Strauss IMCDA’08 Race Report
10:25:42, 15th AG, 97th OA
Sorry I’m a little late. I did this as a podcast earlier in the week but didn’t like it. I’ve since had my head wrapped around some other things.
One Thing(s)
- Execute the best race I can.
- Run under 3:40
- Go under 10hrs
If you’ve read Patrick’s race report you have a good idea of our pre-race stuff. We had a long admin list and it didn’t feel like I was able to turn my head off until sometime Friday evening. Not a big deal though.
On Saturday we slept in, hung out at the condo, and then check out bikes in. We hooked up Steve Cramer and his wife Amy, in town to register for CDA, over lunch. Much to Steve’s chagrin, I risked the race on a bowl of chili. Happy to report that all was well downstairs. Patrick and I each had a Vanilla Bourbon Stout at the CDA Brewing Company. Very tasty!
Early dinner, hang out, read go to bed.
2am: 3 x 250cal Naked Juice Fruit Smoothies.
4am: wake up, coffee, toast with PBnHoney. Put on race kit, chip, body marking in the living room.
5:10-20: ferry ride across the lake to the race venue. Cool way to start the day!
5:30: check bags, bike, pump up tires, drop off bags, etc. Patrick and I were probably out of there by 6:15 to hang out in the grass behind the swim start.
Swim: 59:32, 12th AG, 73 OA
We lined up far to the right. Intent was to get clear water to the first turn then find feet and go to sleep. In my head at the swim start I didn’t care about the swim, didn’t care about the bike, I just wanted to have a good run. No HR or watch for the swim. Within a few strokes of starting I had clear water and got back on the course about two buoys from the first turn. I found myself having to swim through more people than I’m used to in a mass start like this. I probably slotting in with the 1:03 swimmers and had to work my way through them. VERY congested at that first turn but the rest of the swim was uneventful, other than having to swim through people. My PE was that of soft-pedaling: whenever I felt like I was actually pulling on the water…I stopped doing that. Again, didn’t care about the swim split. If there was a timing arch at the swim exit I didn’t see it and had no idea what my swim split was.
In retrospect, I overthunk my placement on the beach, missing the faster swimmers and having to swim through slower swimmers. I was expecting :54-55 but the above combined with just didn’t care accounts for that 4 minutes. I usually swim about 4-5th AG, top 35 OA.
T2: 3:21
Get in, get it done, though I was about :45 slower than ‘05. Reflection of my focus on the rest of the day, not every second.
Bike: 5:24:21, 20th AG, 79th OA.
FTP: 300w
Estimated finish time: 5:15-20. Rode a 5:08 on the old course. a
Power goals: .73-75 IF, 285 TSS, ~215-225w Pnorm, ~208-215w Pavg, VI 1.05 or lower. Cap of 210w for the first 25 miles, then 220-225w on flats, 235-240w on long climbs, no higher than 250-260w on anything. Use the hills to stand, stretch, etc. Let everyone go on hills, bomb descents and corners.
The Numbers
Inside My Head
0-1hr: focused on sticking to my wattage targets on hills, flats, and downhills, keeping the VI very low. In particular, my hill caps were ludicrously easy. Seemed I just thought about maybe sorta looking at the monitor and I’d see 240-250w. Still very easy for me but I began to question the calibration of the PM. After about an hour my legs were calibrated to the monitor and I was fine 
I went backwards on any hills but made up huge ground on descents. Was totally in a breathing through my nose, falling asleep place by 30′ on the bike. But, if you look at my first hour numbers above, I was a “little” over what I wanted to see.
1-2hrs: this is where we started to get into the hills, maybe by about 1:20-25 ride time? I found myself in a little group of folks who would drill it on the climbs and then get in my way on the downhills and corners. I had a blast in that twisty stuff next to the lake. Probably around…1:50 ride time Todd came up on me and remarked that his calibration might be off? I said I’m falling asleep but my IF was ~.74. I think he made a great call by dropping back and doing is own thing several hundred yards back. We did the shaka thing on the out and backs. Very sure that the Three EN Stooges, me, Patrick, and Todd, all rode some of the most consistent bike splits out there. Look at our splits and we are within seconds of each other, I think. Pretty cool. In the small world category, I found myself riding near a Brian for a bit who looked familiar. Turns out it was Brian August, a guy I swam with in college who was 3yrs behind me. What are the odds?
