Racine 70.3 RR - Trevor Garson
Anyone who has read one of my RR's before probably already knows they tend to be a tad on the verbose side, so I'll give you full disclaimer now that my writing is almost invariably heavy on the narration. So without further adieu...
I should start out by saying that Racine ended up being an important race to me precisely because it was not an important race to me. I signed up on an impulse about 4 weeks before the event. This was mostly a direct result of having an all around lousy race at Kansas and a heretofore unfocused and rather aimless season coming off the high of IMWI last year.
This lack of direction was somewhat intentional, designed to give myself a break and sort of discover what my true level of commitment was to this sport. Was I one and done type? Could I continue to set huge PRs in nearly every race I did? Was I destined to the front of the pack out of some sort of genetic entitlement?
T -1 to Race Day
Woke up after a very short night of sleep having been out with friends as DD the night before. Part of my efforts to not completely spurn my non-tri friends (and social life) like last year. Ended up driving up to Racine with two fantastic local racers from here in Cedar Rapids. Both are Kona qualifiers who have been in the sport for years and are great role models for me. Despite this, day before the race was full of near comical folly. We were late leaving, we got lost, the schedule was wrong about the athlete briefing, I got sick from my lunch, I dropped and broke my iPhone, we unloaded our gear into the hotel lobby to realize that we were at the wrong hotel, late dinner, to bed late for another short night of sleep. Managed to not follow basically any of my pre-race rituals for staying low key, eating early, low-stress. It was pretty much the opposite all day.
As a bonus, I was convinced the week before the race that I had a stress fracture in my foot and was not even going to be able to participate. Doctor told me it was not broken, just a pretty nasty sprain. If I was lucky, it might go down enough to allow me to do the swim and maybe the bike. As of Saturday, swelling was down quite a bit, but still ambient pain even while walking,
On the other hand, I thought I had to have gotten all of the bad luck out of my system the day before, so race day had nowhere to go but up.
Race Morning
Up early, intake some Aleeve (for foot) and a lot of Gatorade. Couldn’t stomach much solid food. Was a little late to T1 after waiting on my friends but got my transition area set up without issue thank god, I often have issues with the valve extenders on my race wheels the morning of a race. I had the extreme good fortune to be in the first swim wave after the pro's, so it was promptly time to clear out of T1 and make the ~mile walk up the beach to Swim start.
Swim – 37:40 – 74th in Div
My swim has been outright embarrassing this year and I have no one really to blame but myself. I was trying to find a way to still race this year, but make more time for both work and my social life, and sadly swimming bore the brunt of that, I just have not gotten in the volume. After a horrible swim at Kansas I knew I had nowhere to go but up. Long story short, found a good pair of feet to follow for the first half of the swim in the calm clear cool water and unfortunately was on my own after that, but still popped out of the water at about 36 minutes and change. After the long run up the beach to T1, hit the timing mat at 37:40. Not a good swim by any means, and still behind my fitness last year, but was happy to have salvaged back a healthy amount of time in the 4 weeks I had to work on it between KS and Racine. KS was a 42’ swim by the way, but in much worse conditions.
Bike – 2:29:35 – 18th in Div – 0.81 IF / 215 W / 1.03 VI
The ride was pretty straightforward. Some slight rolling hills, some modest head and cross winds, and oh, did I mention it was freaking hot in Racine? Wore my aero helmet anyway, I don’t find it makes a major difference (Rudy Project Wingspan – full open configuration). Really though just focused on riding as smooth and low (aero) as possible. Adjusted my wattage downwards based on HR with the goal to keep my HR under a set threshold as much as possible to allow me to intake some calories and a metric shit ton (real quantity) of hydration on the bike to set myself up for a run later.
Drank about 44oz or so an hour. Started out by drinking my aerodrink full of water and a bottle with 3 scoops of EFS in the first hour, about 300 calories. From there, switched to water and on-course perform, had a Cliff Mocha (50mg caffeine) shot gel at about mile 30 and mile 45ish. In the end, was mixing perform and water in my aerodrink and virtually drinking nonstop. We all have our genetic gifts and detriments. My downfall without question is the heat. I sweat buckets even when I’m not moving and as a result I have to drink like a horse or I will simply shut down. Thankfully, I was blessed with an iron stomach to make up for this. So I can mix my own nutrition, on-course, one brand of gels, another brand of this, another brand of that, it’s pretty much all the same to me. I know how much calories are in my stuff, and how much are in perform. I don’t eat solid foods during a race, and other than that I just try to make sure I’m not overloading on calories but also I have to be very careful that I’m not drinking massive quantities of straight water or I’ll flush a lot of electrolytes very quickly.
So essentially, adapting from Macca, I have a skeleton nutrition plan, but the actual execution is simply based off of adaptation to the day’s conditions, somewhat adlib style.
