Wm's Undertrained HIM Life Lessons: subtitled The coaches are pretty much right. :-)
I've been more low key on the forums these last few months, in large part because I was diagnosed with a stress fracture in my fibia in early July shortly after my first race of the season. It wasn't that bad, but I was basically told "Thou shalt not run until mid August...and by the way, keep the biking pretty moderate." As a result, I swam a lot and did a few hours of riding until August 17, and I had about 6 weeks to prepare for a local HIM that I did yesterday in Kansas. (It is quite near, but not actually on the old KS 70.3 course...though there is some overlap.)
Patrick, as always came through with some good training advice.
Having been on fairly low volume biking, I had to focus most of my bike work in those 5 weeks (not counting the last week of pure taper) on race-power-plus, rather than keeping up a lot of FTP work. Starting from what felt like scratch on running was pretty discouraging. How can 3-4 miles be a challenge at all?? Anyway, my running was almost entirely easy pace as I built up some ability to run distance. My longest run as about 10 miles.
So that brings us to yesterday's race, which I knew would be slow. I was ok with that.
In case you wonder, my nutrition plan was the same as always: Plenty of sports drink on the bike and a mix of sports drink and water on the run. I got down about 6 bottles of drink on the bike, maybe a little less.
The swim was uneventful. It was a two-lap race. My time was within 1 minute of my norm and my split for the two laps was even.
For the bike, I had chosen a target wattage about 10 W below the normal 80% of my most recent FTP data, which came before my build. This meant I was riding about 175 W. For those who have done the KS bike before, I think this version is similar, but has an even higher percentage of rolling hills. Because the race was relatively small, I was doing a lot of riding alone or nearly alone. I managed to hold the watt target quite well on an NP basis, though because of the hills, my VI was relatively high. My speed range was 6 mph to 44 mph, with many, many short segments in the 8-9 mph region because of the hills. Kept everything below FTP, but sometimes not by much. I was passed by one guy who looked to be near my age, and half a dozen young guns who evidently can't swim. :-) (There was a wave start and they started before me) There can be a strong wind in KS, but there was not this time. However, there was a decent shifting breeze. Unsurprisingly, given a conservative wattage target and the more difficult course, I was about 10 minutes slow on this race compared to my best on this course previously.
The run was my biggest uncertainty. My HR strap had come undone in a very inconvenient way to fix, so I resolved to run entirely by RPE. The course was a four lap affair, with 3 gentle but significant hills per lap. The temp was not brutal (clearly 80+, but not 95 or anything), but the breeze had died. Despite these not-so-terrible-sounding conditions, I have never seen so much carnage on a HIM run course. With a four lap course, it should be obvious that a few of the leaders would have been a lap in front of me. The two I was aware of both stopped and walked from time to time. I was not immune to the damage the course inflicted upon us. I started out at my normal "just run" pace of 8:00-8:15 and kept the RPE as constant as I could until I had to recognize that it was just getting hard. My pace faded significantly...but I had been mentally prepared for that, given my utterly incomplete preparation.
I have never done a HIM that looked and felt more like an IM. Aside from the smaller number of people, this HIM run looked to me more like the IM run at Wisconsin than any other I can remember....walking, shuffling, no one really "running" anywhere near their marathon pace that I could see.
I realized that I had not anticipated this, but I tried to keep in mind a couple of lessons from EN to try to use this odd result to my advantage, given my lousy preparation: (1) There is nothing that slows you down like walking...i.e., the 10 minute rock-star rule; (2) take it easy now so you can catch up later.
The guy my age who had passed me on the bike was easily a mile ahead of me by the time I got on the run course. I don't know the exact distance, but there were out-and-backs that were quite a ways and I saw him very early in that. Although I'm a relatively strong runner, I thought it was unlikely I'd catch him, even though he didn't have a runner body type...both because he was so far ahead and because I knew I wasn't going to have a great run.
As it turns out, I slowly worked my way through the crowd, even though my pace declined from that 8:15-ish to 9:30-ish. (Eek!) At the 10 mile mark, I was telling myself that even 10 minute miles would get me to the finish at this point. It really was a matter of being a 10 minute mile rock star for the last 5 miles. I would walk a few paces at the aid stations to ensure I got all my fluids down, and then start shuffling forward again. Honestly, I was pleased that none of my "miles" was over 10 minutes. In those last 5 miles or so while "running" these 9:30 pace miles was when I started making some progress over the strong part of the field. I passed the 50+ guy I had seen from the bike and at the beginning of the run and several other younger guys.
In the end, my time was still pretty bad. I had expected to go about 5:20 due to fitness, and I am ok with the other 14 minutes that got me up to 5:34 being that the course and day were more difficult than I had anticipated. In the end, I came in first for my age group, 8th overall, with the 9th fastest run split overall. Not to be sexist, but how I do compared to the top amateur women in a race is still a reasonable measure for me, and I did beat all the women. Three people went under 5:10, then a cluster of a few around 5:20, and then my group in the mid 5:30s.
Undoubtedly if this had been a larger race, my relative performance would not have looked quite as good. But, all things considered, I have to walk away happy with this result. I know that 5 years ago, before I joined EN, I would not have done nearly so well.
Comments
Thanks for once again showing us all how execution is supposed to be done.
Proper pacing will often trump superior speed, and sometimes even superior fitness. "Proper pacing" means running no faster than you know you can maintain for the remainder of the race. And that;s where your experience as a runner came in handy.
tough course. small field. just you against the clock and let the others control their own hemorrhaging.
sounds very similar to what I'll be facing in 2 weekends.
Strong execution with smart strategy. Amazing what we learn around here.
Congrats on the good placing.