Pleasant Prairie Olympic Tri - Matt Aaronson
Apologies in advance for a very long race report but it was my first race of the season and I had some long airplane rides last week that gave me time to analyze it. Also I should note the race was Sunday 6/26 so this report is a bit late...last week was a totally crazy week, 3 overnight flights with trips to Germany and Brazil. I'm starting to type this on the airplane on the way home from Washington DC which is where I ended up after I was unable to make my Sao Paulo to Chicago flight due to a cancelled connecting flight. Ugggh.
In any event, overall it is tough to image a better race. My overall time was 2:15:16. This is over 12 minutes faster than the same event last year (which was my first ever triathlon), and over 10 minutes faster than my result in the Chicago Triathlon last year (which was my best ever triathlon).
Bottom line results
Time |
Pace/speed |
Placing overall (total finishers = 607) |
|||
Swim 1.5k |
28:38 |
1:55/100m |
100 |
/ |
16% |
Bike 40k |
1:02:48 |
23.69 mph |
12 |
/ |
2% |
Run 10k |
41:02 |
6:36/mile |
27 |
/ |
4% |
T1 |
1:50 |
84 |
/ |
14% |
|
T2 |
1:00 |
23 |
/ |
4% |
|
OVERALL |
2:15:16 |
30 |
/ |
5% |
|
Division placing (Male 35-39), 71 finishers |
7 |
/ |
10% |
||
Overall takeaways for me
1. I pushed very hard on the bike, and it yielded a great result. IF of 0.949.
2. Somehow I turned in a tremendous performance on the run, managing a really fast pace for the 10k with a solid negative split. This is huge because it means I didn't completely cook myself on the bike and blow up on the run (which, during the last 10 minutes of the bike, I was thinking could be a strong possibility). The run was also a PB for me at the 10k distance and was a VDOT PB – amazing considering it was during a triathlon after a really hard bike.
3. My swim needs work. That said, I turned in a virtually identical swim time to last year with extremely limited swim training after being on the EN kool-aid for the OS – I didn't swim from the end of August 2010 until mid-April of this year, and the race was my first wetsuit and open water swim of the year. On balance I'm quite happy with the decision to invest in biking and running during the winter. I also think that to improve my swim at this point I will have to get swim coaching, and I'm not ready for that kind of commitment. In the HIM distance the weak swim should be even less of a factor.
The other interesting comparison is with my results in the same event last year. This event in 2010 was my first ever triathlon and so it's cool to measure improvement from year to year:
Clearly the improvement on the bike and run has been massive thanks to the EN training protocol:
TIMES |
2011 |
2010 |
Overall |
2:15:16 |
2:27:34 |
Swim |
28:38 |
28:24 |
T1 |
1:50 |
2:27 |
Bike |
1:02:48 |
1:10:10 |
T2 |
1:00 |
1:39 |
Run |
41:02 |
44:56 |
Swim pace (/100m) |
1:55 |
1:54 |
Bike avg speed (mph) |
23.69 |
21.21 |
Run pace (/mi) |
6:36 |
7:13 |
ADDITIONAL DETAIL (warning: very long)
Taper
Originally I was not going to taper at all for this race, but based on my work schedule and a bothersome left Achilles I dialed the amount of training – in particular running – way back in the week leading up to the race. In fact I only I did one 45 minute run that week and it was on the Tuesday before. On the Thursday I did a very hard one-hour VO2max bike session on the trainer and on Friday I did a short (1500m) but intense swim. I think the taper really paid dividends on the run portion. That kind of volume reduction was not part of the half-iron plan but schedule-wise and injury-wise I didn't have much of a choice.
Nutrition
I executed the nutrition plan as intended.
- Pasta for dinner the night before (at the same restaurant as last year), plus half a Gatorade before bed
- Ensure (250 cal) at 5:30am wakeup, plus a cup of coffee
- Caffeinated Shot Bloks (100 cal) at 6:00am while setting up my transition space
- Caffeinated Gu (100 cal) at 6:30am, 15 minutes prior to my start time, plus a few sips of Gatorade waiting for the start
- Caffeinated Gu on the bike x2 (200 cal), one about 10 minutes into the bike (~45 mins into the race), and one with about 15 minutes remaining on the bike
- One 20oz bottle of water on the bike…probably should have had more but I felt like I might need to go to the bathroom so held off
- About a quarter to a third of a 16.9 oz bottle of Gatorade while running out of transition
- Nothing on the run…probably should have drank the water from the aid stations (it got hot out there), but I dumped it on my head instead
Overall I think the nutrition worked out well. No stomach issues. I felt like I needed to go to the bathroom at the end of the bike so I held off on further hydration, but that feeling went away on the run. I was pretty disciplined about taking the gels on the bike…if I hadn't pre-planned to take them at specific times I probably would have not bothered since I didn't feel like I needed them. But looking at my run, I have to believe that the caffeine and sugar was kicking in and making a difference.
Swim 1500m – 28:38
Unlike during the Chicago Triathlon last year, I felt quite lethargic in the beginning of the swim. Perhaps the fact that it was my first wetsuit swim of the year was part of the issue – in any case, my arms felt tired and I had trouble getting up the energy for a strong start. So I ended up mid-pack and then had to deal with traffic and getting kicked and swimming over people for the first quarter of the swim before the field spread out. My sighting and course was okay except for at one point about two thirds of the way in where I got pretty badly off course (my fault, I was counting strokes and decided to sight after 20 rather than 10 "full strokes" and paid the price). Towards the end of the swim I found myself going stroke-for-stroke with someone beside me who had the same color cap, so that motivated me to get into a groove and put a bit more effort in towards the end.
