Geepers! Can’t
believe it’s been so long since I have posted anything. BUT – now that Augusta is over, I want to
give an accounting for what I felt was an outstanding race for me. I felt great going in, had ‘stretch’ time
goals that I met, and had a great time doing it.
The raw data:
Total Time: 5:58:02 (1:19:48 PR from same race last year)
Swim: 32:13 (1 min PR from same race last year)
Bike: 2:51:07 (17 min PR from same race last year)
Run: 2:25:35 (32 min PR from Kansas 70.3 this year)
Unlike Kansas, the conditions for the day were PERFECT! Overcast, cool, and slightly misting near the
end of the run. And obviously, the
current of the river helped a lot as well!
And these conditions, no doubt, had a hand in me being able to set these
PR’s. But in addition to that, the
training and execution guidance of Endurance Nation along with fairly
significant body composition improvements also contributed HUGELY to these time
improvements. I can’t say enough about
EN and the coaching, guidance, and pure knowledge of everything from how to plan
race nutrition, what works best to prevent nipple chaffing during the run, what
to carry on the bike, encouragement and support from other members, and on and
on and on. Nothing quite like it!
So here goes… the day before the race, I had pancakes, syrup
and some egg whites for breakfast. I
then picked up my training/racing buddy, Kourey to head out on our 5 hour car
ride to Augusta from Birmingham. Along
the way, we stopped for a snack of gummy bear goodness to hold us over along
the way.
Once in Augusta, we went to the Athlete check in and picked
up our race packets. We then headed to
bike transition to drop off our bikes before going to get some lunch which
consisted of a 12” sub from Firehouse Subs (yum-o-la!). After that, we had to go back to Athlete
Check in because we both needed new race belts (his was broken, mine was still
in Birmingham) – and hey, what better place to buy some gear than at the
Ironman Expo! We then went back to the grocery
store for our evening meal and morning breakfast supplies before going on to
the hotel.
Dinner consisted mainly of Naked Juice, chocolate milk and
sports drink – nothing solid. This was
key to an “uneventful” morning and worked perfectly for both of us! We also treated ourselves to 1 beer from the
hotel bar to help calm us so that we could sleep.
On race day, we woke at 4:30am and I promptly had 1.5 cups
applesauce with 2 scoops of protein powder plus 1 banana. This was purposely less than Kansas, and
worked well. We left the hotel at 5am
and drove towards the host hotel to grab a shuttle bus to transition.
Once in transition, I set up my area, pumped up my tires,
checked everything over, and we grabbed another bus to the swim start. Because we were so rushed at Kansas, we
planned on being extra early, so when we got to the swim start, we still had
1-1.5 hours to kill before starting. So
once there, we just chilled until ‘go time’.
THE SWIM:
I was in the 7:56am wave with the other old guys, but I got
to wear a pink swim cap! One thing to
note, here, is that in prior races, I have found that I often get a little
freaked out and panicky at the start of the swim. Feel free to read some older posts about that
– but suffice it to say that I have found a Xanax or 3 works wonders for this
situation. Sadly, I failed to pack any
Xanax, so ….
At the start of the swim, I hung near the back as I always
do because I am a slow swimmer and didn’t want to get in the way. Once I started, I immediately had issues
catching my breath. I also found that my
wetsuit felt like it was choking me.
This led to the 1st of two full on panic attacks. For both, I just stopped swimming, floated in
my wetsuit, tried to stay out of the way (I was already in the back, so not
very hard), and relaxed to catch my breath.
This seemed like an eternity to me on both occasions, but given that my
swim time wasn’t too bad, it must not have been that long. At one point during the 2nd attack,
I honestly thought my entire race was over as I began to look for a canoe to go
hang on to. I then said “F#$@ THAT!!”,
forced my face into the water and just started swimming. After a few minutes, I began to relax,
remembered that I was supposed to count my strokes (thanks again EN) and just
cruised along in my slow, but steady pace.
T1:
I came out of the water, jogged up the ramp, down the road,
along the side of transition to the wetsuit strippers, plopped on the ground,
and let the stripper do her magic! Once
freed of the wetsuit, I jogged to my bike, tried to get the grass off my feet,
put on my shoes, donned my helmet and race belt (that fancy expensive one from
the Expo) and headed out on the bike.
The only thing to note is that at this point of the race that I noticed
my watch was not tracking correctly. It
had an error message displayed and I had no idea if any of the swim got
captured. It also would not let me do
anything until I turned it off and back on which I did before starting it back
for the bike portion. I wasted time
messing with this and am annoyed I let that happen.
THE BIKE:
After getting my watch to work, I got settled in on the bike
and felt GREAT! I was wearing the EN Arm
Coolers which actually made me a bit chilly the entire ride because it was
overcast and fairly cool (70s, I think).
But after maybe 30 minutes, I noticed my watch had stopped – the timer
had just stopped. I restarted it, but am
guessing as to how long it was down.
This happened again later in the ride, so my sense of time on the bike
was completely off – I had no idea how I was doing in terms of time or pace and
had to use the mile markers to determine my feeding schedule rather than time.
Speaking of feeding, I went into this race with an entirely
different nutrition plan than in the past.
