Author: Zane Zeeh

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Race Report – Patriot Half-Ironman

This year was much different that last year for me. Last year I had to worry about was my bike actually going to work after it flew behind my friend Mike’s car!!  Well, this year I thought it might be better for me to do the driving. Mike and I had an extra passenger this year in Heidi. Heidi is famously known for forgetting things and being late. Mike and I were able to pick up out packets early so we wouldn’t have to worry about racing around in the morning to get everything ready.

Heidi, on the other hand, needed to get her packet and wasn’t going to have a lot of time before the race. To prevent a catastrophe I had Heidi drop of her bike, helmet, bike shoes and wetsuit the night before. I figured anything else we could deal with, she would just have to show up on time. Good news was, she showed up on time and we were able to grab Mike and be on our way.

The Swim

This year the swim looked like it would be pretty standard, the wind didn’t look as bad as it did last year. I was deceived though, the wind was blowing sideways and I think the course ended up being a little bit longer because the buoys were blowing out side ways. There was also a little bit of chop too that I didn’t expect. The swim was pretty uneventful though and ended up taking me 33:21. Slower than last year, but I was ok with it since my watch said the swim was 1.35 miles instead of 1.2.

SWIM NOTE: My friend Mike was 4th overall in the swim.

The Bike

I was kind of disappointed in my bike ride. My intent was to hold 200 Watts consistently as Coach Dave and I had discussed. The problem was my legs just couldn’t keep it there, not sure why because the swim felt good. Looking at the data from the ride it looks like it took me almost 30 minutes to get my heart rate down to where it should have been. I think next time I may start a little lower than my target and work my way up. I actually did have a negative bike split, not by much, but the second loop was faster than the first. My total time for the bike was 2:46:11.

The Run

When I ran out of T2 Heidi was not far behind. I figured we might be able to run together since we both had the same target of running 7:15s. I had just didn’t have much of a chance at that, it was too hot for me to hold that pace. I started out around 7:50s and felt terrible, my back was very tight. I wish that I had a chance to stretch before the race started but the ground was just soaked in transition. So, for the first 3 miles I just ran 7:50s and watched as Heidi took off. I noticed on some of the longer stretches though that I could still see Heidi out in front of me. After the 3rd mile I started to feel better and loosened up and started to slowly increase my speed. By mile 5 I was doing around 7:30s although I did have one mile around 8 in the middle because I had to stop and tie my shoes.

At mile 7 I realized I was going to catch Heidi and started reeling her in over the next to miles. Mile 9 I caught her and she almost just stopped at that point. I thought when I caught her we would just run in together, but she was hurting pretty bad. Remembering how she stuck with me through the marathon last fall I couldn’t just take off on her. The rest of the way we ran in together, except when we walked. Well, we only walked up once at a hill just after mile 10. I think we ended up averaging 8:30 or so for the last 4 miles we ran together. My time for the run was 1:43:16. I was happy with that, since it was hot and I was a couple minutes faster than last year and could have actually been in a few minutes faster.

Overall

Overall I felt like I had a pretty good performance at 5:08:26. I think my Coach prepared me well and I had a good race. While my ride was a little slower than I had hoped, I felt like I could have kept on going and hold the Watts I was pushing for another few hours. I was very happy with my run. It was good to know that I could get off the bike and run 7:30s in heat. I know that I can’t jump off the bike and hit those numbers right away, but once I loosen up I should be able to click off the miles.

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Race

Race Report – Great Bay Half-Marathon

Headed up to Great Bay for the annual half with my friend Ray. I felt like I was going to have a pretty good race. Each week up until the race I had been doing a run of almost a half-marathon and even thought the pace is slower at a training pace it does give you confidence going into the race. My projected half-marathon pace is around 7:03, but the problem with that is that it does not account for hills that are what make Great Bay the Great Bay half.

