AUGUSTA RACE REPORT

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 1^st 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 2^nd 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 1^st 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 1^st 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 1^st 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!  :)