Steve Boer's 2018 IMWI Race report

Original Race plan HERE

Going into the race, this is the first time I actually felt adequately trained. I still wish I had done more, but was confident that my increased consistency and volume would pay dividends. I arrived Friday, uneventful airbnb checkin, then dinner with the team. Prior to the dinner, Brian Hagan stopped by to give me his flo wheels. 60 for the front, disc for the rear. Packed my T1 and T2 bags, and went to bed. I had gotten much sleep the night before, but managed a solid 7 hours Friday night. Woke up and headed out for breakfast – Lazy Jane’s – was a short 20 minute walk from the house, and worth every minute of it. There were quite a few triathletes there, and I was looking at one and thinking to myself “Oh my God, it’s Edie Falco’s doppelganger” – It wasn’t until much later that night when I looked at FB and decided that it was one of the pro’s racing (erin green). Anyway, back to Saturday morning – I get my breakfast and am walking back when I remember the realization the night before that despite all of my checklists and all of my preparation, I had failed to pack a hoodie/fleece/anything long sleeved – including for after the race. Enter the local thrift shop ;)

$7 later and I’m out the door with a thermal lined University of Wisconsin Pullover. I got back to the airbnb, and start the wheel swap from my old to the new. This is where I start to panic – I realize that the rims are significantly wider than my old ones. I try adjusting the brakes and the calipers, but fail pretty miserably. In a panic, I send a groupme to super Sherpa and mechanic extraordinaire Jeremy Behler. He gets back to me, we talk on the phone, he asks for the address where I’m staying and heads over to the house. 10 minutes later, my knight in shining armor arrives, and with nothing more than the multi-tool in my bento gets everything adjusted to 99%. It wasn’t until I was walking to checkin that I realized I was 1% off, and that after multiple times pulsing the brakes, the pads were slightly rubbing. I take it over to Machinery row, they take a look at it, 5 minutes and $10 later, my pads have gotten the shave they needed and I’m back on the way to bike rack and bag drop. And that is when the doubts enter my head. I look at the lake, and say to myself “the gods must be angry”. After the drop off I head up to the roof of the terrace and realize just how long 2.4 miles swimming is. Crap. I’ve swam 7 times this year, this is going to be “fun” – all this as my stomach has that sinking feeling. 

Head back home, mix all my drink bottles for the bike and the run – bike I made 3 bottles of infinit concentrate, and I also made 2 bottles of infinit tripwire for the run. Bike bottles were 6 bottle concentrates with ~300 calories per serving and each of the tripwire bottles were 500ml with ~800 calories each. Finish packing special needs and head back to the avenue club (same place we had EN dinner the night before) to stuff my pie hole – chicken parm over spaghetti and a couple of my new favorite beer – Founders Rubaeus. I know many of you are probably saying “WHAT?!?!!??!? You’re drinking the night before the race” – honestly, its been part of what I do the day before every big race – a last supper with a nice drink to go with it.

back home, into bed by 9:00, asleep by 9:45 with a 3:45, 3:50 and 4:00 alarm set.

Race day: woke up just before my first alarm and chugged 2 bottles of ensure plus to get 700 calories in my belly to start the day. I’m not a big fan of eating breakfast, but this is an easy way to pre-fuel. Walked to the race site (just about a mile) and started setting up – not much to do other than I had to mix my first BTA bottle. Headed down the stairs (nobody took the stairs, thanks coach rich in 2014 for that tip) and looked for the group to take a picture. Still, completely relaxed and calm. I don’t think I’ve EVER been this relaxed. Winds were quiet race day, so lake was smooth. Finally put my wetsuit on and headed towards swim start to lay claim to a piece of land. Seeded myself in 1:30-1:40 just like I had been planning, and just sat by the barriers – no sense in standing around the whole time. Made small talk with a few people, peed, and just waited my time to start. It wasn’t until about 40’ before going under the arch that the excitement started peaking.

Swim goal: 1:40-1:45 actual: 1:40:00

Going into the race, I had swam 7 times this year, but was confident in swim (up until the white caps on the lake Saturday. Seeded myself with what I thought was the right group and just settled into an easy rhythm early on. Clear goggles (wish I’d thought about it earlier and gotten some polarized), but sun was still low, so sighting wasn’t a huge problem. Fast forward to 9:45 and my watch beeps for the first time. Huh. I guess I had auto-lap setup. Didn’t realize that. Based on the time, I’m going to guess 400m. sure.

