Tim Cronk 2019 IMAZ Race Report
My streak is over! What streak? Since turning 50, 7 KQ's in a row, with a finish of 3rd or higher (1-1st, 4-2nd, 2-3rd) , in all Ironman Distance races that I actually finished (not counting DNF's), and excluding KONA WC. Stats for the last 14 IM's not counting this one , 7KQ's, 3DNF's, and 4 KONA's. All good things must come to an end. Maybe I'll come out of Ironman retirement in 3 years to race M60-64??? Maybe Cozumel for some unfinished business there.
Race Venue- Felt like the race was outgrowing the area of Tempe with all the new construction. Also felt like Corporate owners of the IM brand have continued making more cuts. Still a great race, great venue. We have always stayed on the Scottsdale side of the race and been very happy, but this year and going forward I would strongly recommend staying as close to the race start as possible to make all activities walking distance. Between Mission Palms and a bunch of newer Corporate type airbnb options this appears easier than in the past.
Here is the race plan. https://endurancenation.vanillacommunities.com/discussion/26233/tim-cronk-2019-imaz-race-plan#latest
Drove up friday after some taper workouts, packet pickup, check into hotel. Some bag prep , then feet up before dinner.
Team Dinner- Pita Jungle was so much better than Boca de Peppe IMO. Reconnecting with old friends and making many new ones. Good food, good people, hard to beat.
Saturday Day - Was going to go out for breakfast, but needed to find Heather a Look Keo cleat for one of her bike shoes, so we just ate at the hotel. I had put out a "help need cleat message" on GM, as usual all EN'ers go out of their way to help with many options. @Nam Lam actually brought his shoes to dinner to take a cleat off them and give to us. Huge benefits of racing with EN and specifically focus races. While I was searching local bike shops I talked to Steve Warsaw who was traveling with us and he had extra cleats. Success. Finished prepping our bags, headed to race for practice swim , and bike/bag drop off. Lunch, spent some afternoon time with @Coach Patrick talking EN Ultrarunning stuff, then back to room for dinner and feet up.
Saturday Night- Went to bed around 8pm, woke up several times throughout the night if full on soaked to the bone night sweats, this a very weird phenomenon that I have experienced many times before an IM. Friday night I had slept like a baby with Zero issues and not even a midnight pee which is rare these days. I do not know what causes this , but I dont like it as I wake up with a depleted body from losing all that sweat. Drinking more does nothing except make me pee more. Since it happens so often , I have not been able to correlate to performance, I have had my absolute best races and absolute worst races after nights like this.
Sunday- Wake and prep as planned. When I started the car, I noted that it turned over a little slow, I thought I noticed when I started it to drive to Tempe on friday as well. Hmmm? T- prep etc as planned.
Swim- goal was 1:05, actual 1:06...most people had reported long swims with the gps files so this was probably a good swim. Had 1 gel pre-swim, spit washed goggles with warm water in a bottle I had and shed my Walmart clothes donations. They changed the swim yet again and for the worse, there are 2x 90 degree turns in the first few hundred yards, and the finish is 4/10 of a mile from T1, neither of those changes are necessary IMO. Lined up near the front with Satish and Robin, wore all my thermal gear, swam comfortably hard, seemed to take forever, felt cold and got colder , could really feel my body temp lowering through the swim. NO file , dont wear a watch on the swim.
T1- goal 5min (based on old T1) actual 12 min which included the new half mile run, grabbed bag, sat down in tent, empty bag, dried off , jersey with bubble wrap chest had volunteer zip for me, shoes on, arm warmers on, helmet on, put gloves on heading toward bike. Volunteer stuffed bag.
