Brad Marcus' 2014 IMLP Race Report
Brad Marcus’ 2014
IMLP Race Report
IMLP was my first full distance race. Although I was hesitant
to put it out there prior to the race, I mostly knew what I thought I was
capable of in terms of times….execution is a different story.
After actually getting to LP, I found myself surprisingly
in a calm state until the Saturday before the race. At that point, I questioned
things, had trouble calibrated my power meter and generally unraveled a bit,
but I didn’t totally lose it. I sent out some quick questions on “group me” and
our amazing team helped me solve my issues. Team member, Woody Freese, reminded
me several times to “breathe”…great advice
I woke race morning before my 3:30am alarm went off and
drank a smoothie, coffee, and ate a bagel with jelly – pretty much standard fare
for me that I’ve tested prior. I was able to use the restroom, but not to my
100% satisfaction. The weather was better than I had expected and it was very
lightly drizzling which would eventually stop by the time I left the hotel to
head for transition. In transition, I prepped my bike and ate 1/3 of a powerbar
(all I could get down) and sipped a bit of perform. I got my wetsuit on and
headed for the lake for swim start. The weather was holding (overcast with the
sun barely peeking through). I felt pretty good despite the surreal feel to
things. I ate one powerbar gel w/ caffeine 15-20min prior to swim. My wife, Heidi, who was also racing, and I
both lined up towards the front of the 1:10-1:20 group and the cannon fired.
It is now known that by the end of the day, the swim was
cut short for some and the official IM results for AG’s do not include swim lap
#2 and T1 times. I have been able to gather what I believe are those missing components
of my race although I botched (as usual) the times on my garmin.
SWIM:
Expected – 1:20:00
Actual – 1:17:25 (split1 -37:08 / split2 – 40:17)
Swim start felt good and I was surprised that I swimming
fairly clear of contact at this point. I was well wide of the swim line and the
crowds. I realized at some point that I needed to get in a bit tighter since I
felt too wide. Every time I did this, I seemed to overshoot it and end up on
the “line” where there was a scrum of people swimming at various speeds. I
backed myself out a bit wider and tried to find some feet to draft behind. I
find drafting on the swim very tough since when you choose a swimmer that seems
the right speed for you, your effort is greatly diminished as soon as you get
in the draft zone and you feel like you’re going too slow (when you’re actually
not). I made a decision at some point that I’d be better off in the mix of
things where I felt there would be a general draft zone…this was a mistake. I
got kicked, punched and pushed. However, like the allure of most things, I
found myself getting pulled back in. At one point I took a bad punch to my
mouth which forced me to sit straight up in the water. All in all, I felt
pretty good and think I maintained form fairly well. At some point in the
second loop, I realized it was raining quite heavily. For me to notice the rain
despite being in the water, face down with all the splashing going on around
me, it was raining HARD! At roughly halfway to shore on the second loop, I was
hearing something reverberating underneath the water and figured it was Mike
Reilly announcing swimmers as they were leaving the water. Not until I exited
the water at the beach sis I realize that those sounds were actually thunder!
As I looked up after hearing the booming thunder I saw lightning all over the
immediate area…very scary. After getting my wetsuit stripped, I carefully
walked/jogged along the path towards transition, stopping briefly to say hi to
some family and friends lining the path. I couldn’t help but notice the look of
concern on their faces as the thunder and lightning continued all around us.
The fact was, that I was concerned about the upcoming bike too. At the end of
the day, I was happy to be able to finish both laps on the swim as roughly half
the athletes got pulled out at some point due to the thunderstorms. I was also
happy with my time.
T1:
Expected – 10:00
Actual – 12:40
How or why my transition took this long is a mystery to
me. It could be that I stopped in the tent to pee. Or it could be that I
decided to dry my feet to put socks on (for what reason I do not know since it
was pouring outside!). Finally, it could be that I was putting off the
inevitable of going outside in the sheeting rain and crashing thunder and
lightning. In any event, this is clearly an area where I have plenty of room to
improve upon. In my case, slow was slow…not smooth or fast!