Anyway, for the part that matters, ended up breaking the ride up into 4 parts. A 15 minute warm up (I know plan says 30), 2 full hour ‘main sets’ and a 15 minute higher cadence ‘cool down’ coming into T2 to try and set myself up for the run. This worked out to about 210 watts, 220, 220, then 205 respectively for a total ride IF of 0.81. Honestly, I think the true IF was lower and FTP was probably pretty conservatively estimated at 265, while the true value might have dipped back up into the 270s where it was earlier in the season. VI could have been better; I definitely had some small surges up some of the rollers and in some other scenarios.
All and all, I just felt good on the bike. It all felt pretty easy and the heat had not really gotten to me although I was keeping a pretty close eye on my exertion and spraying myself down (and under helmet) with water at each aid station.
Bonus on the bike, passed a female pro. Oh sweet revenge for all of those times I’ve been chicked.
Run – 1:43:43 – 16th Div Pos
Got off the bike, had my shoe catch the ground and do a pedal skip heading into T2, dislodged my shoe which I had to drop my bike and run back for, leaving me a little frazzled heading to my rack… which I promptly ran by until Bruce yelled at me and reminded me that I had indeed passed it. Ok so T2 was not so elegant, but I felt good at least. Got my shoes on, 6oz racing flats of course, what else would you wear with an injured foot? Hit the port-o-let to take a leak which was a very good sign for me on such a hot day, then off I went.
First loop of the run course honestly was a breeze. My body had lots of other issues to worry about than my bum foot so it didn’t put up a ton of fuss, although I certainly felt its presence. Was cruising mostly in the 7:10-7:30 range and definitely could have pushed harder, but again was actively watching my HR and planning for the second loop, needed to keep it as low for as long as possible.
Definitely walked the aid stations; there was no other way. For someone who is hit as bad by the heat as I am, 3-4 cups of fluid per aid station is absolutely mandatory, and I should have had more. Combine that with minimum 2 cups of ice. Down the jersey, down the pants, some on head hold some in hands. Chew some too, why not. Dump cold water over body when possible.
In this way I continued on, running about 7:30 pretty steady, but bleeding 20 seconds or so per mile at the aid stations to sufficiently load myself down with ice and fluids as to survive to the next one. Really, things didn’t start to get hard until the second loop, and even then, I never was in bad shape until very close to the finish when dehydration began to set it in. I had become lax in the last few aid stations as I neared the finish, and that was a mistake.
Bonus on the run, I was out on the course the same time as the Pro’s and it was great to watch them. Crowie looked like he was suffering. He only beat me by 10-odd minutes on the run, so I’d say he wasn’t having a good day. While I’d never wish anyone ill, when Crowie was not looking so great, it sure made me feel better about myself.
Second Run Bonus: Not really a bonus, but my run time at Racine was 1:43:43. About 5 weeks before at Kansas 70.3, my run time was 1:43:43. Literally the exact same, to the second. I felt worlds better at Racine though than Kansas and was running much stronger despite much worse conditions. Were it not for the aid station overhead, I think I would have ran something in the 1:35-1:37 range.
Overall - 4:55 – 16th in Div – 70.3 PR
So, if you are still reading, I owe you a beer. That aside, Racine represented a 70.3 PR for me by about 2 minutes or so. I qualify with “or so” because my previous sub-5 was at Kansas 70.3 in 2010 where I lost my timing chip and therefore have no official record other than a dozen odd pictures of me under the finishing clock which I used to calculate my swim-wave offset to the gun time and determine a finishing time of 4:57 if I recall. But if you ask WTC, I was a DNF. Thanks for that WTC.
If you recall my questions way back at the beginning of this RR, I’m happy to say that answer to all of them is no. No, I am not going to call it after the one IM. No, I’m not particularly gifted at this sport and I won’t be greeted with success without the accompanying amount of diligent hard work.
But on the other hand, I got to find out the answer was yes to a few other questions. Yes, I can take a more casual season, have a life, possibly find a love interest in my life other than my bicycle, and still be able to race with a modest amount of success. And yes, I’m in this sport for the long haul. It’s going to be a long road where I stumble along the way, but race by race and place by place, I’m going to claw my way up the AG latter.
Thanks folks.
p.s. I could barely walk the next day. Don’t do stupid stuff like race on a bad foot. Foot-hoof is on the left side.
0
Comments
I'm also in kinda-I'm doing whatever I want after IM Wisconsin mode, too -- which has made for a fun summer. Isn't it nice to be able to hang out with friends who regularly go to bed well after 11 p.m.?
I personally enjoy the detail and commentary in the RR.
It sounds like the race was hot and miserable, but I haven't heard too much complaining about it. I thought it was hot when we did it last year and I suffered a lot on the run, but everyone seemed to work through it this year without too much difficulty even through the temps were even higher. I'm glad you were able to redeem yourself from KS. Good luck with whatever the rest of the season brings.
Trevor - Great race and wonderful RR. I like all the detail too. I always learn something from someone else's RR - part of what makes EN special.
The heat was tough on some people but you handled it well. Excellent hydration plan and execution. I know of at least 3 people from my local gym that bagged it after the 1st loop on the run due to dehydration, puking, etc because they didn't attend to their H2O as well as you. Smart racing..
Good meeting you after the race. Hope to see you again sometime.