70.3 Kansas 2013 - Matt Aaronson
IM 70.3 Kansas race report
Unlike last year where I had some real goals for my tri season, this year I was doing Kansas because I wanted to do at least one race to put all of my fitness to use after training for 5 months. I'd have liked to have raced for a PB this year since I'm in better shape than last year, but the baby (3rd child) is due in 3 weeks and there is no fast course that would yield a PB for me that has a race within the next 6 weeks. My original plan was to race Eagleman this weekend but the race sold out and I never got in off the waiting list.
So without the possibility of a PB (and with a PB for this course all but guaranteed), I decided to experiment a little with my execution. Specifically, I decided I'd ride the bike harder than usual and see if it had downstream impact on the run.
I should probably note I went into the race with a pretty terrible cough/cold. I didn't sleep more than 5 hours on Friday night and pretty much didn't sleep at all on Saturday night. I didn't think that would make a huge impact on performance but when I look at my HR data, in particular on the bike, I think it ended up being a factor.
Overall it was a good race but not a great race. My finishing time was 4:45:07, and I placed 95th overall and 12th in the M3539 age group. I was only ~40 seconds out of the top 10 in my age group, which is a lesson that every second counts! My results were a 10:02 improvement over last year on the same course where I went 4:55:09, although last year my placing was 79th OA and 11th in M3539. Of course last year was in record-setting temperatures and a no-wetsuit swim. In fact, finish times for the top 20 guys averaged 10:09 faster this year. This was really consistent: 5th place was 10:03 faster, 10th place was 9:51 faster, 15th was 10:30 faster and 20th was 10:31 faster. All this suggests I didn't improve year-over-year despite better fitness which is disappointing. But I think the execution experiment of riding the bike harder made a difference, and I'll go into some detail on that below.
My brief assessment of the race
- Good swim considering I did only 7 weeks of swim training leading up to the race (and zero swimming from Sept-April). Actually the split was a technically a PB over my swim at Racine last year – and the Kansas water was much choppier. I might have pressed a bit too hard given my HR was pretty jacked exiting the water, but I think the effort was appropriate.
- I wanted to ride the bike at a 0.88 IF (223 NP) and I managed 0.86 from miles 5-40. But then I faded and ended up at the same overall IF (0.84) as last year. I'll have some discussion on that below. My bike split of 2:29:25 was 2:59 faster than last year and given the similar power numbers I suspect the majority of improvement was due to better conditions (cooler and less windy).
- The run was a disappointing 1:37:30. I wasn't hurting but I just couldn't go any faster, similar to what happened in Vegas last year. Although my run was 1:07 faster than last year's, you need to consider that last year in Kansas it was 94 degrees and this year it was only low-80's (no shade). The top 20 run times in M3539 were 3:07 faster this year, on average. Given I ran a 1:26 open half marathon 2 months ago, my half-iron run ought to be 1:30-1:32. I ran a 1:35:36 at Racine last year in similar (actually, hotter) conditions so clearly this was not to potential.
- I spent ~1:31 in the form of two bathroom breaks, 0:50 on the bike and 0:41 on the run. Really that is annoying considering that 40 seconds would have had me beat 2 more people and get into the top 10. Stopping to water the trees happens to me in almost every half-iron distance race. Very annoying.
- I successfully implemented a more minimal nutrition plan that consisted of a gel before the swim, a gel and a Gatorade on the bike, a gel at the beginning of the run, and some cola on the run course. Overall 430 calories plus the cola, so about 100 calories / hour. No side stitches or feeling bloated or sloshy on the run. This seems to work well for me.
- Odd coincidence: my AG ranking on the swim bike and run were 38th, 10th and 15th, respectively. Those are the EXACT SAME as last year at this race!! Only my overall placing was different (12th vs. 11th last year).
- I met Hines Ward on the run course…he was racing in my AG…I passed him around mile 10 (he was on his first loop and I was on my second) and I gave him a huge shout-out of course!
- Craig Alexander won the men's race among the professional field. This was my 7th half-ironman race and the 5th at which Craig Alexander was competing. The guy just can't get enough of me!!!