Bike- goal 5:15 on 160-165watts , actual 5:33 on 142/145watts. I was shivering so hard for the first 30-45minutes my neck really hurt, that slowly subsided and then moved into my left shoulder blade , while uncomfortable was much more bearable than the neck. Had @Satish Punna go by me around mile 8 and then @DAVID RICHMOND go by me somewhere near the turnaround on lap one, I thought YES this means I musta had a pretty good swim/T1 since I still did not know those times, then I thought OH NO this means I'm having a pretty bad bike. Normally when I am this cold I over ride the beginning in my effort to get warm. This time the cold felt like it was preventing my ability to produce the power I planned. Just went with what I had and focussed on staying aero, my lower back was co-operating which was a huge positive. Ditched my bubble wrap, arm warmers, and gloves after first lap. Due to the cold I only drank 3 bottles on the bike, ate everything I planned 1 cliff bar, 6 cliff blocks, 1 gel. Was able to pee 3x on the return downhill downwind sections despite my depleted starting state and only 3 bottles. Caught @DAVID RICHMOND on the last lap ,got a little TTbike relative work in with an EN fist bump, and we finished seconds apart. In the end, I think I executed well, pretty even splits, ironically my slowest lap was on the most watts and the fastest lap was on the least watts. Bottomline this is where I lost the race, I needed to be in my 5:15 or better goal to truly be a contender. It is what it is :-)
Bike Data - time 5:33, 142ap/145np, VI 1.02, w/kg 2.65 , 2834kj
lap 1 1:51:20 on 144/146w
lap 2 1:52:57 on 147/149w
lap 3 1:49:00 on 135/139w
T2 - goal 2-3minutes actual 2:23 , yeah finally hit a goal, left shoes on the bike, handed off bike to volunteer, while running removed helmet and unzipped extra jersey, grabbed bag, sat down in tent, @DAVID RICHMOND sat next to me, socks and shoes on, grabbed belt , volunteer asked if I was done, said yeah, he took my bag, then as I was leaving realized I still had the second jersey on, took it off and gave it to my volunteer.
Run- goal 3:45 on 8:30-8:35pace , actual 4:15 on 9:41 pace. started off easy with a 8:48 first mile, I did not know where I was placement wise but knew it was much further than I would have liked, feeling pretty good, there was still some possibilities of a respectable placement with a top notch run, so I proceeded to run via and increased RPE but felt it was within reason, next 7 miles were all around 8' which is definitely too fast, but I figured I'd let it happen, ease back a little, and try to minimize the fade that would come. Then the issues started, very early in the run my right big toe felt numb, almost like it was cold, then it felt like I was going to get a black toenail, then the pain increased and got worse, on my left foot I could feel a blister on the bottom of the ball of my foot and my left shin was hurting , then my mid section felt pretty strained , couldn't tell if it was organs , muscles or both, including a side stitch cramp under my ribcage. @Kori Martini confirmed my fears with a 14th placement, I eased back a little to get a hold of these issues, logging mostly 8:15-8:45 miles to mile 16. Nothing was getting better and everything was getting worse. I need to walk a bit and hopefully make a comeback. I put on my Ultra hat and walked hard, I kept trying to run , but these ended up being very short sections. No doubt physically and mentally broken at this point. 17-18 were transition miles trying to fight whatever it was I was fighting. Miles 19-26 was capitulation and fast walk / short run 11-13min miles. Got a lot of comments from runners saying your walking faster than I am running :-) Highlight of the run was some interaction with @Dana Burns and then watching @Rich Stanbaugh catch and pass me. There is always a positive. I drank 1 cup full of gatorade at every aid station, sipped gel from my flask every third aid station, switched to coke with occasional pretzel at mile 17 to finish. Peed 3x on the run and the last one was in a porto potty where I observed some dark brown urine pretty much confirming how I was feeling.