My plan, was to start around 7:30s and gradually pick up the pace as I went. Just before the race I talked to my friend Michelle and her friend Courtney. We chatted a bit and I mentioned that I was planning on trying to do 7:20s and see how it went. Ray decided he was going to just run easy and I was going to run with Pete.

Pete and I start out the race and I’m checking my watch and we are a little quick. Just over 7s. We real off the first mile in 7:11 and I think that is a little too quick. So I try to easy back a little and I do, then I hear someone say “hey, is that Zane?”, it’s Michelle’s friend Courtney. She comes jogging up and says when you said you were going to do 7:20s that was my goal too. I’m thinking cool, another person to run with. Then she promptly dropped Pete and I. She was just moving too fast for us at this point. We could see her out in front and never lost sight of her, but it would be a few miles before we caught back up with her.

Through the dirt road I felt pretty good and Pete seemed to drop back a little bit as we went up some hills and I caught up to Courtney. Pete was not to be dropped though and was not far behind. We ran together through about 11-12 miles and Courtney faded back, but we were not really sure how far back. As we were coming back from the out and back I saw my friend Ray, gave him a high five, felt pretty good.

Pete and I made the turn to the finish out of the out and back and had about a mile to go. I knew that I had him because he started to fade just a little. With about a half mile to go I started to push harder and making the final turn to come down the stretch I heard Pete say “Go get him”. He says he wasn’t referring to me, not that I care, but he was talking to Courtney at the time. She had really picked it up and pulled us both in. I ended up finishing just ahead of Courtney and Pete at 1:35:10 a PR of 2:42.

I was pretty happy with that considering the difficulty of the course. Great Bay is not an easy course and definitely not one to choose if you are looking for a PR.

That is about 7 minutes faster than when I did the race back in 2011 during my training for IMLP the first time around.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/294821318

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Race

Race Report – Ras na hEireann

Ok, so this race report is a little bit late, I know I haven’t really been keeping up with the blog. This race was on March 10, 2013 down in Somerville, MA. This is the first 5k I have run in 12 years. My coach had asked me to run a 5k to set a baseline for my Ironman training. One of the reasons I don’t do these races is because you usually hurt when doing, well if you are going as fast as you can you do!

I wasn’t sure how fast I was going to be able to go because my left hamstring was bothering me at the time. In the end it didn’t end up bothering, but it was a chilly morning. I did a short warm up before hand of about 5 minutes or so just before the race started. The course was a pretty fast and flat course.

The race started out and I checked my watch at about the 1/2 mile mark. I was under 6 minute pace and that was not good. I was close to 5:45 and I knew there was no way I was going to keep that going so I started to back off. When I got to around 6:25 I felt like I would be able to hold that for a while. The race seems to fly by when the race is this short and you are running that hard. Usually I like to pick it up at the end of the race, but this time I was just hanging on and trying to keep pace. I ended up finishing the race in 20:12 a PR of 3:24. It’s nice to know that all of the training that I had done for the marathon last fall and the training since then working with Breakthrough Performance Coaching (BPC) and Dave Sek was paying off.

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Ironman Lake Placid Triathlon

IMLP 2013

This month marked the real start of my training for Ironman Lake Placid. December was kind of a base building slash see where we are at period.

This time around I have hired a coach, Dave Sek, from Breakthrough Performance Coaching. I felt like a learned a lot from Fernando Braz during my training for the Marathon last fall and I wanted to use that same type of structure for my Ironman training. I’m learning a lot about how to train to get the most out of each workout. The most important thing I have learned is that every workout does not have to be an all out effort and that workout out like that won’t get you the best results.

I’ve learned a lot so far about setting up pace zones and power zones to help make sure I’m doing each workout at the prescribed pace or power. I’ve even decided to build a Windows 8 Store App to calculate paces and power from recent race performances. There are already similar type Apps in the Apple world, but none so far in the Windows App store. Look for more on this in an upcoming post!