Here is a comparison of my results year-over-year (note the swim in 2012 was non-wetsuit):
| 2012 | 2013 | Improvement | |||||||
| Swim 1.2 miles | 39:37 | 2:03/100m | 34:08 | 1:46/100m | 5:29 | 14% | |||
| Bike 56 miles | 2:32:24 | 22.05 mph | 2:29:25 | 22.49 mph | 2:59 | 2% | |||
| Run half-marathon | 1:38:37 | 7:31/mile | 1:37:30 | 7:26/mile | 1:07 | 1% | |||
| T1 | 2:37 | 2:22 | |||||||
| T2 | 1:54 | 1:42 | |||||||
| OVERALL | 4:55:09 | 4:45:07 | 10:02 | 3% | |||||
| Placing overall | 79/1506 | 5% | 95/1317 | 7% | |||||
| Placing in AG | 11/201 | 5% | 12/174 | 7% | |||||
And the Garmin links of course:
Swim: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/325513094
Bike: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/325502888
Run: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/325513073
Before getting into the details, a bit about my training. This year my training was outstanding in the Jan-March "outseason" where I averaged only ~6 hours per week but was very consistent and really nailed all of my workouts. My FTP towards the end of that timeframe (tested indoors) was 254 which is ~12 watts higher than my best indoor test last year and exactly equal to my top outdoor FTP tested in May last year. Given the weather and schedule I never tested outdoors this year, and based on my training I do suspect that my FTP was down closer to 250 in actuality by the time I got to the start line. My running on the OS was even better and I set a half-marathon PB of 1:26:10 in mid-March without any focused running training plan.
My in-season training after March was much more fragmented due to work and bad Chicago weather that kept all my bike workouts indoors. As a result, I had a lot of missed and rescheduled and lower-quality workouts and no rides much over 2 hours. My strategy to compensate for the relative lack of volume on the bike was to do two big riding weekends back-to-back in late May – the American TTT race on May 17-19 and then a weekend riding the IMWI bike course on May 25/26. The Madison weekend ended up with less biking than desired due to weather but overall I got in some last-minute volume.
Swim – 34:08, 324/1317 overall, 38/174 in AG
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/325513094
As noted above, the swim was fine. Technically it was a PB by 7 seconds over Racine last year, but of course the measurement of these courses is hardly precise enough to say 7 seconds is significant. Let's call it the same time on really minimal swim training volume. Not too crazy in terms of contact and I had reasonably open water from the beginning. The course is an out and back and the water was pretty choppy on the way out. On the way back I was swimming with the chop and felt a lot faster. I also pushed a bit harder and focused a bit more on my stroke. Towards the end I got a bit off course to the right and started running into a bunch of people from earlier-starting age groups which was a pain and probably resulted in me increasing my effort a bit. I probably pressed the swim a bit too hard since I was pretty winded when I got out of the water and knew my HR was jacked. In transition my bike computer showed an HR over 180 which is about 5-7 bpm higher than I probably should have been. But overall not bad at all.
T1 – 2:22
Efficient although the racks had narrow aisles between them and I got stuck behind some slow-moving folks trying to get to the mount line.
Bike – 2:29:25, 10/174 in AG (which put me in 14th place at the end of the bike)
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/325502888
I really like the course. Challenging but not "really hard". Long hills but no steep grades, just a wear-you-down sort of course. Last year was VERY windy (16 gusting 30mph). This year it was less windy and cooler and bike times were faster in general, averaging 2:21 faster for the top 20 in my AG and 2:01 for the top 10. My bike was 10th fastest in M3539. As an illustration of the difference in wind, consider that my peak 30 minute speed last year was 26.2 mph, this year was 24.7 mph even though my overall bike split was faster!
I was started in one of the last swim waves so most of the bike consisted of riding through older / slower age groups. In general I like rides like this because it keeps me interested and engaged as I pass people and try to figure out what AG they're in and how I'm moving up through the field. Pretty early on I had to go to the bathroom so I made the decision to stop and water the plants. I hit the lap button during that timeframe and recorded a 50-second stop. So frustrating. But I felt SO MUCH BETTER after that and honestly it was probably worth a few watts. Of course I was 40 seconds out of 10th place so I need to figure out how to handle these situations better. I've just never been able to relieve myself while riding. Perhaps I have to practice it in training???
For much of the last 10 miles of the bike I rode alongside a really nice guy from AZ who ended up 13th in M3539 and we talked a bit and probably succeeded in pushing each other to go just a bit harder/faster that we might have if we were on our own. As we got close to T2 he mentioned he hoped to have a good run after that bike and he went on to beat the crap out of me on the run. When I saw him after the race we talked a bit more and I was pretty shocked to see he was 13th in his AG even though he finished about 10 minutes faster than me in the race overall. I hope he got a rolldown slot to Vegas, that was his goal.
