Jimmy Augustine's IMTX RR
I don't know what to make of this one. I don't know what I should have expected going in. I don't know how to feel about my results. I have certainly done better relative to my AG. I feel like my training cycle went well. I certainly feel like I put in the hours. Not sure what, if anything, I should have done differently.
Train Up:
CTL peaked at 149 on 4/22 after a "camp" week where I took Monday off from work for a big day, then did typical Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and took Friday off for my 2nd race rehearsal which was a metric IM. Then a consolidation week before one last metric IM sim on May 3rd.
From my sims I targeted 160w on the bike and a run heart rate in the 140's which was yielding paces in the 9:30's. But that was weather dependent and given how hot it could be on race day I was using heart rate as a limiter on both bike and run. 135 on the bike and 150 cap on the run.
On May 5th, I got sick. Cold that brought a sinus infection. I started antibiotics May 6th and finished them the 10th. By Thursday of race week I didn't feel sick anymore.
Pre race-
Up at 4. Coffee and a walk to wake up. Looked at the finish arch. Peanut butter sandwich. Got ready. Out door to transition at 5. Got a ride to start area. Set up bike, pumped tires. Waited too long to get in line to start. Ended up in a mob in the back 1/2 of the swim start. Next time I need to be at the start area earlier than I think I need to be. I really need to focus on getting a better starting position.
Swim- time 1:22 division rank 95/no idea
Last race sim was a 2400scm swim which took 42min. My prior IM swims range from 1:08 in Coz to 1:18 at last year's non wetsuit Florida race.
lots of contact. Zero visibility. Foggy goggles. A post race garmin compare suggests I swam a little further than avg. but only about 100m. I was just swimming slow. Didn't worry about it as my mantra was "be in a position to lift your heart rate on the 3rd lap of the run". And choices along the way that will hinder that goal should be avoided.
So I swam easy. Bumped in to 1000 people. Had to sight a bunch. Which in fresh water non wetsuit dropped my legs. But everyone else was swimming the same water. I just wasn't a top 1/3 swimmer today. Peed twice in the water which was odd.
T1- 3:49
wasn't really phased when I saw my swim time. I've learned that you can't judge your race by the time on your watch when you get out of the water. Courses are different. And my success on the day would come down to what kind of condition I could deliver myself in to the 3rd lap of the run.
T1 itself was quick enough. Never sat down. Had skin down, top, helmet and glasses on before I got to tent. Handed stuff to volunteer on my way out. Rsn my bike out and off we went. Already focused on slowing my heart rate.
Bike- 4:41 77th out of no idea how many.
NP: 144w VI 1.05 AVG HR 138
So the course looked crazy on paper but I thought that it rode just fine. Good pavement. Enough room. Not much wind. Which was good because my HR was very high relative to power output.
History suggested that I should look for 160w and a heart rate in the lower 130's. My plan was to "just ride around" till my HR got into the 130's then settle into power target. HR cap would be 138. So I would dial effort back at 138bpm or 160w. Which ever came first because my sims suggested that I could sustain run effort off of a ride like that and my primary goal was to get to lap 3 on the run still able to work hard enough to have a HR in the upper 140's.
A few things became clear after about an hour: 1) the course was fast. 2) Iwas not getting much power out of my heart rate. 3) As much body glide as I thought that I had put on, it was not enough.
I let my garmin rotate screens as I ride. Here is what I was seeing: 5mi auto lap was clicking a little less than every 15min. So I was moving ok. But 135bpm was only producing about 140w. And that never changed. As much as I wanted to put out 160w, the heart was saying "no". And I needed the heart to go to work for me on the run so I was a good boy and rode the watts that came with the heart rate and focused on nutrition and hydration. Because at this point, it looked like it was going to be ungodly hot and muggy.
Nutrition targets were 300cal / HR. Taken from a concentrated skratch feed bottle and skratch bites. And lots of water. My goal was to grab a water every aid station. Same plan as in race rehearsals. I trust my thirst these days. And as long as I always have water I'm usually ok. Peed twice on the bike which is a good sign for me.
About 85mi in to the bike I was climbing an overpass and I started to get a loud whine out of the rear wheel area. It was break rub. It was so loud that I stopped to fix it. Took a minute. Maybe 3. Not a big deal and since it wasn't yet lap 3 of the run, I wasn't worried.