0-56: Around 1:30 ride time I realized that I was likely going to be out there longer than the 5:15 I expected, would be over budget on the TSS, so I started planning to back it down, bank TSS in the second half, etc. I stayed very aero in the headwinds back into town and just did my thing. 2:41 and 143 TSS at mile 56, right on the TSS money. I have to admit that, with the volume of people who had passed me, I started to question my day a little. But at mile 56 I knew I was on the money, I had seen the bike times from last year, and was confident that there were many guys up the road who had cooked themselves and would come back to me. Still, I was focused on doing my own thing and figured that with 143 TSS in the bank against a budget of 285, and likely to be out there a little longer due to winds in the second half, that I needed to manage my effort very closely. Again, I didn’t care about the bike split and I began to not sweat my low VI goal so much. I decided I would coast more on the downhills on the second lap.
2-3hrs: see notes above. I picked up my BSN bag at miles 65, tossed my empty $15 arundel feed bottle and racked a new one. I felt AWESOME, like I hadn’t ridden the bike at all.
3-4hrs: from the BSN station, through town, out to Hayden, through about 3/4 of the hills I was completely alone. Probably 1:30-45? Handful of dudes wayyyyy off in the distance and no one behind me. Totally solo. Back in the hills which is where the extra watts came from.
4-5hrs: In the hills, out of the hills and in the headwinds back to town. More coasting, finding places to rest, and bank TSS, which is where the 1.08 VI came from.
5-finish: Pretty much done. Thinking about the run, stretching.
Bike observations:
- I rode one (1) watt Pnorm over my RR watts, 2w under my RR average watts. As Patrick and I talked about our race plans during the week, I said I was bouncing around what the spreadsheets say I should be able to do vs what I KNOW I’ve done during my race rehearsals. On race day I did the same thing: am I racing towards a spreadsheet or towards an actual performance that I know was good? That’s a good thought for us to all keep in mind.
- I rode the bike a little dynamically, meaning I used the Ergomo and my head to adjust my pacing out there to account for the fact that I was going to be out there 10′ longer than planned. I’m proud of the nearly even time and TSS splits, though I’d like to have seen lower TSS in the first 1-1:30. In retrospect I think splitting the TSS as 135/150 would have been better…but I’m not sweating it too much.
- Nutrition worked perfectly. I rolled with 1 x 600cal bottle of Infinit on the downtube. Orange, no protein, with caffeine. Empty aero bottle, couldn’t be bothered to fill it up before the race. Took a hit every 15′, chased with water. Very easy to drink out of the aerobottle and this, combined with the cool day, meant I was peeing lots and lots…while pedaling, natch. Bottle was empty at 56 and I took a gel to make up the deficit to my next bottle. Carried on with the plan and had maybe had half a bottle of G-Ade somewhere, just because. I picked up 1-2 bottles of water only at the aid stations to rinse myself off and top off the aerobottle.
- Position: my position is great for training, great for race rehearsals, but when I put a swim in front of it, it’s maybe 2cm too aggressive. If I want to ride another IM in this position I…must…stretch my hips, back and hamstring. I managed it by moving forward on the saddle from time to time to open my hips, standing in non-aero situations like hills, etc.
T2: 2:33. Turned on the Garmin, taped the instep of both feet. I was afraid I would get a blister in my left instep. I wear inserts with a wedge on the left one to add additional support. The inserts + wedge were not as broken in as I’d like them to be so this was precaution. Todd came blasting in while I was in there, on a tear to get out. I walked to the start on run course, pressed Start and began running.
Run: 3:55, 52nd AG, 251 OA, 9:00 pace
My first thought getting on the run course was that this was the year I was going to run people down. I felt great. Goal was to run a 3:40. Turning on my Garmin and looking at the time of day was the first time all day that I paid attention my total time. I saw that a 3:40 would get me about 10:05-10 so One Thing #3 is gone, unless I run like I stole it. No worries. At this time I was on track with #1, execute a great race. Time to make it #2, running a 3:40.
I have to admit that this is where my lack of attention to detail and our gap of knowledge between concrete bike pacing and concrete run pacing bit me in the ass. If you visit the Pro Lounge, you’ll see we started a thread on group-thinking an IM run pacing strategy based on VDot. That is the result of me screwing up my run and resolve to match the dialed in EN bike pacing with dialed in EN run pacing. In particular, we need to give the 6-7+hr bike people a much better plan than we have now.
