Peter's 2014 USAT Olympic Nationals Race Plan
Peter's 2014 USAT Nationals Race Plan (Olympic Length)
My wife got all excited that I qualified for Nationals and we got caught up in the moment and signed up for this thing. It also helped that my sister lives in the area and we haven't visited in a while. I will be doing this race about 5 weeks after IMCDA so maybe this wasn't the best idea. Oh well, I am going! I will only have a few weeks of good training on the Get Faster plan due to the timing. I am not quite sure what my expectations are for this race. I am writing this with the lofty assumption that my last known FTP and vdot are still accurate, but I am prepared to face the facts that I may not be able to hold the planned paces. I really just want to have fun and see what it is like to race in a field of elites!
Thursday:
Arrive on Thursday early in the morning at 8:11 AM (Red Eye, again, poor planning!). Get car, see if we can check in early at hotel, otherwise just hang out in Milwaukee.
Pickup bike as early as 12:00 PM
Packet pickup at 2:00 PM
Go for shakeout bike ride, hopefully on course
Friday:
Swim practice at 11:00 - 1:00
Rules briefing at 1:00
Bike checkin 2:00 - 7:00
Put CO2s on bike. Make sure bike has extra tubes as well.
- Try to limit fiber intake throughout day and stay hydrated. Light dinner of just pasta.
- Go to bed slightly hungry
- Set everything out at night
- Charge watch
Wetsuit
Goggles
Anti-fog spray
Race cap
Timing chip
Tri-Glide
Vanilla Gel
Gas-x
Sunscreen
Bike Shoes
Helmet/Visor
Aquaphor
Running socks
Towel
Running Shoes
Race belt with bib
Double latte gel
Tri Shorts
Tri Shirt
HR monitor
Garmin 910xt
Saturday:
Set alarm clock for 5:00 AM, have breakfast of 2.5 cups apple sauce with scoop of protein and banana. Get dressed and head out.
Transition open 5:30 - 7:30 AM
Set my bike with 1 bottle of perform.
Sip on a 2nd bottle of perform / water while I wait 2 hours for my wave to start. What do I do for 2 hours?? I know, Coffee!!
Swim:
Wave #13 at 9:30 AM, a full 2 hours after the first group!
9:00 - Put wetsuit on and take vanilla gel and gas-x
9:15 - Warmup then line up with wave toward the back (I am slow...)
9:30 - Swim!
I am a MOP swimmer, which means that for this race I will be BOP. My plan is to just go out and see if I can find a pack and get pulled through the swim. I read Matt Ancona's race report and it said he had his fastest swim ever here. I hope to do the same. I would be very happy with 25-27 minutes on the swim.
Bike:
I plan to just have 24oz of perform on the bike and that's it. I have no idea what my target time is, I do not have much short course experience. My FTP is 240 and I plan to target .95 IF, which is 228 watts (I have recently done a bit over 220 NP watts for 1 hour and I was able to run after). The bike is pretty flat with a handful of turns so I am hoping I can just hunker down, stay aero, and give it all I got. I will set my garmin to auto-lap every 3 miles so I should then have 8 windows to try to target the watts.
Run:
The run is my best event. My vdot is 56/57 and I want to try to target my Z4/Threshold pace which is 6:15. I will have 1 caffeinated gel in my pocket to take if I feel like I really need it. I will have to see how I feel and what the temperature is to know if I want to use the aid stations at all. It is pretty difficult to take in nutrition at a 6:15 pace.
Questions:
Should I start off a bit slower on the bike/run and then increase to my target pace? Or in an Olympic should I just go all out the whole time? Targeting a < 40 minute run, does it make sense to take in any nutrition or water, I feel like it will just slow me down. In an open 10k I definitely would not stop.
Thanks!