Run Data - time 4:15, 159ap/169np, 9:41pace, 2.96 w/kg, 2442kj's
lap one 1:48:38 188/190w 8:17pace
lap two 2:26 138/147w 11:10 pace
Post Race Night- my buddy Steve Warsaw was in the finish area waiting, he DNF'ed having been cut off in the danger zone bike mount area and crashed his bike, was able to finish bike but injuries did not work for his run, saw @Satish Punna who called it a day with back issues, then @Coach Patrick winner :-) , @Rich Stanbaugh , @Jeff Phillips ,who both had fantastic days. Picked up morning clothes, got changed to stay warm, had some food, checked tracker for Heather, caught her at mile 17 the EN tent for a kiss, then picked up our bikes with the help of @Nam Lam . Then Nam and I went to finish to catch @Dana Burns , @Al Truscott winner, @Gary Lewis , @Stephanie Stevens , and Heather finish. Headed to Mellow Mushroom with a bunch of the team to drink , eat, and talk about the day. When Heather and I got back to the car it was 11:45pm and the car would not start, there was a fight going on between 2 biker girls and some guy in a jeep, found some jumper cables from the second person I asked, got a jump and headed home.
Day After- rough night sleep LOL, breakfast in hotel, asked Steve Warsaw to drive me to Autozone for a car battery , swapped that out, packed up the car , checked out, went to awards to see @Coach Patrick and @Al Truscott get the KONA slots. Then headed out to a Team lunch with the remaining peeps. Was home , unpacked, and on the couch by 4pm Monday afternoon.
I didn't get the race I wanted, but I got the race I earned on that day. Its certainly never a given. Congrats to those who had great races and to those who like me did not have the day they envisioned, step back, focus on the positives as there are many !
Here's one of mine, Heather's mile 17.
Toe hurt so bad I thought it was broken, went to Podiatrist Doctor for xrays, no break, joints looked great, just a sever contusion. NO idea how this developed , but it was a major factor on my run, still limping around with pain but its getting better every day and a little less colorful.
Heathers cleat replaced .
Comments
Hey Tim, I just love the way you put it all out there. Win/lose/or draw LOL.
So what is next for you, more Ultra Running, or something else?
Btw, how "well prepared" were you on the bike VO2 max-wise?
thk u for sharing your knowledge/experience....even when things don't go as planned.
Wow Tim, quite a day!
It seems to me that while you didn't add to your KQ collection, you also didn't add to your DNF collection. It takes grit to keep going even when it's not your day.
Pat
It was a pleasure meeting you and Heather . You were the exact nice guy as @Steve boer described. I was so impressed by your laser focus race efforts throughout the day. Certainly didn’t leave anything on the table. Thanks so much for all the advice you shared over the weekend.
@tim cronk Tough race but you always work the problem and keep pushing through. That's one crazy looking toe. Enjoy the down time after the big season.
@Peter Greagg Yep and I'll call this one a draw! Next up for me is the inaugural Ultraman Arizona in late March. No other major plans after that but have lots of Ultra idea's. Vo2max prep ? Well not as good as I was in May as you will see by the charts I think you'd be interested in below , but that was by design with the time I had, focus had to be on the long bike since it was so weak, my bike week was essentially 1 day ftp work usually in the range of 2x 15'-22' , 1 day of long ride IM or better, and one day of mostly endurance where I would make sure to get in some Vo2 work, I'll call this low level Vo2 mostly 105-110% since most of it was in aero in the 4-6' range with a couple minutes per week of 1' intervals seated all out. So I feel I kept those systems triggered but certainly not enough to improve again indicated in charts. Bottomline for me on bike prep, I felt I needed 4 more weeks of long rides to peak, and of course that woulda been 4x more ftp/vo2 sessions.
My Hero Bar- FWIW I believe the mFTP to be quite accurate, not sure on the others and everything is probably based off my sFTP which was still set a bit higher?
A picture of Vo2max down from the peak in May.
@DAVID RICHMOND YW and same to you sharing your not so perfect day, its easy and human nature to only wanna share the good, so we gotta take the bad with the good, that is where we learn. If it were all good WTH fun would it be.
@Pat Morton That word GRIT came up in my day a few times last Sunday. I'm pretty sure its ingrained in my head forever :-) On Thanksgiving I was telling a friend about somebody I had recently met, that actually gave me hope in the human race again, and then I brought up Ken Choubler, since he also had that same effect on me.