As I said above, my goal was to work the bike harder than usual. My typical target is 85% of FTP but given that TSS is a function of IF and total time on the bike, execution guidance (e.g. tables) suggests I could ride 87-88% of FTP. So I decided I'd try to do that. I was only moderately successful. As I mentioned I got out of the water with a jacked HR and my power for the first 5 miles was pretty low, 0.81 IF. At that point I re-zeroed my powermeter and immediately saw higher numbers, so perhaps that first 5 miles was a bit low due to a calibration issue. For the next 35 miles I worked hard on the bike, seeing HR numbers about 10bpm higher than usual for me riding z3 but only averaging 0.861 IF for those miles. In the last 15 miles I paid the piper for the effort and faded badly. So badly, in fact, that I ended up at IF 0.84 overall, which was essentially identical to last year's IF where I targeted 0.85.
My splits on the bike, taken every 5 miles:
| Lap | Miles | Time | Speed mph |
Avg power | Norm power | VI | IF | Avg cadence | Avg HR |
Max HR |
NP/HR | |||
| 1 | 5 | 13:21 | 22.5 | 203 | 206 | 1.02 | 0.811 | 90 | 163 | 182 | 1.26 | |||
| 2 | 0.18 | 0:31 | 20.6 | |||||||||||
| 3 | 5 | 13:22 | 22.4 | 218 | 219 | 1.01 | 0.862 | 92 | 155 | 163 | 1.41 | |||
| 4 | 0.72 | 3:06 | 14.0 | 216 | 225 | 1.05 | 0.885 | 90 | 152 | 160 | 1.48 | |||
| 5 | 0.02 | 0:50 | 1.1 | |||||||||||
| 6 | 5 | 13:25 | 22.4 | 225 | 226 | 1.00 | 0.889 | 91 | 152 | 162 | 1.49 | |||
| 7 | 5 | 14:31 | 20.7 | 218 | 219 | 1.00 | 0.863 | 91 | 152 | 160 | 1.44 | |||
| 8 | 5 | 14:14 | 21.1 | 212 | 213 | 1.01 | 0.839 | 91 | 150 | 158 | 1.42 | |||
| 9 | 5 | 11:53 | 25.2 | 210 | 211 | 1.00 | 0.831 | 90 | 147 | 153 | 1.44 | |||
| 10 | 0.28 | 0:30 | 33.9 | |||||||||||
| 11 | 5 | 12:47 | 23.5 | 216 | 218 | 1.01 | 0.857 | 88 | 148 | 155 | 1.47 | |||
| 12 | 5 | 13:19 | 22.5 | 218 | 219 | 1.00 | 0.862 | 90 | 149 | 153 | 1.47 | |||
| 13 | 5 | 11:57 | 25.1 | 204 | 208 | 1.02 | 0.819 | 88 | 150 | 155 | 1.39 | |||
| 14 | 5 | 13:08 | 22.9 | 209 | 210 | 1.01 | 0.827 | 88 | 152 | 167 | 1.38 | |||
| 15 | 3.84 | 11:43 | 19.6 | 201 | 203 | 1.01 | 0.799 | 88 | 152 | 158 | 1.34 | |||
| 16 | 0.21 | 0:37 | 19.0 | |||||||||||
| OVERALL | 55.33 | 2:29:14 | 21.80 | 211 | 214 | 1.01 | 0.841 | 90 | 152 | 182 | 1.41 | |||
| TSS = 175.9 | ||||||||||||||
I'm not sure exactly what happened here and why I couldn't hit 0.88. That should have been possible for a 2.5 hour ride. I think there were two factors: (a) as described above, I was undertrained for endurance this year…my attempt at a last-minute "volume injection" wasn't effective, (b) I was physiologically compromised in some way (probably by the cough/cold). Take a look at a comparison of my summary bike data from the past 2 years at Kansas. What stands out?
| 2012 | 2013 | |||
| Avg power | 209 | 211 | ||
| NP | 214 | 214 | ||
| IF | 0.843 | 0.841 | ||
| VI | 1.02 | 1.01 | ||
| TSS | 179.5 | 175.9 | ||
| Avg HR | 142 | 152 | ||
| Avg cadence | 90 | 90 |
Obviously the HR sticks out like a sore thumb. To point (b) above, it is really odd that my HR was so jacked on the bike. I can understand that pressing the end of the swim can jack HR and I've experienced that before. But on the bike I'm usually rock solid in the low 140's for z3 riding. Below is a chart of NP/HR over the course of the ride (miles on the x-axis). You see decoupling beginning at mile 40 in 2013 and mile 45 in 2012, but overall the 2013 line is just, well, lower. This wouldn't be expected based on my training experience this year (and remember that my FTP is the same both years so while technically IF/HR should be the metric, that chart would look identical).
