IM Raleigh 70.3 Race Report for Brian Terwilliger
The beauty of IM Raleigh 70.3 for me is it is a local race, eliminating all the travel logistics and nightmares that can occur. So lets get right to the race.
Saturday was pretty relaxed, though had to get up early as my wife and two kids were running races. So I just plopped in a folding chair at the finish. After the race, came home, relaxed and waited till my assigned time to check in my back at T1. Drove up to T1, racked my bike, let the air out of the tires. If you don't, there is a good chance they will pop. Came home and relaxed for a while. Ate. Then packed my run and bike bags.
While a local race, the point to point nature of the Raleigh race presents challenges that other races don't. You can't drive to T1. You can't even get within miles of it. You have to get dropped off at T2 and take a shuttle up to T1. About a 40 minute ride. Wife/Sherpa dropped me off at T1 around 4:30 AM. Put my run bag at my spot in T2 and hopped on a shuttle. Took a nap. Shuttle arrives at Swim Start / T1. Get body marked and right to my bike to take it to bike support to get my tires pumped. The line can get very long, so knocked it out first thing. Bike back on rack, lay down towel, put shoes, helmet, glasses, HR monitor and EN Tri Top out. Grab my goggles and cap and go relax till its go time.
Its a wave start. Pro men at 7, women 7:08, AG starts at 7:16 every 3 minutes. My start is 7:33. Water temp 82.6! Hot. Not good. I overheat in the swim pretty easy in hot water. So I dial back my planned effort a little. Was originally targeting 28 - 29 minutes as the swim is usually a cluster with the wave start oldest to youngest. My wave gets in water. Walk/swim out about 25 yards to the start line. Line up front and far right. Horn goes off and start. There are 4 of us out front and we hang as a group for a couple hundred yards, then they fall back. Very quickly I am swimming into the pink caps (previous group, first half of my AG as we went in 2 waves) and then green (2 groups ahead). And now the traffic jam starts and you have to swim around people. Constantly running into people, going around, re-sighting and getting back on line. Just kept swimming at a pretty relaxed effort. Make final turn for the inward portion, sight the boat ramp exit a few hundred yards out every 10 strokes or so to stay on line. Kept swimming till my hand touched bottom on a stroke, stood up and ran out and up the rap. 31:16, 6th in AG. Not bad for what was a very easy paced, relaxed swim through a lot of traffic. I'm not a fan of waves. Much prefer the self seeded rolling start.
Alright, slow jog to the bike. Cap and goggles in bag, HR strap on. Glasses on. Step into tri top. Helmet on. Socks on, shoes on, grab bike and go. T2 just over 3 minutes.
On to the bike. The easy swim let me start with a low HR. Was 141 when I put the HR on in T1. It quickly dropped to my target of 130. My target watts for the ride was 205 - 210. My power meter is connecting sporadically. Great. The beginning of the bike in Raleigh is pretty much an uphill climb out of the lake with a real stupid out and back with a tight u-turn back up a hill. Its idiotic. PM still not connecting right. So just riding 130bpm and hoping the signal sticks and PM comes on line. Its not. But I have a second quick release on my steam that I can move it to once i get out onto the open road. I do this about 40 minutes in on a nice long flat. PM connects and never drops the rest of the day. Holding my numbers strong at 210 to 220 on the flats and climbs. Some pops up to 240/50 for some of the steeper short climbs. The Raleigh bike course is a great mix of super fast flats, long climbs, rollers, and some killer downhills. Maxed out at 42 mph on a couple of them coasting down the hill. Nothing real exciting happened on the bike. Just peddled, held my targets, and rolled into T2 in 2:34. With virtually no data for the first 40 minutes, power came in at 199, so I suspect it was right in my target window. Now the fun begins. Jogging through T2, my bike decides to hit something on the ground, snapping the front wheel a hard 90 degrees to the right, halting its forward momentum, which took me with it, sending me over the bike and hard to the ground. Unknown to me, the chain decided to take a big hunk of flesh out of the back of my leg. The person taking the chip off at the finish saw the gaping wound and sent me to medical. I had no idea. But, alas, its one of those things that happens. Compose myself, get back up, grab bike, make it to my spot, rack, open Run bag and grab shoes, hat, and race belt. Helmet and shoes into bag, run shoes on, hat on, race belt in hand and out on to the run. Put on belt and settle in at a slow pace. Garmin says 6:15 a mile. This is a lie. I'm barely moving. But being in a tight road between tall building this is obviously a GPS issue and I ignore it. After about a half mile it finally settles into what I think is a correct pace, 7:55. I just hold my perceived effort until aid station 1. Now the sun is beating on us. There is no shade and the first 3.5 miles is all uphill. First mile came in 7:53. Perfect. Right to plan. The next couple miles, while the pace was right on plan, the congestion at the aid stations caused the actual time to cover the miles to drift up to 8:30 plus with the walk break. This continued for the entire race but was able to speed up the aid stations by just not getting a lot of stuff or passing them by. My A+ goal on the run was to go sub 1:45. But came in at 1:47 (8:10 min/mi). Acceptable. And an 11 minute improvement over this race in 2015. The Raleigh run is boring and uneventful. Not really much to say about it other than it is always a freaking oven with no shade. Its a boring run course with really nothing to look forward to or motivate.
