MedExpress Mountaineer Triathlon Race Report
The Mountaineer was my first triathlon of 2007 so I was a little anxious about taking the start line. I'll run through a few of the fears I had:
1. Swim - this is always a concern, but due to my fairly consistent swimming over the past 8 months it is becoming less and less of a concern. The positive talk about my swimming has also helped out the anxiety.
2. Very few brick workouts this year - I have been swimming, cycling and running more than any other time in my life, but I haven't added in too many brick (bike/run) workouts. This left me in a position of the unknown regarding how my legs would react to running once I was off the bike.
3. Very little to zero mid/upper intensity work. My primary training after the Derby Half Marathon has been long (sometimes very long) easy bike riding. The swimming and run workouts have all been easy too - my fear was that they had been too easy. The doubts were there because I hadn't seen a sub 7:45 mile on the run since the 1/2 marathon and I wasn't sure if all the 8:00 to 9:00 / mile easy runs were going to allow me to run well again? Join those doubts with the knowledge that my friends and training partners had been doing sub 7:00 min/mile runs regularly and my mind was in a period of high intensity self doubt.
The Race (brief)
The swim started without much issue. The in_the_water start was a very nice change for me. After a few minutes of swimming I felt fine and in a good place - that left midway through the course. I am not sure about the reason for my mid-swim change_of_heart, but I began to feel "slow". Nothing like feeling slow to mess with your mind. The swim continued on without issues other than my own mental battles, allowing myself to concede that even if I was slow - there was still the bike and run.
As I came out of the swim I stopped on the dock, sat down and pulled off my wetsuit, prior to running to the transition. While in route to the transition I looked at my watch to see where I was at, it said, "4:00". Apparently my Polar froze up a little bit into the swim. This meant I would have to reset it, which I didn't have time for. It also meant that I was "flying solo" for the day because I purposely didn't put a computer on my bike for this race. Riding with zero feedback was difficult when you are already anxious because all the bikes were off the rack when I got there.
My swim result - 32:00, 122 overall rank. Faster than 2 of the top 4 in our age group and 17 seconds behind the 1st place person in our age group. It looks like I didn't have as much to worry about as I thought!
The bike started out with anxiety (probably left over from the swim) too. As I got on my bike and took off, the bike was making a hideous "creaking" noise. It bothered me for about 15 miles, but I came to peace with it once I felt like it was just my Look cleats making the noise.
The bike route was a 2 loop course, therefore my strategy was to ride comfortable the first loop and work a little bit on the second loop, making sure I had the ability to run. Since my heart rate monitor was frozen, I had to continually remind myself that comfortable is probably "easy", especially knowing how worked up I was about being "behind". While the course was supposed to be challenging, it was not that challenging at all. There was some climbing but nothing significant or blow_your_legs_up hard.
My bike result - 2:45:12, 20.3mph, 78 overall rank. As it turns out, the bike is where I lost the majority of my "placing". Every person that placed ahead of me in our age group rode a faster bike split.
The run was highly uneventful four 11 miles and highly challenging for 2 miles. The majority of the course was an out and back leg on a bike trail, but there was 1 mile that was very hilly and difficult. (The run was a two lap course too.) The hills actually came as a nice relief as I found my legs struggling with the flat out and back portion more than in the hills. This is likely due to the speed that I was trying to maintain but hadn't run in some time.
I used the walk/run pattern that I used in the Derby Half Marathon, although it was a little modified because I didn't have a watch to check splits.
My run result - 1:37:13, 7:25pace, 36 overall rank. To be honest this was the most dissappointing of my splits. I was anticipating a sub 1:35 on that course, but I guess without doing any tempo, threshold or upper steady running it might be hard to expect that in the race.
Final Thoughts and "What Next?"
The race went as well as I could have expected. After all, I did have a personal best at the half iron-distance (4:58:56). I also knew that the bulk of my training over the past 18 months has not been focused on having half-iron speed, it has been focused on having Ironman endurance.
That being said, I realize that I am coming to a point in my training that will require me to include some steady, upper steady and tempo or threshold workouts. I am not completely sure how they will be inserted into my training yet - it will depend highly on my ability to recover from each workout.
The next two weeks (July 9 to July 22) are 9 and 8 weeks out from Ironman Wisconsin. They will also be my biggest weeks in terms of volume (hours) this year. After that I will use a lighter week (week 7) to recover and go into a 6 week specific preparation period.
I have been going over how to handle my specific preparation for IMMOO. If you have any suggestions or comments, I'd love to hear them. (I may not act on them, but always ready to listen!)