So overall I think there was some strange physiological stuff going on related to the cough/cold. But I think undertraining for endurance was a factor in the fade as well. I think if I was in better form I really could have hit 0.87 on the bike although I'm not sure I'd have avoided some sort of fade. I will try this experiment again, hopefully next year on a flat course where I can look for a 2:20 bike split and a big half-iron PB!!
T2 – 1:42
Pretty fast. Took off the helmet, sat on the ground and put on my socks and shoes, grabbed a plastic Ziploc bag with all my stuff for the run, tore a gel off my bike and ran out while eating the gel.
Run – 1:37:30, 15/174 in AG (which put me in 12th place overall)
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/325513073
As I ran out of T2 I knew I was moving too slowly. It just didn't feel smooth and good. I opened the Ziploc bag, put on my race belt and hat, and sprayed myself with the sunblock from my bag. I tossed the sunblock and the Ziploc bag to a random spectator and started running. About a half mile in I saw William Jenks coming in the opposite direction and I gave him a high-5. I then looked at my watch and saw I was at a 7:50-ish pace…yikes time to get moving.
Just before the first mile marker I once again succumbed to the urge to water the grass. That cost me another 41 seconds. But after that I clicked off miles of 7:14 and 7:22…far slower than the 6:51 I ought to have been running but a hell of a lot better than 7:46.
Mile 4 was 7:45 because it included the one hill on the course, it is about a quarter mile long and gains 75 feet. Not exactly a mountain but it certainly slows you down. I then settled into a pretty steady pace with the next miles 7:26, 7:19, 7:27, 7:33, 7:38. I spent most of this time running behind a female pro on her second loop. I figured she must have been having a bad race but I looked her up afterwards and she did okay. Something was wacky with my HR monitor I think because my HR showed some strange craters for no apparent reason between mile 4 and mile 7, but in reality it was the usual steady progression from the 150s to 160s and firmly into the 170s by the 10k point.
I was taking water and ice at most of the aid stations, and starting on the second loop took some cola at a couple of them. There is no question the aid stations cost me at least 10 seconds/mile overall. I'm a bit perplexed by my perceived need
Comments
Love reading you decipher and compare all the data as you try to solve the triathlon puzzle. It prompts me to view things differently.
There is no doubt that your cold and being endurance undertrained was a factor in your race. Regardless you still crushed it with a faster, or at least equal comparison to last year after you factor in wetsuit/heat.
I think you essentially proved your experiment on biking a higher IF, by not really hitting your bike IF and then subsequently your Run target. This seems to correlate well. So it would seem if you do bike a higher IF that would translate into a slower run?
Your looking for seconds and I agree everyone counts. You know where they are . You just need to go get them. Those 2 pee stops? What were those 30 sec intervals on the bike ? Calibration?
I know its all a balance and part of the puzzle. I can't even imagine biking over .85.
Thanks for sharing and congrats on your new soon to be addition to your family.
Tim,
One thing that strikes me as really impressive on your bike is the 1.02 VI on the segments and 1.01 overall. That's really impressive.
I have no doubt you'd have taken a few min off one place or another without that cold. I have to think that was a limiter on your run. You were suffering pretty badly after the race it looked like. Statistically, a 175 TSS shouldn't be enough to kill off a run, but perhaps the fade at the end suggests the cold was getting to you already.
In any case, I agree with Tim that you're at the place where you're close enough to how well you can do overall [on any given day with your fitness that day] that you have to plan the trade-off there. I don't think it's NECESSARILY a bad thing that one has a sub-optimal run by a minute or two...the only prize is for getting across the line for the whole day.
I have this article that I wrote a while back that is too long and complicated, but it explains how guys with higher W/kg can ride lower VI on hilly courses than ones with lower W/kg because they don't have to spike higher above their target watts to go up and can probably be more consistent about pushing on the downhills instead of coasting. Both of those, of course, lead to lower IF, a better bike split, and a better run compared to the higher VI. (My VI was closer to 1.04...probably in part because of my leg issue, but still... not ideal.)
