Jimmy's IMAZ Report - Swim Bike Walk
I really dont want to write this race report. For a few reasons. First off because it will read pretty much like my IMFL report from last year. Swam Fine. Biked easier than I had planned, ate and drank to plan only to have my stomach refuse anything after about 10 miles.
I’m writing because Coach P wants a race report to look at before we debrief. So here goes.
This is IM #7. I wasn’t sure that it was going to happen. I had a really rough go last year in #6 and as I walked about 10 or so miles I decided that I didn’t want to do this any more. After some rest I decided to give the out season a go and got a running injury that put me out for about 12 weeks. During that time life and family filled the void and I suspected that I was moving on. Then some thing s fell in to place at work, my injury cleared and I decided to give it another go.
My real focused build was about 14 weeks long. During that time I logged 200 hrs and 12242 tss. It wasn’t the most effort I’d put in but it was up there. I worked with coach P to cobble together a schedule that would allow me to make soccer games and volley ball games and show up for work. I ended up with lots of 1hr sessions. I skipped a few days of work for a “Camp” of 5:30 on the trainer, 5 on the trainer the next day and a 2hr run during week 15. NP for these rides was 155. I did a RR in week 17 of a 5:30 bike at 150w and an hour run at 10min/mi. My longest run was 3 hrs at 10min/mi. I didn’t expect to run that fast on race day but I expected that 10:30 would be a good target depending on the weather.
Best bike split is usually pretty accurate for me and it said that 150w would get me around in just under 5:30.
Here is a look at my PMC chart from the past few years. The big difference in this build was how much I had let go of SBR. I was actually back in crossfit!
I did 90% off my riding on the trainer. Given my schedule I opted for the zero admin time of a trainer plus my ability to be home with the kids if my wife needed to go do something while I rode. Plus lots of people way faster than me swear by the trainer so I figured that it would get me ready.
Here is TSS by week for the months leading up to the race:
I felt reasonably ready is what I am trying to say. I had put on some weight when I got off the bike and picked up the weights but that had come back off for the most part. Here is a chart of my morning weight over the past 5 or so years. You can see where the IM races fell!
Lets talk nutrition. Because that seems to be becoming a major problem as the years go by. Af far back as 2014 I can see notes in my race reports about having stomach problems on the run. But they were minor annoyances. Didn’t want the gels I brought by mid run so I ate the ones on course. Stuff like that. But IMFL 16 and now IMAZ 17 my stomach simply shut down and wouldn’t take anything in without sending it right back out with 13 mi to go.
So this is what I ate this time. Worked fine in my RR by the way.
early morning 1/2 of peanut butter sandwich. I always eat this before races. But I am open to it being the problem. I stopped gnawing on it by 5am.
Sipped diluted gatorade endurance till it was time to get in wetsuit.
The swim was uneventful and was the same 1:15 that I seem to always swim. Decent amount of contact. Lots of free draft on the way out, less on the way back. Water wasn’t too cold. Although I am glad that I did the practice swim the day before. It was fine. I felt good getting out of the water. Didn’t drink too much of the water.
Swim took 1:15.
Swim took 1:15.
On the bike I had 6 bottles of GE, 2 small waters to clean my mouth and hands, 3 sleeves of cliff blocks (1 caffeinated) 2 pouches of sport beans and a caffeinated cliff gel for a total of about 2000 cal. (I weight 165).
I peed once at the start of the swim, and twice on the bike (1 time at the fstart of the first downhill and again at the second).
Here is a picture of my ride. TSS was 289 via heart rate as PM was not working.
You may notice that there is no power information. My garmin didn’t pick up my powermeter. Still don’t know why. At the time I didn’t worry about it because I have ridden plenty by HR and even had a good race in Cozumel off of RPE when my tech failed. So I rode by heart rate. My target was 136 ppm and I was pleased by how easily my HR came to target. The first lap took 1:55. I did the math and saw that I was on pace for 5:45. Which is slower than what 150w should have been giving me but I wasn't going to chase a bike split. I would just ride my HR, eat and drink to plan and redeem myself on the run. Lp 2 took a little extra time for some reason. Lap 3 was a little quicker but regardless it was a 6 hr bike split which should have been conservative. HR was in check and it was time to get on my feet.