So back to training. I feel like I’ve been making good progress so far, but this weekend will be the proof as I do another test on the Computrainer. This test includes an all out 20 minute effort to set up my Threshold for biking that will be used to setup my next block of training. I have a goal in mind as to what power I want to hold for the test. Hopefully I will hit it. Tune in for my next post with the results!

I hope to post more often on the progress of my training.

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Marathon Race

Race Report – Baystate Marathon

Well, my first marathon is over and here is how it went down. I ran with my friend Heidi and we got there plenty early for the start. Stretched a little, waited in the bathroom lines (Heidi had to go twice!!!) and finally seeded ourselves for the start of the race with about 5 minutes to the start. The weather was great, probably right around 50 at the start, clear sky and no wind.

The race plan as previously mentioned was to run 5 – 5 milers @ 7:20-7:30 pace and bring it home with a smile as Coach Braz said. Heidi was planning on doing a 3:20 or 3:25 race and I said why not just start with me and see how it goes. We don’t talk much when running but it is nice to have someone to run with and help pace with.

The race starts and we head out. It took us about a half mile to get to our pace because it was so crowded with the marathon and half-marathon starting at the same time. About 2 miles in though the half-marathon turns off so we started to get some spacing. Since Baystate is a two loop course we passed the 13.1 mile park on the first loop and I could remember thinking I’ll be looking forward to seeing that next time around. The first 5 miles went very smoothly and we averaged 7:22. We both took our gels just after mile 5 at the next water stop and kept going. Around mile 8 we cross the bridge in Tyngsboro to head back toward Lowell. From this point back to the bridge that we crossed to head back out for the second loop it feels like it is very flat to down hill.

At mile 10 we took our second Gel and were again averaging about 7:22 pace. We were both feeling pretty good. I was listening to Heidi breath and thinking she is having a great race and having no problem keeping this pace. We were drinking at each water stop, but for me I have a lot of trouble drinking and running. It is more of a gulp and splash. My inefficiency at drinking and running would come back to haunt me later.

Heading through mile 15 we passed the half way point and were just cruising along, another 5 miles down at 7:21 pace. Back at around mile 8 we realized that we were running with a guy who had his own personal water station biking along side him. The cool thing for us was that he was going our pace. We just figured let him pace us and fell in behind him. Once and a while we would take the lead when he was drinking or getting nutrition but he would eventually be up front again with his biking buddy riding along beside him.

Through mile 20 I was still feeling pretty good and I handed Heidi her last Gel and was planning to start to push a little harder. Heidi dropped back a little bit but not much. I was really just keeping pace with the guy running with his bike buddy. Again through mile 20 we had averaged 7:21 pace.

The next 5 miles is when disaster struck. My calves started twitching around mile 22 and became very bad at mile 23. Heidi who never dropped far back came running up next to me and we were running together again. Then around mile 24 I had to stop and stretch my calves. They were just so tight that I could hardly walk. I stretched them and started running and was ok for probably another half mile and then would have to repeat the stretching. This went on for the rest of the 5 miles. Finally in the middle of he last mile I had to stop for probably 30 seconds to loosen them up even more. At the water stops I would literally stop and just drink 3 or 4 cups of gatorade/water. It was too late though, I was dehydrated and couldn’t do anything about it at this point. I lost almost 2 minutes of time over the last mile.

Heidi was nice enough to slow down and run with me and keep encouraging me. It was a very tough last mile. I ended up running a 3:17:15 and missing qualifying for Boston by 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

Here is the tale of the tape on Garmin and Starva where you can see how things fell apart toward the end of mile 22.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/235722221 and http://app.strava.com/runs/25696376

Congratulations to Heidi on having a great race and Personal Best time. She could have easily been under 3:15 if she had not waited for me.

While it was discouraging to not meet my goal. I know that I am capable of running a 3:15 and just have to be more conscious of drinking through the water stops.