On the Hines Ward thing (whom I admit I would not recognize): after the race at the awards ceremony, there was a pretty obvious non-athlete who was there wearing a Ward jersey. I recognized him from where he had been cheering on the run course. One of the podium athletes getting an award mistook this rounder-than-Hines-Ward person for Hines Ward, which led to a pretty amusing exchange for me to watch and probably a little embarrassment for the guy. I guess he just assumed that anyone wearing a Ward jersey would be Ward....?
Great race report. I did Kansas too. Will write up report later. I have a question....Matt, why don't you pee on yourself?
Seriously, why give up that precious time? It's kind of difficult to do but something to maybe practice in training......Now if you need to stop because you need to do something other than pee. Well, that's a different story.
Anna
Regarding you questioning why you couldn't do an 0.88 IF bike split, I had a few thoughts.
First, the bike pacing chart was developed by looking at a lot of actual bike splits, so the guidance it offers is based on 'averages' — and you may (or may not) be 'average' in that sense.
Second, as you point out, you weren't able to get the consistent prescribed volume and intensity done on the bike during your HIM build — in one sense I find that reassuring in that the volume and intensity is in the plan for a reason, and if you don't get that done there is likely to be a negative impact on your race.
Thirdly, you didn't do an outside FTP power test, so you were actually guessing what an IF of 0.88 translates into in watts. While most of us that have been using power for a while have a reasonable idea what our FTP is from doing so much FTP interval work, an actual test is likely a more accurate way of estimating your FTP. I note that your inside FTP was higher than last year's inside FTP and that your outside FTP is higher than your inside FTP — meaning that it was likely that had you tested your outside FTP at the end of your OS, it would have been higher than last year's outside FTP — that said, (and as you point out) from this point on life and weather interrupted your HIM build and accordingly your outside FTP would be drifting down from the end of your OS. But you didn't test outside so where it was at the race is just guesswork.
Lastly, you did just 7 weeks swimming in preparation for the race. It is possible that having more swim endurance could have had a positive impact on your bike split. In other word, with more swim endurance, the swim would have taken less out of you leaving you with more resources to spend on trhe bike and run.
I have done a couple of tris where the swim was cancelled due to bad weather and was pleasantly surprised how much harder I could go on the bike without a swim first, and that harder than normal bike didn't have a negative impact on the run.
Just my $0.02
Congrats on the pending new addition to your family!
PS If it makes you feel any better, Coach P determined I lost like 1/2 hour in the porta-potties peeing during the bike at IMFL.
Good to have met you at lunch. Sitting at the table with a bunch of talented folks was nice. You analysis is great. I'm at Starbucks and sat with a fellow AG. She was impressed with the knowledge that the EN folks have. Now watch coach get a big head!!!! Improvement is always good and allows you to take to the next level. Congrats to you and all KS folks.
I'm glad many of you like the reports. As you might imagine the act of writing them and pulling all the data is super-helpful to me as I analyze my own performance.
Regarding the peeing (and yes it was that and not any other biological!), I hear you all. People have been telling me for a couple of years now I have to do it. I guess I'll just try it and see how it goes. I'm sort of "over" the concept that my $300 bike shoes will get urine on them. It's more the general grossness of running around a course in shorts that you pissed in. Do you smell like urine at the end of the race?? I guess you could get an extra water bottle and rinse a bit.
On further reflection I do think the cough /cold had a big impact. The reality is that my HR was 10bpm higher than normal. That just HAD to have had a big impact.
And Peter's point on the FTP is correct and I had given that a lot of thought before the race. I was pretty sure my FTP had backslid…my best estimate was 8-10 watts. But my outdoor FTP > indoor and without a test I couldn't be sure, and my schedule was screwed up enough that I couldn't fit a test into my workouts. Obviously if my FTP was 10 watts lower than I rode a lot higher IF. It's hard to speculate on that. I thought that using the indoor number would pretty much counterbalance the backsliding. But it was at best an estimate and I realize that.