T1 – 1:50
I had a bit of trouble getting my wetsuit off my left ankle and also a bit of a problem buckling up my helmet, so I probably gave up about 20 seconds here. Too bad since I missed sub-2:15 by only 16 seconds…
The 40k bike course at Pleasant Prairie is very flat and completely closed to vehicular traffic. Notwithstanding quite a few corners and a couple of areas with rougher roads it's a pretty fast course when not windy (and it was not windy on race day). The temperature was a very pleasant high-60s at the start and warmed to mid-70s by the end of the ride (most of which was in direct sun).
One thing I was VERY nervous about leading into this race was my equipment. I was riding two brand new wheels – a Zipp Disc clincher rear and a Zipp 808 clincher front. My first ride ever on the disc was a training ride 3 days prior to the race and that ride ended after 30 minutes with a flat tire. So I was pretty paranoid of flatting on the disc. In addition, in the hotel room the night before the race I couldn't get the crack pipe on the valve so I decided rather than risk letting air escape from the tire if I couldn't get it to work properly, I'd just ride the tire with whatever pressure was in there after I had changed the tire two days prior. I'd guess it was 90-100psi at the most. So not ideal. Regarding the front wheel/tire/tube, I had literally never ridden it. With about a mile to go on the bike portion of the race I thought to myself that if the disc had a flat I'd ride the damn thing on the rim to finish the race.
My strategy on the bike was to go very, very hard. I was aiming for 95% of FTP or more (>236 watts). In the three triathlons I did last year I pushed the bike harder in each successive race, and despite having a slower run in exchange for a faster bike, I never found the point at which the tradeoff was a net negative for my overall result. So at this race I was continuing the mission to find the point of biking "too hard". As I said to some friends before the race, I was on a mission to bike so hard that I'd be forced to walk during the run!!!
I set my Garmin bike computer to take a split every 4 miles (mostly because 6 goes into 24 evenly and 40k is 24.8 miles). My screen was my normal training screen that does not show speed but rather power output (3-second average watts). I also had it showing lap time and average power out for the lap, as well as current cadence and heart rate.
Given my early start wave the first half of the course was very empty. Within about 5 minutes I found my riding next to a guy who was going about the same speed as me. He would pass me and several minutes later I'd pass him. This continued for about the entire first half of the bike race. We talked a bit and I found out he had just finished Ironman Texas a couple of weeks earlier, and that he had qualified for Kona during Ironman Wisconsin where he turned in a sub-10:00 performance. Hard core. At one point I looked at the age marking on his calf at it was "44", meaning he started in a wave 6 minutes behind me. Now I am not a terrific swimmer, but I am about top-quartile in my age group…so for someone to make up 6 minutes on the swim…well, "hard core". So I was not surprised when after half an hour he had pulled away far enough that I couldn't see him anymore.
I do think that pushing to keep up with this guy helped me push my overall pace. My first split was almost 98% of FTP and I was conscious of the ride being a very hard and intense effort. The next two splits in the first half of the bike race had lower average power, 235 watts and right at the edge of my goal. I was constantly thinking about "pushing harder" and was using the lap average power as a whip – i.e. trying to force myself to "average up" the lap power to hit 95% of FTP for each split, and mentally "requiring" the 3-second average power to be >240 watts each time I looked down at the screen.
The second half of the bike course was much more crowded since that half of the course is shared by athletes racing the sprint distance and all of those start waves were hitting the course about the time I got to the second half of my bike. In addition to generally more traffic, the sprint distance had attracted the usual people on hybrids and mountain bikes who were all over the roads. This is yet another reason to appreciate the closed roads…
With about 5 or 7 miles to go I again caught up to the guy I had been talking with at the beginning of the bike. At this point I knew I was really pushing hard because I wasn't really comfortable talking with him when he said something. As we came into the bike finishing area I passed him for the last time and for the first time thought about the fact that I'd have to run now, and that if pushing the bike so hard led to a spectacular implosion on the run, he'd think I was a rank amateur for f-ing up my pacing so badly (notwithstanding my going-in attitude that I was trying to bike so hard that I'd blow up on the run)!
Overall my splits from the bike broke down as follows:
Lap |
Miles |
Time |
Speed mph |
Avg power |
Norm power |
VI |
IF |
Avg cadence |
Avg HR |
Max HR |
||
1 |
4 |
10:28 |
22.9 |
241 |
242 |
1 |
0.978 |
89 |
164 |
174 |
||
2 |
4 |
10:06 |
23.8 |
235 |
235 |
1 |
0.949 |
94 |
161 |
165 |
||
3 |
4 |
9:42 |
24.7 |
23 |
0
Comments
Matt - great race and a wonderfully detailed report. Nice work. Like you, Pleasant Prairie 2010 was my first ever triathlon. I did the sprint last year in 1:16 and had no clue what I was doing (pre EN for me). I still got 2nd in my 55-59 AG, go figure. So I have fond memories of PP and will do the race again in the future. This year did IM CDA on June 26, so had to pass up PP. Anyway, Congrats on a super fast race and 12' course PR. Bruce
But I don't do these to win or place, for me it is all about registering improvement, performing to the best of my ability and having fun!