1. Swim - this is always a concern, but due to my fairly consistent swimming over the past 8 months it is becoming less and less of a concern. The positive talk about my swimming has also helped out the anxiety.
2. Very few brick workouts this year - I have been swimming, cycling and running more than any other time in my life, but I haven't added in too many brick (bike/run) workouts. This left me in a position of the unknown regarding how my legs would react to running once I was off the bike.
3. Very little to zero mid/upper intensity work. My primary training after the Derby Half Marathon has been long (sometimes very long) easy bike riding. The swimming and run workouts have all been easy too - my fear was that they had been too easy. The doubts were there because I hadn't seen a sub 7:45 mile on the run since the 1/2 marathon and I wasn't sure if all the 8:00 to 9:00 / mile easy runs were going to allow me to run well again? Join those doubts with the knowledge that my friends and training partners had been doing sub 7:00 min/mile runs regularly and my mind was in a period of high intensity self doubt.
The Race (brief)
The swim started without much issue. The in_the_water start was a very nice change for me. After a few minutes of swimming I felt fine and in a good place - that left midway through the course. I am not sure about the reason for my mid-swim change_of_heart, but I began to feel "slow". Nothing like feeling slow to mess with your mind. The swim continued on without issues other than my own mental battles, allowing myself to concede that even if I was slow - there was still the bike and run.
As I came out of the swim I stopped on the dock, sat down and pulled off my wetsuit, prior to running to the transition. While in route to the transition I looked at my watch to see where I was at, it said, "4:00". Apparently my Polar froze up a little bit into the swim. This meant I would have to reset it, which I didn't have time for. It also meant that I was "flying solo" for the day because I purposely didn't put a computer on my bike for this race. Riding with zero feedback was difficult when you are already anxious because all the bikes were off the rack when I got there.
My swim result - 32:00, 122 overall rank. Faster than 2 of the top 4 in our age group and 17 seconds behind the 1st place person in our age group. It looks like I didn't have as much to worry about as I thought!
The bike started out with anxiety (probably left over from the swim) too. As I got on my bike and took off, the bike was making a hideous "creaking" noise. It bothered me for about 15 miles, but I came to peace with it once I felt like it was just my Look cleats making the noise.
The bike route was a 2 loop course, therefore my strategy was to ride comfortable the first loop and work a little bit on the second loop, making sure I had the ability to run. Since my heart rate monitor was frozen, I had to continually remind myself that comfortable is probably "easy", especially knowing how worked up I was about being "behind". While the course was supposed to be challenging, it was not that challenging at all. There was some climbing but nothing significant or blow_your_legs_up hard.
My bike result - 2:45:12, 20.3mph, 78 overall rank. As it turns out, the bike is where I lost the majority of my "placing". Every person that placed ahead of me in our age group rode a faster bike split.
The run was highly uneventful four 11 miles and highly challenging for 2 miles. The majority of the course was an out and back leg on a bike trail, but there was 1 mile that was very hilly and difficult. (The run was a two lap course too.) The hills actually came as a nice relief as I found my legs struggling with the flat out and back portion more than in the hills. This is likely due to the speed that I was trying to maintain but hadn't run in some time.
I used the walk/run pattern that I used in the Derby Half Marathon, although it was a little modified because I didn't have a watch to check splits.
My run result - 1:37:13, 7:25pace, 36 overall rank. To be honest this was the most dissappointing of my splits. I was anticipating a sub 1:35 on that course, but I guess without doing any tempo, threshold or upper steady running it might be hard to expect that in the race.
Final Thoughts and "What Next?"
The race went as well as I could have expected. After all, I did have a personal best at the half iron-distance (4:58:56). I also knew that the bulk of my training over the past 18 months has not been focused on having half-iron speed, it has been focused on having Ironman endurance.
That being said, I realize that I am coming to a point in my training that will require me to include some steady, upper steady and tempo or threshold workouts. I am not completely sure how they will be inserted into my training yet - it will depend highly on my ability to recover from each workout.
The next two weeks (July 9 to July 22) are 9 and 8 weeks out from Ironman Wisconsin. They will also be my biggest weeks in terms of volume (hours) this year. After that I will use a lighter week (week 7) to recover and go into a 6 week specific preparation period.
I have been going over how to handle my specific preparation for IMMOO. If you have any suggestions or comments, I'd love to hear them. (I may not act on them, but always ready to listen!)
Labels: half-ironman, Mountaineer, race report, triathlon
posted by gary at 10:43 AM
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