (about mile 80), I started to fade a bit, but I still felt pretty good.  The IMC bike is basically done at mile 95, with the rest being downhill into town. 

But two things were concerning me a bit.  First was that I was getting some twinges of cramping in my quads and calves, and that my heart rate was running pretty high while my watts were falling.  I tried to increase my fluid and salt intake.  Since I felt far better than any of my other IM bike rides at this point, I didn’t worry about it too much.  It’s supposed to hurt, right?  I thought I had a shot at a sub-5:20 bike and felt great about my effort on the day, and started to think about the run.

I came into town well and I got into T2 at 5:21 and felt good.  At this point, really thought I was on my way to a home-run of a day.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.

Out on the run, I saw my family and gave a high-five and turned out onto Lakeshore.  The first thing I noticed was how hot it was in the sun.  The second thing I noticed was my climbing heart rate.

I ran the first mile in about 8:07, which is about right for me.  Sometimes things get better after you run a bit, so I stayed positive hoping I’d settle in like last year.  But my heart rate was steadily climbing (that’s bad) and I could feel cramping coming on in my calves (also bad).  The slight uphill out of town was brutal and when I got the aid station at mile 2, I stopped to walk and get some fluids in, hoping that would get my HR under control and I could find a rhythm.

The mile into the mile 4 aid station is downhill, and by then I had switched to full-on damage control.  I stopped to go to the bathroom (first time since before the swim) at Mile 4 and tried to get myself together.  I decided that I was just going to do everything I could to avoid a major meltdown.  I felt at that point like I did at mile 22 or so in Coeur d’Alene – another 22.2 miles of this was a crushing thought.  So it meant walking the aid stations and steep hills, getting as many calories in as I could at each aid station, and just running it as close to the edge as I could muster.

At mile 6, the flats along the lake, there was a brutal, steady ~20mph wind headed right at us.  This really hurt me.

At mile 9 my cramping was getting worse and I stopped to stretch. At this point I had no idea how I was going to make it.  I didn’t want to DNF but didn’t want to be out there for 6 hours.  I remember thinking that each mile felt like an Ironman by itself.  I was trying like hell to stick to a "no walking outside the aid stations" plan. 

I made it through the hills and back out of the turn around to mile 14.  Here I saw Owen and Polita and was pleased with where they were as it seemed they were having a good day.  Running wasn't getting any easier, and I was getting more and more light-headed as well.  So passing out was one more thing to worry about.  I really did think that I'd eventually collapse or seize up with cramps and that would be that.  There's only one way to find out, right?

At mile 16 I had my lowest point and started to mentally fold a bit.  After muscling through 2 and a half hours of this, another 10 miles seemed impossible.  I walked and chatted for a few minutes with another guy along the lake.  He was in worse shape for me and that helped me get running again.  About here Mark went by me looking just awesome – was very happy to see him killing it out there.

Not long after, I saw Deb coming the other way.  I went over to her to say hi – it gave me an excuse to walk – and told her I wasn’t enjoying myself very much.  At least she was running well!

At mile 18, Shaun Callaghan came by on a bike and gave me some motivational words that helped a ton.  From here on out, I actually started to pull it together a bit, get refocused, and I ran pretty steady when I realized I was still shooting at sub-10:50 on the day.

The next 8 miles, it was just  more of the same aid-station-to-aid-station battle.  I kept saying "okay, 7 more aid stations...just 7 more", and I was pleased to still be under 10 minute miles for the most part.  Given I’d done 20 miles I wasn’t as worried about my cramping getting any worse since the Gatorade and chicken broth seemed to be helping.  There is a long, shallow grade back into town on which I saw Bethany and Stephen which helped keep me motivated at one of the toughest points on the course.  Perfect timing.

Finally, I got to mile 24, I could see the hotel at the end of Main, and got the downhill through town and turned onto Lakeshore into the din of the crowds and the finishing area. This was a boost and helped me relax and just run as well as I could.  I didn’t care how fast I was running, but I wanted to run "pretty" all the way in.

Ironically, this was my best Ironman finish.  Because I didn’t care about my exact time and because I’d overcome 4 hours in hell, I really relaxed and enjoyed the last ¼ mile of the run.  I’ve always been so focused on finishing in prior races, it’s gone by in a blur.  This time, I looked around, high-fived some friends and soaked it in a bit.   I even considered walking the final few yards to make the most of it, but didn’t. 

