Mark Maurer's race rehearsal #1 report

Race Rehearsal #1

This is my first EN race rehearsal so I wanted to do it by the book. I made several mistakes right off. The first was that I didn’t type up my RR plan and post it on the forums. I meant too but I was too busy this week. I did sketch it out for myself and it went something like this.

·         Thursday night get the bike loaded in the car and lay out all my gear and nutrition. Pack running gear and bike gear into the car.

·         Make up all the fluids I’ll be using for the bike and the run and put them in the refrigerator.

·         Get to bed early, 9:00 at the latest

·         Get up at 4:00 and have my regular IM breakfast which is muesli with almond milk and a bagel with honey and almond butter.

·         Get dressed and put any additional clothes, based on weather, that I’ll need in the car

·         Load the fluids into a cooler and put in the car

·         Drive to Tenino and park in the shade (the dog was in the car to go on the run with me)

·         Unload the bike and fill the water bottles,

·         Load all my nutrition on the bike or jersey

·         Take off down the trail towards Yelm

·         Stay in aerobars as much as possible

·         Pedal smoothly with a high (90) cadence

·         Drink every 10 minutes

·         Eat 240-280 calories/hour

·         Use my gears to stay in my goal watts and keep a VI close to 1.00

·         Execute like a ninja!

The second mistake was that I forgot to weigh myself before I started.

From the EN race pace calculator my 4 gears were

1st	162
2nd	170
3rd	179
4th	187

 

I started about 6:00 and it was a clear gorgeous morning. It had rained a little during the night and the trail had mist rising off of it. All the bunnies were still out and I had to keep dodging them along the trail as the darted in and out of the vegetation. It was cool and I kept the power low to get a good warm up and keep at the 162 watts. I had set my Garmin to auto lap at 7 miles because Coach Rich recommended an auto lap at about 20 minutes. I figured that 7 miles would be a little more than 20 minutes for me and 112/7=16 so I would have 16 laps at the end of the day.

I got off the trail when it crossed the state highway to see what that was like, but it was rush hour of sorts (all the logging trucks were heading out) so I got back on the trail at the next intersection. At the start of the second lap I picked up the pace a little, still not to 2^nd gear but closer and held that. Starting with lap 3 I tried to hold the goal watts of 170 but I was still being conservative since I everything in the wiki said to be conservative rather than over cooking it.

I continued to try to hold the goal watts of 170 throughout the rest of the ride. I knew I had a 3^rd and 4^th gear, but even on the hills I tried to stick close to 2^nd gear. I might have been a little conservative but since this was my first rehearsal I worked with it. Most of the laps that were lower like lap 3 and 16 were laps where I was coming back into the park where my car was parked. The 7 mile auto lap probably skewed the data because of having to go slower in the town and park.

I set up my Garmin with 7 fields, 3 sec avg. watts (on top), heart rate, cadence, lap avg. power, lap NP, TSS, and distance. I did the lap avg. power and lap NP because someone noted that if you have both you can keep track of your VI if they’re close. This was a good tip but I found that I would be cruising along with an average power of close to 170 and I would back off to eat or do a u-turn and the average power would fall several points. Of course my brain wanted to get those numbers back up close to 170 again and I would have to talk to myself a lot to keep that under check. I kept telling myself that I still had X miles to go and then run so just be patient. Slowly the numbers would creep back up, whew!

I did miss having time on the Garmin because I lost track of it and forgot to eat at first. I did have a time alert set for 15 minutes to remind me to eat but sometimes I wouldn’t hear it or I would be busy going up a hill and would forget when I got over the top. So I took off TSS and put on time for the 2^nd ride.

Bike Results

My goal TSS from the race calculator was 283 with an optimistic goal time of 5:40.

I finished in 6:04.26, 111.21 miles, NP 167, VI 1.01, avg. HR 121, and avg. cadence 87, TSS 286.3. The individual lap numbers are listed below. And here’s the link to the file http://www.trainingpeaks.com/av/4DQ4VPBOUFWOPWCOLY4GIUEDL4

Lap	NP	VI	HR
1	157	1.01	110
2	164	1.01	117
3	169	1.02	118
4	168	1.01	118
5	170	1.01	118
6	171	1.02	116
7	170	1.01	119
8	166	1.01	119
9	170	1.01	121
10	169	1.01	124
11	163	1.02	122
12	169	1.01	124
13	167	1.01	126
14	166	1.01	129
15	167	1.01	127
16	162	1.04	128

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At mile 35 a wasp hit me in the lip and stung me. Fortunately I was just getting back to the car and was able to get a cold drink which helped a little with the swelling. However it did feel like I had a wad of chewing tobacco tucked into my lip for about 20 miles. I’m glad that it didn’t fly into my mouth. I kept thinking about Ben Greenfield because he puts wasp venom in his bike nutrition bottle. He has to take it orally but I got a free injection during the ride. Sweet!

