Kansas 70.3 race report - Matt Aaronson
IM 70.3 Kansas race report
Profile: Matt Aaronson
- 37 year old management consultant, 3rd year doing triathlon, 2nd year doing HIM distance
- FTP 254 (4.1 watts/kg), VDOT 51.6
The short version
- Overall a well-executed race in challenging conditions. Finishing time 4:55:09, good for 79th OA, 11th in M3539 and a slot to Vegas where I had a bad race last year and can now try again.
- Swam 39:38 in moderately choppy water and without wetsuit, a 3:54 non-wetsuit PB
- Rode 1.02 VI on a very rolling course, hit my "high z3" target with an NP of 214 (IF 0.843) for a split of 2:32:24
- Ran a 1:38:37 half marathon in 94-degree heat on a completely unshaded course. Most importantly, I think I ran as well as I could have and did not undercook the run as I have in prior races. I stopped to massage my quads and stave off cramps a few times, to stretch a side stitch that flared up, and to water the plants for over a minute at mile 3. My HR was pretty much in the low-to-mid 170s the whole time, until the last 10 mins when I jacked it to the mid-high 180's to speed up the pace 30 sec/mile and pass 2 guys in my AG. Overall a nice negative split run on a tough hot day, and I'm happy with it.
- Terrible transitions…over 2 mins slower in total compared with the guys around me in the standings
- Did not get massively sunburned
- As a bonus, there were so many slots that 11th was good for an outright qualification in my AG without rolldown…crazy!!
Intro
I was very optimistic about this race but there were real uncertainties. I signed up because of 3 factors:
1. I wanted an earlier season race because I like racing and training for 7 months for your first race is really not maximizing the fun factor
2. 2 weeks of really nice March weather in Chicago lulled me into believing that I could train outdoors on the bike
3. The race wasn't selling well so the organizers allocated 100 Vegas slots to it. Given that most of the popular races got their slots reduced from 50 to 30 and that Vegas slots were not rolling down deeply at most races, I knew that my only shot of getting back to Vegas was at a race with an expanded slot allocation.
My goals for the race were:
- Have fun
- Ride a bit harder than usual, and experiment with a bit of a higher VI than usual
- Hopefully get a Vegas slot
- Most importantly, put in a great effort on the run and make sure to have no gas left in the tank at the end. If you read my Steelhead race report you'll know that at both Racine and Steelhead I laid down massive negative splits because I wasn't confident to up my pace on the run earlier. At Steelhead I ran the last 2 miles in just under 14 min despite pacing over 7:20 for the run overall. So I was on a mission to really put in a good effort on the run.
On the one hand I was quite confident in my fitness – running fast with an all-time high VDOT of 51.5, an all-time high FTP of 254 (4.1 watts/kg), and great bike endurance after getting some longer 75-mile rides done in the month leading up to the race. And my swimming, while still pedestrian among those with my kind of bike and run splits, is a lot better than last year. And most importantly, I only had 3 nagging injuries, and all seem to be manageable (knocking on wood right now!).
But for some reason had an uneasiness about this race coming together for me. My training was really fragmented:
- the Chicago weather put me back on the trainer for a while, so my training was much more OS-like than last year. I didn't do any weeks over 10 hours.
- my work travel schedule was nuts, meaning bursts of biking on weekends but a lot of missed weekday sessions…this is fine for a while but eventually it catches up with you
- my run endurance was essentially untested since almost all of my long runs have been pulled back to 90' for schedule reasons or due to injury concern
- I had a big concern about overall endurance in general since I didn't do a lot of really long workouts like I did last year. On my swim/run days I've always ended up splitting the workouts up (except for once, when the run ended up as a major fail). My race rehearsal run was great but I had to cut the bike at 40 miles because my buddy Andrew got injured. I did run pretty well off a 75 mile bike 4 weeks before the race.
