Dan's IMLP Race Report
Race report for Ironman Lake Placid. So excited to finish, and so pissed about multiple rookie mistakes. Loving every minute of it though.
Summary:
IMLP 2013 was my first full IM. The only organized triathlons that I’d done in the past were sprints, so while I went in with solid time/HR/pace goals, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect and how my body would react. That said, these were my estimated times beforehand: 13:30 total (Swim – 1:45, T1 – 0:10, Bike – 7:00, T2 – 0:10, Run – 4:30). While I was stoked to finish, my finish time of 14:05 fell well short of my goal, due to mistakes that I made in each stage of the race (swim/bike/run/nutrition/transitions). I see plenty of room for improvement across the board.
Pre-Race:
I found myself completely cool, calm, and collected all of race week, including race morning all the way up to the swim start. I was really happy that I was able to keep myself mentally in check, because if nothing else I wanted to save all that adrenaline for the race itself. That said, it was an amazing site at the swim start: there were TONS of spectators, and it was awesome to stand in line waiting to go in w/ Mike Reilly already going crazy on the mic.
As for the tangibles, I followed the intermediate IM plan during race week, which I felt got me to the start line feeling perfectly rested and tapered without having lost any fitness. I do regret some of the extra volume of food that I ate, especially two days prior (specifically at the banquet) as it came back to bite me on race day. Next time I’ll need to be more disciplined with my nutrition for the entirety of race week.
Swim:
Leading up to the race I had been regularly watching the temperature of Mirror Lake, as it had been as high as 77 degrees within 10 days of the race. I tend to run hot anyways, so if the temperature was too high I was going to go without the wetsuit. My only options were my full (sleeved) Xterra wetsuit, or my jammers, and at that point I was so broke I was going to go with whichever option made more sense on race day. Luckily, the temperature dropped to 71ish by race morning, and the full wetsuit option worked fine – I was not too hot and didn’t lose much fluid on the swim. The course on Mirror Lake is long and narrow, with 9(ish) buoys on each length of the course tied down to an underwater tow cable. I did notice that while the field was spread out for most of the race (except for those folks swimming on the cable), most people seemed to converge on the buoys as they went passed them. Because of this, I tried to stay on a line that was about 5m wide of the buoys, which seemed to work well.
However, I made two bad mistakes:
1) I seeded myself WAY to slow. I thought I was a 1:45ish swimmer, but I completed the swim in 1:23, which meant I had to fight through hundreds of people. This cost me some time, but more importantly a lot of extra effort. Looking back, I should have just slowed down, but in the heat of the moment I just kept my pace.
2) I spit in my goggles way too early and then didn’t put them on until right before I entered the water, about 30min later. When I finally dove in, they fogged immediately, and the only thing I could see were other swim caps. After about ½ loop of flopping around like this, I finally let some water in to one eye so that I could see. I was paranoid about the water irritating my eyes for some reason, but eventually I gave in and let some in to both. This little thing probably cost me 5mins of time, not swimming straight and extra effort.
All in all, these errors probably only cost me 5-10mins of actual time, but the real cost was the extra effort. Not sure exactly how much this affected my run at the end of the day, but I’m sure it hurt me some. Besides those mistakes, I felt that I navigated the swim leg well. I kept form and a steady effort as much as I was able in between running into other bodies. On the first loop, I kept to the outside because there were just too many bodies swimming right on the cable, which I felt cost too much energy to deal with to warrant the sight of the cable line. I walked in between the two laps (maybe 20 steps), which helped to bring my HR back down after that hectic first lap. The second lap went much better – I could see and the pack had thinned out a bunch, which allowed me to jump on the cable line and for the most part swim uninterrupted.
T1:
I got to shore and jogged over to the wetsuit strippers (who did a great job, off in less than 10secs), and then continued on to the transition area. There was actually a lengthy run to T1, but I was worried about my HR spiking so I kept it to a moderate jog. I made it to my bags and then into the tent pretty quickly, and once in the tent I rushed to change. I had decided to not wear my tri top + shorts or HR monitor under my wetsuit – I was ok with eating the time to have a dry change of clothes. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t done that, as I sweat through them in an hour anyway and it probably cost me 5 minutes to do the full change (plus I punched a hole in my tri-shorts with my foot, which made for some terrible chafing on the bike). I also decided to put on a light vest that I had in my bag because it looked like it was going to rain and it wasn’t very warm out. This proved to be the wrong decision as the rain held off all day, but this didn’t matter to much.
Here my banquet dinner came back to haunt me in the form of a bio break. This cost me another ~5 minutes.
Everything else I had prepared well – I had layered my transition bag appropriately, had my watch and nutrition already on my bike from the morning, etc. – but again a few mistakes cost me some time.