I was shocked to have still managed to put together a 4:16 marathon after all of that.  It's 30 minutes slower than I ran at CdA but much faster than what I was imagining when I was out on the course...even now it seems impossible that things didn't turn out worse.  And overall I ended up with a 10:52 - two minutes faster than last year.  Crazy.

Every Ironman finish is a good Ironman finish, and I was proud to smile and raise my arms across the line, even if I didn’t finish as well as I started.

The Obsessing

Immediately following the race, I just assumed that I'd ridden too hard.  I'm a firm believer in "there is no such thing as a good bike followed by a poor run" and by that bar, I figured that was that.  But after looking at the data - and knowing that was the best I've felt for an IM bike - it's not obvious that's the main issue.

From the data, I rode quite a bit stronger than I had at any of my prior Ironman's.  But the fade in our 4-5 was fairly significant.  After talking with some people, it looks like I might have gone out a touch hard in the first 2 hours, and that coupled with some hydration issues and (again) not getting enough calories in on the bike finally caught up with me.  I think that the difference is that this time I finally rode hard enough to expose that clearly on the run.  One of these days I'll get it all right on the same day.

My body wasn't very happy with me either.  Post-race, I felt far worse than I have after any of my other races.  The night's sleep after an IM is usually pretty bad, but this was terrible.  I had chills and sweats all night long.  Fortunately, most of this started to lift by the next day.

Net-net, I feel very good about finishing with a solid time with some adversity.  It could have been worse, a lot worse, and there’s some good things to learn. A friend (thanks Rhae) pointed out that having things go wrong and still coming in well (I was, after all, 2 minutes faster than last year), is something to notice.   Even if you don’t nail your fast time in the end, it still shows how far you’ve come.  It’s a good point.  It’s easy to get caught up in what ‘could’ have been.  In the grand scheme, it doesn’t matter that much.

Now it’s time to take a little bit of down time and focus on some things in my life that need a little more attention right now. 

All things considered, I had a great day out there and was so pleased to see great races by so many of my dear friends.  Owen and Polita had GREAT first Ironmans, Deb cut an HOUR off her race from last year, I’m proud of Ann her race, and Mark qualified for Kona, which was freaking cool.  I got to see my family and have a nice relaxing week in Penticton. 

I love me some Ironman. Can’t wait for next year.

Ironman Canada 2008

Well here we are again.  Ironman number four is 10 days away.  Wow, that was quick.

Since I last wrote, I've gotten a few weeks of solid training in as things have continued to come around.  It's pretty clear to me, at least in this case, that an Ironman full recovery for me is between 5 and 6 weeks.  It wasn't until the last week or so that I really felt like I was going well.   The geek in me really wants to understand what the physiology behind this is.  How is it possible that it takes that long and what's the mechanism?

Anyway, things have come around and that's what matters.  Just this week everything has started to really click and I'm finally swimming and running reasonably again.  Yeah, whatever.

Life in general has been crazy.  Work is very busy and taking a lot of my time and attention.  I had to make an emergency trip back to Illinois for a family matter.  Not much down time this summer.

Race Execution and Pacing

Two weekends ago, we went over to Spokane for the Troika Half Ironman.  This race is three weeks before Ironman Canada, which makes it a perfect dress rehearsal and capstone "workout" for the last training block.  Having the race in home-town Spokane is fun for me, easy for the family to see, and logistically easy with a place to stay ready to go.  Last year, however, this race was a disaster of small errors that led up to one very unhappy, and not very fast, day.  I really wanted to atone for that meltdown and prove I could race the Half distance effectively.

I've turned a corner in my approach to racing over the past few months.  The change for me basically happened on the run at Ironman Coeur d'Alene, where I went out with a different strategy than prior IMs, and one that led to dramatically better results.  My approach has been to race a more balanced, patient, and well-paced event.  In some sense I'm racing "easier" but I think that mind set actually allows me to go faster.  By being more relaxed, I'm able to focus on form and execution, which is a much better place to be then constantly battling the pain. 

