IM Loo - Race Report
IM Louisville – after all the preparation for a really hot day, humidity and just plain hotness, a great weather day appeared. I flew in from NY on Thursday, with many weather delays and flight cancellations occurring, I was happy to get out of town ahead of Hurricane Irene. The Hurricane seemed to have sucked all of the humidity and weather out of the heartland to our delight.
Woke up early, went to transition and got my spot on the lineup, I was near the front and once they moved us down, I was on the dock, near the back end of it. Good positioning. I was expecting a swim time of approximately 1:30. Usually I have a tendency to swim towards the right and get away from the crowds, unintentionally, which can result in me swimming more distance than necessary. On the first part of the swim I was feeling good, counting strokes, actually swimming straight. After the turn into the main channel of the river, I again did my thing and worked out to the right, but not terribly. Somewhere around 70% of my way through, I got a into a negative funk, my right eye was burning from something that must have gotten into my goggles and I was losing focus on my stroke and stroke count. After passing the bridges, I reminded myself of being in the box got into counting strokes and got a good rhythm going. I was really thinking half way through that this was going to be a 1:45 or longer swim, when I got out of the water at 1:26, I said maybe today won’t be such a bad day.
Got through transition with no problems, the grass appeared wet and I saw a doode slip when and slide out when he rounded the end of the bike row, and just took my time walking fast. Mounted and was off. I focused on Just Riding along and felt good on the way out. As Patrick said in the 4 Keys talk on Saturday, something is going to go wrong, my first something was that my Joule was not picking up my cadence, I tried to have it activate the sensor and it seemed to pick up the cadence for a second, but then went back to zero, I tried to think of why this would be, and I know it all worked right on my test ride on Friday, so I was miffed. I stopped fiddling with that and just realized that I was going to have to focus on cadence. As much I was backing off on the hills, It wasn’t enough, my target watts were approximately 165 and on the uphills I was doing approximately 170-190. Though, I really paid attention to not jamming the pedals, letting people pass and going slow. I pushed the Flats and the downhills at target wattage. LV hills are often down first followed by an up. As much as I passed people (and many) on the Downs, as soon as my speed slowed I immediately moved to the right and backed off. This was my first race with infinit and special needs was coming up before I drank my 3rd hour concentrate, swigged that down and quickly got my new bottle from the special needs.
Coach P rode the course as a training ride on Friday and reported that back section of the loop and the ensuing added mileage into town after your second loop is where your Bike split would be made and I focused on working the EN hill method. Feeling good that it was working so well. There was one doode I was trading places with for much of the first lap, he would pass me on the hills and I would catch him or even pass on the downhills, the only thing wrong was that this nameless person was in EN Kit!!!
Partway through the second loop I was feeling that I was putting too much on the bike course. At this point I was riding an IF of .71-.72 and NP of 163. I backed off more on the hills and focused on not pushing. Now my second thing to go wrong happened, I shifted into my largest ring on my cassette to back off on a hill and my chain jumped and got jammed between my cassette & spokes. Off the bike, it took 4-5 minutes of tugging at the chain and finally getting part of it on the sprockets and turning the wheel backwards using it as a lever to get the chain freed. As soon as I got going again, I focused on just accepting what happened and not trying to make up time. in the course of the day it wouldn’t matter. Now in the back half of the loop, I again focused on lightening up on the watts. I knew I still had 40+ miles to go on the bike and that my legs had plenty left in them, also with the knowledge that 33 of those miles were the backstretch where things are easier with a net downhill. On the bottom of the last hill I hooked up with a line of riders that I had been trading places with on the hills and worked, with proper spacing, with holding pace with them. We were riding at approximately 19 MPH while maintaining approximately 135 watts, so I knew I wasn’t pushing or hurting myself. I looked at my garmin which was on my wrist from the beginning of the swim and discovered my third problem, it was reading “low battery,” at this point I realized I was screwed for run pacing.
Bike Split 6:14 I don’t have my Joule with me as I am not at my home where there is now power post Irene… I will add the numbers to this thread tomorrow.