My wife got all excited that I qualified for Nationals and we got caught up in the moment and signed up for this thing. It also helped that my sister lives in the area and we haven't visited in a while. I will be doing this race about 5 weeks after IMCDA so maybe this wasn't the best idea. Oh well, I am going! I will only have a few weeks of good training on the Get Faster plan due to the timing. I am not quite sure what my expectations are for this race. I am writing this with the lofty assumption that my last known FTP and vdot are still accurate, but I am prepared to face the facts that I may not be able to hold the planned paces. I really just want to have fun and see what it is like to race in a field of elites!
Thursday:
Arrive on Thursday early in the morning at 8:11 AM (Red Eye, again, poor planning!). Get car, see if we can check in early at hotel, otherwise just hang out in Milwaukee.
Pickup bike as early as 12:00 PM
Packet pickup at 2:00 PM
Go for shakeout bike ride, hopefully on course
Friday:
Swim practice at 11:00 - 1:00
Rules briefing at 1:00
Bike checkin 2:00 - 7:00
Put CO2s on bike. Make sure bike has extra tubes as well.
- Try to limit fiber intake throughout day and stay hydrated. Light dinner of just pasta.
- Go to bed slightly hungry
- Set everything out at night
- Charge watch
Wetsuit
Goggles
Anti-fog spray
Race cap
Timing chip
Tri-Glide
Vanilla Gel
Gas-x
Sunscreen
Bike Shoes
Helmet/Visor
Aquaphor
Running socks
Towel
Running Shoes
Race belt with bib
Double latte gel
Tri Shorts
Tri Shirt
HR monitor
Garmin 910xt
Saturday:
Set alarm clock for 5:00 AM, have breakfast of 2.5 cups apple sauce with scoop of protein and banana. Get dressed and head out.
Transition open 5:30 - 7:30 AM
Set my bike with 1 bottle of perform.
Sip on a 2nd bottle of perform / water while I wait 2 hours for my wave to start. What do I do for 2 hours?? I know, Coffee!!
Swim:
Wave #13 at 9:30 AM, a full 2 hours after the first group!
9:00 - Put wetsuit on and take vanilla gel and gas-x
9:15 - Warmup then line up with wave toward the back (I am slow...)
9:30 - Swim!
I am a MOP swimmer, which means that for this race I will be BOP. My plan is to just go out and see if I can find a pack and get pulled through the swim. I read Matt Ancona's race report and it said he had his fastest swim ever here. I hope to do the same. I would be very happy with 25-27 minutes on the swim.
Bike:
I plan to just have 24oz of perform on the bike and that's it. I have no idea what my target time is, I do not have much short course experience. My FTP is 240 and I plan to target .95 IF, which is 228 watts (I have recently done a bit over 220 NP watts for 1 hour and I was able to run after). The bike is pretty flat with a handful of turns so I am hoping I can just hunker down, stay aero, and give it all I got. I will set my garmin to auto-lap every 3 miles so I should then have 8 windows to try to target the watts.
Run:
The run is my best event. My vdot is 56/57 and I want to try to target my Z4/Threshold pace which is 6:15. I will have 1 caffeinated gel in my pocket to take if I feel like I really need it. I will have to see how I feel and what the temperature is to know if I want to use the aid stations at all. It is pretty difficult to take in nutrition at a 6:15 pace.
Questions:
Should I start off a bit slower on the bike/run and then increase to my target pace? Or in an Olympic should I just go all out the whole time? Targeting a < 40 minute run, does it make sense to take in any nutrition or water, I feel like it will just slow me down. In an open 10k I definitely would not stop.
Thanks!
0
Comments
Training and preparation phase:
I already did a lot of olympics and I also spent A LOT of time in the GetFaster plan and last year after my Ironman I changed to the HIM-Adv plan which is a notch less intense than the GetFaster Adv and all I can tell you is "IT WILL HURT - A LOT!"
I made a huge mistake to pick up the training too early after IMAT and would go for a 2 weeks recovery for next time ... maybe then the jump-start into GF or HIM plan gets easier
For an OD there's almost no need for tapering but I tend to use 3-4 days of short but still high-intense sessions and last day before race if completely off for a one-day carbo-load (I use CarboLoader by Sponser for this purpose)
The race:
Swim - I'm like you ... keep off the fight on the start (and yes there will be a terrible fight the shorter the distance gets) then try to find a pack and keep going at around 85-90%
which still allows you to keep good form.
