IMLC - 2014
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Ironman Los Cabos, 3-30-2014, was my second Ironman. I completed it in 13:30:11 (1:18 swim / 7:03 bike / 4:52 run). I had a PR for the race, the swim, the bike and T1 (Ironman Lake Tahoe , 9-22-2103, was my first IM; completed in 13:55 (1:29 swim / 7:26 bike / 4:39 run).
Having said that, I have been delaying writing the race report because I really underperformed on the bike. IMLC was a very challenging course and the temperatures were very high during the bike race (up to 98° as it radiated off the road). However, IMLC did not have the extremes (low temps, sustained climbs, altitude)of Lake Tahoe. PRs were to be expected.
I started training for IMLC in December. My total training volume was roughly 50% of what I had leading up to IMLT, however, I was building off of a strong base and my strength was consistently better than I had last fall. February was my largest recorded training month ever – one week of which was conducted in south Florida in order to get some outside time; all the rest was conducted indoors on a treadmill, a CompuTrainer and in a lap pool.
Thursday:
Arrived in Los Cabos
Picked up my bike from TriBike Transport
Assembled my gear.
Started hydrating
Relaxed
Friday:
Slept as long as I could
Normal breakfast/lunch, Pasta loading dinner, started hydrating with Gatorade,
Shake out ride on the run course to make sure everything was good with the bike,
Packed all my bags and started eating and hydrating.
Saturday:
Goal was to stay off feet all day
Checked in bike, T1 & T2 bags
Little to no fiber, pasta dinner with a light sauce, snacked on 6x Honey Stingers
Continued hydrating with Gatorade until roughly 7 pm
Tried to sleep early (you know how that goes)
Sunday:
3:30 – awake, kitting up – 5 hrs sleep – Gatorade (1L – 190 cal)
4:30 – breakfast (2x Yogurt w/ Apple Sauce, 2x Honey Stingers – 680 cal)
5:00 – First bus to T1
5:20 – arrived, walked down hills, dropped special needs bags – bathroom
5:30 – Set bike up (Garmins, tires, Gatorade 0.75L – 150 cal) – bathroom
5:45 – Sat down / watched / snacked on 1x Honey Stinger (170 cal)
6:10 – wetsuit on, swim warmup – bathroom
6:40 – sat down / waited
6:55 – lined up
7:00 – started race (1,190 calories consumed)
Swim – this was my first mass start swim. Also my first open water since IMLT. The crowd was pretty evenly dispersed – seemed thinner in the middle than on either the left or the right. I started in the middle about 4-6 people back. Got off course a couple times, had a hard time working through the crowd – I was actually faster than a lot of people and spent time nearly vertical trying to stay out of the way. Next time, I will start closer to the front and try getting out of the way. Still 1:8 PR – I felt good about that.
T1 – was a little frustrating trying to get sand off of feet so that I could get bike shoes on, but not a huge deal. Will go faster next time.
Bike – I felt great starting the bike. I was excited about the PR and was ready to ride.
- Power Target: 170 – 175 watts (FTP 240 / IF 0.73)
- Nutrition Plan: 400 cal/hr across all sources; fluid = 24 oz / hr; salt 1,200 mg/hr across all sources
- one bar / on pkg cliff shots / 24 oz Gatorade / Saltstick every 45 minutes
HR 1: hard to curb enthusiasm. NP 177w, VI 1.028, 18 mph, cadence 76. eating & drinking. After 1 hour, I was over power budget &reduced
HR 2: felt great. NP 170w, VI 1.040, 17.6 mph, cadence 73. a little behind fluid as I came through town, tried drinking more
HR 3: NP 157w, 1.075, 15.9 mph, cadence 69
HR 4: NP 123w, VI 1.103, 15.8 mph, cadence 67
HR 5: NP 122w, VI 1.209, 13.1mph, cadence 61
HR 6: NP 119w, VI 1.106, 13.8 mph, cadence 64
HR 7: NP 131w, VI 1.159, 16.0 mph, cadence 66
I stopped giving descriptions after hour 2, because I still cannot sort out the order of events during hours 3, 4 or 5. They all run together and are confusing… snapshots that I cannot put in chronological order.
At some point, I recognized people were passing me. That I was super hot. That my legs were screaming and that I was putting out 95 watts on the power meter. I thought it was broken, but my speed as about 8 mph. I recognized that I was in trouble. At this point, I had Gatorade in my Speedfill tank. I believe that I remember adding some, so it was more than I had started with.
I was having a hard time swallowing the Gatorade – my mouth was wonky since the swim – probably swallowed a little too much of the sea of Cortez. Notwithstanding all the advice – I grabbed water at the next stop and drank it down in about three goes. Then I drank more Gatorade. I took another Salt Stick and repeated the same at the next aid station. My plan changed… I was determined to get myself together and finish the race as best I could. In terms of the 4 Keys… the box was mighty small in the middle of the bike…
I was concerned about finishing – could not hardly make it up the hills, so I started coasting down the backside to conserve energy for the next climb. This went on from whenever it started (end of hour 3?) until about halfway through hour 6. At that point I started feeling better, aleut still on the edge of cramping. I finished the bike as best I could.
T2 – happy to be off the bike, I wrapped it up as fast as I could, made a pit stop at the toilette (nearly black and burring like hell) and took out for the run.
Run - My heart rate monitor was not functioning – had not functioned all day, hence no warning signs on the bike, so I just settled into a comfortable pace. I ran steady, walking 10-12 steps at each aid station and carrying on. I was on the verge of cramping whenever I tried running faster, so my single goal became to finish the race. I continued a mix of Gatorade / water until about mile 15. Gatorade was gone, so I switched to water / coke. I continued with the salt sticks, but was not able to tolerate any calories that didn’t come in liquid form.