T2- the dismount line really snuck up on me. Wasn't much warning. But no issues. Handed off bike and started the 10mi run through t2. Didn't have time to come out of my shoes before dismount so I stopped to take them off. Again, no problems or worries. Still too early for that.
T2- 4:41
T2 is pretty smooth for me these days. My bag has socks in shoes and everything else in a gallon ziplock. I put on socks and shoes, take out ziplock, hand bag helmet and glasses to volunteer and sort the rest out on the run.
I forgot to take off the clear shield glasses that I like to bike in before I left t2. And given how expenses the silly things were, I carried them the rest of the race. On the visor of my hat. They came in handy later...
Run - 4:57 84th out of whoever was left. Not my worst IM run. But close. Worst was here in 2014.
Let's get this out of the way: I don't like this run course. Too much. Too much banging of trash can lids, screaming in my face. I totally get that most folks love the wattie ink people in their speedos blasting techno music. I HATE it. Leave me alone. I have work to do.
3 laps. My expectation going in would be that lap 1 would be about keeping HR down. Lap 2 would be an emotional struggle and if I planned the first parts of the day right, lap 3 would be about running.
Getting off the bike it was clearly ungodly hot and humid. Got my gear on and filled up the ziplock bag with ice at the first aid station. Every time the HR got up to 148, I walked it back down to 140. 200cal per HR as a gel every 3mi was the plan. Garmin was set on heart rate. Nothing else mattered. Just drive the car at the planned intensity. Don't worry about how fast or slow it is going.
Then my stomach started to sour. Noticed it after mile 6. Figured since it was sour and not sloshy that meant I needed more water. And to lower my HR from the upper 140's to the lower 140's to give my digestive system some more capacity to process.
But it only got worse. By mile 12 I was hurting really bad in my gut. Wanted to barf. Maybe I should have. It was taking longer and longer to recover from the discomfort that taking a gel caused. After the mile 9 gel, it was mile 12 before I recovered.
The first two hours on the garmin file look "ok". Heart rate range was 134 to 150. Avg of 145. Right on target. Nutrition to plan as well. Yes I was going slow but that was t my focus. My focus was on holding back so that I could run during the last 90min.
But my insides felt really bad.
By mile 15 I was sick enough to my stomach that I decided to call an audible. I don't like calling audibles that deep in to a race like this. I don't trust my judgement much at that point in a day but I did it anyway. Seemed like the right move at the time. I decided to just give myself what sounded good at the time. Cola mostly. The odd grape. Somewhere around this point, another runner offered me $1000 for my ice bag. No way man. Not parting with this baby. Little did I know what was coming.
At some point in the next 2mi, all hell broke loose. Clouds rolled in. The temps dropped. Lighting and thunder that was so bad that it honestly scared me (and I am aware of the odds of getting struck by lighting. Pretty slim). Then the rain came. It went from "a nice shower" to "the end of days get on the arc" very quickly. Wow. Really? You are going to slog through this for another 90min? Why? Them the wind picked up and the way the course wound around there was plenty of time running into the sideways rain. Switched from my sunglasses (too dark to see) to my clear cycling glasses that I had been carrying like I knew the weather was going to change. Onward. Next came the unmistakable "clack clack" sound of hail on car roofs. Big legitimate ice cubes falling out of the sky. At the worst, we got off the course. Huddled behind buildings and overpass columns. Sunburnt and shivering wondering if and when this would pass. Wondering how long I could physically wait for the hail and wind to maybe pass before I got too cold. Wondering what the hell I was doing out there anyway. I had nothing to prove. No one was there watching. Family at home would welcome me back. Co workers can't fathom a mile swim much less the rest of this nonsense. Honestly, what kept me from stopping was checking another box towards legacy entry to Kona. That is what kept me out there. To have done all that work and not be a notch closer was what did it.
Then, as my brain was doing a number on me, the wind and hail stopped and we were left with a good hard rain. And off we went again.