I cramp from time to time on the run. Pickle juice clears it up immediately. I cramped a bit over the first mile or two but I had a little pickle juice with me and after a few sips the cramps were gone. My plan was to stick to a `135 bpm avg run pace for at least the first 1/2 of a lap regardless of how slow that was. I knew that the heat might effect me and I wanted to save energy for when the temps dropped.
Then after about 15min, I lost heart rate information to my garmin. Rough day as far as tech goes. Luckily I had found what I thought was a workable rhythm in the 10 or so minutes prior. If I ran 90 seconds and then walked 30 I could keep my heart rate where I needed it to be. Yes that meant 11 min miles but that was ok. In fact all I cared about was keeping my heart rate in check. So I just watched the clock and repeated that same 2min cycle for a couple of hours. Along the way I had to pee so I hit the porto at about mile 8. I was taking 2 cups of gatorade at every station and putting some ice in my go bag.
Some time between mile 8 and 10 I had the stomach shut down again. It feels like a sour constriction just below my sternum and nothing goes past it. So it is like anything I swallow just stays in my throat. I talked this over with my doc (also an ironman finisher) after florida and he said it was gastritis and put my on prilosec for the week leading up to the race. Said that should do the trick. Nope. The trick was not done. By mile 14 I was cooked. I walked 18min mi from 14 to 18. Then, also like in florida last year I was able to slowly start introducing 60 or 70 steps of running every so often without feeling like I was going to go down. It is such a frustrating and demoralizing situation to be in. There is so much further left to go. You feel sick as hell. You know that at your current pace you are going to have to keep going for hours like that but if you try to run you feel so sick that you worry about DNF which to me would have invalidated all the work done and time spent.
I promised myself that if I just kept walking it would eventually end and there was no reason that I wold ever have to do this again.
Here is a picture of the death march:
In hindsight, it looks like I held it together through about mile 11 which is about when things went south for my stomach.
So there it is. The good, The bad and the ugly. I finished.
On the positive side, I swam fine with no panic or stress. I was able to manage my effort on the bike. I didn’t chase a bike split or other riders. I was able to stay small going in to the wind. I ate and drank enough to pee 2x on the bike and 1x on the run at mile 8. And most of all I didn’t quit.
I look forward to a call with coach P to talk over what is happening to me. I will of course pass along anything that I learn to the group. One of the tough parts about this sport is just how few data points I can actually gather. I mean if I am having stomach issues 9 or 10 hours in to an endurance event, how do I experiment? How often am I actually in that situation? 1x per year? 2 if I am crazy? 3 if I am coach P?
And it seems like everyone I talk to has a different solution. More cal, less cal, more salt, less salt, different carb mix.
I’m honestly wondering if training indoors so much isn’t contributing to the problems I am having. The wind docent bother me but I think that the temperature difference might be a factor. Yes I have done long sessions on the trainer and the nutrition has gone down fine but maybe being out on the road on a bike that is moving in air that is warmer might make a difference? I have always assumed that if my HR was right then the stress level on my system was right and I could digest. I really don’t know.
Anyway, it took a couple of days for my stomach to ease up. I had a really dinner tuesday night after coming home from work early because I still felt sick. Needless to say my kids don’t care what my time was. The people at work don’t know that I was slower than I had expected to be. And I feel really good about finishing.
My worry is that if I decide to go for #8, will this happen again? My deepest worry is that the whole thing is mental. That I don’t “want it” bad enough. That my mind fabricates the whole sickness and uses it as an excuse to walk.
So that is it. The whole saga. Swim 1:15, Bike 5:57, Run walk 6:05.
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Comments
And, yes, it is frustrating that there is no real way to test this in training. First you have to swim 75 minutes, then get 290 TSS on a bike, and run for at least two hours. Ain't gonna happen. The only way to test any changes will be another race. The prospect of several hours of walking to finish 140.6 is not motivating to getting back on that horse. You're the only one who's going to be able to figure out if you want to tackle it again.