Bike:
Once on the bike, I stuck to my HR numbers all day: 110-115 for the first hour, then 115-120 after that (allowing 125 on big hills). I did find that after the swim and transition that it was very difficult to keep my HR steady. Probably a combination of the adrenaline and how hard I had worked on the swim. Regardless, I stuck to the numbers, and fueled well. I was taking down ~1.5 bottles of perform per hour, with a gel (or ½ powerbar) every 45min. Looking back I should have either slowed down the drinking or sucked it up and peed while on the bike, because I had to stop and hit the bathroom 4 times, costing me prob 10-15mins. It was cooler and cloudy the whole day, so I wasn’t sweating very much and decided to go without any additional sodium (I had Salt Stick pills ready but didn’t use em). I’m still questioning the sodium –I had a rough go of it in the middle of the run (see run section below), but I really felt like I was consuming a lot of sodium as it was on the bike. I got a few light headaches when I chugged some extra Perform before a few of the aid stations, which usually happens to me when I’ve overdone the sodium…so I thought I was on track with it.
On the second lap, I began to hit the crests of the hills and downhills harder, as my HR seemed to even out a bit more. On one downhill (somewhere on rt 9), I had hit a downhill pretty hard and was coming to an aid station too fast (~10mph). I had one hand on a bottle when another guy flew in front of me and slammed on his brakes. I knew I couldn’t react in time with my hands where they were, so instead of crashing into him I bailed off of the bike to the left. Somehow in that moment I put together that falling back to the left would allow me to roll through the fall but also have my bike fall away from the derailers, which proved to be the best move I made all day. I fell, rolled through it, popped up and grabbed my bike. A few volunteers circled me asking if I was fine, while another younger kid just said “That was AWESOME!” to which I couldn’t help but laugh even when I was pissed about falling. I actually had to patch up my leg a bit before I started moving again, but all in all it probably only cost me 10mins. I do think it cost me more in the form of wasted adrenaline and energy, but it could’ve been MUCH worse, so I was okay with it.
The hole in my shorts ended up costing me a bunch of skin on my leg, but it was inconsequential to my performance. Makes walking around now pretty fun though…
I was very happy to see town the second time around – I was way over the time I thought I would have ridden the course in (7:15 or so), plus coming out of the solitary bike route into the very lively town center was awesome. I had held back on any caffeine to this point, and decided to pop a caffeinated gel at the end of the bike and to build the caffeine during the run.
T2:
T2 went much better for me (~7minutes) – dropped the bike, grabbed my watch, and jogged over to grab my bag. Once in the tent I changed quickly – however I had to ditch my tri-shorts (due to the hole I put in them) and change into a backup pair of shorts, costing me a minute or so. I also fumbled with tape for my nipples (to prevent chafing) for a bit, I need to see if there is a better/quicker solution for that. I felt good coming off the bike – I had kept to my HR goals the whole bike, which left me fresh and mentally confident for the run, despite the slow bike time.
Run:
I started out well, and kept to my initial pace of 9:30/mile as planned. I came in wanting to drink 5oz Perform per aid station, plus a gel every 45min and whatever extra salt I needed with Salt Stick. However, for whatever reason my stomach felt slightly weird at the start, so I decided to hold back on the fuel, which turned into 2.5oz Perform per station for the first few miles. After about mile 3, I started taking about 5oz per station. I headed down out of town and around river rd feeling good, sticking to my pace. About 6miles or so in (the turnaround), I noticed my HR starting to drop, from a steady ~130 down to ~115, which freaked me out a bit. As I headed back up into town, my HR continued to drop, almost proportionally to the amount of hills/time, so I slowed my pace to ~10:15/mile. I think adrenaline kicked in big time when I got back into town and my HR leveled at 100. However when I left town and started heading back down, HR kept dipping, down to ~85 by the time I made it back to river rd. I had been taking in my 5oz Perform at each aid station, plus a gel every 45min (alternating caffeinated Roctane gels with 120mg sodium and non-caffienated Powerbar gels with 200mg sodium).
By this point, not only was my HR in the basement, but my stomach was starting to fight me as well. I started feeling very ill. At that moment I wasn’t sure what to do – I knew that an upset stomach is usually cured by slower pace + sodium, but I again thought that I was at least right on pace with salt, and didn’t want to risk a sodium overdose of some sort by taking a salt stick with such a low HR (which had dipped to as low as 40). So I decided to just slow wayyy down, still barely “running” at ~12min/mile. I started drinking extra at each aid station, which was difficult given the stomach situation. Eventually after ~6miles, my stomach and HR came around, allowing me to eat a little more. By the time I exited river rd (mile 22ish?), I was able to pick my pace back up to ~10/mile with my HR now above 100 again.