- unlike last year, when I trained in huge heat and humidity in May/June/July for a race that turned out to be 100 degrees, this year the spring was really cool and I only did one run in killer heat (which nearly killed me)
- unlike last year, when I trained in huge heat and humidity in May/June/July for a race that turned out to be 100 degrees, this year the spring was really cool and I only did one run in killer heat (which nearly killed me)
Truthfully I guess my confidence was also really shaken in Vegas last year when I cramped up on the run after a hot and hilly bike where I followed my execution plan to the "T". I still have no idea why that happened, and although I should be happy it hasn't happened again, I was worried because I've had no opportunities to further diagnose the origins and figure out a prevention strategy. So I felt a bit like I needed some "luck" for it not to happen again.
Swim – 39:38, 252/1506 overall, 38/168 in AG
I am a terrible swimmer relative to guys who have similar bike and run splits to me. I took 5 lessons back in December without any swim fitness and managed to peel 10 sec/100 off my t-pace in a week. So there is a lot of low-hanging fruit here and I am nowhere near where I could be. But overall I'm comfortable in the water and so when they announced "no wetsuits allowed" due to water temp I wasn't freaked out like many folks. Actually being able to wear my speedsuit for the second time halved its absurd cost per wear!
As other reports have noted, the water was rough from the wind. And there was a pretty decent amount of contact in my start wave that didn't really subside since we started pretty late and the swim course was pretty well covered with people all over. I focused on my technique and form and did not push very hard at all. On the return portion of the course it was into the sun and my breathing side was into the choppy water so I took in some water, got more off course than on the way out, and needed to stop and breaststroke a few times to re-orient myself.
But overall the swim was fine and when I saw 39:xx coming out of the water I was neither pleased nor disappointed. The best part was that my HR was nowhere nearly as jacked up as it has been in the past getting out of the water. Maybe I didn't push hard enough. I will have to experiment a bit in the future with with pacing and see if a "push" that might gain me a minute or two on the swim would end up costing me later in the race.
T1 – 2:36
The zipper on my overpriced speed suit got stuck a few inches down so I had to wriggle out of it and that took time. It probably cost me north of 30 seconds and there's no question that my transition time was about 30-45 sec longer than the top guys in my AG. Also I put on socks but for the moment in the half-iron distance I'm not going to change that strategy.
Bike – 2:32:24, 10/168 in AG (which put me in 15th place at the end of the bike)
Great course and relatively challenging. Rolling hills but some flats. Very windy (16 gusting 30mph according to later reports). No really steep grades, just a wear-you-down sort of course with long rollers.
My strategy on the bike was to be a "little bit" aggressive. I knew the course was a bit hilly so I didn't have any sort of time expectation. I just knew I was going to try to ride towards the top of my z3 range targeting ~216 watts NP for the ride. But unlike my rides last year where I really aimed for a super-low VI (I rode a 1.01 VI at Racine and Steelhead and a 1.02 in Vegas), I knew I was going to try to work the bike a bit tactically…but without going nuts and sacrificing the run. I think I was reasonably successful executing although there were a number of times I defaulted to my standard low-VI "constant power" strategy that I'm comfortable with because I was worried that working the hills harder would give me problems later on. The data shows that I hit my power numbers pretty well, riding an NP of 214 and 0.843 IF.