Categories
Marathon

Baystate Marathon Strategy

All of the workouts are finally over! This morning was the last track workout before the marathon this coming Sunday. Tomorrow is a short and easy 5 mile run, Friday is a day off and Saturday is another short easy 25-30 minute jog. This all leading up to my first marathon that is not part of Ironman. The goal is to qualify for Boston. To get to Boston in my age group I need a 3:15 or approximately 7:27 minute miles.

My coach, Fernando Braz, has given me the plan for the race. He wants me to focus on executing 5 miles at a time.

5 miles @ 7:30-7:20
5 miles @ 7:30-7:20
5 miles @ 7:30-7:20
5 miles @ 7:30-7:20
5 miles @ 7:30-7:20
and then bring it home for the last 1.2!

Sounds like a good plan to me. I’ve already entered into my watch so it will notify me if I leave that range. I’m most concerned early on about going out too fast. After I get to the 20 mile point I will evalutate how I feel to see if I want to try and get to a 7:15 pace for the last 5 miles segment.

The other large component here is nutrition. I need to bring a couple of gels with me so because they only provide two on course. I think I want to be sure to drink at each water stop and have a gel every 5 miles.

The course is supposed to be fast and flat. Well, from the elevation chart it looks pretty flast with a total of 335 feet gained over the entire marathon. Hopefully that will make me fast!

Categories
Race Triathlon

Race Report – Call To Honor

This race report is a little bit late, but hey, better late than never!  I have been doing this race for four years now. Each year I have managed to get a little bit faster. This was the first year though that I didn’t move up in the standings though. My times have gone from 55:45 to 52:28 to 51:18 to 49:06. I finally broke 50 minutes this year.

The Swim

The swim is a short quarter mile swim. The water was around 72 and I wore a wetsuit. I learned from last year that the time to take off a wetsuit is less than the time it takes to swim without a wetsuit. I felt pretty good about my swim and was 6th out of the water and first in my wave.

The Bike

The bike is a 10 mile loop through Boxford, for the most part it is pretty flat. There are a couple of rolling hills in the beginning and the end, but nothing major. My bike time was a little bit faster than last year and if I hadn’t run 16 miles the day before I probably would have been able to push harder. It’s not that my legs were tired so much, but they just felt a little heavy. At 20.96 mph I was little off what I have been doing for my last two races where I was at 21.59 and 21.40.

The Run

I felt good on the run and was about 20 seconds faster than last year. That doesn’t seem like much, but when the course is only 1.5 miles it become a little more significant. We had heavy rain the night before the race and the gravel road was a little more “gravelly” than usual and I had to be a bit more careful in some sections.

While I moved down to number 8 from number 7 last year. I’m happy that I improved my times. I’m looking forward to doing the race again next year. Congrats to Jan D. for being the first overall woman!

Categories
Race Swimming

Boston Light Swim

On August 18, 2012 at 7:00 am I jumped into the water to start what would be an 8 miles, 7 islands, 1 swim journey. Last fall Mike K. came up with the idea of some of the Stiles pond Scummers doing the Boston Light Swim as a relay. I thought it sounded like a pretty cool idea. Originally it was going to be Mike K., Erin C., Jan D. and myself. Jan bailed on us because the water was going to be too cold! Just kidding Jan! It turns out that it was the day her son was moving in at college and she obviously couldn’t miss out on that. Karen L. another one of the Stiles Scummers jumped at the chance to freeze in the cold waters of Boston Harbor and take Jan’s place.

There were all kinds of swimmers entered into the event. Some had gone to the Olympic trials, others had crossed the English Channel and there was even another team from Stiles pond!

The Boston Light Swim is a tide assisted swim and it is import to start on time. That meant getting down to Boston by 5:15 for check in and heading out 8 miles on our boat to the start at Little Brewster island where the Boston Light house is. The night before at the mandatory meeting we were warned that any lightening could end the event before it even starts and that storms would be moving through early in the morning. Everyone was hoping they would stay to the south of us. When I checked my phone just as we were heading out to the start the radar did not look good at all, showing heavy rain coming our way. Thankfully we were not seeing any lightening that would have cancelled the event.

