Mark’s St. George Race Report and my experiment with beets:-)
Over the last month or two I have read several articles about beets impact on athletic performance through improved blood flow to muscles throughout the body. As I’ve read, the benefit is caused by the nitric oxide that is converted by your body after consuming foods high in nitrates as is the case with beets. For about 2 weeks leading up to St George I had been roasting and eating about 6 beets per week. By roasting them in the oven they get really sweet so it wasn’t too difficult to incorporate beets into one or more meals per day. For those of you who enjoy beets you know eating beets comes with some very interesting side effects. I must admit that takes a little getting used to.
Anyway on to the race…
My #1 goal this year across my season is to arrive at my races healthy and without any nagging injuries. This year I dialed down the intensity and volume by plugging into the intermediate instead of advanced training plans. I also did all speed workouts on a padded track or treadmill. These steps served me well and I arrived at St. George injury free.
Race morning was the usual. Up at 3:45, 3 cups of applesauce with protein powder and one banana. Sipped on a drink of half Gatorade and half beet juice while getting ready. Arrived at T1 about 5:45 and worked my way through my prerace checklist. I continued sipping sports drink and beetjuice right up until about 15minutes before my swim wave.
SWIM: Time: 38:42
This past year I joined Masters Swimming and I have been swimming 2-3days per week since last October. My swimming has vastly improved, but you wouldn’t know it by my time. All last year I struggled with calf cramps during the swim and I tried everything last year from magnesium to stretching, to swimming with calf sleeves, to swimming without calf sleeves and in every race I cramped. Last year at St. George I cramped before the race while my wave was swimming to the start line. That was a bad sign. This year I was able to start the race without cramping. The swim was very open and there was minimal contact within my wave. When there was contact, it felt like people tried to move out of the way or swim around the congestion. It felt like a very ”polite” swim from that perspective. I felt very strong from the waist up, but I struggled getting any bite on my kick because my legs felt very high in the water. I swim with a 2 beat kick and I use my kick more for rotation than propulsion so because I couldn’t get a solid kick I wasn’t able to engage my hips so I felt very arm and shoulder dependent, almost like swimming with a pull buoy. Luckily I managed to finish the swim without cramping, but my swim time was somewhat disappointing. I know I have the fitness and technique to swim closer to 35 minutes vs. 39minutes.
T1: 4:14
Too much time in T1. Struggled a bit getting my shoes on because my feet were wet. Also, I had to stop for a minute to tie the drawstring on my trishorts because I forgot to tie it after my last porta potty stop. Stupid!
BIKE: 2:42:54
The first thing I noticed on my bike was that my power meter was not producing a reading on my 510 but it was showing on my 910. This same thing happened last year at Boulder 70.3 but I attributed it something glitchy. At that race I ended up riding without power because I forgot to check my 910. This time around I wanted to try and fix the problem so after starting the ride I tried asking the 510 to search for my PM, but it wouldn’t find it. I then tried turning it off and then back on and that’s when it picked up the PM. The only downside is my watch and 510 were about 1.1 miles out of sync, but not a huge issue. My pre-race setup on my 510 is turn on the auto-pause, turn off the auto-off function, find and calibrate the PM, start the ride and allow it to auto-pause – then go swim and hopefully when I get on it all fires up and starts displaying data. The last 2 times this has not happened. I think I will experiment with not starting the ride until I get on my bike. I feel like when the power meter goes to sleep and the ride has already started, the 510 does not pick it up when it reawakes for some reason.
Once I got that worked out I started drinking and got on my target watts of 210-215 (83% of FTP). I love the St. George bike course because there is always something to do and despite 3000+ft of climbing it’s still is a very fast course. When I looked at my ride from last year, I noticed my power was lower earlier in the ride and then steadily increased from about the mid way point. My plan this year was to push harder in the early part of the race in order to even out that effort across the entire ride. As a result I was on the gas as much as I could on the flats and the downhills and it was paying off early on. I was passing a lot of people and it felt like I had people pacing off of me. On the climbs I wanted to minimize the damage by keeping under my FTP even though I was over my target watts.
I knew I was putting together a very solid ride, but about mid way through the ride, going into one of the uphills I dropped my chain. Bad shifting – totally my fault. It got sucked in between my frame and my small ring and I couldn’t pry it out. For a minute I thought my day was done. I kept working at it and eventually I got the chain out, but I bent the little aluminum frame protector that’s glued to my bottom bracket and it was rubbing against my chain every revolution. I tried bending it out of the way but, it was no use. I got back on my bike and kept going being very careful about how I was shifting. It took me a little bit of time to get my head back into the game and let go of the 3-4 minutes I lost. As the ride progressed I slowly started getting my game together and pushing again. The last climb up Snow Canyon, is very steep in places, but there are also flats and even short sections where it goes slightly downhill. I took advantage of every one of the short flats or downhills to increase my speed to carry the momentum into the uphill. I took my time and eventually made it to the top. From there the ride is a blazing fast downhill back into town. It’s about 13-14miles and it’s pretty easy to cover that ground in under 30minutes. Lots of 40+ MPH and my goal was to stay aero for as much of that as my stomach could handle. I was pretty successful.
In terms of nutrition I took in about 4 bottles of perform, 4 gels, and 1 powerbar. Nutritionally, I have my race nailed and I felt great throughout the race. My power numbers were spot on although my VI was a high, but it’s tough course to keep a low VI so I’m not too concerned with that number.