MISTAKE #1: make certain you’ve practiced with your exact setup before race day

I’m fine with my 9:45 for 400m, and keep going. Somewhere around 15 minutes into the swim, I start to get tightness in my chest. I’ve NEVER had that before. Then again I’ve NEVER swam in my new wetsuit before. Is it the wetsuit, is it psychological, is it physical? Shrug

MISTAKE #2: nothing new on race day

I keep swimming, get my 2nd autolap 10:27 later. Okay, little bit slower, but still around what I expected. I keep going, trying to pay as little attention as possible to the swim data, is it doesn’t matter. Fast forward to auto-lap #4 and at 12:07 I start to freak out. WTF is going on with my swim. If I’m doing 12:00/400m, I have nearly 4k for the entire swim, that’s 10 auto-laps, at 12:00/400 that’s a 2:00IM swim. WTF. At this point in time I hit my first low of the day. I start questioning everything. The stupidity of having only swam 7 times this year. I may not even finish this swim the way things are going. What am I going to do for the rest of the day? How am I going to explain how I effed this up so bad? What is @Tim Cronk going to say, and how long am I going to have to live with that? At this point, I go ahead and pick up the stroke rate a little bit, trying to save my race from the very distinct possibility of a DNF on THE FIRST LEG. I haven’t even studied the swim course enough – how many buoys are there? They’ve all been numbered, but I don’t know what number I’m looking for. At this point in time, the sun is much higher, and the sighting is getting a bit more difficult. Finally make the last turn home, and all that I remember is

@jeremy behler commenting about “don’t screw up the angle on the approach swim exit”. I finally get out of the swim, hit the button on my garmin for swim exit, and MY LOW IS OVER!!! Garmin had me as 1:41:05 for the swim. At this point, I’m on cloud nine. This is a VERY good way to start the day. I go all the way to the end of the swim out, see the last two strippers at the end with nobody, point at them, at this point I’m already unzipped. Lay down on the ground in front of them, get back up and on my way. Benefit of the last strippers: their ground was actually still almost virginal. I saw so many people with muddy butt/back all day long due to the soaked ground from all the rain in the week before.

Bike goal: 6:35-6:55 NP 165-170 actual: 7:00:31 NP 149

Bike started off fast. Those miles out of town (once you get off the bike path) are quick. From the very beginning, I could NOT get my power up, no matter what. I accepted that, and rolled with it. I had my garmin 520 setup (I thought) to auto-lap every 5 miles, drink cue every 12 minutes. I had no problems drinking all day, I was drinking to thirst and staying ahead of my cues. After the first hour, I’d already drank almost 2 bottles, and averaged 17mph. holy cow, flying. If I keep this pace, I’ll have a 6 hour bike split. Needless to say, I didn’t keep that pace. Nor did I have a 6 hour bike split. By the time I was 1.5 hours in I realized that something was up with my garmin. I scroll through the screens and realize that I’d traveled x many miles, the entirety of which was on my current lap.

MISTAKE #3: don’t muck with your electronics and expect things to just work right. Muck with your electronics, and then practice with them.

At this point, I’ve given up on my 5 mile auto-lap, still thinking about “I can’t get my power up”, and try to maintain NP – at this point I was fluctuating between 155-157. First pee on the bike by mile 40 – it’s still not an easy thing to do. Nutrition is going to plan, I’m getting through aid stations fairly smoothly – any water that’s left over just before aid station is a crotch wash, dump the spent bottle entering transition, get a fresh one to place in cage on downtube. By the way, I LOVE the volunteers that either have the super light grip on the top of the bottle, or place it on the palm of their hand. I wonder if they tell people “don’t try to run with them”? any way you look at though, even the worst volunteer is still a volunteer, and I appreciate everything they do. I started the bike with all 3 of my concentrate bottles on the bike, eliminating the stop at BSN. Going into the race, everybody talked about how technical the course was, how hilly the course was, and how bad the roads are. Coming from NYC suburbs, I found none of those 3 items to be true. I thought back to Rich’s IMWisc webinar and made certain to not sit up and brake ¼ mile from the turn. I made certain to not try and hammer the climbs, I just stayed in my saddle, and rode up it like it was nothing. I know that my power spiked on the hills, but not drastically. The combination of a 50/34 and 11/32 masked the weak engine as much as possible. 

MISTAKE #4: probably at about 70-80 miles in my garmin beeped at me for low battery. I’m an idiot. This is the 2nd time I’ve screwed myself by not realizing brightness on 100%.

I turned brightness all the way down, and was prepared to finish the ride with just my 935, but it somehow managed to last until the end. The last 1/3 of the ride, my NP was dropping lower and lower. I didn’t think much of it, know that its due to a lack of 5 (in my case 6) hour power, which is something I need to work on for next year. Afterwards looking at the data, I’m grateful that I didn’t have the 5 mile auto-lap working, or else I’d have realized how low my power had dropped, I may have TRIED to push power higher, and ended up compromising my run. My 2nd half bike was nearly 10% lower than the first half. For the last 60-90 minutes on the bike, I was crunching numbers in my head, and new that it would be VERY close to getting a 6:xx:xx bike split, but knew that it wouldn’t make a bit of difference, and even if I wanted to push, I Likely wouldn’t be able to. By the time we were on the bike path back into town, I was ready to sell my bike for $10 and get on with the run.

