David Pettigrew 2014 Lake Stevens 70.3 Race Report
This was my first half-iron distance race, having raced everything else from Sprint to Ironman distance. I wanted to try this distance this year to see how I enjoyed and managed the training and racing workload required. Last year was an Ironman year, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to spend the same time training this year, so the distance looked to be the next best thing.
I have been using the Endurance Nation Beginner Half-Iron plan prior to the race. I have had a few issues this year with my feet that have prevented me following my run training plan. I was able to get up to almost the required long run distance before the race but did not do any of the speed work due to fear of injury, instead was doing easy jogging for some of those and I also ran mostly on trails versus pavement.
My goals for the race were - to enjoy the journey, have fun, treat it as a health activity not a race, take care of my body/do not injure and have enough energy for the 5+ hour drive home after. In addition I wanted to get a feel for the distance and use it to inform race choices for next year.
Morning
Up at 4:30am. Ate light - only a banana and a fruit juice sachet. Left the hotel at 5 with Ann from my local tri club and got to transition around 5:30. Transition was still quite quiet. I met Stephen from the Corvallis Tri Club in transition and went to setup my area. Tried to get in and out of transition. In transition I met Phil Mills of the EN team who was racked across from me. It was nice to have a few team mates to help relax and chat with. I did manage to forget to put one of my bottles on my bike so only had the front aero-bottle with Perform.
Once my transition was all setup, I made for the porta-potty, took care of business and applied my body lubes. Then I went back to transition and put on my wet suit to the waist and headed out and hung about for the start with Phil. Once I saw my wave line up I headed over to join them.
Swim.
The 1.2 mile swim is basically an out and back. My wave had (I would guess) about 100 people. There was plenty of space to get lined up. I positioned myself in about the middle of the way along the start line. The swim start went really well and I got relaxed and into a rhythm quickly. The water temperature was 69? which was perfect. My heart rate remained comfortable and I got into bi-lateral breathing which I was able to continue for the entire swim. About 5 minutes in I realized I had not started my Garmin, so I started it at that point. The swim was fairly uneventful except that it got quite misty towards the end of the turn around and I lost sight of the buoy line. I think I had been too far away from them and there was actually a slight left hand curve to the course that I hadn’t noticed. The result was I went off course and lost several minutes and wasted energy getting back on course. I had intended to stay close to the buoy line but had opted for clearer water. After the two buoys at the turn around I elected to really try to follow the buoy line. As a result there was a bit of contact with other swimmers and the faster swimmers from later waves came by me every few minutes. But it wasn’t too bad and I think this was a bit of a breakthrough for me to have the confidence to swim in with the main packs. In the future I am going to try to be more in the optimum line and not be so afraid of the contact. Given the mistakes, I think a sub-40 minute swim split could be easily possible for me in the future.
Swim Split: 00:42:44
http://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/568120384
T1
An uneventful 3:51. Only issue was getting the wet suit arm off over my Garmin. Not sure how to best deal with that… perhaps quick release the watch before taking the wet suit off.
Bike
Basically stuck to my plan at the start with the watts lower than my race target for the first 30 minutes or so. My heart rate started very high and eventually it came down. It is a constantly changing course with non-stop hills and turns. It is difficult to hold a steady power, but I tried to limit the spikes on the hills, maintain the power over the top. Played yoyo with a lot of people in the first half of the course until about Granite Falls, where there is a more flatfish section, at that point I left most of those people who were charging up the hills behind.
This chart shows that I did manage to keep my power at least flatter than the hills - https://www.evernote.com/shard/s11/sh/2d68f10d-5d8d-4469-ada9-ef6aa00ee713/faaa1c53c15e7e25deb1dcbb5c9d1702
This is a fantastic course. A lot of fun to ride with constant focus and decision making required. I do wish people would not coast down the hills near the middle of the road. It makes passing them without crossing the double yellows difficult.
My nutrition was a shot blok every ten minutes using the Garmin timer to remind me, approx. every hour I took a gel, I drank around 30oz. of Perform every hour. The temperature was perfect with some cloud cover for the first couple of hours keeping the temperatures down. The last hour or so it did get quite hot however. I got two bottles of Perform at each of the three aid stations except one, where I dropped one bottle and got a water in its place.
The steep climb on Ingraham Road was interesting. One behind me guy crunched gears and fell over; further up the hill was a guy at the side of the road with a broken chain.
Note: Ironman had the course at 2,159ft, my Garmin gave 3,550ft.
Some geeky tri power data
NP 150
AP 140
IF 0.767
VI 1.07
Bike split: 03:27:13
http://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/568120387
T2
4:52 I am a little bit disappointed in this. There was a long run to get to my racking spot. Running in bike shoes sucks. Learn to dismount with shoes on bike. I was also a bit disorganized and had to move someones bike that was in my spot.
Run
Happily my back had not caused any issues after the bike and I was able to get running right away. Target pace was - first 3 miles at 9:30 pace, next 7 at 9:00, then whatever is left in the tank after that. My first mile I did an 8:18 before I was able to talk myself down and get into a more sensible pace. The course is hilly. Nothing too steep, but it means you can’t run to a set pace easily. On the flat sections I would check my pace to see how it compared to my target pace and use that as my guide. I was feeling good and felt that the 9:30 was too conservative, so I started targeting a 9 min/mile pace. At mile 10 I elected to basically continue with the pace I was at, maybe increasing it a small amount. I saw a couple of EN folks and a Stephen and Ann from Corvallis out on the course.
Nutrition was a mix of Perform, Coke, Red Bull and water. I tools something at most aid stations. I pored cold water on my head and walked for 10-15 seconds at each aid station.
I really enjoyed running through the town of Lake Stevens, the crowd support was awesome and really picks you up. You pass the crowd twice on each of the two laps, so it is a lot of fun.
In the end I am super pleased with my run. I moved from 118 to 83 in my age group and passing 230 people. I kept a very steady pace and came in under 2 hours on the run. My time was about 13 minutes slower than my standalone half-marathon time. That is great considering how little I have run coming on to the race. I attribute it to getting my power target set at a conservative level and executing the bike well from an energy management and nutrition perspective.
Run split: 01:54:35
http://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/568120391
Finish time: 06:13:15
Ironman results (bib789) - http://www.ironman.com/triathlon/events/americas/ironman-70.3/lake-stevens/results.aspx#ixzz3BHPOAtaj
Comments
Phil, yeah, it great to meet you and have some company ahead of the race. You did amazing for your first triathlon. Especially your swim. I remember really freaking out at my first open water tri and it was just a 750m swim. I am almost certainly doing this race again next year, unless I do something crazy like enter an Ironman :-)