Lake Winnipesaukee, NH, August 17, 2008
Drove to the race the day before with my friends Erik Van and his wife Patricia and their kids, and met our friends Dave Turvene and Will Colston at the site, where we checked in, racked our bikes, etc.
In the morning, we arrived and set up, and all went well. I got to the beach just as the 2nd or 3rd swim wave was going off, and saw Will’s wave depart. Soon it was time for my wave, and then we were off, on a nice, rectangular clockwise course in the beautiful waters of Lake Winnipesaukee.
Swim
I dug right in to my new swim stroke which I’ve been working on, and which by now is halfway to becoming habitual (I slip out of it when tired and not concentrating). Fairly quickly I found a good pair of feet to draft off of – a guy who was actually going slightly faster than I probably would have gone, but, me not wanting to lose my draft, prompted me to push a little to stay with him. At one point I suddenly brushed up against a buoy – on my left! This guy was leading me inside the buoy – without a thought I stuck my head bolt upright and then quickly detoured back around the correct side of the buoy. I regretted losing my draft, but consoled myself with the knowledge that I had stayed on the course and followed the rules and – I am unsure – maybe avoided the risk of a penalty. On the second leg of the race I found another guy to draft off of, who also pushed me faster. At the second turn, I turned toward shore to find a healthy chop in the water hitting me in the face; there was no risk of dehydration on this leg as I drank quite a bit of the lake water. I also found myself swimming through a thick school of women in yellow caps (a previous wave). Somewhere here I lost my draft again. A hundred yards from shore or so some guy in a silver cap (my wave) came roaring up next to me, so I sped up to swim alongside him the rest of the way in. Overall I felt good on the swim – the water was gorgeous and nothing really cropped up to bother me. My time was 32:59. That put me 186th out of 1,506 finishers, and 29th out of 219 finishers in my 40-44 age group.
Running into transition I had a new experience: wetsuit strippers. Usually only reserved for Iron-distance races, I flopped down onto a mat in front of these great volunteers and they yanked my wetsuit off me – a big help in transition, and kinda fun. The rest of my transition I concentrated on being smooth and steady (I think of it as “slow/fast”). This race I decided not to wear my tri top under my wetsuit, because I noticed it sticking out on a previous race and worried that it was dragging down my swim time. So I had to put that on, and stuck a bannana in the pocket for bike fuel. Then as I ran out the bannana fell out after about 10 yards, some guy kindly called to me but I abandoned it.
As I left the park, I saw my mom, which was fun, since I wasn’t sure what time she would get to the race (she had arrived *just* in time to see me it turned out).
Bike
A woman we saw the day before had warned against going too hard in the first 10-15 miles of the race, so I took the first couple miles easy, but by mile 10 I realized I was going pretty hard, and figured I had fallen into the trap she warned against. Not sure why but I often find I go faster than other people down hills, for whatever reason (I suspect I take it easier on the way up than most, and work harder on the way down – weight of myself and my bike might also have something to do with it), and once I get up that momentum, for some reason I find it easy to maintain it, and often pass people thereafter. So passing people like that was kind of addictive, so that kept me going fast I think. Which is not to say I wasn’t also getting passed – in some cases, *blown by* – by a fair number of riders, often on the $3,000 bikes with carbon wheels.
After exiting transition, I rode for a while with my feet on top of my shoes. I like to rubber-band my shoes to my bike, hop on, spin up, and then put my feet in my shoes, it has always worked well and it’s fun. For the first time, I had a little trouble getting my feet into my shoes; it actually slowed me down a bit.
I made a last-minute decision to go ahead and wear my new heart-rate monitor for the first time in a race. I didn’t so much use it as check it, out of curiosity, and I found one interesting thing in the first 20 miles of the bike: every time I looked, whether I was on a flat, on a downhill, or on a steep or gradual ascent, my heart rate was always 147, 148, or 149. That tells me that in 3 years of training by feel without a monitor, I’ve learned to become pretty consistent, partly because I do work at keeping my effort constant even when the terrain is not.