The idea is simple: try to maintain steady pacing across the entire distance.  This is especially true on the run where running 15 or 30 seconds per mile faster in the first third of the run can cost you 1-2 minutes per mile in the last third of the run when the wheels some of.  So the idea is postponing that meltdown (or avoiding it) as long as possible.  The same can be said for the other legs.  Basically, a pace that seems easy at the beginning of the leg is likely to seem very hard by the end.  And maintaining that "easy" pace, for me at least, will deliver a very solid result.  If you can stay disciplined and avoid the fade.

Here's what's happened. 

At the Seafair Sprint Triathlon, I decided I was just going to swim solid, starting out well easier than I thought I "should", and I wasn't going to bother with drafting or worry about what other people were doing. The result was I swam over two minutes faster, on an 800m course, than last time I did the race.  I was coming off two big training weeks and had a sub-par bike and OK run, but still ended up only about 80 seconds off the podium in my age group.  I'm not exactly training for sprints.  Quick shout out to Scott Greene for winning his very-tough 35-39 age group.  Stud.  Given the situation, I felt good about this result.

So back to Troika.  Last year I swam too hard and really struggled in the last 500m of the swim in absolute agony.  This upset my stomach badly and I never really recovered.  Bad tummy means too few calories going in, and that's just not going to work.  This year I just went out and swam steady and as close to the buoys as I could.  I swam a minute faster than last year on much less effort.  On the bike, I started out easy for the first 20 minutes then built into the ride and was strong all the way through; 8 minutes faster than last year.  On the run, I set a solid but maintainable pace and held it until it about mile 12, which is close enough to gut it in.  I was 20 minutes faster on the run than last year.  So, yeah, I'm fitter and last year's result was a bad example, but this was a much better way for me to race and snagged me a 2nd place in my age group.  I actually had fun out there and look forward to next year.

So I've got that going for me.   I was also surprised how quickly I bounced back from this race and how little soreness I had over the following day or two.

Completing the Double Header

On to Canada.  So that's the groove I'm going with.  Race more relaxed and just count on my fitness to do the work, especially when it starts to hurt.

But it's just a race.  If anything else, I'm looking forward to getting back up to Penticton and seeing some friends and family and getting some rest.   We've got two friends doing their first IM, so it'll be fun to observe the "first race" experience through their eyes again.  And many of us in the group have the potential for a breakthrough day up there.

I really need to find a good resource to explain why recovery from an Ironman is so dramatic and takes as long as it does.  I'm still struggling to wrap my head around how it can be that different from long training days where you're doing 2/3 of the volume (with much less running, of course).

Here's what I'm talking about.

It's been over three weeks from the event.  Since then:

• The first 7 days after the race were pretty much completely off from training.  Towards the end of this week a wave of delayed fatigue tends to hit you.
• The next 7 days were light, with a little bit of running towards the end of the week. 
• The third 7 days was a 12-hour training week with just a little "real" work sprinkled in, it was good to get moving again.
• My Heart Rate has been through the roof every time I've trained - 10-15 beats higher than I'd expect for a given pace/exertion.  My HR is typically very predictable.  I can't figure this one out, though a buddy who did the race is also experiencing this.
• My running is 45-60 seconds per mile slower than normal, even more if I was to run at my normal HR.
• My swimming has gone completely to crap.  I'm a mess in the pool; any worse and the old ladies with hair nets and kick boards will be out pacing me.

So there you have it.  The only bright spot is that I'm coming back into form on the bike pretty well.

In the pool, I just can't seem to find the technique that I was swimming with before the race.  I'm about 5s slower per 100y than I was easily swimming before the race (that's a lot).  I think all that swimming with a wetsuit makes you a lazy swimmer.  I've got 15K in the pool this week, so I'm hoping that will whip me back around and I'll rediscover how I was swimming at camp.  But its frustrating as all hell.

The run progression is fairly similar to what other post-Ironman periods has been.  It takes about a month for me to run "normally" again, which in my case is any longer run at a low HR (< AeT) at pretty close to 8:00 miles.  Before the race I was comfortably doing 2+ hour runs at that pace/effort.   I'm about 20s/mile slow right now.

I'll know that I'll get there over the next few weeks, so I'm not whining about it.  It just takes time.   But it's just amazing what an impact the race seems to make on your body.  It's easy to think that this stuff is mental but there seems to be some pretty hard data to it.   And most of the soreness from the race, for me at least, works itself out within 72 hours.  Three weeks seems like such a long time.

The lesson here is to be careful with your recovery and let it happen.  I don't think you can force it, and you're very injury prone in the process.