On the way out to the start looking back toward Boston you could see the rain coming down. It wasn’t raining by us yet though, so that was good. On the way out we decided that I would go first because I was going to drive the boat while Mike was swimming and we would have Karen and Erin swim in between us to give us time to dry off a little bit and be ready to drive. On the way out Karen casually mentions that she doesn’t do well on boats and needs to get in the water soon!! Uh oh!! I offered to let Karen be the first in the water but she declined and said second would be good enough. I think that was a relief to Erin because it delayed her getting into the water.

Let’s talk about the water for a minute. We were told the night before that the water temperature had been between 68 and 73 all week. Yeah, sure it was, it just happened to drop 5 or 6 degrees in one night! The official temperature after the race was reported to be between 63-64 for the entire swim.

Ok, back to the boat and the start of the race. The other thing we agreed on before the start was that we were each going to do 10 minute shifts. Why? Because Joe said do 10 minute shifts, duh!!

7:00 AM – The horn blows! I jump into the water. My first thought is “bullshit, this water is not 68 degrees”. I start swimming and for the most part I’m trying to calm myself down because I feel like I’m flailing about because I’m cold. After about 5 minutes I start to feel better and finally slow myself down and get into a little bit of a rhythm. Then just as I was starting to feel pretty good I see Erin waving me in. My first turn is over. Great now I can get warm! In my head I was thinking I wish I could swim a little longer now that I’m cold and used to the water anyway. I make my way to the back of the boat grab the ladder and Karen jumps in.

I’m pretty much freezing and shivering uncontrollably, not a big surprise really, but I thought after only 10 minutes in the water I wouldn’t have been that cold. I throw my sweatshirt on and wrap my large beach towel around me and continue to shiver. Mike is up next so while he gets ready I take over steering the boat. Erin looks at me and asks how was it, I lie and tell her it isn’t too bad. She knows I’m lying because I’m still shivering like crazy. Ten minutes later Erin is in for her first swim and to finish off our first rotation through the line up. In 40 minutes we manage to swim almost 2 miles! With the tide rising we were really moving as the race director had predicted we all would.

The water was relatively calm for an ocean swim and the rain that was on the radar never really showed up out in the harbor. The second rotation through was probably the roughest water we saw with a little bit of chop and the wind blowing the boat around a little bit.

We went through the rotation one more time and all decided that on our next time in we would go for 15 minutes at a time instead of 10. Actually my first 3 swims were 10 minutes and Karen was the first to start the 15 minute turn. At the pace we were going it looked like we would all swim only 4 times each.

As we closed in on the finish Erin would be bringing us in to the finish line. So as we got closer to the beach Karen and I jumped in to join Erin and finish together. Unfortunately Mike had to dock the boat and couldn’t swim in with us. Our official time was 3:13:24.

We ended up being the third team to finish. The first team was the other team from Stiles, finishing about 6 minutes in front of us. We gave them a pretty good run for the first half of the race, but as we passed under the bridge by Long Island they just pulled away.

Here is the path we swam http://connect.garmin.com/activity/212317250

I had a good time and I would definitely do the Boston Light Swim again. Probably only as a relay because I don’t think I could last for 8 miles in the cold water and this year was considered warm! Thank you to Mike, Erin and Karen for including me on their team. It was definitely a great experience!

Categories
Race Running

Yankee Homecoming 10 miler – Race Report

I’ve only done the Newburyport Yankee Homecoming race a couple of times before this and have watched a few other years. Every year it seems that the weather is hot and humid for this race. Usually one of the hottest nights of the summer. This year though, the forecast was for 75 and a cloudy skies. Sounds like perfect running weather to me, at least compared to what you usually get.

