Tag: Triathlon

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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!

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Race

The Patriot Half – Race Report

I have to say that the day ended a lot better than it started. My friend Mike stops at the house at 4:15 am to pick me up. We load up the car and I put my bike on the back. We are ready to roll. We start heading down 95 and Mike looks in the rear view and says “What is going on with the bikes?” I look bike and my bike is flying along behind the car!!! Mike slows down and pulls over. Bad news, race wheel tire is shredded.

The bike rack has rubber straps that hold the bike in place while driving. The problem is that when you have race wheels that have a large surface area the wind catches them and lifts the bike up. When the bike gets lifted up the rubber straps can then come undone as I have learned from personal experience and doing a little search on the net. Fortunately we had some bungy cords and were able to strap the bike back on and be on our way again without having to worry about the flying up.

We finally get down to the race venue at just about 6 am. First thing I have to do is change out my wheels. Luckily I had brought along my other wheels. My thought there was that someone was going to need them and I didn’t feel like changing tires and tubes so I was just going to give them the whole wheel. Turns out it was me that needed them!! It took all of about 10 minutes to get the other wheels on and adjust the brakes. One thing that I did forget about though was that the cassette that I had on these wheels is setup for a hilly course and not the flat course we were riding. There were a few times I missed those in between gears that my 11-25 cassette has, as opposed to the 11-28. So, the bike is finally all squared away and we are setup in transition. Hopefully that would be the end of the problems for the day.

The Swim

The swim is a counter clockwise swim that works out nice as the sun is never an issue. The water temperature was reported to be 68 degrees, not bad at all with the wetsuit on. There was a little bit of a wind blowing in at us though and that caused the first leg of the swim to be a litte tough with the choppy water. I quickly moved out in front of the other 93 people in my wave and caught up to the wave that went off before me. I think I even saw Julie and Janet during the swim. Jan, on other hand, was far too fast and I wouldn’t have seen her even if she started in my wave. The swim took me 32:24, my goal was 30 minutes flat.

SWIM NOTE: My friend Mike K. tied for 3rd overall in the swim and probably would have won it outright if he started in an early wave and didn’t have to swim through 8 waves of yahoos….

The Bike

The bike ride for me was pretty much the same as last year as far as time. According to my Garmin I was at 20.5 mph for both loops of the bike. The first loop I was 20.6 and the second 20.5, probably a little less since the average was 20.5. I had hoped to go at least 21 mph, but without the Zipp wheels I probably lost about .5 mph. I’m ok with the ride, it was a bit more windy than last year but I was able to ride just a little bit faster and certainly did not push nearly as hard as last year. My goal, which I know was a stretch was to bike the course in 2:33:25, and I did it in 2:44:47. So I was way off on that. Still a lot of work to do on the bike. While my overall biking fitness has improved a lot from last year I still need to get stronger on the bike. A lot stronger.

BIKE NOTE: Didn’t see it happen, but Coach Bri went down pretty hard on the bike with about 18 miles to go. This probably has something to do with Mike and his bike rack. I’m not sure of the connection but there must be one!! Coach Bri is a little sore, but doing ok and his bike is already ready for the next ride.

The Run

Part of not killing myself on the bike was wanting to be able to run this year. I increased my fitness enough on the bike over the last year that I was able to put in the same bike time but still had legs left to run this year. My goal for the race was 1:47:00 or 8:10 pace. This is the only goal that I managed to accomplish I did the run in 1:45:59 for an 8:05 pace. My total time was 5:07:53, a new personal record. I had hoped to break 5 hours, but I can see I still have some work to do to get there. I felt my nutrtion was pretty good and I didn’t have any cramping problems. Even though I didn’t cramp I still feel like I need to hydrate better.

The rest of the Sunday morning crew

The rest of training crew, with the exception of Coach Bri, had pretty good days as well.

Heidi M. doing her first ever half ironman distance event had what I thought was by far one of the most impressive times of the day at 5:14:22. Heidi pulled this off with barely any bike training and only a few open water swims. We expect her to quit her day job and turn pro soon!

Mike K. had a personal best of 5:24:46 and beat me in the bike leg. Now we know why my bike fell off the car!! All part of his master plan!