| Lap | Miles | Time | Speed mph |
Avg power | Norm power | VI | IF | Avg cadence | Avg HR |
Max HR |
NP/HR | |||
| 1 | 5 | 15:02 | 19.9 | 214 | 221 | 1.03 | 0.869 | 87 | 145 | 164 | 1.52 | |||
| 2 | 0.17 | 0:31 | 19.6 | |||||||||||
| 3 | 5 | 13:49 | 21.7 | 215 | 220 | 1.02 | 0.865 | 93 | 140 | 158 | 1.57 | |||
| 4 | 5 | 13:09 | 22.8 | 212 | 214 | 1.01 | 0.843 | 94 | 137 | 145 | 1.56 | |||
| 5 | 0.2 | 0:30 | 24.3 | |||||||||||
| 6 | 5 | 15:04 | 19.9 | 216 | 217 | 1 | 0.854 | 91 | 139 | 149 | 1.56 | |||
| 7 | 5 | 14:55 | 20.1 | 208 | 212 | 1.02 | 0.834 | 90 | 141 | 149 | 1.50 | |||
| 8 | 5 | 12:11 | 24.6 | 213 | 215 | 1.01 | 0.845 | 90 | 141 | 145 | 1.52 | |||
| 9 | 5 | 13:49 | 21.7 | 207 | 215 | 1.04 | 0.845 | 88 | 142 | 159 | 1.51 | |||
| 10 | 0.18 | 0:30 | 22.3 | |||||||||||
| 11 | 5 | 16:52 | 17.8 | 209 | 212 | 1.01 | 0.835 | 88 | 143 | 150 | 1.48 | |||
| 12 | 5 | 11:26 | 26.2 | 201 | 210 | 1.04 | 0.826 | 89 | 140 | 149 | 1.50 | |||
| 13 | 0.19 | 0:32 | 21.9 | |||||||||||
| 14 | 5 | 12:22 | 24.3 | 212 | 215 | 1.01 | 0.846 | 88 | 149 | 157 | 1.44 | |||
| 15 | 4.57 | 11:30 | 23.9 | 200 | 206 | 1.03 | 0.811 | 91 | 150 | 157 | 1.37 | |||
| OVERALL | 55.33 | 2:32:12 | 21.80 | 209 | 214 | 1.02 | 0.843 | 90 | 142 | 164 | 1.51 | |||
| TSS = 179.5 | ||||||||||||||
You can see I took a few 30-sec "breaks" to backpedal and re-zero my powermeter and take in some gels, etc. One small victory in this race is that it's the first one I didn't have to stop to water the plants. I had to go for a while but the urge faded a bit and I wasn't uncomfortable holding it in.
Interestingly there was a pretty decent tailwind in the last 10 miles and I felt really great. In fact, my "peak 20 minute speed" was 27mph, peak 30 min was 26mph, and peak 6 min was over 30mph, so that gives you a flavor of the ride back to the park. Unlike some past HIM races where the last 10 miles of the bike is a struggle, I felt very strong coming into T2. Some of the power falloff is certainly attributable to the tailwind. HOWEVER, there is also some minor HR decoupling from power that is evident, so maybe the euphoria of the tailwind and long stretches at 30+mph had me feeling better than I was in reality…
T2 – 1:54
I lost a lot of time here as most of the fast guys were under a minute. Other than stopping to spray on and rub-in sunblock – which I could and should have done while running – I really don't know where all the time went. Pretty pathetic…no excuses…
Run – 1:38:37, 15/168 in AG (which put me in 11th place overall for the race)
Well, it was HOT!! A record-setting day with 94-degree temps in Lawrence. The course is 2 circuits of a "triple out-and-back" (think 3 out-and-back "fingers" extending from the start/finish area). Other than one short (but steep) hill, the course is pancake-flat. And there is no shade. A lot of people got really badly sunburned. The course is all within Clinton State Park and one of the out-and-backs meanders around the campsites where there are a ton of supportive spectators. They could have had a bit more music on the course, but otherwise it was pretty energizing despite the conditions.