Run Goal: 5:00-5:20 Actual: 5:24:57

Finally off the bike…what a relief. As soon as I got off the bike and headed into transition, my neck was super stiff. I’ve been battling neck/back pain on the bike this year for long rides. I ended up grabbing the back of my head to pull my head forward all the way. I was actually going to stop for a quick neck rub before heading onto the run, but somebody else beat me to the table. Oh well. I didn’t NEED it, but it would have been nice. Then again, that would have been another 2-3 minutes on top of my already slow transitions. As soon as I was out of Monona terrace, stopped at the portapotty to get one last pee before heading out, grabbed two cups of ice (one for each of my rear pockets), a pack of cliff blocks and off I went. I was carrying my own nutrition for the marathon (infinit tripwire grape) which I drank at the top of every mile, and supplemented with a little bit of water, more just to wet my mouth than anything. The first couple of miles I knew that I had to keep my HR low and take in as many calories as possible. I had planned on 140bpm for the first hour. There were only a few times I had to back it off, but when I did, I just fast walked and my HR came back down quickly. My first mile was 11:02 and I knew that I was starting off in a very good place. I had wanted to turn up the HR a little after the first hour, but quickly realized that is an exercise in futility. The name of the game was just keeping the HR from dropping. Overall, I felt great on the run. Never really slowed down a whole lot, and never had a deep dark period on the whole race. Every time I had a hill, I would walk it (observatory hill). I had a few spots in the middle where I was having a little bit of GI distress, and actually had to stop to poo at camp randall stadium at the end of the first loop. That was one of only 2 times that I stopped moving, the 2nd being early on the 2nd loop for nutrition. By the time I was finishing the first loop, it was getting harder and harder to drink. I had a second handheld bottle of tripwire in RSN, and completely skipped it. 2.5 hours in, I wanted nothing to do with more grape tripwire. Back out for the second loop. I was still moving at a steady effort, no idea what my total run time was or what pace it was, the only time I got pace information was when I auto-lapped each mile. The only screen on my garmin was HR, and I was keeping it in the 130 range mostly. I was still feeling good at the end of the first loop, and just kept going. At this point in time I’d almost entirely stopped drinking, and new I was in danger. By the time I made it to mile 15 I had quit my tripwire and tried redbull, which was just too sweet for me. My handheld was mostly empty, I dumped the remaining contents and at the next aid station got it filled with pepsi. By the time I’d run a mile or so, it had gone completely flat and the change in taste was more than welcome. I took a cup of broth at a couple of the aid stations, knowing that since I was starting to get a headache my sodium was likely low. The broth was too strong for me, and being in the stupor that I was, I didn’t even think to just add some water to dilute it down a bit. I knew that I was in grave danger due to not drinking and low salt, but managed to keep pushing on. Next aid station I took some potato chips, and those were the best thing I ate all day long. I was fully expecting the suck to hit at mile 18, but It didn’t. I remember Coach P talking about “pick one thing and do it great, even if it’s just running the last 5k”. By the time I hit mile 20, I knew the end was in sight, thinking about how all that was left was a 10k. I knew that I had enough left over, and turned up the pace. It wasn’t until after a couple of miles that I realized how much I was holding the run together, and I was passing people left and right. At first I was thinking about counting them, but that would require too much mental effort. As I clicked off the miles, I kept blowing by people that were walking it in. At a certain point, I remember people complimenting me on “great run” as I passed them one after the other. Each mile completed was one mile closer to the end. I still had not hit the wall and was feeling great running almost the entire marathon. I came into the finishers chute with 2-3 other people, and I remembered somebody saying “Unless the seconds matter, they don’t. When you’re in the finish chute, don’t be the jerk that sprints past the person in front of you, ruining their picture. You’ve been out there all day, let the gap spread out and get some great pictures”. I let the people in front of me go, one of them sprinted it, the other two just ran it in, and I walked it in. Enjoying. every. Last. Second. It wasn’t until I was 3’ from the finish line that I heard @john Withrow screaming his brains out trying to get my attention.  It wasn't until the next day when I tried to catch up with all the Groupme action that I saw @Rob Peters comment that I had negative split the run. I hadn't paid any attention to run timing, just ran my race. it was probably 3-4 days before the race that I had told @francis picard that I wanted to negative split the run, and without knowing/trying to do that, I had.

Final Thoughts:

I went into the day with a 13:40-14:20 range……I finished in 14:27. Out of 860 minutes, I was off by 7 minutes. I will take it. This was hands down the best race I’ve ever had. I never once had even the slightest twinge of a muscle. I know that I left time on the course, and am fine with that. I was able to have the run I had because of the bike I had. Any way you look at it, I had an 80 minute PR - My previous IM finish was 15:48. Now that it’s a week post IM, I’m absolutely amazed at how well my body took the abuse. I walked all over town on Monday and Tuesday, by Wednesday I was out doing short easy runs. All of the success I had on course was due to all of the work I put in off the course. This was my first time truly racing as part of EN, and I have to say that all the support and camaraderie you get on course is what makes the team. 99% of the time, all of us live in our own world, and race day is the one time we all come together. Already looking forward to the next adventure as part of TeamEN (Rattler), and also looking forward to going back to Madtown next year to knock off another 80 minutes.