Raleigh RR & Racing in Heat Revelations
Here’s a quick recap of my day in Raleigh last weekend for the 70.3 and, more importantly (at least to me), some interesting lessons-learned and things to ponder going forward. I would love to get the team’s feedback:
This was a B/C race for me, with no real big build-up prior to the race, as my goal this year is just building some strength and durability, staying mentally and physically fresh, and having the best IM build ever this fall. But I did want to race this course hard and gauge/verify where I am fitness-wise. This is a pretty tough course, but I didn’t think going sub-5 would be an overly difficult task, assuming there were no major issues. But an issue did arise the Wednesday before the race when I came down with my daughter’s killer head cold. Pretty much bed- and couch-bound for the next two days with a high fever and sore throat. Thought about bailing on Friday, but I figured the hotel and race were non-refundable, so I might as well get a mini-vacation out of it and race if I felt better on Sunday. I felt a ton better on Saturday and, absent an unexpected relapse, I should be fine to race on Sunday. And, sure enough, I woke up Sunday feeling pretty strong. Head was still fully congested, but it wasn’t in my lungs.
Swim
Out at Lake Jordan, the air temperature felt great – low 70’s. Water was hot (81F) but calm; should be a great swim. I was one of the few who warmed up, and I felt good/fast in warm-up. I took off in the 4th AG wave, starting front-row at the buoy. As usual, there were a bunch of guys racing out the first couple hundred, with a handful dropping off as expected. From that point to the first turn at 500m or so, it was a group of maybe 10 of us. Felt good, but I was definitely working hard. But by the time we got to that buoy, however, I was totally winded and kinda gasping for air. Upon turning, we faced a pretty strong current and quite a bit of chop for the 1000 or so meters parallel to the shore. I decided to slow down a bit and just cruise this portion at my ownsteady-hard pace. I knew I was letting the FOP go, but I was fine with that. I figured the head cold was affecting my breathing, which would only be an issue on the swim. I’d make it up on the B&R. This leg of the swim took forever, but as we approached the final turn, I caught up with 3-4 of the guys from my AG that had ditched me. I passed at least 100 (from earlier waves), no one ever passed me, so I felt good about where I was, even though I suspected the time would be really bad, maybe :35. When I exited and saw :37, I was momentarily deflated, but I rebounded because I just knew I wasn’t far from the front guys.
T1
As I moved to “bike mode,” I was still 100% committed to racing. And I blitzed T1. It’s very long and narrow, but I ran quickly and smoothly to my spot, got the speedsuit off and in my bag in one fast movement, helmet on, bike off, gone. My 1:50 was nearly 90 seconds faster than the guy who won our AG, the same exact time as Meredith Kessler and only a couple seconds slower that Jarrod Shoemaker and Richie Cunningham – a couple of ITU guys who only get paid when they transition well.
Bike
As planned, I rode the first 6-7 miles pretty conservatively, up and down the chip-seal hills inside the park, then settled into race mode once out on the beautiful highway. By Mile 15, though, I was struggling to hold the 210-15 watts I had planned to ride. This made no sense. It’s not a particularly difficult task to push those watts. But it was today for some reason, this early in the race. And my HR was 5 beats higher than it should be (routinely hitting 140). This continued for many miles. Maybe one or two guys passed me, and I had passed dozens. Still, my NP was only 198 or 199, HR still high. At this point I concluded that the illness was robbing me of some energy and I needed to ride smartly so that I could run. I chose to target 195W through the end of the ride. I ate 3 gels, drank 4 bottles of GE, peed twice, and probably left a gallon of snot on the greater Raleigh area roadways. My ears were plugged up the entire ride, which made things sound a little weird inside an aero helmet. The Raleigh bike course, by the way, is awesome. Maybe 25% glass-like asphalt, 25% chip-seal (pretty smoothed over, not the real rough stuff), maybe 50% average country roads. Very low traffic. Pretty scenery. Lots of turns and rollers, a few decent climbs and descents (I spun out on my 52/12 a few times, maxing at 41mph). The 2900ft of gain was just enough to make it a challenging, but fair and fun ride. I can’t wait to race this thing again, at 100%.
As you can see above, watts just didn't like going >200 and HR didn't want to stay <140. By the time I rolled into T2, I had abandoned any notion of PRing or racing against the top of my AG.<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;" class="Apple-converted-space"> I was pretty congested and miserable and I kinda lost the desire to even run 13.1. But I’ve never DNF’d in over 200 races, and wasn’t about to start now. I really hope that this conversation with myself was internal, but who knows.