Prior to this, I used Gu and supplemented with salt sticks for sodium. This time, however, I used 2 different
formulas of Infinit – one for the bike, the other for the run. The bike formula consisted of 300 cals, 412g
sodium, 71g carbs, 3.42g protein, no caffeine per hour. I switched to this Bike formula for all of my
training rides that were longer than 2 hours after I got back from Kansas
earlier this summer. This worked
perfectly for me in training and on race day!
No cramping, no hunger, no bonking, plenty of energy! I will stick with this and only adjust as I
lose more weight.
I started the day with 1 hours’ worth of formula in my aero
bottle and a “2 hour bottle” on my down
tube that I used to refill my aero bottle every hour. I refilled the aero bottle prior to each aid
station and used water from the station to top it off. Again, this worked perfectly and I will
continue this approach going forward.
Back to the ride – all I can say is: FAST! There were definitely some very fast sections
to this bike course. Granted, there were
some hills as well, but lots of flats and plenty of downhills! That made for a very fun and exciting
ride! One thing that was concerning to
me, however, was the lack of control people had with their bikes. I saw a TON of people weaving all over the
place and darting in and out of other riders.
Needless to say, it is a bit scary to have someone weave in front of you
while you are approaching them at 35 mph going downhill. I also noticed a lot of people coasting down
the hills!?! But since many of them
crushed it going up the hill, I guess they were resting. Anyway, I made up a lot of time on the downhills.
Because I don’t have a power meter, I use heart rate and RPE
to determine my effort. My “zone 3” pace
is 151 – 158 bpm which I easily maintained for the duration of the ride. Unlike last year where I hammered along for
much of the ride, I maintained a steady, consistent effort regardless of hills,
flats, or traffic. This, I am certain,
made a HUGE difference in how I felt on the run (thanks again, EN).
I was still feeling great as I got closer to the end. I consciously pedaled a higher cadence in the
last 10-15 miles just to help with the transition to the run. Don’t know if that helped any, but I felt
good, so I’ll keep doing it. I came in “hot”,
braked hard, and jumped off the bike.
T2:
I ran to mount my bike, put on socks and shoes and had to
replace my race number. My number got
torn and I knew it would not last for the entire run. So I had to search my transition bag for my
other race number to use. At this point,
I decided not to wear my newly purchased race belt for the run and use my Fuel
Belt to hold my new number instead. I
had to use the Fuel Belt anyway because I was carrying my Run formula of
Infinit nutrition. This formula
consisted of 245 cals, 406g sodium, 61g carbs, no protein, and added caffeine
per hour. Like the bike formula, I used
this extensively for most workouts that were less than 2 hours and it worked
perfectly!
THE RUN:
I had two “1.5 hour” bottles in my fuel belt that I knew
would last long enough to get through the run, even if I blew up and it took 3
hours. But I was feeling good and knew I
wouldn’t take that long.
I started out and immediately noticed that my watch had lost
GPS and was not tracking my pace.
UGH! I fiddled with that for the
1st mile or so and gave up. I
just used the mile markers and hit my “split” button at each marker to note my
pace for each mile. My goal was to hit
an 11:00 per mile pace for the 1st three miles then speed up to
10:30 per mile the rest of the way. But
based on my manual tracking, I was all over the place – as fast as 10:00 min
miles to as slow as 11:55 min miles.
This seemed to coincide with how long I spent at each aid station (go
figure). Lesson learned – don’t spend so
much time at the aid stations! The clock
doesn’t stop!!
In addition to manually calculating my pace per mile, I also
watched my heart rate and it hovered around 164-166 the entire run. This is a little higher than I would have
liked, but my paces were a little slower than I wanted, so I just kept
going. I was so worried about not having
enough left in the tank at the end that I wanted to do everything I could to
keep a decent, steady pace going so that I wouldn’t have to walk. And it worked! This is the 1st time I have EVER
been able to run the entire 13.1 miles except for the walks at the aid
stations. Other than those, I ran every
mile!
The run was fairly uneventful in terms of the actual
run. But the crowd support was
amazing! It was like a huge party in
downtown Augusta and I really got a boost every time we looped back towards
part of the crowd. Truly fantastic!
THE END:
As I neared the finish, I was able to make out the time at
the finish line which I knew started 26 minutes before my swim wave
started. I crossed as the time was
around 6:24 – so I knew I had finished in less than 6 hours. Prior to the race, I had set my BHAG goal
(Big Harry Audacious Goal) as sub 6 hours.
That, I felt, could be accomplished if everything went perfectly and I
pulled off a 30 min swim, 3 hour bike, and 2.5hr run and fit in transitions
somewhere. My realistic goal was sub 6.5
hours. So… I am ecstatic to have
finished in 5:58. Without the training
support of Kourey, the materials inside Endurance Nation, and a supportive wife
and kids, I could never have pulled this off!
But a year after doing this race and “just finishing” as a BOP-er (back
of pack-er), it is damn nice to finish as a MOP-er (middle of the pack-er). Next year…. FOP-er baby!!
And now – the season is officially over. I am doing NOTHING for a week, and then will
start to add in some alternate exercising for a while. Perhaps take a BodyPump class. Maybe yoga or tennis. I’ll surely take my son mountain biking. But I’ll lay off the swim/bike/run for a
while. At least until November! :)