I need to figure this out, what cause the HR drop and the stomach issues that followed? Was it a lack of sodium + dehydration caused by fueling poorly early in the run? Maybe an overall lack of sodium? Could I have possibly cooked myself on a combination of swim+bike, even though I hit my bike HR numbers? Is it possible that it was a lack of calories? The more I slowed down, the more I could eat, and I actually overdid the intake with a rate of prob ~400 cals/hr…but everything I ate had sodium so maybe the calories were inconsequential. I wish I could reply it and pop a Salt Stick to see what would have happened, but then again who wants to re-live just the miserable part of an IM run ha.
Hearing the music pumping in the distance, I knew I was close. When I hit the last big hill up into town, my HR had come almost completely back to normal, so I upped the pace again to 9:30/mile. I got goose bumps hearing the roars of the crowed in the Oval with Mike Reilly again on the mic – with less than 3miles to go I knew I had it. I flew (relatively anyway to my pace the whole afternoon) up past the brewery and down mirror lake drive. I took one last gulp of Perform about a mile out just to be sure, and brought the pace down a tick so that I would have some energy left for the finish. Coming into the Oval, I made sure to let the guy in front of my have space, and more importantly made sure that no one was behind me – the last thing I wanted was to split the finish line. I played to the crowed a bit with some fist pumps and got them going, slapping hands with friends and family lining the walls, and got my first IM finish with a 14:05.
A big shout of to the coaches and the entire EN team - without all the guidance + training I may have folded at some point given all the mistakes I made. But I was able to figure everything out, to make multiple adjustments on the fly, and to finish my first full IM.
Comments
Congrats on the finish.
@Tim - Thanks for the thorough feedback...agree with all of it. And yea back to the drawing board with nutrition - I wish it was easier to simulate those running conditions to see what I could tweak!
BTW, I use white old-school athletic tape on my nipples, two pieces shaped in a "+" under my tri top (which I wear the whole day) on each nip. Caution though, I've learned to trim (not completely shave...yet) my chest hair, because it can get matted up and make the tape removal kinda painful and uncomfortable after a long day.
On your run, were you noticing that your Perceived Effort was getting harder, staying the same, or decreasing as the miles wore on and your HR dropped? Over the course of the run it should *feel* progressively harder with each passing mile, even if your pace and/or HR stays the same. Me, I would have taken the falling HR as a sign I needed to raise my effort level.
About the HR, I agree with Al. I noticed this in one of your RR posts from awhile back and thought the same thing. My guess is that, even if it wasn't obvious, your legs got fatigued and you weren't able to drive the harder pace, leading to the gradual decline in HR. I know that in my IM, late in the marathon my legs/knees felt as though I had hit the squat rack for several hours, something I had never experienced in any of the open marathons I've done. While my legs were gassed, with a VDOT of 61, my HR was low since my legs couldn't drive an aerobically-challenging pace. From my experience, I'm only paying attention to my HR to keep it below a certain level. When I'm having trouble pushing the pace to get it up, I then ignore it and focus instead on RPE as Al suggests. As you approached the finish, it looks like you did just this - ignoring the HR and instead hammering those last 3 miles with no problem.
Anyway, that's just something to consider for next time. Congrats again.
@Scott - Good call, I'll probably start wearing that sort of tape all day as well, and not waste time putting it on in transition.
@Al - Great advice on food day before and drink during the early bike, thanks.
As for the HR, it was interesting - perceived effort increased over the first few miles and then was about the same throughout the remainder of the run. When my HR dropped and I took the pace down, perceived effort definitely dropped as well, so I thought the same thing - why not try and push the effort and see if the HR responds. However, whenever I tried to bring the pace back up, my (already low) HR would drop even further. I think it must have been a fueling issue as well, since my HR refused to respond to pace increases and after I slowed and refueled in the middle of the run my HR eventually rebounded.
@Lynne - I actually stopped at the med tent and talked to them for a bit, but since I was fine at the end they didn't want to evaluate me further (it was very busy in the med tent...looked like they needed to focus on the people who were actually in trouble)
@Rob - Yea even though I still think fueling played a part of it, after reading your and Al's posts I think this is probably a part of it as well. When I dropped the pace down to ~12min/miles (which even at mile 18 still felt ridiculously slow) I remember thinking how easy it felt, and being frustrated that my HR was limiting me. As you say, this did happen to me during an RR a few months ago, and I've actually seen it start to happen during several long run training sessions. I never had this happen to me when I was training for Boston back in winter/spring, but during all of those runs I was pushing it the whole time (z2 with z4 intervals mixed it), which might have kept my HR right where it needed to be. I'll note this for a few months from now when some long runs come back into the mix and see if I can test it out.
Race week nutrition is very important and gets more important as race day gets closer. Something I am sure you will pay attention to next time.
Like Scott - I cover my nipples before the race after trimming the hair. I use flexible fabric band-aids. They seem to stay on as long as I am clean, dry and hairless. The other place I use band-aids is on my sternum where the tri top zipper pull-tab bounces (gives me a rash).
Nice work overall.