Not able to sleep so I figured I'd take some notes in the form of a race report for future consideration. It's been quite a journey from the 235 pounds and skyrocketing cholesteral situation I was in three years ago when I started triathlons, to the lean 200 pounds and 60+ lower cholesteral that I am now.
Overall
Now I understand why people say Lake Stevens is a tough course. The hills on the 1st 14 miles of the bike loop didn’t seem that hard during my practice rides. How could I have deluded myself like that? And the run is far from flat as claimed by the race director.
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Risk |
Mitigation Strategy |
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Heat |
Rest before I get tired, cool off before I get too hot (since it is very difficult to lower core body temp once it goes up), and drink/eat constantly according to race plan. I carefully studied the sections on “heat stroke” and “heat stress” in the book “The Lore of Running”. Thanks to Bryan Woodruff for recommending this book, as these ideas formed the basis for the above heat mitigation strategy. |
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Knee |
My right knee injury has been acting up lately due to high training volumes. Interestingly, my PT at the Proclub noticed my right leg is noticeably smaller than my left (quad is 2.5 cm smaller 3 inches above knee). Turns out I’ve been favoring this leg in my training to the point that it atrophied. Virtually no workouts in 4 days prior to race to give it a chance to heal. Planning weight program after this race to equalize. I was 10 pounds lighter at the start of this race (200 pounds) than I was after porking out prior to Pacific Crest. The reason I did 180 miles of moderate training 3 weeks before Lake Stevens was in part to get my weight down. |
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Right foot |
Pay close attention to outside of right foot on bike to make sure it doesn’t explode on me in T2 like it did at Pacific Crest. |
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Unknown about what it takes to run a half marathon after a 56 mile bike. How much to back off on bike to save enough for run. |
Since this was my A race, I wanted to put forth the best effort I’m capable of to serve as a benchmark, but still leave enough to maintain steady pace throughout. |
Race Goal
Finish under 6 hours. Ideally 5:35 S: 37, T1: 3, B: 3:03, T2: 2, R:1:50 unless it turns out to be hot. If hot, slowing way down because I’m not trained for heat.
Race Morning
Up at 3:30 after about an hour of sleep. I was packing, mixing, organizing until after 2AM. Start this earlier next year.
Ate cup of yogurt and banana while preparing 4 egg omelet loaded with Portebelle mushrooms. Finished this off and was out the door at 4:30 for the 1 hour drive.
Drank 16oz of Carbopro/Heed mix just before arriving. My stomach was bloated from my breakfast right up until 5:30.
Picked up packet and returned to car to grab my stuff. No timing chip in race packet? Panicked since I didn’t have much time to spare, back to race start to find out that you get your chip as you enter transition area. Whew! Never seen that before.
Warm up
Ran 5 minutes along lake front to check out the course, then biked the big hill next to the lake to develop a strategy for tackling what I thought was the most difficult part of the run. It wasn’t though. For me the toughest part was the first 3 miles of the run course which felt like all uphill and incredibly hot due to low wind and being away from the lake. I also did a test swim where I determined that wearing my shirt under my wetsuit made the suite feel much tighter so I went back to transition and took it off. It would have cost me dearly to swim the entire course that way.
Swim Start
Blasted out of the start and after 100 yards noticed that I was in 2nd place. Yikes! Better back off. Settled in behind a group of 7 swimmers leading the charge and drafted a third of a mile before they left me behind. I’m guessing this drafting saved me a couple minutes. In part I had to slow down because my legs started cramping. Couldn’t figure this out since my legs rarely cramp when I swim. I had some warning this might happen since my toes cramped as I walked into the water for my practice swim. I suspect that spending several hours in the heat the day before at the company picnic had something to do with it as I was drenched in sweat most of the day. Drank gatorade and took a few Thermolytes but that might not have been enough. I focused on relaxing my legs and not using them at all. Cramps went away but returned twice.
Heading back in we ran into the International distance swimmers rounding their buoys and things got a lot more crowded. Seemed like bad planning to have this happen. Finished swim at 36:45, just ahead of 37:00 target. 200 yards from shore I engaged my legs full bore to get some blood down there. I’ve found this helps eliminate dizziness when I stand up out of the water.
T1 (3:15)
Took 3 Thermolytes with about 8oz chilled bottle of Carbopro/Heed mix and was out. Really turned out to be a great help having that cooler there. Thanks to Tim Morley for the suggestion and many others for dealing with the heat. All were right on and I used them extensively.
Bike
Unlike Pacific Crest where the bike felt relatively effortless, this bike started out tough for me. I took it slow and gradually worked my way into a decent state at mile 14. Spent the first 3 miles fiddling with my HRM which kept reading over 200bpm only to finally realize that the sensors on my chest strap were flipped over in T1. When it finally registered correctly, it was at 147, so I backed off to just under 140. Checked my clock at mile 14 and it read 1:02. I had wanted to complete the loop in 1:30 so started to get bummed out. Then I hit the first big downhill and ripped out a mile in less than two minutes. Maybe there is still hope, I thought. Max speed hit 48mph a few times. Much easier for me to go fast on the downhills than push myself up hills given my 200 pounds. I took every uphill very slowly, and ripped every stretch of road I had marked as “easy speed”. Finished 1st loop at 1:30.