To state the obvious, it was tough to get going again. There was still a very long way to go. Lap 3 came and I was really despondent. I would try and will myself to work harder. My HR was very low and I had lots of room to work. But I just felt so crappy that I would have to slow down again for fear of a dnf. I was getting down a bit of coke at this point but my stomach had walked off the course. And i really wanted to follow it. It was a really demoralizing last 8mi. I had put a ton of time effort and resources in to preparing for this race. The whole day was about prepping for lap 3 and I couldn't will my body to produce. Same result as Florida last November. Training went well, thought I had executed with restraint, ready for last 8mi and when the time came, I couldn't produce.
As I stand here today I don't know what the answer is. It might be between my ears. I might not "want it" bad enough. I might be happy with my current level of performance on some subconscious level.
It might be nutritional. I might just be out of sugar by mile 18 and left just with the fat burning system to keep me moving. It might be genetic. This just might be as good as I can go.
But it might have also just been a bad day. My training sims all suggest that I am capable of more than I out out on Saturday. But with so few race days per year it is really hard to get a meaningful data set.
No cramping till the last 100m of the run.
Looking at the run file, my run EF stayed pretty flat from start to finish. About 1.15. Which is low relative to my sims but about right relative to the super low bike EF that I had put up earlier. In my sims my bike EFs ranged between 1.2 and 1.34 and the 26k runs off those bikes ranged between 1.26 and 1.29.
So on race day when I put out a bike EF of 1.04, I should have expected a run EF reduction was in the cards and 1.15 seems about right proportionately.
But why? And what do I do with that info next time? Did the swim take too much out of me? Was I still sick? Do I need to train different, eat different, or just be patient and keep doing what I am doing? I just don't know.
Finisher chute. Love that place.
Mike got my name right.
Catcher was awesome. Grabbed my stuff and took me straight to med tent over my protests. I guess I looked pretty bad. Docs gave me a pill for nausea. Stomach came around pretty quick after that. An item for next run special needs bag next time? After 10min in the med tent I started to shiver. This is normal for me after IMs. I get really cold. After assuring the docs I was fine I got my bags and got back to my room shaking like a monster and into a hot shower.
It is Monday and I am back at work and felling pretty good physically. A bit sore but not like what I would have expected. I have a standing desk. Standing and moving helps a lot.
Some preliminary take aways from the race:
I don't like this race. Don't like the lake and really don't like the run. There are plenty others out there. Time to explore a bit.
This time of year is ok but not ideal for a race. a summer race might be good for my work/life schedule. France?
I like having my family with me for full distance races. I was aware of their absence on this one.
That's really all. Way more questions than answers at this point. I'm open to feedback. Team mojo was strong. Dinner was great. We had a little group but I felt like we hung together well.
Thx for reading. I will get garmin files from the race and my sims up tonight for anyone willing to dig through.
Comments
Jimmy, IMO, this was a tough one because it is just very hard to simulate training and race rehearsals under a heat index of 95 degrees with a change to torrential rains and colder temps.
That was the heat index before the bottom dropped out of the sky on Saturday. Those kind of changes and conditions will do things like not allow you to get as many watts as you normally see out of a given HR. That kind of heat will also wreak havoc on your gut and its ability to process anything while trying to work.
I have raced with you at IMTX under better conditions and seen what you can do. You certainly had your CTL at the right place going into this race.
Tough day to pull of an IM and you did it. That would be my focus. Comparing to past performances might not really be fair to you given those conditions.
Well fought battle IM!
Jimmy,
It was weird not racing with your (after having done so twice), so part of me really wanted to be out there with you. Until I saw the bike course change, the swim course change, the TA change, the heat, the humidity the rain and Mark C being in my AG. I was pushing for you all day and knew that you were probably a little disappointed. But you finished like you always do and will take some things away from this one.
Couple of things to consider, taking this with a grain of salt as I'm not a coach and can't even impersonate one with any believably: First, you tend to be a pretty high-volume guy for most of the year, with most of that volume on the bike and run where there's a little more impact than swimming. This has worked for you for a at least a couple of years, and you've had some solid races, but it wouldn't work for me. At least not all that riding/running. I plateau, get flat, and lose some of that "spark" that comes at the end of a nice concentrated build. I remember you posting a 17- or 18-hour week, looking at the calendar and thinking that it was still 13 or 14 weeks out from IMTX. I wouldn't be surprised at all if you could get fast/fresh on lower volume, then build for ~6 weeks and have a great performance at IM. I'd at least schedule some time with Coach P to review your files over the last year or two and see what he thinks.