This is the summary of my notes from that thread:
Rich’s assessment of Dick’s run
Estimated open half mary time of 1:33 = VDot 49 = E-pace of 8:40 and goal mary time of 3:40. However, you can see above that my NGP of my first 12 miles was significantly faster than this. I ran at an E-pace of Vdot 50-51 within the first 18 miles. In fact, I started to go downhill around mile 15-16 so was likely a little higher up to then. Net is that my NGP for the last 6 miles was almost a minute per mile slower than goal.
Should have:
- Run/walked from the start at E-pace of VDot 49 = 8:40 pace, putting money in the bank and finishing strong.
- With a history of not-so-good runs, bad feet, and desire to just run well (not slow down) I maybe should have gone with a VDot of 48, yielding E-pace of 8:48?
- As is, by over extending myself for the first 12-15 miles, running to a VDot of 50-51, I finished with an E-pace of VDot 47, all boogered in the last 6-7 miles. Awesome!
- I didn’t start walking the aid stations until mile 10.
My friggin’ feet hurt RIGHT out of the gate. It may have been the result of maybe a poor taping job + swollen feet from being out there all day + not having the laces totally dialed in + I have ludicrous flat feet. You know that when Uncle Sam requires a waiver from a doc for you to enlist in the Marines…you got broke ass feet. That’s me. Anyway, rather than standing down and maybe trying to fix it, at the time I basically accepted that this was my lot in life, was gonna be another painful run, and I was able to put it out of my head until the demons started knocking at about mile 14. Then it truly, truly sucked. While not as bad as 2005 (I basically ran myself into an injury that took forever to heal) and I had no ankle issues, the relative speed with which they felt better after the race has me thinking it was a function of the tape and maybe the shoes vs the manifestation of my injuries. Very, very frustrating as I’ve been running relatively pain free all season.
The Final Assessment
After the race I was in a semi-bad place. Not super-bad, like an 8 out of 10, largely because I just don’t care that much about my Ironman racing anymore. I was a 9.5/10 on the “Certainty of not doing an IM again” scale. Meaning, as much as I’d like to knock out a good run like I did in ‘02, I don’t care that much about it to actually do another IM. Now, with some distance, a closer assessment of my run and after noodling this running with pace stuff, I’m feeling a lot better and I’ve maybe come down off the ledge to about a 7.5-8. Specifically, if I had exercised enough attention to detail and used our developing system to call myself a VDot 48 vs 49, that’s an E-pace of 8:48, marathon time of 3:50, in which case I was only off my goal by 5′. Still, not at all happy with how I got to that 3:55 but…there it is.
My major take home lesson from all of my racing with pace noodling is this:
If you want to run a faster IM on race day, you need to earn the right to run faster by running faster in training. By lifting your VDot. Just because you want to run a 3:40 don’t make it right if you don’t have the VDot to justify it. If my FTP were 280w I would never pace the bike as if my FTP were 300w. If your VDot is 49, don’t run at friggin’ 51 VDot E-pace. Wanna run faster? Earn it.
This is my fitness philosophy, in a nutshell: “This is all just a game. If it’s not fun, don’t do that. If it is fun, do more of that. Focus your fitness lifestyle (and business, in my case) on what you love to do and you’ll be happier in the end.” During our weekend together Patrick and I talked about our evolution as IM athletes and coaches, the evolution of the IM demographic, fitness as a lifestyle, and some other higher level thoughts. I must be getting old…anyway, I’ll share those thoughts with everyone next week.
In the short term, I’ve never focused on making myself a faster runner. I think I might try giving that a shot (see above) and let the wheels tell me what distance I should be racing.
It was great to see the other EN’ers on the course, get some mojo for the kit from some of the spectators and other athletes, etc. You guys don’t know it yet but as Patrick and I do our thing outside of the EN Haus, continue speaking at races, the brand recognition of EN and the EN kit will grow. You’ll definitely start to see a good bit of mojofication from the spectators and other athletes.
And, after Patrick’s performance this weekend, I decided to promote myself to the position of Czar of HIM/Short Course/Endurance Adventure Outfitter Operations, leaving the IM racing to him. 
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