Having done this race a couple of times before I knew that the second half of the race is the hardest part. There are a couple of hills that can eat you up if you start out too fast in the first few miles. My strategy was to do the first couple of miles as a warm up, pick up the pace to 7:20-7:30 for the next 3 and then let it out for the last 5 and see what I had.

Now what actually happened. I ran with Heidi, she forgot her watch and asked if she could run with me and I would pace her. Sure, no problem. Well, no problem for her, but for me it was a problem because it is tough to hold her back, she likes to go out fast!! Our first mile? 7:23. Yeah, that is close to 8. What about the next mile? How about 7:15! Those would be the slowest miles we did. At mile 5 we start up the hill and I notice that Heidi is falling back a bit and I ask her if how she is. She replies with “Just go”. I’m not ready to really go anywhere, so I just hold the pace going up the hill, right at 7:14. From here I know there is only one more hill at mile 7 so I start to pick up the pace and see how I feel. Mile 6 7:10 and I feel pretty good, not breathing too hard and feel comfortable. Picking up the pace a little more during mile 7 and I see I’m at 6:50 at the base of the hill. I finished up the mile at 6:57, but the hill has taken quite a bit out of me. I probably should have backed off just a little more. Next 2 miles are almost identical 6:56 and 6:57. The last mile I push with whatever I have left, which isn’t much and manage a 6:39 pace.

I was pretty happy with how the race turned out, even though I started a little faster than I planned. Official time was 1:11:28 for 7:09 pace. There is no starting mat so I lost about 15 seconds by starting back too far. It is good to know that I can start that quickly and still feel comfortable enough to run 7:10-7:15 5 to 6 miles into the race and feel like I could hold quite a bit longer.

Here is the Garmin history http://connect.garmin.com/activity/205247981

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Ironman Lake Placid – Part Two….

No this is not the second blog of a two part blog. It is the first blog of what will be the beginning of my second journey to Ironman Lake Placid. This past weekend I went to Lake Placid to watch the Ironman and to volunteer. Having only participated in an Ironman it was a great to see it from the other side, the spectator side. Watching something like Ironman doesn’t really come that easy for me, I kept thinking that I wished I was out their competing. I’ve worked hard all winter and spring and I know that I’m in better shape now then when I did Lake Placid in 2011. I enjoyed going out and training on the course, even though we only did 1 loop of each event, I felt good being out there.

This time Ironman will be different for me, the goals are different. The last time it was about finishing and pacing myself conservatively, make sure to get to the finish line! This time though, I want to race. I want to push myself and see just how fast I can go at Ironman. Can I go under 12 hours? under 11 hours? How fast can I run a marathon after biking 112 miles?  Can I bike the course at 20mph? All those questions will be running through my head over and over during the course of the next year.

The answers to some of those questions will become more clear after I run my first marathon this fall. If I’m able to run a 3:10-3:15 marathon, I should be able to train and build on that fitness enough to reasonably set running a 3:30 marathon at Ironman as possible. Similary my biking has improved dramatically from last year, it is rare now that I bike under 20mph on rides and that includes rides over 60 miles. That is something I couldn’t come close to doing in 2011. Another good winter of hard training on the CompuTrainer and I feel like riding the Ironman course in 5:45 or 6 hours is another reasonable goal. Riding just half the course this past weekend I felt like I was close to that already. To achieve that bike goal though I will have to spend more time on hilly courses, that is going to mean heading to NY more often to visit my parents and climbing the mountains around the reservoirs or heading up into NH on the long rides. It will mean taking on Peekamoose mountain again, a climb that is much harder than any on the Ironman course. It will mean riding around the Pepacton reservoir with climbs that are as steep as the climb from Jay to Wilmington, but longer. It will mean lots of time on the bike.

The last time I signed up I can remember thinking to myself, “what the hell did I just do?”. This time I’m well aware of what I did and I’m looking forward to the challenge.