Bike:
Expected – 6:30:00 - 6:45:00
Actual – 6:41:18
It’s been well documented how the beginning of the bike
was in LP on this day. Sheeting rain (the kind that you would pull over for if
you were driving a car), thunder, lightning, standing water on the roads and
dropping temps. Although I knew that there was a chance of thunderstorms on
this day, I was not prepared for the extent of these conditions. I had opted in
T1 to pack a light, long sleeved “rain” jacket. I was expecting that the jacket
would provide better protection than it did, but I don’t think anything would’ve
kept you dry on this day. I also decided to stow a pair of amber sunglasses in
my tri top and bring my eye shield which conveniently secures onto the top of
my Giro Air Attack helmet if not being used by magnets. After realizing that I couldn’t
see anything while riding in the heavy rain, I tried the glasses…this was not a
good option and I went back to no eye protection. After a while I tried the
visor and realized that this worked better than expected and gave me the best
protection. I tried to dial in my “JRA” pace but realized that I was having
problems reading my garmin in the rain. I went by feel as best as I could. The
bigger issue was that I started to get cold on the bike. Not just my hands and
arms, but my entire core. Knowing that the descent to Keene was coming, I tried
to increase my power a bit to warm myself up. This was useless and may have
hurt me later in the day. The descent to Keene was a harrowing experience. Not
only was vision poor, but I was cold and my brakes did little to slow me down.
I realized that I had to keep my speed in check but this was very difficult to
do and if I had been in need of a fast stop, it simply wouldn’t have happened.
With my mind on Heidi’s safety (I knew that this descent in the rain was her
biggest fear of the day), I made I made it down the descent in one piece,
although much slower than I would’ve liked. I’d guess that my average speed was
in the neighborhood of 25mph, which is tough to imagine considering the
steepness of the down hills. I made it to the flats where again I tried to dial
in a more steady pace. My goal watts being somewhere in the 160 watts
neighborhood. Again, visibility was poor and reading of my powermeter was tough
at times. I had begun eating and drinking 15 minutes into the bike and really
tried to keep up with this, but given the rain and cold, it was more of a chore
to drink. I remember what Coach Patrick had said about needed to stay hydrated
in this type of weather and even though we don’t feel like we are sweating it
was important so I did my best. I later heard stories from athletes that chose
not to drink and much later in the day paid the price! Somewhere around the
turn to Wilmington the rain lightened a bit and by the time I neared the climb
to White Face, the rain had stopped. Although I started to get pretty warm, I
opted not to remove my rain jacket until I got to special needs. I had peed
once on the bike in the first loop and at some point attempted to go again when
I realized that I was having some GI issues. I am still unsure whether this was
from nutritional mistakes that were from my days leading up to the race, or
just something that happened race day, but I realized that I needed to find a
porto-potty at some point on the bike. I opted to hold out for a bit. I pulled
into bike special needs, took of my gloves and jacket, grabbed some extra nutrition
on was on my way – this stop took longer than it should’ve and will be
something to work on in the future. My EN tri top was clearly seen for the
first time all day and I was getting some good support from my friends and
spectators. Shortly after beginning the climb out of LP, I stopped at an aid
station to use the porto-potty and this turned into what seemed to be a 5 min
stop. At this point, my mind turned to how this would affect my run, but I
tried to stay in my box. The 2nd descent into Keane was a different
story – I rode aero for most of it and my speed topped at 48.5mph. The rest of
lap 2 was somewhat uneventful. I tried to focus in on my power and nutrition. I
felt myself getting warm at some point and poured water over myself at some aid
stations. I felt that somewhere around mile 95-100, mile effort level had to be
increased to maintain my target power numbers and I opted to back off. Around
mile 100, as I climbed past Whiteface again, the skies darkened and I got hit
with heavy, binding rain once again, but at this point, I was able to push
through to finish the bike. All being said, I didn’t hit my power numbers for
the bike and rode a .662 IF. I lost more free time between a prolonged special
needs stop and an unplanned porto-potty break. On a bright note, I negative
split the loops on the bike (a tall task in LP) thanks to a faster descent and steadier power
the second time around.
T2:
Expected – 6:00
Actual – 8:23
As soon as I dismounted in T2, I found it difficult to
walk so I was forced to take it easy getting to my Run bag and changing tent. I
think in the future, I would opt to leave my bike shoes on my bike since I
think it would make walking easier. I had to use pee again in the changing tent
and then got to a chair to prep for the run. That final rain on the bike soaked
me pretty good and I took some time to dry my feet and apply some anti-chafing
to my feet since I was unsure of how the weather would be for the rest of the
day. Things obviously took longer than they should have and I gave up a lot of
free time in both transitions!