T2
Unlike T1, I took my sweet time in T2. 2:35 was competitive, but not top of class. The new goal I formulated in transition was to jog the run at low HR (150), do no harm (I don’t need to enter summer with Bronchitis or Pneumonia) and try to run 2 hours and maybe finish around 5:15. There’s no shame in 5:15, and pre-EN Mike would have celebrated such a time with conviction.
Run
Just like the bike, I quickly noticed that HR was way high for the effort I was putting out. I really had to crawl to get it down below 150. But crawl I did. The run course, just like the bike course, is pretty awesome. Wide downtown roadways completely blocked off, jammed with spectators. Unlike some 70.3s where you have 4 feet of coned spaced to run with 2,500 other runners next to a stream of cars, we had 30 feet to run on each side. Not a lot of shade, but it’s only 13.1 miles. At nearly 600 feet of gain, it’s all gradual up on the 3.3 miles out (some areas less gradual than others), all gradual down on the way back. Two loops. When my HR spiked, I walked. And I walked the entirety of every aid station but the last two. I probably thanked 500 people. I really enjoyed the run, maybe more than any IM or 70.3 run in the past. Data says I spent a bit more than 35 minutes at Active Recovery pace (basically, 9:00 or slower). So, it really was more like a walk sprinkled with moments of jogging. Even though it was in the 80’s, it never really felt that hot, so I ditched my ice bag at the second AS. When I needed to pee, I acted all gentrified and used one of those porto johns that I have seen at races, but never use. I ran the last couple hundred yards through the chute to look respectable for the cameras, finished the run in 1:53. 5:09 overall. I figured I was 50th or 60th in my AG, maybe top 500 OA. But I was quite happy with my race. No regrets at all.
Lessons Learned
I grabbed my gear, walked back to the hotel, took some Sudafed, showered, and came back down to watch the rest of the EN crowd finish. I had “learned” that, although a recent illness can affect power/effort on race day, the impact was only maybe 5 or 10%. Something good to know for future races.
Or so I thought . . .
I got a couple texts from friends, one of which congratulated me on running my way through the field to a top 20 AG place. “Running my way through” . . . what? I don’t think so. I ducked into a pizza place and checked the results. Sure enough, I came out of the water in 26th after that craptastic swim. But, as expected, the swim was very slow for everyone, and I was less than a minute from most of the top guys. And my 2:34 bike was actually quite fast compared to the competition (1 minute slower than 3rd place AG), on a course where 2:25 sometimes isn’t that competitive. It made no sense. There was wind, but it didn’t seem to have that big of an impact. But, still, I moved up to 22nd with that very sub-par ride. And how on earth do I move into the top 20 with a 1:53 jog/walk and get within 20 minutes of the podium? Surely I gave up 20 minutes on the swim and run alone. Did nobody train? Has the entire tri community gone soft?
Around the time of the awards ceremony (at the finish line), there was a discussion with some of the pros about the “harsh race conditions.” What conditions? It was 82 and maybe 10mph wind. It’s the South – this is mild picnic weather down here. Everyone seemed to agree that race times were 10-15 minutes slower than last year, even though last year the temps were 3 degrees hotter. One of the pro males then said, “the difference this year was the dew point; the temperature was meaningless.” Huh? “When the dew point gets above 70, your sweat doesn’t evaporate, you can’t cool yourself, HR goes up, you go slower - period. It’s not hydration, it’s not acclimating – the only solution is to slow down.” I thought: he basically just summed up Al T’s Racing in Heat guidance, but I had never heard someone laser in so much on only dew point.
Sure enough, last year Raleigh was 85 degrees at mid-day, but the dew point was “only” 65. This year, it was 82 degrees at mid-day, but the dew point was 72. And the times this year compared to last year were significantly slower, from the pros down to DFL. Could 7 dew points really make that huge of a difference? Moreover, was it that 72 dew point, and not my illness, that was responsible for my high-HR, low-power outputs and 5-10% slow-down? Hmmm . . .
This also caused me to re-visit IMFL last year, where the thermometer said it wasn’t that hot, but on the run it felt like the heat just sucked every ounce of life out of me, I ran with high HR/low pace and – yet – mowed through most of the field with a run that was way slower than I expected/wanted. And I remember Coach P saying after the race that he thought the Florida conditions felt worse than some years in Kona.
