Steve Cogger’s IMMT 2018 Race Report - Officially a MOPer
IMMT 2018 was my 9th Ironman and my second time racing in Mont Tremblant as well as my second full season with EN.
My times have been varied over the years, ranging from “almost middle but really back of the pack” to “even further back of the pack”. After my first Ironman in 2009, which I used a book to train for, I never followed a plan and just relied on my non-sport-specific fitness to get through the day. Last year at IMMT 2017 was the first time I stuck with EN and a focused training plan starting with the November OS and continued with EN right on through to race day. I was thrilled with my results last year and those were:
IMMT 2017: Swim: 01:20:16 Bike: 06:37:27 Run: 4:43:54 Finish: 12:55:29.0
My previous best was very similar to these times at Arizona 2011, when I finished just shy of 13 hours.
Goals:
For this year, I told Coach P my main goal was to get my bike closer to 6 hours. The reasons for that goal was a) I have never been strong on the bike and I was tired of everyone passing me, and b) I have learned from past experiences, that no matter what kind of run shape I am in, if I suffer on the bike the run flat out sucks.
Training:
I closed out 2017 with the run durability program focusing on getting in 25 miles/week
January Outseason - Did not go all that great due to travel and illness
Followed HIM plan for Quassy 70.3 in June
Finally hopped in to the Full IM Bike Focus plan
A majority of my bike training was done indoors as Zwift workouts. I only managed a handful of outdoor rides, mostly with friends ranging from 70-100 miles and an occasional 12-20miler on my local roads which are all hills.
Due to scheduling and travel my run volume dropped tremendously the final 6-8 weeks leading to race day. I still managed to get the long runs in, but couldn’t muster many of the brick and shorter weekly runs. I knew this would hurt me on race day.
Race Morning:
We stayed right in town so I was able to get my bike set up in transition and return to the hotel room for more food and rest. Nothing really to report here.
Swim:
Before the swim I was sipping on scratch, just trying to stay calm. I dropped off my morning clothes bag, suited up and headed to the beach. Once I got to the beach is when I learned the swim was delayed due to fog and poor visibility. I immediately walked off the beach to find a spot to sit and get off my feet. Fortunately, I stumbled upon a stack of recliners. Naturally, I helped myself to a comfy seat and put my feet up for close to an hour.
Once it started, the swim went as well as expected. I don’t have many swim gears. Actually, at the moment I only have 1 gear in the water. That gear has allowed me to finish each Ironman swim within a few minutes of 1:20 regardless of training.
The swim was one of the most aggressive/brutal I have been in. The visibility dropped so low for the first leg out that spotting the next buoy was impossible and I was just following the herd.
You can see how squiggly and non-straight my swim out was due to fog and low visibility.
I have taken the following approach to the IM swim “This is your current situation for the next hour and twenty minutes so just keep calm and maintain the best form you can” No counting buoys, no worrying about how far I have left to go. I just focus on the current situation and pray I don’t get bad cramps. I simply stuck with the herd until the next buoy would exit the mist and then if I was off course, adjust.
I exited the water in 1:18:54. A full minute faster than my average :)
T1:
While I envy all you super fast transitioners, I’m not quite there yet. I stopped in the porte-let on my way to transition. My body still has not allowed me to relieve myself in my wetsuit. I also worked out the inevitable calf and foot cramps that I get from the swim.
9:50 (I’ll definitely work on this in the future)
Bike:
My nutrition plan on the bike was to Drink Scratch, eat Honey Stinger Waffles, Honey stinger Chews and grab a couple bananas along the way. The aim was for 250-300 Calories per hour and all my fluids have electrolytes because the day was going to warm up. Plus, the later start meant we would be on the bike longer into the heat.
I did train half the season with GE, but then learned that in Canada they do not use GE, just regular Gatorade. Which is why I shifted to carrying Scratch, chews and solids.
I filled a concentrated bottle of scratch which I kept in my cage and a regular concentration in my aero bottle that I started with. Each aid station I refilled my aero with water and a good squirt of the concentrate.
This also limited the weight I would carry as the most I had at any time was only 2 bottles. As I would get to the final climbs I would only have the weight of what was in my aero bottle.
All my solids were in a bento for easy access.
The first banana I grabbed was way to green and tasted awful! It unfortunately turned me off to bananas the rest of the ride. A stupid move in hindsight.
Overall, the bike was the most uneventful Ironman bike I have ever had (In a good way). I just kept my eyes on my power numbers and did my best to keep them at my target. Furthermore, because my run training suffered leading up to the race, I figured I should drop my target by another 5 watts and if I felt good at mile 80 I would play with bumping that up a bit.
The most amazing thing to me was the amount of people I passed during the second loop. I know Coach P has talked about this at length, but this is the first time I witnessed it for myself. I was usually with all those people slowing down. I owe this to using the power meter the EN way. There were times I found myself in a pack that seemed to be going at a decent speed and effort, but then I’d check my power and see that I was way way below my potential. So shift up, get my numbers back where they belong and pass the whole pack. Many of them would catch me going up hills, but I’d go right past them again on the way down and on the flats. It was not only fun, but fascinating to me.
In training I did just one 5.5hour indoor ride holding slightly higher power than I targeted on race day. Anytime I started to ease up I just reminded myself that I already did this in training, but mentally harder. That training ride helped me tremendously on race day.