My strategy for the run was to make sure I didn't leave any gas in the tank. I was planning to start at a 7:30-ish pace and then build to the low 7:00 range, hopefully targeting a sub-1:35 half marathon. The heat killed that plan but there were other issues as well…
I ran out of transition at a good easy pace, just under 8 min miles. I had grabbed a Gatorade that was stashed in ice at my transition spot and was drinking it and running along at a decent clip. If whatever reason I didn't see the mile #1 marker so didn't lap my watch until mile #2. Avg pace was 7:20 to that point so really pretty much "on track". Then a few issues started to crop up:
- at mile 3 I had to stop to water the plants…lost almost a full minute
- later in mile 3 I could feel the quad cramps lurking. This was worrisome because it meant that I was nervous to push the pace lest they really cramp up
- at about mile 4 I got a brutal side stitch. I think this was related to nutrition (see below)…so I had to stop a few times over the next mile or so…luckily the side stitch faded after about a mile and a half, or it would have torpedoed my race
But above and beyond all of the issues was that I just couldn't run much faster. My cadence was about 86 – 3-5spm below "typical" – but I couldn't increase it. I didn't have my Garmin screens showing my HR, but I just knew that if I accelerated in a meaningful way that I'd be toast. So I chugged along at about a 7:20-ish pace – which worked out to 7:40-ish when you factor in walking all of the aid stations to get water and ice – and tried my best to run as hard as possible in a sustainable way. I also stopped reasonably regularly to massage my quads and stave off the cramping. A later look at my HR (see the Garmin file) proved my case…unlike prior races where my HR started low and built slowly over the course of the run, in Kansas it was a pretty constant low-170's the whole time. I kept the back pocket of my EN tri top filled with ice, and make sure my hat was filled with ice too. I drank water and didn't eat my gels due to lack of hunger.
At mile 7 I got a bit of a chill so I thought I might be getting overheated. Not much I could do about that and luckily the feeling went away.
At mile 11 it was clearly time to make sure the tank was truly empty, so I did manage to up the pace a bit. But as you can see in the HR chart, it immediately put my HR into the 180s. Due to the out-and-backs I knew there were 2 guys in my age group just ahead so my last 1.1 miles averaged 7:04 as I ran them down with half a mile to go (one of them dropped an f-bomb as I ran past because he just couldn't pick up the pace…with all of us "on the bubble" for a Vegas slot you can bet it's competitive!!...they finished within about half a minute of me). My HR at the end was 188 and I could barely see straight, which for a 7:04 pace is absurd …I can usually run 4x mile repeats at 6:20 pace and have my HR at about 180. So clearly the heat was playing a huge role.
Run splits below, the choppiness of the pace is mostly due to the spacing of the aid stations, with the two miles with >8:00 pace including both an aid station AND the one hill on the course.
| Lap | Miles | Time | Pace min/mi |
| 1 | 1.97 | 14:45 | 07:29 |
| 2 | 0.98 | 07:54 | <td width="87" style=
0
Comments
Great stuff. You held up in the heat better than I did. Impressed both with your bike and run. You held much higher IF than I did, and naturally went faster. :-) But you also held up your run better than I did...in fact, incredibly well as far as I'm concerned.
The course is virtually identical to previous years. If it's short, it's only by a trivial amount. My Garmin also came up short (12.9x miles). But I was watching the mile splits against the Garmin, and "my" miles were ALL just a smudge too long relative to the marks, rather than just once. That would mean that they had to have had a too-short measuring stick the whole time, and that doesn't seem likely. Plus I know that the Garmin doesn't function well in terms of measuring distance on a track...I figure this has some similarities to that with all the tight turnarounds and such. Who knows.
Anyway, now I have 3 months to try to catch up and be a little closer to you! You're going to have me on the bike for sure...I'm not going to get to 4.1 W/kg and that's a lot of uphill! But if I can do a better swim and build my run, I'll at least try to be closer there!
I wish I understood the whole nutrition/electrolyte/etc better. I'm just not convinced that mega salt does anything but end up getting sweated out. (Obviously there is some minimum we need) But the body is pretty good about adjusting the salt levels in sweat within reasonable ranges so as to keep the serum salt concentration the same. This is what lies behind the phenomenon of all the guys who sweat so much they leave salt lines on their clothes eating more salt and leaving more salt lines. I've never taken a salt pill in a race..but who knows, maybe I would do better if I did. :-)
My favorite part of this race report is the description of post-race barbecue. We should think of a race to go with Memphis in May and the Kansas 70.3 and call it The BBQ Trifecta. ;-)
Congratulations on a great race and the Vegas slot. Especially in the heat. There is nothing like knowing you left it all out there.
Very impressive given your time in the sport and how many half's you've raced.
Congrats!