Power
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Avg Power: |
191 W |
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Max Power: |
490 W |
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Max Avg Power (20 min): |
228 W |
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Normalized Power (NP): |
212 W |
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Intensity Factor (IF): |
0.831 |
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Training Stress Score (TSS): |
178.7 |
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Work: |
1,836 kJ |
T2: 2:20
RUN: 1:31:58
At dinner the night before the race Coach Rich shared his perspective in terms of how to approach the run. Keep things in check for the first 4 miles until you get to the top of the first big hill. From there start to push the pace and race. Bust your ass up the last big hill on the return trip then enjoy the 4 miles downhill until the you arrive back at the finish line. This sounded like good plan, so that’s how I approached the run. It was hot (80F)when I started but heat doesn’t seem to bother me too much even though we haven’t had temps near this high in Colorado so far this year. I also wanted to try to minimize walking at the aid stations. I walked just long enough to drink a cup of perform and then I got moving again. It was 5 maybe 10 steps and then I was running again. My plan was perform at every aid station and then 2 salt tabs every 3 aid station and cliff shots as needed or when I remembered. The first 4 miles were steady and then I started pushing the pace. Because of all the ups and downs my quads were screaming and I felt like I was walking this line between a really great run and a total meltdown. I focused hard on maintaining good form and hoped that would be enough to keep me from falling apart. The last steep downhill was killer on my legs. Once I was down the hill then it was about 3 miles slightly downhill to the finish. I skipped the last 3 aid stations and crossed the finishline with a 1:31:58 half and an overall time of 5:00:08
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Observations:
I have never run a sub 1:40HIM run before, let alone a 1:31. I never expected this would be possible. My open half marathon PR is 1:32 and change so I PRed my half marathon time on a really difficult run course. In the out season I bumped up my VDOT, but chose not to run an open half, again due to my #1 priority of coming to my races healthy. So back to the beets….Was this the reason for such a strong run? I don’t know. I do know I was running the last 3 miles at close to TP and I didn’t feel tired. I was sore and hurting, but I was not tired. For sure part of this is due to coming down from 5000-6000 ft of elevation to do this race. Also, i came into this race about 4 lbs. leaner than last year so i'm sure that helped as well. But, last year i had what i considered a strong run and finished 1:41. I will continue incorporating beets and beet juice into my race prep and pre-race plan, but i think i'm going to look into some of the concentrated beet "shots" - just less prep and much easier especially on race morning.
In terms of other take aways, I’m thinking about cutting the bottom few inches off my wetsuit legs to drop my legs a bit so I can actually use them during the swim. I’m somewhat hesitant because once I make that cut there is no going back. And the other thing I need to figure out is my garmin so it’s picking up my PM data from the get go. Finally, I need to have better bike skills to fix minor issues more quickly. The 3-4 minutes struggling with my chain cost me 4 age group spots and was the difference between being over or under the 5 hour mark.
Overall a great way to start the season and it was great to meet up again with Team EN. Lots of positives to take away and several things I need to fix before my next race.
Any input/advice is always welcome.
Comments
Mark - VERY impressive bike IF and run execution. Especially considering the heat. As to cutting the ankles off your wet suit; you note: " ...I swim with a 2 beat kick and I use my kick more for rotation than propulsion …" Isn;t that the way we're supposed to be swimming? The very marginal value of propulsion in a 2000 meter swim vs the energy cost to kick harder does not seem like a good ROI to me. Why drop your feet into the water, where the drag will increase? Or alternatively having to work harder to get your feet back up to where your wet suit puts them now?
Was your swim time/pace equal to your swimming "T-Pace"? If not, then getting faster in an HIM might be a matter of treating the swim as an actual race, instead of a warm-up. 1900 meters RACING in a wetsuit ought to take about the same time on a per 100m basis, as the 1000 yd/meter swim test we do.
Mark - great race execution! And your execution on the run was spot on! You were able to power up those hills and then bring it home. Your fitness will only improve as the season progresses. Keep hitting your workout and stay healthy.
I wouldn't cut your wetsuit. There is no guarantee that cutting them will give you the result you want. I know someone who has the same problem as you and she switched to a HUUB Aura. Maybe getting more OWS will help you get used to having your legs higher in the water and allow you to work on body rotation. Swimming with a wetsuit is very different than swimming without one. I always feel uncomfortable in one and never feel like I'm swimming that fast.
@Al - Point taken on the wetsuit. That idea comes out of pure desperation
You are correct in that i do not race the swim. I try to keep my HR low and stay relaxed, maybe too relaxed. Looking at your suggestion, my t-pace equates to about a 36:30 HIM swim, further confirming my feeling of underperformance on the swim. This was my first open water swim of the year and within the next week or so i will be able to get into more open water. I'll experiment with pushing a bit harder and see what happens. The other point i omitted in my race report was that i swam 1.34 miles. I never really felt too of course, but i think i pretty much stayed on the outside of the loop and that's probably why i had so little contact. Like i said, lots to work on! Thanks as always for sharing your wisdom!
@Teri - Thanks for the feedback! You make a good point in that it may be just a matter of spending more time in open water and letting my pool stroke adapt to the extra buoyancy of a wetsuit. It's really nice to hear that some as smokin fast in water as you feels uncomfortable and "slow". Maybe there really is hope for me