Second, completely counter to everything I said above, you don't swim enough. At least not enough to support a 1:22 in really hot conditions with zero hydration. I have no science to back it up, but it seems that every time someone has a bike that didn't meet expectations, they were either in the water too long or didn't swim enough volume in training, usually a combo of the two. Again, I remember during your build this time that you were swimming something like 7-9k per week during the key build weeks. Again, no science to back up, only personal experience, but I think it takes 12-15k to swim well and feel somewhat normal on the bike, probably closer to 18k if you're going to swim 1:20+. Swimming, of course, is the biggest logistical headache for most of us and swimming more may just not be in the cards. But if you can swap one of your weekly rides or runs with a swim, I wouldn't be surprised if you race faster on both the swim and the bike.
Again, just throwing stuff out there. Not trying to critique. Just the opposite: I want to encourage you to sign up for more of these things so we can get the gang back together. As soon as SS posts his race plans for 2017, you have to promise to do the same.
Cheers on a solid race and the rest of this year.
MR
mike - that swim vol stuff makes sense. you read my work right. I was 3 swims per week at about an hour each. about 9k per week. Mind you I had no intention of being in the water that long but given that this was a notoriously difficult swim it would have made sense to make sure that thee was extra swim work done. I was comparing workload and distribute this year to workload and distribution in 2014 the last time I did IMTX. BUT that year was the wetsuit legal swim year. Totally different animal especially in fresh water.
2 weeks of down time then starting up again towards florida in november!
Jimmy, Ironman races are hard enough without the wrath of the elements also fighting you. I read the comments from Shaun, Mike & Tim. I can't add anything that those members haven't thought of regarding training & racing. I will say that you touched on a couple of things that I believe can play big factors in performance. You caught some sort of illness pretty close to the race. You can't measure how much that effected you. It doesn't show up on training peaks. An illness can really impact how your heart performs. All the training you did leading up to the illness stressed your heart. That illness could have been harder than you thought. You may have felt overall that you were back to normal, but the heart can have different ideas. Second, your race support squad was not there. Mental prep is huge and as nice as seeing members from EN is, not seeing you family is super hard. FWW, I think this was an epic adventure. You conquered the course and the elements. You are AN IRONMAN!!!!!
From you gut issues it was either good nutrition plan but not executed frequently enough for heat / swim.....OR....a bad plan executed well (too calorically dense) that set you up.
Some suggestions as I don't have files or data...
1. Plan on staying cooler on the bike (bottle for water on body and arm coolers) to keep core body temp down.
2. Confirm bike food has good sodium in it (powerbar products do)
3. Confirm you had external salt to take to supplement high fluids on the bike...
4. Add a banana to T2 to settle stomach.
5. Confirm first lap matched your bike HR (no miles too hot)
Illness - This was still an issue on race day. My power to hr ratio was way off from all my sims even after swimming much more easily on race day relative to last sim. I clearly "wasn't right" from the gun. I didn't fade on the bike. My power to heart rate was steady. It was just a few ticks low from mile 1 to mile 95 relative to my sims. The good news is that yall have taught me not to chase target watts off a cliff simply because I could hit them on a different day.
Fuel and hydration on the bike - I had about 880mg to 1g sodium per hour from scratch products. 300 cal/hr. This didn't seem tough at the time. Worked like the sims. I am pretty sure that I was ok in this department.
Avg heart rate on the bike was 138bpm. Avg HR in my last race rehearsal (may 3rd) was 135. Pretty close.
The run - Avg HR for hr 1 of the race was 145. Avg hr for hour 1 from last race rehersal (26k run off 4hr bike) was also 145. So far so good.
But I wonder about the impact of antibiotics on my digestive tract. Those pills may have cleared my sinuses but they also cleaned out my gut of the good stuff that is supposed to be there. My expectation is that the stomach pain and inability to stick to my run nutrition plan may very well have been related to the impact of antibiotics on my GI under that amount of stress. I was getting 400mg of sodium per hr from the gels. I had salt stick with me but in the moment I thought that the sour feeling was from too much sodium, not too little. Didn't feel "full", it just hurt to put stuff down my gullet.