@Nam Lam Nice guy LOL haven't been called that before. We'll see what @Steve boer thinks of me after I pace him at Ghost Train :-) Can't wait to watch you race IMSG after IMAZ camp:-)
@Gordon Cherwoniak Yeah the toe still hurts but a little less each day, a little less colorful as well, I'm enjoying my "Trainwreck" after race season / holiday but I'm only 4 months away from UMAZ so I cant let it get too far out of hand.
@tim cronk not necessarily the best outcome for a race after which you suspend your IM self for an indeterminate period. But you are already into athletic endeavors which will certainly take advantage of a number of your skills and attributes. Ultra running and triathloning will reward your mental focus and preparedness, attention to details of pacing and nutrition, coordination of team support, and most important, your massive aerobic engine.
I'm looking forward to coming down to AZ in March with Cheryl and provide whatever help you want and need, as well as watching you set and exceed your own expectations.
Night sweats before a race? No real clue, but a guess is that it is related to a combo of hydration, hormonal disruption which is partly due to mental anticipation. As we get older, men get night time hot flashes too, just not as dramatic an onset age-wise as women.
@tim cronk Great summary of your day. This would have likely been a wreck for someone with less experience and drive than you have. There is a clearly a very large victory in your race. It was great to meet you Heather and share the course, as well as dinners, etc. Looking forward to seeing you guys at the volume camp in the spring. Good luck with the UMAZ prep!
great to see you guys as always.
sorry we got you on a bad day but nice job dealing with the issues.
the sweats thing is weird. let us know if you figure out the cause.
appreciated starting the day with you and Satish. I found it very settling.
the battery fiasco was weird too.
have a good toe recovery.
I regret all the opportunities I missed to race with you in Kona. maybe when we're older.
have a good build to the Arizona Ultraman.
hopefully see you soon.
@tim cronk Thank you for replying and sharing that information.
One thing struck me from your Hero Bar is your Stamina of 78. I'm guessing that your best races had it higher than that?
In the event you come back to triathlon racing, I point out that Tim Cusick from WKO4 says that Stamina is quite trainable. TTE influences it, where longer TTE gives higher Stamina. TTE can easily be pushed into the 50-70 mins duration. Start with your current TTE @ mFTP and add 5 mins per week.
Stamina is also increased by 0.85 IF intervals with duration of TTE. Most can start at 1.5 times TTE, and add duration (I use 5 mins per week) weekly. I have seen 2.5 times TTE (where TTE was 60 mins).
Using this approach I pushed my Stamina up to 86, which allowed me to have bike TSS of over 210, and still run up to my run fitness at the Worlds 70.3 at Chatanooga in 2017. (https://endurancenation.vanillacommunities.com/discussion/23899/possible-use-of-tte-and-stamina-metrics-in-wko4-to-improve-long-course-triathlons#latest).
While I recognise your VO2 max was low for you, it is still high in an absolute sense. Noting you have described in other posts your general approach to raising it, I was hoping you would share a detailed description (ie a recipe) of your VO2 max interval sessions?
Great report! I really appreciate how you detail exactly how the day
unfolds it. You’re a experience was similar to mine in many ways, and I’m
sorry to hear how things just didn’t come around on the bike. I think from
the macro perspective it’s clear that the work you did to be so successful
that Leadville came at a cost. Still great to see you out there mixing it
up and putting pressure on all of us to race better.
Most of all, thank you so much for your time to discuss the ultrarunning
stuff. Very excited to put that together for the team. I hope you recover
just as quickly as you were running on that first lap and I look forward to
seeing some workouts from you soon!
~ Coach P
Tim,
You said it all with, "I didn't get the race I wanted, but I got the race I earned on that day. Its certainly never a given." (I'll be using that in my RR). With smart decisions, you salvaged your race and your RR taught others how to do the same. Well done and Congratulations.