Matt-
Great race, thanks for the report, I love reading them as they help me think about my own races! Quick question for you. I am doing 70.3 MT a week from Sunday, this will be the first time I race with my Quarq. I noticed you said you zeroed yours out a few times while on the course. Is this something I should do?? My plan was to calibrate it before I left transistion to go to the swim start. Will it lose calibration since it will go to sleep before I get on the bike? What's your normal routine? I appreciate the help in advance! Congrats again on a very well planned and executed race...and of course on the Vegas slot!
Bryan
Matt - the true test of the quality of your race effort was your ability to run down not one but two guys in your AG in the last mile. No matter what you felt during or after the race, that fact seals the deal - you are a racer! And, the better news, you still have some ways to go before reaching your peak in all three sports. Stick with it and success will continue to surprise you.
The day you are completely satisfied with a race result is the day to hang it up.
Although I'm treating Vegas as a "B" race, I've got my money on me to get to the finish ahead of you and William ... thanks to the 2012 swim wave schedule:
6:45 M50+
7:15 M35-39 (A-H)
7:55 M45-49
Starting earlier is an advantage of getting older so take that!
@ Matt - Congrats on an excellent race and thanks for the detailed report. I learn a lot from reading your posts and reports. Enjoy Vegas. And 2x what Al said about you being a racer. I'll see you @ Pleasant Priarie and Racine. Will be fun to race with you.
@ Beth - I'm not kidding when I say that the BBQ in KC was in the back of my mind from the time I signed up for Kansas. I worked with a client in KC many years ago back in the day I was over 200lb and I must have tried 12 or 15 of the BBQ joints there. In fact it is the main lasting impression of that city for me. So the post-race meal was planned well ahead of time. And it was a good one. For all those in the Chicago Sleeper cell who made it to the end-of-season BBQ at my place last year and saw my smoker, you'll understand...
@ Al - Your story of running down the guy at IMAZ last year is the TRUE competitive fire! I totally get it...I had my eye on those guys, I knew I was gaining, I knew how I had to play it. Honestly, that is the fun part. And it sure beat the hell out of thinking about how damn hot it is or if my quads were going to call it a day or any of the other crap I might think of during a race. Even silly stuff like thinking about "running the tangents perfectly" can really help you mentally stay in the game around how to get through the course as fast as possible.
@ Paul - I look forward to meeting you. And I love the smack talk. So you get a 30 min headstart. Hmmmmm, with the triple double-out-and-back run I'll have my eye on you for sure!!
@ Bryan - I do calibrate the Quarq before I start my ride or when setting up my bike in transition. However, I also re-zero it about every hour or so by backpedaling a minimum of 4 revolutions, and until the head unit reads "0". As the temperature changes over the course of the day it will need a re-zero. Also if it gets wet, starts raining, etc. Humidity and temperature are the main factors that influence the calibration value.
@Matt
Congrats on a well executed race, I often can find plenty of reasons to nitpick myself about race execution, but any race that has you actually cutting your splits over the last few miles instead of exploding is an execution victory in its own right.
@Will
You mentioned that "the course is virtually identical to previous years". I may be just focusing on a technicality of your plural use of the word "years", however the in the two years that I raced Kansas the run course was most definitely not identical. In 2010, the run course was most definitely short by about a half mile. In 2011, the turnaround that is out on the bike course (leaving the campground) was noticeably further out than it was the previous year, and it's pretty plainly visible on my Garmin files from both runs (2011 distance was spot on).
I'm of course not insuating that the course was short this year, I was not there and have no way of knowing, but this course has been short in the past.
My point was that that I was watching carefully and I was getting ALL of my Garmin miles 1.5-2% longer than the marked mile. That would be consistent with a bad measuring stick, but not consistent with a single badly placed turnaround.
By "virtually" I meant that I wasn't going to vouch for the exact placements of turnarounds or whatever.... :-)
Thanks for the correction.
Heat and I do not usually get along, and I fear my short time in SoCal has already entirely spoiled me in the heat acclimation department, even now in June most of my runs are in the 60s or low 70s, and if I ride inland I can experience temperatures all the way up into the 80s! Practically the surface of the sun.