The T2 banana is intriguing. I will put it into my long days in prepping for IMFL and see how I tolerate it. I might also look at a secondary fuel source for the second half of the run. The gels get tough to take even under ideal conditions after a few hours. A change might be nice at say run special needs.
Lastly, regardless of what else happened on the day, regardless of how well the trainup went I still took 12min off my marathon vs imtx 2014 and that INCLUDES the amount of time I spent huddled waiting for the hail to pass.
I feel much better today. Tougher people than me walked off the course. Putting the day in context with all the other days over the past 5 years I can still say that I am making progress and that is all I really am after.
Thanks fam.
now its time to rest and learn from that race for the next !
Your observation about your gut flora is certainly something to consider. I always make sure l eat yogurt with active cultures during and after a course of antibiotics for just that reason. Actually, I eat yogurt almost every day for those little buggers.
Rest up.
@ Jimmy, I think Coach has some strong wisdom regarding the hydration and sodium comments. Depending on how much water weight/sweat loss you were experiencing per hour, those sodium requirements could easily be north of 1000 mg / hr.
For 2017, I am seriously thinking IMMT followed by a 4 week interlude leading up to IM CHOO. I could really make that leap if I knew there were a bunch of EN bad asses also planning to attend those races........
SS
What you aren't giving yourself credit for is the mental fitness you had that made you able to tough out a really tough day!
@Mike R - you can impersonate a coach AND you do, you are a WSM!
First set is my last of 3 metric IM sims done as race rehearsals. FWIW, I went with metric sims because i was concerned about how nutrition would go and how the body would feel deep into a run off the bike.
SIM 3 swim http://tpks.ws/vRfgx
SIM 3 bike http://tpks.ws/YzHtJ way more power but still slower due to the crap roads around my area and lack of legal draft i guess
Sim 3 run http://tpks.ws/su26H This is what I was expecting. Or at least there abouts. The other two were more or less the same except the bike looked more efficient because I was on the trainer inside.
Here are the race day files:
Bike http://tpks.ws/EL3Vt same heart rate as sims but no power coming from the effort. Not much "fade" or drift. just not getting too many miles per gallon of effort.
run: http://tpks.ws/ZVnHn Avg hr for the first almost 3 hrs was 143 which was right on with my sims. But again I just wasn't getting speed for the effort. Then it gets wonky when the hail came down.
I think that I am actually happy with the way that I "built the car" in training and the way that I drove the car on race day. The final results are what they are.
On to the next one. Thx for all the input and positive mojo.
Some really great input....Just a couple additional builds on comments/points already made. As you correctly pointed out your sickness and subsequent antibiotics essentially wipes out all the good bacteria along with the bad. All those good bacteria in your gut are gone and need to be recultivated. Could this have caused a problem on race day, maybe, maybe not. But, It does represent a change in the condition from rehearsal to race day. I had a kidney stone a few weeks before the race and tests revealed a possible UTI infection, but i refused antibiotics because I didn't want to take a chance with the antibiotics. My feeling is avoid them if at all possible.
Secondly, i resonate with Tim's comments around HR and RPE. For me, HR on my garmin wasn't working so went 100% by RPE on the bike. When i looked at my garmin file i averaged 133 HR vs. my normal bike HR of 126. I probably would not have biked as well as i did if i had HR showing on my Garmin. At the very least it would have created doubt in my mind. Also, sometimes 150 watts feels like a cool down and other times it's like riding at FTP. No need to chase the number off a cliff. Finally, don't underestimate the impact of not having family support there and cheering for you. It's such a lift to have that to look forward to each lap and that can carry you for several miles afterward. I know i missed having my family there.
Certainly a day of mixed results, but for sure lots of great advice to take away and apply for future races. Big kudos that despite all the issues and conditions you managed to take big chunk out of your run time. It was great to meet you over dinner and congrats on finishing one of those races that will be talked about for years!
I will be racing IMFL for the 3rd time this november. The course is familiar. I feel really excited at the idea of running a metric IM or two during my build totally by rep then seeing what the data shows after it is over. Then maybe even racing by RPE. After all at this point I don't really have anything to lose. I am in that long corridor between "can I finish" and "can I qualify". Seems like a perfect time to try something new.