@tim cronk Great RR, as always. Thanks for sharing. You had a great swim. Your bike and run experiences sounded painfully similar to what we got in Florida this year. Sometimes I ride pretty well in the cold, but other times the muscles just don't fire. If I do another cold race, I will eat the T1 time to fully dress for the conditions. I hate cold/numb toes on the bike, and if I had to make a wager, you probably stubbed your numb toe coming out of the water or during the Family 5k Fun Run they replaced T1 with this year, or you just unknowingly got your toe in a bad position inside your bike shoe. Regardless, that toe + three bottles on the bike = an inevitable price to be paid somewhere along the run.
Even though your results didn't match up with all your goals, you still put on a showcase of fitness us mere mortals can only aspire to duplicate. And, more importantly, you got to share another race with Heather and with what seemed like half the EN family (I want to hire @Kori Martini to play at my next IM).
Looking forward to catching up in Tucson in March.
MR
@Al Truscott yeah cant seem to figure out those night sweats pre-IM, I never have them any other time? In 2015 IMLP the only IM I ever placed 1st, I had the absolute worst night ever, that am after I ate I got all dizzy and had to go lay down, I thought my day was gonna be bad, but it ended up being a great day. Will chat more about UMAZ as it gets closer.
@Sid Wavrin Thank You very much, look forward to more time at the camp.
@robin sarner you and @Satish Punna both OWE me , I wanted beat you guys fair and square and you guys robbed me of that opportunity :-)
@Peter Greagg I have no doubt that stamina/tte etc can be trained. My early season bike work had my tte out way past 1hr. while I love the wko4 model , I like the approach of just doing hard work intervals across the spectrum of times and let the curve/numbers take care of themselves. For early season bike or 12 weeks out from IM , I think v02/FRC is where to be, inside 8 weeks its gotta go more specific for me, and that is where I was for IMAZ training. In fact I really felt I needed 4 more weeks of that.
@Coach Patrick while there is no doubt LV may have taken a bit out of me for IMAZ, the bottomline is I was weak on the bike and I blew up on the run. No fake news here! UMAZ will be a different story.
@Derrek Sanks yeah I think the word salvage works. I think its good to over do it in training to see what you have after that , so when the inevitable blow up during a race occurs , you have somewhere to go albeit a lower level. But it teaches us that not all is lost. Thanks for the kind words.
@Mike Roberts You never fail to crack me up with your comments "the family fun 5k aka T1" actually thought of you when I was overrunning the first half. The only pace is a suicide pace and today is a good day to die. Only I decided I wanted to live :-) cya in March!
@tim cronk - What an outstanding season... you were a toe away from running the table! I've learned an incredible amount from you and your approach to racing - I love reading your reports. Looking forward to the journey to UMAZ!
@tim cronk Great summary of your thoughts, feelings, and decisions on race day. Your experience was evident throughout the day and some takeaways are there for the team. You looked strong to me when I saw you on our second laps and I appreciated the smile and fist bump when we passed -- it certainly helped me seeing an EN master on the course. Looking at your toe at the awards ceremony on Monday I'm surprised you ran as well as you did.
It was great meeting you and Heather and sharing stories and experiences over dinner at Pita Jungle. Events and conversations such as that really made the week special. (I'm also looking into the Thin Optics glasses Heather shared 👀)
Good luck in your build up to UMAZ, I look forward to following your training.
@tim cronk
Very nice report and, from my view, strong performance dealing with the issues you laid out.
Also, I consider this to be a very successful race rehearsal for UMAZ!
I know this is not the race a 7X KQ'r can be comfortable but it was commendable is so many ways and you did a ton of things right.
Thanks for taking the time to share the details with all of us. It helps us be better, smarter and faster in the end.
Sorry about the cold and the toe. Dealing with Cold Toe syndrome while simultaneously executing a Ironman is no simple task!🙂
Congratulations Ironman!
sorry we flaked on you. One of my disappointments of the day was missing another opportunity to race Kona with you. (i am sure we could have talked you into taking the slot ? :) )
Tim,
As always, thanks for the detailed analysis. Love reading your posts and I’ve learned a ton following along with your adventures! Can’t wait to see what you are up to next.