June Lake Half - Tahoe Altitude Experiment
Here's a mixed RR / altitude observations / general story time, lengthy as always but that's just apparently how I roll.
Headed up to June Lake CA, right by Mammoth to do the inaugural June Lake half (shorter variations of the course have been going on for 7 years). This was a 'D' race for me primarily because I have not been able to run for 2 months now (since Wildflower) due to chronic ITBS. Got a whole functional leg length discrepancy thing going on thats giving me lots of trouble. Anyway.
Starting elevation is just under 7,700ft. Got up there the night before at 5pm to grab packet and set up tent after 6.5 hour drive from sea level, obviously no time for acclimation. But on the plus side, you can't beat the view. This was the night before the race, allowed myself to have one pre-race beer. It's race-cation.
Swim. Water was freaking beautiful. It gets pretty damn cold up in the mountains at night (and pretty warm in the day) so the water (60s) was warmer than the air (50s). Good, clean, clear alpine water. Locals all said not as cold as normal due to low snow this year. Did a very brief warmup <5 mins before the start, after being told by numerous people about how much swimming at altitude would suck, warmup felt ok but was <em style="font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;">very easy pace.
Actual swim start was one wave for all men in half. 2 lap swim, pretty shallow water to start. Went out easy expecting the worst in terms of breathing. Start was actually fine / no different than any other start. Noticed difference a ~100m in or so, where I've usually settled into my groove. Not here, if you are a flatlander and you get your HR up at altitude, it stays up. Still had a decent first lap. Came out of water to run over mat for 2nd lap and realized how freaking exhausted I was. No one was running. People slogged over the mat and looked very reluctant for lap 2. Lap 2 I really started to bog down and just wanted to get out of the damn water.
Ended up with a 37:07 swim. Not my worst but had a very peculiar feeling during/coming out of it, completely drained but not exhausted. What I mean by that was muscles didn't feel tired, I just couldn't deliver them the juice to keep them going. For perspective, OA winner swam a 33:21, but fastest swim was a 28:48.
Bike. I biked a 2:28 which was good for 4th OA. A tad over 3k ft of climb on the bike, it was a beautiful course and honestly not that challenging from a terrain perspective, but again I felt pretty awful. Took me for-ever to get my HR down after the swim (horrible transition btw). Once I did get moving and settle into my power I started blowing by people. Positive of the thin air is speed on the flats. Unfortunately, things went south at first aid station. Was positive we were told there would be 3 aid stations on the bike. There were 2, one per lap, only 4 volunteers at the aid station, 3 holding bottles, one gel. Dude in my AG comes flying by me right before aid station and proceeds to ride down the line and fumble the first two bottles, then grab the 3rd, leaving volunteers empty handed and scrambling with nothing to hand me. I only had one bottle on the bike, which I had already drank, no other nutrition on me. Oops.
Really fell apart on 2nd lap, no hydration, no nutrition until mile 40 or so other than the 1 bottle of Osmo I started with. Sure the aid station guy screwed me, but I could have brought more. Lesson learned, even if it's a 'D' race, bring your 'A' game in terms of execution. Otherwise you reinforce bad habits and really just screw yourself for no good reason. Overall biking at altitude report. My power was definitely crap but my bike placement was still good. Either my power was reading low or everyone suffered equally. Also hard to tell how much being off my power was altitude versus my entirely pathetic hydration/nutrition.
Run. First 3 miles of the run are comically absurd. You leave the lake at 7,600-something and climb a mountain up to 8,400ft or so. All on trails, and trust me, running is not an option. I was at threshold HR just hiking, people were taking breaks to walk up the damn thing. Still was awesome though. I haven't been able to run more than 3 miles in the past 2 months so if I picked a course to walk, I had every competitor in the field walking with me. Get to the top of the mountain and the scenery is stunning. Running on singletrack through pines with lakes and snow tipped peaks shockingly close at hand. You scramble up there for a bit and then descend down some gnarly, rocky and steep single track down. It was a blast but I wish I had actual trail shoes, had any stability in my hip/ITB... and didn't suck at trail running.
Make it back down, do some more climbing at asphalt and one of the first people from half caught me right at the mile 6 marker. I heard someone loudly exclaim in a comical hispanic accent "6 miles in over an hour?!?! AY DIOS MIO". I needed the laugh although he wasn't trying to be funny at all. Anyway, the rest of the run still was pretty tough but nothing crazy like the mountain. My pace was crap but I couldn't believe I was still running because A) my knee doesn't let me run and 
I have zero run fitness right now.
Mile 10 my knee really started to hurt. I should have just walked it in from there but I'm an idiot so I brought it home. OA time was 5:23, 3rd in M25-29, 16th OA thanks to a tough course but really, because of a small field. Honestly this was an impressive performance for me in the regard that I did everything wrong (no taper, no training, no nutrition) and still finished, but not impressive in most other regards.
OK, so my n=1 take on racing at altitude as it pertains to upcoming Ironman Lake Tahoe:
Swim: I'm legit worried about the swim now. Not worried in the "you're not going to finish" kind of way, but it took a lot out of me and I was fading fast on the 2nd loop. I'm really hoping dropping another ~1500ft down to Tahoe altitude will help, but really be prepared to scale back your expectations for the Tahoe swim if you can't acclimate ahead of time.
Bike: My biggest problem with the bike at altitude was the swim. Took me way too long to settle into the bike because of HR being so high coming out of the swim. But once you settle down, I think the bike is going to be OK. The altitude seems to be more of a limiter at Z3 and higher pace than IM pace. BUT big disclaimer, usually I have to consciously dial back the climbs. I don't think I ever even hit my FTP on a single climb at this course, it was hard enough to climb at 85% of FTP without getting anaerobic. And when you get anaerobic at 8k, it takes forever to recover.
Run: Honestly I didn't notice the altitude that much in the run. I'm sure it was there, but I think I can mostly chalk this one up to the fact that I had bigger fish to fry on the run than some triviality like not being able to breath. Breathing is entirely overrated.
I took some pretty shots that I posted on FB but everything is conspiring to me not being able to post them, or in this case the EN site keeps inverting them no matter what I do. So here's one quickie of the beach area: http://i.imgur.com/QYTG3Mc.jpg
And a closing shot of the 'podium'. The chick up there was the sole finisher and winner in F25-29 for the half (again, not a big field).
Comments
Great race report and lots of learning points for the IMLT crew:
How was the race itself? I luv luv luv the 395 corridor from Bishop to Bridgeport and it would be fun to wrap a tri race into a moto trip up there. Did you stop at Schatt's in Bishop for some pastries, etc?
I didn't stop at Schatt's unfortunately, this was my first trip to the Mammoth area and I was meeting people who were already up there so I didn't really have any local knowledge of what was good to hit up.
The race has a cool low-key vibe to it, definitely in contrast to the WTC races. The run was really well supported and other than the my aid station sanfu the bike is generally pretty, the first half of each loop is very scenic with some fun downhills and turns. I think when registration opened up over the winter timeframe the half was $150 and we got a 15% discount through the tri club so it came out to like $140 with active tax. In the days of $310 reg fees for Oceanside and god knows Vineman is probably going to be the same next year, I think there's a lot to be said for getting a good group together, doing some awesome camping up by the lake and supporting a local race that is reasonably priced.
Looks like a neat venue. Would be fun to do a group thing there.