I was doing out and back laps so I had a tail wind or a head wind depending on direction. Of course things were much worse mentally when I had a headwind. Fortunately I remembered that the winds also pick up on the Vineman during the last 20 to 30 miles so it was a good simulation. The thing I realized about wind on this ride was how difficult it is to keep power steady. The wind was steady with gusts and that played havoc with keeping a steady cadence and steady power. I had to change gears a lot to keep things constant. It was much more difficult to deal with than hills because there aren’t any visual clues.

I changed routes after the first lap between Tenino and Rainier because the trail had quite a few driveways where I had to sit up to look for cars and there are bumps in the trails caused by tree roots. I took to the county roads south of Tenino which have very little traffic. I could go up the river valley to the end of the road and the out and back was 22 miles. The problem was that it got really boring going over the same roads repeatedly so that was another mental stress. On the other hand, my riding was much steadier on the county roads.

I was drinking a 24 oz. bottle of fluid per hour. Since it was cool that morning I was not sweating as much as normal. This meant that I needed to pee often. I have never peed on the bike before so I decided that this ride was a good time to learn, otherwise I would have to stop every 20 to 30 minutes. I guess I’m a “real” triathlete now. Baptism of, well I won’t go there.

I calculated earlier in the year that I need about 400 calories per hour on the bike and I’ve been training with that since the start of the IM plan. I was drinking OSMO and later Gatorade endurance which provided 120 and 160 calories per bottle respectively. So I had to supplement that with 280 or 240 calories. I took 5 rice muffins (200 cal. each) and Clif Bars cut into 60 cal. pieces. The nutrition worked well for me. The muffins (recipe from The Feed Zone cookbook) are easy to eat on the road and easy to digest. I wrapped the Clif Bars in rice paper so I could easily grab them out of my bento box. The last hour I switched to gels to get ready for the run. I had saltstick tabs with me and I took one the last hour because by then it was starting to get hot.

Things started getting tough between miles 80 and 90 and the last 11 miles were really tough. I was heading into the wind and it was the farthest I’d ridden in several years. My power output was starting to drop and I wasn’t as steady. My last lap was the lowest NP and the highest VI of the ride. But I did keep pushing all the way into town.

The Run

When I got back to the car I put the bike away and went and changed clothes. By then it was warming up and I had worn a long sleeve jersey, bike shorts, and knee warmers for the ride. I picked up the dog and my fuel belt with a bottle of OSMO and nutrition. I calculated I needed about 300 cal per hour on the run and I planned to eat on Clifshot per mile.

My Z1 time in 9:17 so my first 3 mile pace would be 9:47. I kept repeating Coach Patrick’s mantra, “give us 3 minutes and we’ll make your day” and kept an eye on my watch to make sure I did keep the pace down. My first 3 miles were 9:37, 9:47 and 9:49.

I turned around and headed back to the car. I picked up the pace and covered the next 2 miles in 9:17 and 9:18. The last mile I picked it up. I have been visualizing the last 1.2 miles of the Vineman for the past couple of weeks. That last part turns back into a residential area of Windsor and is lined with people. I have been seeing myself pick up the pace, feed of the crowd energy, and just keep passing people. So I progressively picked up the pace as the mile went by and was getting near my Z2 pace for the last 400 meters.

I finished the run strong and it felt good. Overall the run was the best one I’ve ever had off such a long bike, possibly any bike. My quads were a little sore and twitchy for part of the first mile, but after that I felt strong and like I could run at my Z1 pace for a long time. I think it bodes well for the Vineman since I’ll have tapered for that. Here’s the link to the file http://www.trainingpeaks.com/av/IQICVAHNOM3NXH42KTGPWVYTK4

I welcome any comments, criticisms, or suggestions.