I enjoyed the outbound bike a lot, and the return trip, when the wind seemed harder and I was more tired, I enjoyed it less. For a while after the turnaround it began to feel slog-like, and my effort level (and heart rate) lessened. But then after a while I regained energy and gunned it up again. After I turned onto the main lakeside highway, I thought I was like half a mile from the end – it turned out to be 3, and a lot was uphill. That was one of the hardest parts of the bike. But overall the bike course despite the few steep hills was a good one for me since it had a lot of extended gradual hills which I do well on. And, I did push the bike; since I knew I was planning to walk a lot of the run anyway I figured I might as well. On the bike my time was 2:44:20 – that was 283rd of 1,506 finishers, and 55/219 in my age group.
Back into transition, I also took this one steady, not gunning this time for a fantastic T-time as I have in past races for fun. I changed shirts, took off & adjusted my race belt, etc.
Somewhere around this point, I noticed I was dying of thirst; during the bike, I had consumed my two (extra-large 30 oz) water bottles, but never stopped to take any additional liquids from the aid stations. So when I started the run I guzzled a couple cups of water at the exit aid station and felt better, and continued to drink steadily during first lap of the run (less so on the second but still some) and felt fine overall. After the race, I realized I never peed once during the whole thing, and in fact not for an hour or two afterwards. I probably was dehydrated. Maybe I would have done better if I’d drunk more according to conventional wisdom, or maybe the wisdom is wrong and our bodies are more resilient than people think. In any case, it was not a strategy that would set me up well to go another 6 hours, as I will be in the full Iron distance race I’m planning to try November 1.
Run
Since I’m still working my distances back up in the wake of last year’s stress fracture, and since I’m focused on the Iron-distance race, I decided not to risk injury by running the whole 13.1 miles when I haven’t done any runs lately longer than 7 miles. So, I went into this race planning to only run about 8-9 miles of the run. Figuring each loop was 6.5 miles, I had this whole plan worked out to run the first 2 ¼ miles, walk to the turnaround and back to roughly the same point, and do the same thing on the second lap. I ran the designated amount, and then started walking – but it was early in the run, and I was the only one walking, and after a minute or two I was dying to start running again. I lasted 5 minutes and then started running again, and at that point the plan went out the window as I lost all track of my running vs. walking distances. I did hit my watch each time I started or stopped, so I was able to figure out later that I walked for about 45 minutes, and ran for about 1 ½ hours. So I did walk about one-third of the time, but that means I ran more than two-thirds of the distance since of course you travel slower when walking. If I walked 15-minute miles, I would have covered 3 miles, and run 10.1 at a pace of just under 9:00 per mile. Here is a graphic showing the erratic nature of my run-walk pattern (remember this is by time not distance):
Yellow card
It was on my first walking session on my first lap that a lady pulled up to me on a bike and explained that actually, there was an Ironman race rule against running barefoot.
Now, I was aware of this rule. It had been discussed on the barefoot running listserv a few years earlier, and many of us signed a petition asking to them to rescind it as pointless and silly and retrograde. We received no response from the company, and other runners reported getting no response from them when asking about it. But, before the Timberman, seeing that it was affiliated with this corporation, and unsure if the rule was still in effect, I looked in vain for a reference to the rule on the race web site, and found none, even though they did list rules that differed from the standard USAT rules. Also, no mention was made of this rule at the pre-race meeting where the head ref went over the key rules including those specific to Ironman Brand races – including the requirement that shirts be worn, which had apparently been instituted at the same time as the barefoot rule.
I pointed all this out to the official who stopped me on the run, said that I hadn't run with shoes in 3 years and would probably get injured if I tried, and noted that it was an ancient tradition practiced by some of the world's best runners. The official was somewhat apologetic, and said that she and the other officials had had a long discussion the previous night about this "funny" rule, but nonetheless had no choice but to enforce it.
At this point I wondered if I would be pulled from the race, disqualified, or forced to don some kind of footwear. I was relieved when she said that I would just get a “yellow card.” If I got two more, I would be DQed – otherwise, there was no penalty. The next thing I was worried about was that I would be given a yellow card every time an official saw me, so that they would quickly mount up. But, she said running the whole race barefoot would only cost me one yellow card, so I was okay. The only cost to me was that a) if I had gotten 2 other yellow cards, I would be DQed, while another athlete would not, which is unfair, and b) my run time was slowed by this official, who interrupted my forward motion to take down my race number (I will admit, however, that at that time my forward motion was not very swift).