Run:
Expected – 4:30:00
Actual - 4:45:06
Coming out of T2, my legs immediately felt better and I
tried to settle into my z1 + 30sec pace. I needed to slow myself down a bit to
keep from running too fast, and was curious to do an evaluation of myself after
a couple of miles to see how my HR and GI were doing. Since everything seemed
to be relatively ok (HR and fatigue in check), I decided to use this time to
get more nutrition down since I figured that I may encounter issues later. I
took a gel in mile 1 or 2, a salt tab and made a point to walk and drink
perform at the aid stations. Things were going as planned over 6 miles and I
made the decision to attempt to step my pace up to z1 (going from a 9:15 to
8:45 pace). This seemed ok at first – HR bumped up marginally but in a
comfortable zone. At some point though, I noticed some HR spikes. I am still
unsure if this was real or some craziness on my HR monitor but I made the decision
to back off a bit since they seemed to persist – also I was feeling much
warmer. My HR never really backed down to where it was earlier and I was also
feeling some stomach cramping. I continued on, forcing down another gel, salt
and perform at all aid staions as I made my way back into town and looping back
to finish my first 13 miles. I was still holding a decent pace and felt well
enough although knew that some trouble may be looming. I saw Coach P as I
headed back out and he walked with me and I told him about the GI cramping. We
decided I go to coke, broth and salt and I made the decision to stop taking
gels and perform. I was still able to hold pace to mile 16 or so at which
point, I began to slow considerably. I believe it was a combination of lack of
GI issues, fatigue, but mostly not enough nutrition that became my demise and
it finally caught up with me. Although I recognized the signs, I just couldn’t bring
myself to eat more gels or drink more perform. By mile 20, I was feeling nauseous
and it was hard enough to get down anything (coke, broth, water), but I forced
what I could – I had hit the proverbial wall, and I knew it! The rest of my run
was tough all around, more steps at the aid stations led to very slow jogging
and walking for some miles. My pace went from low 9:20min/miles to 10’s, 11’s,
12’s, 13’s and finally a 16min/mile at mile 25 where I was again forced to hit
a porto-potty. It wasn’t until I actually got to the Olympic oval that I felt invigorated
enough to jog steadily to the finish. I enjoyed the finish and took in the
crowd and my name being called and Coach Patrick was there as I crossed the
finish line. It was great to see him there and he evaluated me – I looked green
– He made sure I was ok and after 30min or so of sitting, I was feeling much
better. I was able to wait at the finish as I heard Heidi’s name called and see
her cross the finish line. Despite all the challenges, it was a great day!
Summary
Although I swore in those last few miles and after I
crossed the finish line that I wouldn’t do another IM, by the next day my
thoughts were already on where I could improve the next time around. I learned
a lot and execution is easier said than done. I think I knew what I had to do
in many places, but couldn’t get them done. In reflection over the last week, I
feel somewhat frustrated that I spent countless hours training for my run
(probably my strongest of the 3 disciplines), and was able to execute the way I
had envisioned. One of my goals was to not walk (except through aid stations),
and I was forced to do so at some point. In looking through my entire day, I
made up ground throughout vs the field going from 1207 at bike start to 1009 by
run start to 767 through mile 21. From mile 21 to the finish, I dropped from
767 to 943. Those final miles were somewhat demoralizing as I was passed by all
those people, but serve as motivation to get improve in the future. Ironman
decided not to include the 2nd lap of the swim and T1 in the
official times due to the fact that several people did not complete the swim.
Here are my official and unofficial times:
Official: 12:11:54
Unofficial (incl entire swim + T1): 13:04:50
Thanks to Coach P and R and the entire team for all the
support through this process!
Comments
Brad, Great report. You experienced everything out there. The weather is the unknown factor that hit us all. Your top speed is impressive. I am still nervous on that hill. I was thinking about what race to do shortly after crossing the line as well. It was great training with you this year. You and Heidi are terrific people and it is truly great that you can share such a big event.
It was really nice to meet you and Heidi. You seemed pretty calm as I think I saw or ran into you a half dozen times throughout the day. Thank you for putting my mind at rest a little bit when we left T2, you gave me a nice words that calmed me down a little bit as we ran down the hill near Lisa G's. The last time I saw you on the run course was about mile 22 on the bridge you were talking to Heidi, I only wish I could have dragged you up the hill with me since I had been following you for almost the entire run up to that point. Great work on pushing through those last miles to get it finished.
I think we were in similar conditions getting off the bike...hurting...tired and perhaps behind on hydration.
So any thought on what your next full will be? Hope to see you both in Placid Next year.
As for your results on the day for the Full event vs the shortened event. Check out this link.
http://www.sportstats.ca/searchResults.xhtml?month=0&lastname=marcus&year=&firstname=brad&city=
Congrats on a solid race on a tough, tough day. All the reports of the rain on the descent out of town give me the willies, just thinking about carbon rims, wet wheels, etc. Yikes!
It sucks when the gut doesn't cooperate after months of training. I've been there. You'll get it next time!