Bike
Do your really want to carry around CO2, spare tires, etc ... IMHO an OD is over if you flat on the bike as the time you loose there for getting it fixed is way too much relative to the total race time. 95% of FTP is a good target even though you could also go for 100% if you really feel good. I tend to start out pretty strong (>100% to get through the tons of people that swam faster than me) and then dial back a bit. I use only one big bottle of perform and 1-2 gels - first at half way point and the second 5-10' before T2.
Run
I also can't take it a lot when running around Z4 like it's being done on the OD and it's also not really necessary if I nailed the nutrition on the bike!
You really have to be careful with your pace out of T2 - it will be WAY TOO FAST (I've found myself running Z5 pace out of T2 and still thinking I've to increase my pace!!!)
I'd try to get some sips of Perform/Water during the run if you can get them swallowed without vomitting
I also think you are right about the tube and CO2, I will go completely minimal, just the aero bottle with perform.
If you are MOP on the swim then don't undermine your bike/run by going too hard. The physiological cost of overdoing the swim in an olympic distance event is big, in particular on the bike where you don't have time to "settle in" and let your heart race retreat into a z3 mode.
On the bike, I'd divide it into 2 sections. The first is "swim recovery" where your HR will get under control and your power will be lower than you want it. Your goal is to minimize this phase. Hopefully 10 mins or less before you can start hitting your goal watts. Maybe you give yourself the first 3-mile auto-lap for that phase, so about 8ish minutes or something like that. The second phase is goal watts. Personally I think that given your run strength you should go ALL OUT. You are not going to materially undermine your run by biking hard...you are too strong of a runner to have that problem at this distance. In a perfect world that would mean close to 100% of FTP assuming you bike around one hour, but in practice you should be happy to achieve 95% of FTP. Persoanlly I think my best is 94% of FTP in an Olympic-distance race when I raced "all out". Psychologically you can rationalize this by thinking about all the strong 30' OS brick runs you had after 60-75' rides that had 45'+ of FTP intervals.
On the run I think you play it by RPE given your experience as a runner. Fundamentally you ought to be happy with z3/HMP for the run, which for you is probably ~10sec slower than z4/TP.
Totally agree to ditch the flat kit. If you get a flat the race is over.
The OLY distance favors the swimmer being a higher percentage of the event than any other triathlon distance (dont give up more than you have to here)..... Just like a Sprint the Transitions are a bigger portion of the total race as well.... 1 minute wasted in a Transition is equivalent to 10 seconds per mile on the run! Work your transitions and minimize everything.
FWIW - My OLY race execution is what I will call redline (not really all out) but RPE redline from start to finish... I always target .95 on the bike and come in around .93-.94 , the run has no target other than redline but pace usually comes in at 10 sec per min slower than my HMP .... I go NO socks, hat, or glasses on the run.... 1 gel pre-swim, 1 bottle perform on bike, 1 gel first mile of run!
Prepare yourself mentally to be really really uncomfortable but its all over in a short period of time.... Some of the best training you can do is an OLY.... Have fun!
Bike (IF 0.95) -> http://tpks.ws/QbZ7
Run (IF 1.00 based on NGP) -> http://tpks.ws/z1PE
As already mentionend a few times shooting for IF 0.95 is great and on the run just go ALL OUT but prepare yourself to suffer on the run ... the GetFaster plan will prepare you a LOT better for this level of suffocation than the IM plan does.
All of my OD runs felt like Z6 starting right away of T2
As an aside, I honestly believe that with practice socks don't add much time because they help you slide your feet into shoes more easily…with wet feet sometimes getting shoes on can be a bit tougher. Personally I sit on the ground to put on socks/shoes.
I also learned it the hard way - my shoes were soaked with blood after the race ... not funny!