When I started the 2nd loop, the temperature was noticeably hotter than the first, but at least the humidity had dropped. So while the speed was easier, the heat was draining me faster so I took lap 2 a little slower at 1:34. At mile 51 I started feeling the pain in my right foot that took me out at Pacific Crest, so I stopped and loosened my shoe, worked like a champ. When I arrived at T2, I stood on the bag of ice in my cooler while I put on my left shoe to reduce any potential swelling (Thanks again Tim!).
Couple other points. There were two close passes by drivers, one of them obviously intentional. After the driver just missed me, I saw him/her purposely swerve close to the rider ahead of me as they passed. Geeze! The 2nd thing that concerned me was that while I was cranking at 40+ on the major downhills, there were corners that hide my view of left hand turns and other busy traffic spots. I had to slow down a bit to make sure a car wasn’t pulling across my lane as I turned the corners. I’m not sure I could have stopped in time if the timing was just wrong. One thing I liked about Pacific Crest was that the course is in the boonies and this type of risk doesn’t exist.
Big lesson on the “dump water on your head to cool off” strategy. Don’t do it before going UP a hill, because the sun will bake it. Best to do it before a big downhill when the wind will take its toll on the heat. Thanks to the guy who dumped a half pitcher of water on my head at mile 40 aid station. Had to stop to refill my water bottle but it was worth it to be drenched just before starting the big downhills.
Bike Nutrition: 2 48oz bottles: 1 is Perpetuem/Recoverite/Heed), 1 is Carbopro/Heed. Also drank two bottles of water to chase down two bags of Cliff Shot Blocks. Took 2 Thermolytes every 20 minutes.
T2
Drank 8oz of chilled Carbopro/Heed to wash down 4 Thermolytes and hopefully help keep my core body temp from rising. Also grabbed 5 Hammer Gels from the cooler for the run. Decided to carry my own nutrition, in my hands, because I don’t like how the Fuel Belt restricts my hip movement and heats me up due to its black color. My wife and I tried to come up with a way to sew elastic bands on the shoulders of my running shirt to hold them but in the end I decided just to carry them. Was able to eat 1 every two miles starting at mile 5 and tossed the last one at mile 11.5 since I didn’t need it. Carrying them was not a problem. Tried carrying my Thermolyte container tucked into my shorts but it wouldn’t stay put, so I carried that as well.
Run
Thank goodness my right foot didn’t bothering me as I started running. Not sure how much the ice at T2 helped but I figured it was my only chance to ice it so I’d better seize it. Round the corner and start up the hills. Something didn’t feel right so I immediately went to a walk/run mode going up the hill. Walked in the shade after getting to the top and both legs started cramping pretty bad. Walked quite a bit until I found a good place to stretch my quads out. 1st mile was tough taking me 15 minutes. Good news was that I needed to use the porta-potty at the first aid station. That is the first time I’ve ever done that in a race and I saw it as a sign that I was hydrating properly. It was the only time during this race though.
Tried some Gatorade at the first aid station thinking that I needed a different type of electrolyte, but it didn’t agree with my stomach so the next mile was about dealing with stomach discomfort. Only took 10 minutes since the cramping had finally subsided.
I’ve never had stomach cramps before in a race but I had my share of stomach discomfort this time of all kinds. “So this is what everyone has been taking about”, I thought. In retrospect, I’m sure some of that pain was stomach cramping. However, I started passing gas a little while longer to great relief. Not sure what I ate that caused the gas, but I was leaving quite a trail throughout the run. Even had to apologize to a couple police officers as I went by J. A colleague has suggested that the GI was caused by either the protein or undigested Cliff Shot Blocks which contain high fructose corn syrup. This is the first race I’ve used the shot blocks, and ate four of them at one time on the bike to catch up on my nutrition. I’d bet it was the Shot Blocks.
After struggling through the first 3 miles in about 36 minutes, I was able to start implementing my race plan for the heat: run 7 – 8 min/mile pace in the sun, and walk almost every lengthy shade patch I came to rest my muscles and cool down. I drenched my long sleeve Seattle Marathon shirt at every aid station and the fast running pace plus the wind produced the wind chill I had hoped for. I could cool my face down at any time by brushing it against my shoulder. A lot of people thought I was crazy for wearing a long sleeve shirt but I love the material that shirt is made of. Very light - wicks away water and heat very effectively.
Had imagined that I would run the last 1.5 miles fairly fast, but the heat was very challenging for me so I just stuck with my run fast in sun / walk shade strategy until the last half mile. At that point I figured I’d better pick things up a bit to make sure I finished in less than 6 hours.
Final Numbers
13/34 in age group.
36:45 3:19 16 3:04:18 3:17 12 130:05 13 5:57:41
Credits
This was a very complex and challenging event, especially given the heat. I could not have even finished without the help I received from Jill Fry. She corrected countless mistakes I would have made before they happened and greatly accelerated my learning curve.
Erik Moen did a bike fitting for me in June that greatly improved my effectiveness on the bike. This allowed me to be more efficient at higher speeds which easily took 20 minutes off my overall time for this event.
Tom and John at Triumph Multisport were of great assistance especially in the areas of nutrition planning.