On the nutrition side, I agree with Al that your run calories were high. The bike calories looked spot-on, but perhaps you are one of those people that don't well drinking large amounts of GE. I know I'm in that camp. I need a 50/50 mix of GE and water, then rely on gels and blocks for additional calories
IMO the peanut butter sandwich didn't help -- nut butters tend to sit for a long time as the GI system slows under race-day stress. Can you tell us more about your diet leading up to the race? What was dinner the night before ... and breakfast ... how about on Friday's meals ... maybe there's something that we can find. And what was different nutritionally from IM Texas last year?
Tagging @Sheila Leard as our resident dietitian, she may have additional insight
we think that my bike nutrition was too dense for the amount of fluid. I was washing down blocks and beans and gels with Gatorade Endurance. I hit my caloric targets but I didn’t have enough water to process the solids that I had added to the Gatorade in order to hit my calorie numbers. By the time I started running it was too late.
my run nutrition was only a 1/2 filled paper cup or two every mile.
anyway, I feel like I have something to work on for next time (yup there will be a next time). I need to find out how much water it is recommended that an athlete take with every sleeve of blocs and make sure that I am added that in.
or just switch to liquid like EFS gel flasks and take water on the course.
the peanut butter sandwich is something to consider changing as well. But honestly I’ve had one before every ironman and 1/2 I’ve ever done. Everything is on the table for change but that one is an old habit.
I've been chatting with Jimmy behind the scenes ... for some people, talking about personal nutrition is as private as they're bank account. I never know.
Anyway, Al brings up a good point about absorption. For others on the team with gut issues here are some things to ponder. I'm highlighting some points Jimmy and I discussed.
1. Hypertonic solutiions vs hypotonic and/or isotonic. This is important for Jimmy to consider because of his comment "Some time between mile 8 and 10 I had the stomach shut down again. It feels like a sour constriction just below my sternum and nothing goes past it. So it is like anything I swallow just stays in my throat". This sounds like GERD.
In some athletes , acid reflux can be triggered by too many concentrated carbs. The bike fuel was potentially creating an osmotic load .... meaning the carbs are building up in the gut and the only way to get absorption of the small intestine going is to draw water from the blood, hence dehydration, bloating, nausea, i.e., "shut down".
Gatorade has an osmolalty in the range of 300 - 330. Blood is around 285. My recommendation to Jimmy is to drink a true hypotonic drink like NBS (that is now on our sponsor list and is great!), Skratch Labs, OSMO or EFS Pro. The beauty of these drinks is that you can nibble on blocks, bars (with no fiber & fat), and titrate in the carbs instead of a bolus of carbs. Sports nutrition companies that are staying up with the literature are all dropping the carbs and increasing the electrolytes in their products. GE has supposedly been reformulated. Remember, sodium and glucose piggy back into the cell. If there is too much glucose it won't happen.
An hour before T2 stop all chewing and prep the gut for the run. Dial down calories/hour on the run.
2. Bring down the fat in pre-race fuel. Peanut butter for sensitive guts could really slow digestion. An alternative is MCT Powder stirred into cream of rice cereal or your coffee. It will provide fat but is easily converted t energy.
3. No fiber 48 hours before race. Residual fiber from seeds and skin can be lurking.
PS: Jimmy be aware of citric acid in sports drinks ... this is also a trigger for GERD. Gum arabic is an emulsifier that can slow absorption.
http://www.pepsicobeveragefacts.com/Home/Product?formula=F0000005607&form=RTD&size=24
I wonder about having concentrated carbs and sodium in the form of a feed bottle and then taking the right amount of water on the course from aid stations.
or, taking GE on the course but figuring out how much water I will also need to take to process the blocks etc that I need to supplement my caloric needs.
Another way is to start with 2 full bottles of Skratch or OSMO and have on board sleeves of each. Be sure to have them opened and ready to pour into your aero bottle mixed with water from aid station
You could also have some stashed at special needs or bottles ready made to switch out.
Yes it would be easier to go course support. In a pinch I've taken the GE and mixed it with water in front aero bottle. Don't let fueling be your limiter. Think it through and keep personalizing it.
Way to tough it out on the run. A couple things I noticed about the nutrition 1/2 a sandwich and diluted Gatorade, seems light in the AM. Many take in much more calories than than prior to race start. If you are cramping do you need more salt prior to the pickle juice?