I think Peter your point on the swim is a really good one. We all know the adage "you can't win a triathlon on the swim but you can sure lose it". I experienced something similar last year in an Olympic-distance race where I experimented with pushing the pace on the swim and then paid the price with a jacked HR that I couldn't get down until over 30 minutes into an hour long bike. It really impacted my ability to generate power. I think in this case that was a factor, although it may be less about the swim fitness (my 1000yd TT is virtually identical to where it was last year and I wasn't pushing super hard) and yet another area where the abnormally-elevated HR on the day really impacted me. I too have the "cancelled swim experience" – my best bike split was at Steelhead in 2011 when the swim was cancelled and I biked an IF of 0.896 and followed it with a 1:36 half marathon (which in 2011 was a damn fine run). So I get it…the swim matters a lot.
@ Kim, yes, I missed training with you and a group of folks on the forums this year. No one really got into posting consistently although I posted every workout up to the TTT. I think the structure of the forums makes the cohesiveness more difficult.
Thanks again team for your support!
Even though my swim times haven't improved dramatically (although they have gotten better) the last couple years, as you know I've put a bit of extra effort into the swimming...last year through volume, and this year through a coached change in approach. Your observation about the high heart rate at the beginning of the bike is consistent with mine. When I am in better swim shape - regardless of the time of the swim - the first 30+ min of the bike is a lot better and the HR is under a lot better control. I suspect this is less of an issue for the IM for most folks, where bike intensities are that much lower. But in the HIM, you're riding along at a "working" rate.
I think it was at the end of the 2011 season, I really tried to think to myself where my best potential to get faster was. At the time, I concluded bike and swim. I doubted I was going to get 5 minutes faster on the run, but I thought I could get 5 minutes faster on the swim, and was pretty sure I could get 5 minutes faster on the bike. Because of race circumstances with which you are familiar, I'll never really know what the results of that were, but I know I was getting on the bike in better condition. I guess my thought is that the ROI on the swim is higher in the HIM than it is in the IM...but I am totally speculating based only on my own experience. I'm still looking for the last 2-3 of those 5 minutes though!
@ William, true, you'll never know for sure. But consider the below from your AG:
It suggests you did indeed improve, but that the improvmeent was actually quite marginal and on the run you were pretty much even. Perhaps you'd argue that the field overall was better this year than last -- only 4 of the top 20 from last year was in the top 20 this year (including you). But I think we'd agree that conditions are probably driving the vast majority of the improvement in race times between this year and last. It is an imperfect analysis, but I'll bet directionally accurate.
EDIT: Btw the argument that the field was stronger this year is valid...your improvmenet exceeded the improvement of the field yet you fell from 11th to 13th place. But you need to consider that 10th to 13th this year was separated by under 2 minutes. Last year an extra 2 minutes wouldn't have gained you a placing. So if the field was stronger, I doubt it was by much.
I guess the best way of putting it honestly is if you are not in contention but are in a position to do well (and while you clearly you rank higher on the "position to win" scale, you're in a bit of the same boat), it's kind of a potshot as to how many superfast guys come. You're on the edge of that group, and I'm a definite notch below. Nonetheless, both of us are close enough that small group statistics will move you up or down a few places because you're near the end of the bell curve but not way out on the extremes where data are really rare.
The question I ask is "All things being equal, what percentage of the time does Matt's 4:45 (or William's 4:57) put them in the top 10 of their age group? "
The best way I can think of to answer that is to get the USAT scores for the events and see how much variability there is in the top 10-15% of each AG field...but I'm too tired to do that. :-) The USAT number is flawed, but it's the best one I know.
If you really wanted to know "the best place to try to qualify for Kona (or the 70.3 champs)" the USAT scores would be the first place I would look, but I'm not sure you can easily get the race by race scores any more.
- 11th at Kansas 2012
- 9th at Racine 2012
- 12th at Kansas 2013
In all of these races there were guys within seconds of me and I could have easily been up or down a couple of spots.
Matt... as always, a detailed and insightful report by you. Thanks. I learn something every time I read something you write.
I think the cough/cold took more out of you than you conclude. I bet it cost you at least 5 minutes on the run. You were just too strong coming out of the TTT. Anyway, I very nice race regardless.
I'll see you and your Dad next Sunday at Pleasant Prairie. Then it will be time to focus on family and that fall marathon.
The only question is whether there's still enough noise (i.e. who turns up) that it matters for us, and I suppose "matters" is a qualitative thing. On my good days, I've been anywhere from 6th to 13th. I still think that to know whether that's fluctuation in the field or fluctuation in performance, the best measure would be the USAT scores. Both are probably similar in magnitude.