Finish – 13:30
Postmortem – one interesting characteristics at Los Cabos is how quickly the temperature raises. Unlike Florida, where it seems to get the hottest later in the afternoon, Los Cabos was super hot by 11am. Not the air…the sun… and the roads. I believe that made several mistakes that lead up to me not having enough fluid in my system to digest the solid carbs in my stomach and to cool my body. I was dehydrating and starving for carbs at the same time. Not having a functioning heart rate monitor hid the warning signs that I would normally see leading up to that.
My cadence e was very slow from the outset. I typically ride at about 82-83 rpm. In subsequent hours, the average was suppressed because I was coasting down hills (40.6 minutes of 0 cadence)… But that doesn’t explain the slow cadence from the onset.
- I need to fix my pre-race diet – not enough early morning calories.
- I need to focus more on fluid calories on hot days – as I became dehydrated, I didn’t have access to solid carbs in my stomach
- I need to change my hydration system so that it is easier to keep track of fluid intake – Speedfill tank is difficult
- Extra heart rate monitor in special needs
Questions
- Why the slow cadence?
- Is the confusion that I am having typical of dehydration?
Comments
Rich,
Thanks for the detailed race report. My notes:
In summary:
I chose the .73 based on a set of three Century practice rides I did in Florida 3 weeks prior to the race. Temperature/wind was more or less the same, I practiced the same nutrition, etc. I didn't have any practice on the IMLC course, in retrospect, 0.73 was too aggressive. I expected a 5:30ish ride. Florida was flat and IMLC was never flat, so the VI was bound to increase, which should have lead me to chose a more conservative target.
I asked a question about the bike pacing and temperature on the pre-race call; maybe misunderstood the answer or asked the question the wrong way. I asked how to adjust the target TSS (270-290) to account for the heat at IMLC. If TSS = IF^2 x time on a typical day, and the target of 270-290 is not adjusted, I think that formula needs to be adjusted to recognize that temperature above some "standard level" contributes to / accelerates the stress accumulated. I didn't make any adjustments. That was a mistake. Typically I use my heart rate as a gauge, but the heart rate monitor had failed. A failed HRM should have been reason enough to dial back a little bit until I was established on the bike.
I 100% agree with the too much solid food comment. I believe now the loss of strength / confusion was from not having enough calories after swim / at the start of the bike because of not digesting the food I ate. Even the timing of the onset of the problem - 2+ hours into the ride - ties to the timeframe when sugar is depleted from bloodstream. This is the same diet that I've practiced and raced with for about 8 months; it is the first time that I've tried it in race conditions this hot (I live in Detroit).
How do you manage 400 calories / hour in a liquid form eating & drinking what is on the course?
The cadence is still a mystery with me. When I look at the distribution/histogram, and visually eliminate the zeros, the mean is still in the mid/low 70s. I have no idea where that came from...
Writing this down, discussing it and and seeing the magnitude of how poorly I executed has helped me start to move past it. The experience is going to remain bitter in my mouth until I have another race to remove the taste of this one.
Ironically - this was not a "lack of planning," it was poor planning and worse execution. That is what creates the bitter aftertaste.
Thanks for the help / insight... next time will be better!
Rich - Now you know what it's like to race in Hawaii!
Amazing that you have completed in a 6 month span two of the very hardest IMs, Tahoe and Los Cabos. Your swim improvement is encouraging, as well as your persistence in running the whole way, albeit at the very slow pace your condition and the heat allowed. But still, you ran.
We're paying Rich the big bucks to help us race better, and he is right on in all his points. There's simply no substitute for adequate fluids on a hot day, starting from mile 0 of the bike. As to calories, there is no one size fits all, even on a calorie/kg basis. Liquid only, considering racing on fewer calories (I do quite well on 200-220/hour on the bike), and a variety of sources to keep your GI tract happy are things to think about.
Rich,
Notes:
The week before IMLC, my power meter failed and I had a warranty replacement. I had one opportunity to ride with the new power meter on the Computrainer before sending my bike with TBT to IMLC. Unfortunately, the CT data file was corrupted, so I was not able to establish a reference between the CT and the new power meter. So - I rode IMLC with the same "calibration" on the new power meter that I used on the old one (old power meter was essentially equal to my CT.
Yesterday, I did a calibration ride with the new power meter. I rode several power levels, including my targeted levels for IMLC... and I saw an average offset of about 17 watts lower on the bike than on the CT!
If I apply that offset to Hours 1-3 at IMLC, that changes my IF to 78% (81% during the first hour). When I compound this with the temperature, and the problems we are discussing above, I have a much better understanding of why I bonked as hard as I did.
Under normal circumstances, riding at 200w for 3-4 hours is not a problem for me. However, raise the temp on the road to 98° (form my Garmin), eat the wrong foods... I was in trouble.
Calories per Hour
Here is how I got to 400 cal/hr: I weigh about 165#, 165*.625*4 = 412.5 - I rounded to 400
During training rides, that has been OK for me - but I had a tough time hitting that number in Tahoe too. I'm new at this - but it seems like it is just harder to eat on race day. I will definitely dial it back to 250-300 and see what works in that range.
Overall - discovering the difference in the power meter readings is bittersweet. On one hand, it is an answer that helps me understand why it got hit as hard as I did - I not only ate wrong, and drank wrong - I was way over power budget. On the other hand, it is really poor preparation on my part. You should use me as an example of things gone wrong in your Power Course!
But- now I am on the path to IMMT - and apart from learning - IMLC is outside the box!
Thanks for the help!
Thanks for the encouragement...
I'm looking forward to Raleigh 70.3 then getting serious for IMMT.
I'm also looking forward to training out doors... it has been a long winter here in Detroit!