So, for fun, I looked at my results on Athlinks, picked out a handful of races where I ran to goal in temperatures that met Coach P’s general definition of “hot” (80+F) as he discussed in this linked chat about racing in heat (http://members.endurancenation.us/R...s+and+Perf). And a handful of races where temps were in the 80s but produced runs that were more like death marches. Then I looked up mid-day race conditions for each. It’s far from scientific, but the 70-dew-point threshold that the pro mentioned this past Sunday at least looks to have some anecdotal legitimacy:
Hot, but still ran goal pace:
IMTX: 84F/52DP
Miami 70.3: 82/60
Chicago Mary: 82/55
Hot, death march:
Phuket Tri: 85/72
Kansas 70.3: 80/72
IMFL ’15: 84/75
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find races where the dew point was in the mid- to high-60s for a better comparison to those in the 70s.
Now I wanted to see whether Coach P’s comparison of IMFL ’15 to Kona mid-day conditions was accurate or complete BS:
Kona ’15: 87/73
Kona ’14: 85/69
Kona ’13: 83/71
Kona ’12: 85/67
Kona ’11: 85/69
The above Kona numbers look eerily similar, year-in, year-out, always hovering a little above or below that 70 dew point number. I seriously doubt those few points make the difference between a “mild” Kona conditions year vs. a “brutal” one. That is, I suspect that although the 73 dew point certainly didn’t help on the run last year, the lack of overcast and breeze is likely what really made the run so difficult for most. The reason the previous couple of years weren’t considered as brutal was probably more due to the overcast and breeze than the marginally lower dew points. But, sure enough, just comparing dew points, IMFL ’15 really was pretty epic.
Finally, I Googled the subject to see if this has already been covered and found an article in Runner’s World that also tends to validate the 70-dew point threshold notion:
"It's Not the Heat, Nor the Humidity
It's the dew point. That's the meteorological measure that best predicts how tough your summer running is going to be. Simply put, the dew point is the temperature at which water condenses. The closer the dew point is to the air temperature, the more saturated the air is and the less perspiration can evaporate and help the body cool itself, resulting in extra stress on the heart and lungs as the body attempts unsuccessfully to cool itself. Accordingly, the dew point provides a strong indicator of how you'll feel running and a useful tool in predicting how much performance will be impacted.
|
DEW POINT (°F) |
RUNNER'S PERCEPTION |
HOW TO HANDLE |
|
50–54 |
Very comfortable |
PR conditions |
|
55–59 |
Comfortable |
Hard efforts likely not affected |
|
60–64 |
Uncomfortable for some people |
Expect race times to be slower than in optimal conditions |
|
65–69 |
Uncomfortable for most people |
Easy training runs might feel OK but difficult to race well or do hard efforts |
|
70–74 |
Very humid and uncomfortable |
Expect pace to suffer greatly |
|
75 or greater |
Extremely oppressive |
Skip it or dramatically alter goal” |
Al’s Heat Adjustment spreadsheet (https://www.box.com/s/0sh530z6qjcf8k0oe4cc) definitely takes dew point into account, but I’ve never seen it viewed like this in a vacuum, and I’ve definitely never seen the relative threshold numbers (i.e., 70+ = serious sufferfest) mentioned above. Maybe this is old news and some of you have been focusing on it for years. It’s certainly something I’ll now look at as I prepare and plan for my future hot races. Would be interested to hear some of your takes on the subject.
Comments
Full disclosure...I merely helped on the heat pace calculator, provided feedback, pulled data, weather conditions on race day, provided presentation advice, and translation from geek talk to human speech. Matt Samodjean came up with the idea, did the background research to come up with the dew point/temp equation, and did all the math and data crunching to produce the spreadsheet.
I'm sure it's not *just* dew point, as there are some temps above which even a decent dew point won;t allow optimal pacing. And there are altitude, terrain, wind, and fatigue status to consider. That's why the use of HR as a primary metric is so effective...it takes into consideration ALL of those factors. My basic message has always been, "Don't try to fight external reality." If 90% of the game is half mental, don't beat yourself up against the other 50% you can't control. Sometimes we just have to slow down, and it doesn't mean we're not tough enough.
Your kid's cold helped you inadvertently do that, with a fairly good end result, in retrospect.
Looking the charts, it explains alor of the walking zombies at IMMT 15 where DP was 76. I guess I did well on the run with 3:51..
And amazingly the Red Bull was like secret sauce. Calmed down my stomach and made my headache go away. Started at mile 7 and had a cup at 8,9 and 11.