After ditching the bike at T2 I took of my bike shoes (should have left them on the bike) and wasn’t finding it easy to run to the bag pickup. This had me concerned, did a quick change and off I went, again, not feeling good about running, so I decided to walk the slight up hill and stairs to the official beginning of the run. I actually felt fine once I got going. The first stretch takes you up onto a bridge that goes halfway across the river and at this point, my garmin was working. By the time I reached the turnaround on the bridge, it died. I focused on the aid station that you passed 2x on the bridge and got sponges, water, perform and ice in my run hat. At the bottom of the bridge I handed my GF my watch and said “I’m F—d.” Not having the Garmin actually turned out to be a good thing. On most of the first half of the run I felt horrible. I was getting plenty of fluids, so much so that I was having to take care of nature more often than I would have liked. And yes, rich, I was proud of myself for learning to be like you, anytime, anywhere!
I saw coach P who was at mile 6/18 on the double loop run, and got some words of encouragement, reached the turnaround and headed back to town. In this IM you pass insanely close to the Finish line, actually looking straight down the last 100 yards before making a right turn, heading around the block for your second 12 mile loop. In my mind it wasn’t a question of if, but when I would start to walk. In mile 13 I stopped and started walking, I took about twenty steps and told myself, this isn’t why I came here and that I couldn’t possibly think about this until mile twenty. At this point for over 6 miles my stomach wasn’t feeling great, and I could not figure out why. I was downing plenty of water & perform. At the next aid station I took an orange slice & half a banana. This started to help and I made it part of my routine for every aid station. I established what I knew was a very slow run pace, focused on staying cool, and staying running. Walking the aid stations, taking care of natures call and getting through the miles. The greatest aspect of the run was seeing the many ENers in and out of kit. There were a number of people flashing the EN sign that weren’t in kit and it was a big help. By this point, as much as things hurt, I knew I could do this running, that became apparent around mile 18-19. I knew I started at only a couple of minutes after 7AM and often asked people for time of day as a gauge as to how I was doing. I pushed along and before I knew when I was looking for what I thought was mile marker 24, I realized I missed that one and was at mile 25! I was also seeing people on the out portion of the run that I was swapping places with on the bike when they worked the hills and I was working the down hills, the EN way.These people were now 4-10 miles behind me! While I didn’t count the land cod that were walking, there were many.
Total run was 5:30, I did the first 3.4 miles at an 11:06 pace, the next 4.8 at 12:30 (exactly what Matt’s Head index calendar said I should be doing), the next 5 miles at 13:33, the next 4.77 at 13:15, the next 5 at 12:54 and finished with a 12:00 pace in the last 1.2 miles.
The line, no, not that one, the finish line! The euphoria of knowing I got it done and executed the way I should.
Lessons learned:
1)Stay focused on the stroke count and don’t let get caught up in what the swim will be, you can only control what is in the box and the finish time isn’t in the box until you cross that line.
2)Don’t ride the “could” bike!
3)Don’t ever give up, things will always change, and the status quo will disappear, in this case bananas & orange slices, solved a problem and things got better instead of worse.
The post script is that I properly defined my goal for this IM as a Percentile of AG & overall finish position compared to IMAZ where I was in the 71st Percentile last year. My goal was 50% and I came out at 51. THAT is something to smile about.
I don’t have to wait a year to apply the lessons, though I won’t have hills to practice on, I am doing IMAZ in 12 weeks!
Comments
Great race! Way to stick with the plan when things got dark. I lost my watch in the swim at IMCDA and had to run without pace. Some very smart people said it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Looking forward to meeting you in Aspen.
Scott, truly impressive to move up the bell shaped curve from 71 to 51- it's all downhill from here! I like the way you just ... kept ... running. With the training you've done, after mile 11-12, it's really all in the head.
Scott - way to get it done on the run. It's nice to see you hit that 50% target you were aiming for. I share the same sort of goals as a MOPer. Look forward to seeing you in Arizona. Rest up. Dominic
Great job and good luck at IMAZ.
Great meeting you and Leslie and looking forward to AZ.