Cross finish line, my youngest medals me as my oldest pours a bottle of water on me. They love volunteering at races. Off to medical at the insistence of the volunteer mentioned earlier. The clean me up, bandage, and send me on my way. I proceed to eat 2 pizzas. Now I sit around for an hour and half waiting for T2 to open to get our bikes and bags. Go grab my volunteering family as their shift ended, and off we go back home.
My goal was to break 5. Heartbreakingly close with a 5:00:27. But I feel good about it. Stopping to help a runner standing in the road asking people if they had salt was ultimately the difference coupled with the T2 bike mishap. But I feel great about it and consider the day a total success. And a 35 minute PR for the Raleigh race. And a 3:32 PR for the distance. The PR was done a totally pancake flat course vs Raleigh's fairly hilly bike and run. Up next Chattanooga on Sept 24th with a bunch of other ENers. See you there!
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Congrats on a great race. It was great seeing you several times on the run. I knew you started in a wave 6 or 9 min behind mine and were about a mile behind on the run. Thus, I knew our mutual goal of breaking 5 was within reach. I hung with your spousal unit at the finish waiting for you, but they finally booted me. By the time I got some food and returned, she said you were in medical. Sorry I missed you. But even just chatting with you wife for a few minutes helped me conclude that you married way above your head. So . . . you've got that.
Phenominal swim. You obviously move through human traffic far better than me. Our bike and run times were very similar. Transitions were the difference. I tell anyone who has a time or place goal - whether it's KQ, 5, 6, 10, 12 or 17 hours - transitions are where time is easily stolen and where a lot of dreams get crushed. Learn to ride sockless, put shoes on bike, and T1 becomes helmet, glasses, go. I went 1:40 in Raleigh without rushing. Same for T2: Have your shoes out of the gear bag, ready to go. And unlike T1, no need to put bike gear back in bag. For me, it was just socks, shoes, go-bag, go. I did it under 2 minutes.
Chatt sets up pretty well for you. It's ultimately a runner's course at the FOP of each AG. If you really don't have time or place goals, no need to focus on transitions. But even if your time/place goals are internal or secret, steal 5 minutes by planning, simplifying and practicing TAs. Just my $.02.
Congrats again.
MR
And I snagged my wife by getting her drunk and tricking her. True story.
I need to work on my transitions!! I'm not a runner so I need all the time I can get on them speedy girls. I am going to start biking and running without socks and see how it goes. I do have one question how was that long run without your shoes on? My rack was close to the run out exit and I'm glad I had my bike shoes on to run length of the T2.
@Kellie Moran-Jones, last year I ran all of T2 with my bike in bike shoes and I hated it. Plus, I greatly decreased the life of my cleats. This year, I tested the pavement on Saturday mid-day in bare feet, concluded it wasn't overly hot, ran on bare feet Sunday, and it wasn't even uncomfortable. Just depends on the surface and the temps. As with many things in this silly sport, plan and practice. And I agree, if you came for hills and heat, you chose very wisely.