IM 70.3 Lake Stevens Race Report - Scott Stewart
Pre race:
My day started out with an early 1am breakfast consisting of 16oz of Strawberry C Odwalla juice (~320 calories). Went back to sleep then woke back up at 3:30am for a second breakfast consisting of 16oz of Strawberry C Odwalla juice and a bowl of oatmeal with blueberries (~680 calories). I got ready, drove up to Lake Stevens while drinking some Infinit (~150 calories), went thru body marking, got my stuff ready in transition, stopped by the port-a-potties, then headed to the swim start. I was lucky that I was in one of the first swim waves which started at 6:38am, only 8 minutes behind the pro men, which meant that I didn't have to wait very long before starting.
Swim, 49:14:
I started out pretty much right in the middle. The gun went off and I just followed the people in front of me not really having to sight at all. After things cleared out a bit, I made my way over to the buoy line. I knew from doing this race last year that there's a cable that runs under the water that the buoy's are attached to. This it makes it easy to swim straight without the need to do much sighting. Overall, I was hoping for a little faster swim, but my swim training has been less then ideal since IMCDA so that's just how it is.
T1, 3:22:
I made it thru transition as quickly as possible, and am happy with my time.
Bike, 3:04:15:
I started out, turned on my LYC right away, but forgot to turn on my garmin watch. I had setup my garmin to beep every 10 minutes to remind me to take a drink of my Infinit. I have never done this during training so I completely forgot that I was wearing the watch. Luckily I stayed on top of my nutrition the entire way. I had a concentrated bottle of Infinit with 450 calories (all carbs, no protein) and 1200 mg of sodium. I drank the entire bottle by the time I got to mile 48, then switched to just water the final 8 miles. I had planned on doing this in order to hopefully start the run without a bunch of calories sitting in my stomach.
Overall, I felt pretty good throughout the entire bike. My normalized power ended up being lower then I had planned with an IF of .75, but my bike time was quite a bit faster then expected so I was fine with that. The surprising thing was my VI of 1.05. I have a history of really high VI numbers, and considering this was a pretty hilly course, I was very happy with that.
T2, 4:08:
Again, made it thru pretty quickly. I stopped at the port-a-potty to pee then took off on the run.
Run, 1:57:45:
I have a tendency to start too fast on the run, so I really focused on keeping my pace down as I started. I couple of quick checks on my garmin confirmed that I was right where I wanted to be pace wise. The entire first loop (two loop course) I felt okay, but was definitely feeling the effects of the bike. I just focused on staying in my box and only allowed myself to think about the mile that I was currently on. I walked the aid stations and just kept running a nice easy pace. I was carrying Infinit with me on my fuel belt, but only drank a sip of it at a time, and only when I felt like I needed it. I ended up only drinking about 75 calories worth the entire run, but never felt like I needed more then that.
The second loop of the run is where the race really got hard for me. My lower back started hurting pretty much every time I ran uphill, and the steeper/longer the hill, the worse it felt. As a result, I ended up walking a few times when my back pain started to really get bad, but I only allowed myself to walk about 30 steps each time so it didn’t have a huge impact on my overall time. Around mile 10.5, when I was taking a quick walk up hill to ease my back pain, teammate Michael Smith passed me and encouraged me to get going. I latched onto him and used him to pace me the rest of the way up the hill. During this time I was thinking about my goal for the race of finishing sub 6 hours and knew that I would have to pick up the pace to do that. So as soon as we hit a downhill I decided to really speed up and push myself as hard as possible the final 2 miles. I ended up finishing the race with my 2 fastest mile splits and accomplished my goal of finishing sub 6 hours. In reviewing my run data there’s 2 things that I noticed. First, my first and second laps were pretty even (58:19 and 59:26), which means that I was pretty consistent. Second, my fastest 30 minutes was the final 30 minutes of the race, which means that I finished strong.
Total time, 5:58:44:
I was so happy when I headed into the finish line and saw on the race clock that I had finished sub 6 hours. It took a lot of focus and determination for me to get thru the run with the back pain I was experiencing and still achieve my goal. I would like to thank Michael for pushing me the final couple of miles. The best part about being apart of EN is the great teammates that I get to race with.
Comments
Scott - AWE-some! Reading this makes me feel as if I did the race myself - even better, 'cause I didn't have to. You overturned any bad karma lingering from Coeur d'Alene, and totally turned around your mindset into Success and Racing, rather than defeat and just finishing. I can only imagine how good this makes you feel - enjoy it, you deserve it!
@ JT, yes, I think I am finally starting to get the nutrition side of things figured out for racing. I tried something completely different then what I did at CDA and was surprised at how few calories I needed during the run. 525 calories over the entire race seems low, but it worked. I'll just have to work on fine tuning things. And your right, I think I do owe Michael a beer for helping to push me on the run, although he owes me a beer as well from a little bet we had going.
@ Al, it definitely feels good to have had a good race. Since I had a dissapointing race in CDA, I have decided to use a couple of HIM's and a marathon next year to learn how to execute and get my nutrition perfectly dialed in before tackeling my next IM in 2013. This race was a big step in the right direction.
Here's a picture of me finishing:
Btw regarding calories, it really is amazing how little you need for a HIM. Last weekend I had a gel before the start, a bottle of Gatordade in T2 and a gel at mile 5 of the run and that was it (310 cal). In another race I did the exact same but added 2 gels on the bike (510 cal). Really, you don't need much.
Great Report, and Great Race! It was a very cool way to spend post race, hanging with your family. Looking forward to more races with you in 2012.
I enjoyed reading your repots for Oceanside, CdA and now Lake Stevens. Thanks for writing them up.