Afterwards I spoke to the head ref and told him that while I did not blame him or his staff for enforcing the rule, I thought the rule was bogus and that it looks very bad for the sport of triathlon for it to be so strongly dominated by a single corporation - unlike virtually every other sport - which issues capricious rules and is not responsive in explaining the reasons for them, and that this raises questions about whether they are making decisions based on profit-making ties with the shoe industry rather than the well-being of athletes (when I was on the Ironman mailing list all the e-mails I received from them consisted nearly exclusively of advertisements from equipment companies).
I told the ref I hoped he would convey my sentiments through whatever channels he might be connected to. He told me to write to them directly. I did so and now I’m corresponding with them trying to get an answer. I look forward to hearing why they think they need this rule.
Sore feet
In any case, as I mentioned I have not been doing 13-mile runs, so I expected my soles would get sore on the second lap, as they did. This race having “special needs bags” (again usually something seen only on a full iron-distance race), I put some cheap $3 flip-flops in a bag and jammed them in the back of my shorts at the end of my first loop. I wore them on some of my walking intervals on the outbound portion of the second lap, and actually tried running with them for about four and a half minutes on the return leg. When I saw I was a mile and a half from home, I took off the flip-flops and ran the rest of the way in. Although my feet were VERY sore at first, by the home stretch they were feeling fine, and I ran strong and hard down the finishing chute.
On the run I had no hope or thought of getting a decent time and wasn’t even thinking about it. So, I was shocked at the 10-mile point when I did look & saw I was only 5:04 into the race – if I had run a regular 5k time at that point I would have easily beaten 5:30 – as it was I stuck to my discipline and walked a big chunk of the remaining 3 miles, and still beat my Half Iron PR by more than 5 minutes. My run time was 2:15:09, which placed me 986/1,506 overall and 157/219 in my age group.
Conclusions
My overall time was 5:36:29, which put me at 528/1,506 overall and 105/219 in my age group.
Since I wore the monitor, I might as well record that my average heart rate during the swim was 143, during the bike, 147, and the run, 141. My average heart rate when actually running was 147, and when walking, 134. During the event overall it averaged 145. Basically, in all segments except when walking, I always averaged within a percentage point or two of 80% of my estimated maximum heart rate of 180. I have no idea if that’s something that experienced athletes would say is desireable or not, I’ve never done any heart rate training, maybe I’ll have to read up on that. Interestingly, my lowest heart rate was during the swim; I wonder if that means I was just being smart – or can I get away with pushing harder?
My peak heart rate was 170, which I hit during my final run down the finishing chute.
Overall the race went well, I felt good, it was a great day out with my mom there and my friends. And, I was surprised how well I did considering that I had mentally written off the run. I am amazed when I remember how terrible I felt at the finish of the DDT and other prior races, compared to this one. I thought I went pretty hard on the swim & especially the bike, and still felt good on the run. Whether this was a benefit of the monthly 100-milers I’ve been riding in training for the Ironman, or whatever else, I don’t know. Of course it’s easy to feel good when you walk – whenever I felt like it, I just did, with no guilt, and it had to have helped that I was super-relaxed. But, my time was in line with my previous half-iron run times.
The "after" shot: Dave, Erik, me and Will after race
The lesson I take from this: it really can be counterproductive to push too hard on these races. Also it makes me thing that for the Ironman, my run-walk strategy (realistically, virtually no one runs their whole marathon in their first Ironman) will not revolve around some kind of system, such as alternating runs and walks at set intervals, or what have you. I may just walk whenever I feel like it, run when I feel like it. (If I never feel like running – a real possibility – that is when I could start to fall back on the discipline of a system.)
I apologize to the patient and rare reader who has gotten this far into this race report, which contains so much more detail than the underlying events merit; please know that I feel very fortunate that I am physically able to participate in races such as this, keenly aware that such a blessing can be lost for good at any moment, and eager to record my memories of these races as much for myself as for anyone else.
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