IRONMAN LAKE PLACID RACE REPORT

PRE-RACE

This year on the swim I’ve been working hard on technique with a local swim coach, Kari Woodall, and also put in some good masters workouts over the winter and into the spring. I find that masters gives me a good boost in my fitness but also can lead to quite a bit of fatigue if I’m not careful with the intensity and swimming with swimmers a couple steps above my level. With the swim, I can usually tell how fatigued I am based on how I feel in the water. This is the first sport to go when I’m feeling beat down. My swim was definitely off in June and most of July but started to come around during race week.

On the bike I was strong. My power was up quite a bit from last year. I had some great workouts on the bike. On the downside I was a bit worried about my bike volume. We get a late start on the bike training here in WI and Placid was a bit early for me. I also had some issues with hot foot leading into the race and had some custom insoles made for me at Exclusive Cycles 2wks from race day. It turned out that this was never and issue.

My run was also in a good place. I had done somewhere around 5 runs that were 30km or more. I implemented a walk run strategy on these where I would run 2mi and walk 30s to get used to the Ironman strategy of walking every other aid station. Even with the short walk breaks I was averaging right around 7:30/mi on these runs. I was confident in my ability to run 8min/mile throughout the Ironman marathon. I think the biggest concern for me on the run was how my legs would hold up on the hills. However, compared to the hot foot concerns this was very minimal.

Overall, the preps for this race were decent. I felt like the half Ironman that I did in early June may have screwed things up a bit. I felt very tired for a long time after that race and never fully regained the form I had leading into the prep period for it. Leading into IMLP I was trying to do catch up recovery all the way into race week. I felt much better during race week.

I tried something new this race which was a relatively big breakfast for me race morning. I got up at 3am and drank a large smoothie with 510cals, a banana, and a bagel. I laid back down in bed and my stomach hurt! I got back up at 4:30 had my coffee and was ready to go. I had a gel and some water right before I started my swim warm-up.

SWIM--1:01:08 (30:15/30:54)

I lined up a bit wide of the buoy to start right behind a woman that said she would be hitting a 58 minute swim and wouldn’t be sprinting out. Perfect. The gun went off I promptly lost her in the typical swim start chaos but stuck to my plan of mod-hard swimming and no harder to start. I found some feet and tucked in waiting for faster swimmers to come by. It turned out that this never happened and we were passing swimmers on the way back from the first loop. I figured these were some good feet as every so often the feet would turn over as their owner did some backstroke but kept it moving really well. I tried remain with my feet were when I got out of the water but lost them on the entrance back into the lake. I promptly found some new feet and rode them all the way around the second loop. I was very happy with my effort which I would rate as easy to falling asleep and the resulting splits.

BIKE-- 5:36:14 (at 56mi 2:46:24)

Once out of the water I jogged over and got my wetsuit off and then jogged over to transition. I didn’t want to run all that distance from swim to bike and jack up my heart rate. When I got on my bike I noticed the heart rate was a touch high and just let it settle down the first few miles. The bike was rather uneventful. I had a bit of a down spot after the first out and back section but remembered that if I’m feeling down to eat more, so I did and that spot probably lasted only about 5-10min max. I took in a total of about 1800 or more calories on the bike leg, 3 electrolyte tabs/hr as my quads were a bit crampy in the beginning, and ridiculous amounts of water.

I was passed quite a bit on the bike on the hills and then would go by the people that passed me on the flats and the downhills. I was very much in my own game, as during race week I really tried to instill the mindset of a 10hr time trial, not a race against everyone else, me against the clock and everything else was distraction.

I can’t even explain how good I felt on the bike. I never got to the point of dying to get off the bike or hating my bike by the end of the ride. I enjoyed it throughout. It was my easiest long ride of the year by far. I thought this would set me up for a great run.

RUN--4:12:41 (1:45:42 half)

I got off the bike and went through T2 at a decent clip. I started to settle into my running pace but had some pretty serious lower back spasms going on. I got out of town and ran to the side of the road to do some brief stretching. That seemed to do the trick and I was out running again feeling smooth and very much in control. This continued throughout the run until the long downhill out of town where my quads started screaming at me. I was in unbelievable pain on that downhill and finally just had to go to a shuffle. The pain continued throughout the race but was ridiculous on the downhills. I just kept playing games where I would run for a certain number of minutes then walk a minute. It became a survival technique and racing was now done. I kept this going until I got to the uphill back into town where I just decided to try running up the hill. This didn’t hurt my quads and I went with it. By the time I got up the hill and to the turnaround I was less than a mile from the finish and just gutted it out to the line for a 10:59 finish.

REVIEW
Looking back at the race I was very happy with how I paced the swim and bike. I got lots of calories and water in on the bike and was always thinking about what my body needed next or what I needed to do to make sure I could run well.

The run was a bit of a disaster. I’ve had those same quad issues once before but it was in a half marathon that was quite hilly and I hadn’t done much road work prior to the run. I think I blew it in the preps and didn’t get in enough, or any, long downhill runs. Overall, I’m not completely disappointed. My first goal was to finish and that I did. My second goal was to execute and I followed the plan on the swim and bike as well as the run. The final goal was a sub 3:30 marathon and I came up very short on that one but I have a good idea why.