There is a climb around Mile 82 on the way back on the highway when I realized how hot it actually was. I had only peed once so far (Yes, I stopped because I have not figured out how to pee on the bike yet either) even though I was drinking (or so I thought) a full bottle of scratch between every aid station. So I focused more on taking in fluids and eating chews as those have electrolytes as well.
Around the same time is when my foot started to hurt. My right foot goes numb which transitions to pain on long rides sometimes. I can manage to adjust my pedal stroke and wiggle my toes to deal with it, but it certainly wasn’t going to do me any favors heading up those final hills. The final push up those hills were painful due to my foot, but fitness wise I still felt just fine.
Got to T2 with a ride time of 6:02:14. Given my goal of a 6hr bike, I was thrilled with this. That’s over 35 minutes faster than any IM bike I have done before.
T2
I handed my bike off to a volunteer, took my shoes off for that sweet relief and hobbled my way into the tent. Total T1 time 5:07
RUN
As stated earlier, I wasn’t expecting much from the run. All my long runs were in the glorious heat and humidity we experienced in the North East this year. And my weekly mileage was no where close to where it should have been. Looking back, I should have made many of those shorter runs more of a priority.
My goal was to start slower than slow and see if I could pick it up from there.
Run nutrition: I grab what is on course. Mainly gatorade, Cola, and I carry a vial of base salts.
I also had my Race Saver bag.
*For any of you that don’t have a Race Saver Bag but are planning a hot race I HIGHLY suggest getting one. Every aid station I filled it up with ice and by the next aid station it was melted but I managed to continually wipe my face with a cool bag and dump cold water down my back. It’s like getting a fresh sponge every mile. Which by the way, IMMT gave out zero sponges on the run course.
Even with the bag, the afternoon heat got to me and I just couldn’t get my heart rate to great spot. So I kept moving slower than I wanted.
In the end, I finished the run in 4:50:45. Not great, considering my stand alone marathon PB 3:44ish, but I kept moving forward. And thanks to starting off slow, I didn’t end up slowing down too much on the run.
Conclusion
Total time: 12:26:48
133rd out of 285 in the M40-44 Age group
This marks the first time I am not in the Back half of The Pack. I am now OFFICIALLY A MIDDLE OF THE PACK GUY!!!
This was like a 30 minute PR for me.
Looking back at the season, I feel I did better when I started the out season in November, rather than January. Feb-March seem to be when the kids (and me) get colds, so I feel getting in the hard work during a safer season makes sense.
The run durability was a fantastic way to stay in shape through the winter, but I did not follow through with it during the summer. That was on me and I definitely suffered on the run because of it.
This venue is so much fun, I am already registered for 2019.
Comments
@Stephen Cogger Congrats to making it across to the middle of the pack! Looks like you had a great race considering some of the training limitations you gave yourself. Honestly, you have a ton of low hanging fruit still left on the tree if you decide you want to keep moving on up to the "Front of the middle of the Pack" as your next step...
My guess is your swim training was a bit light, so even though it was a 1 min PR, my guess is it took a bit much out of you which came back to you later on.
For the bike, you mentioned that you were much more focused this OS and it DEFINITELY paid off. However, you also mentioned that you had a single ~5:30 ride in training. If you want to keep making your way up through the pack (and I'm confident you can/will), you should try to hit all of the longer rides in training, including the 2 proper Race Rehearsals, and possibly squeeze in a longer "bike camp", even if it's just 3 days in a row of a long weekend. If you think your confidence was higher because of your ~5:30 ride, imagine how much fitness and confidence you will gain from ~5-6 "Century Rides" throughout the IM build. This might also help you get the foot issues figured out as this might be a training thing, maybe it's a positional thing, maybe your shoes are just too tight. Unless you get there a bunch of times, it's harder to figure it out. I don't want you to read the above as negative, quite the contrary. You had an awesome ride and I just really think you're getting started with your potential.
Very smart starting slow on the run. That was probably mentally hard, but given the conditions, I'm sure that's what allowed you to keep running steady in that heat instead of walking like many of the people I'm sure you were passing. If you have "even" better bike fitness, AND you get slightly better conditions for the run, I'd bet you'll be able to close that gap with your open Mary time to something like ~20-30 mins.
Congrats on a great race!!!
--JW
Sounds like it was very hot? When the temps are north of 30-32C, I think one needs to discount the times by as much as 70-90 sec/mile, as your cardiovascular system is using so much of its capacity just trying to keep your core temp below 40C - not a lot left over for the muscles to say nothing of the gut to absorb calories. So in addition to the massive PR, I think that run shows great fortitude and focus.
In the upper half of the most competitive AG is certainly a great step forward - keep on marching!
@Stephen Cogger
So sorry I missed you at IMMT. Saw a picture of you and your family there, and it looked like you had a fun time. I echo @Al Truscott and @John Withrow and would add doing the FTP builder on Zwift in the out season, targeting the UberBiker 4.0 Watts/kg, and rethinking nutrition on the bike so there are less moving parts, it satisfies calories, Na and fluid requirements and sets you up for the run without gut issues. FYI, planning to take my own advice on this as well. Also planning on a masters swim class this fall to get my swim below 1:18 also as I expect the videos will help with technique, and a couple running 5ks and 10ks to improve speed.