Jan D. also had a personal best of 5:35:11 and improved her time by half an hour. Improving both her bike and run times significantly.

Julie V. while about a minute slower overall at 5:40:17 improved her run this year by over 10 minutes. Now if we could just get her to swim a little more and stop hanging out in transition…..

Janet B. took first place in her age group while setting a personal record of 5:42:11 at the half ironman distance.

Brian B. needs to keep the rubber side down!!!!

Categories
Race Triathlon

Race Report – Call To Honor

Today was the Call To Honor triathlon in Boxford. This is the 3rd year of the event that honors the memory of a local resident and State Trooper who died in the line of duty. His family comes and races as relay teams and presents the medals to all the winners. They are a very nice family and very involved in the community espeically the town beach where the race is held.

The race itself is a very short, especially the run. Most triathlons the athlete will spend 10% on the swim, 50-55% on the bike and the rest on the run. This even though, It is about 10% 85% and 15%, so if you are a strong biker it really helps.

The weather for race day was very nice, a little bit chilly on the bike ride over, but it warmed up nicely and the water in Stiles was at least 70 degrees.

The Swim

I wore a one piece tri outfit today. A DeSoto Liftfoil speedsuit. This is the first time that I have ever worn one of these for a triathlon. This year the swim seemed to be a bit longer than it was the last two years. I think they actually measured it out. My time was a little bit slower than last year and I was 13th overall in the swim. I knew that I had fallen behind some of my fellow age groupers that were wearing wetsuits, but not by much and I figured I was behind maybe 3 of them.

T1

My transition was pretty good, but not as fast as I had hoped. I really wanted it to be under a minute, and part of that expectation was that I wasn’t wearing socks and I didn’t have to change out of a wetsuit or put any other clothes on. It was glass, helmet, shoes, bib number and go. I think I need to learn to mount the bike with the shoes clipped in.

The Bike

My expectation was to average over 20 mph on the bike and I did that. At least according to my Garmin GPS I did that. It said that I averaged 20.9 mph. My official time was 30:20, which I think was about a minute faster than last year. So, that wasn’t bad, but it would have been nice to break 30. I guess there is always next year. The only problem I had on the bike was when I slowed down to take the left onto Herrick Rd. I got up out of the saddle to accelerate and I got a massive cramp in my left calf. I had to stretch it out before I could start riding hard again and lost some time there.

T2

This transition was better than the first, but again I had trouble getting one of my bike shoes off, so that was a little disappointing. You would think I had never taken my shoes off before. I need better focus.

The Run

The run started out a little slow because of the cramp in my calf, but about a half mile in I started to feel better and was able to push more. After the turn it is mostly down hill and I really started to push a little more and wish I had my Garmin on to see some splits. My pace was around 7:30 for the run. Again this was about a minute better than last year.

My overall time ended up being just about a minute better than last year because the swim was a little bit longer and I was a little faster on the bike and run. I ended up placing 8th overall and 4th in my age group. The age group placing was a little bit disappointing. I really had hoped to be higher after looking at last years results, but I guess it is all who shows up that day. 4 out of 34 isn’t bad I guess. An interesting note is that 6 of the top 10 were in my age group and 8 of top 15. Tough age group to place in.

Well, that wraps up the triathlons for this season. Time to focus on getting better for next year!

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid Race Triathlon

Patriot Half Ironman Review

Saturday morning was the Patriot Half-Ironman. It’s a good warmup race and a good point to figure out where I am with my training for the Ironman. Learned plenty of things from this race. Hopefully I will be able to correct them for Ironman.

The Swim

I was in the last wave for the swim, for individual racers, behind me were the Aquabike. This is the first triathlon I have been in where I started so far back, usually I’m one of the first waves and come out of the water and all the bikes are still racked and then everyone passes me. It was a little different for this race, the wave starts were seperated by 4 minutes, so it was fun to pass the yellow caps, by the first turn, at the second turn started to pass white caps and as I was coming into the shore I even passed a few of the orange ones. I just relaxed for the swim, kept my breathing even and didn’t push. My pace was 1:30 for 100s. I think that is easily maintainable for Ironman. If I had pushed hard I couuld have taken at least 2 minutes off that, maybe more, but I don’t think it would have been worth it when I got to the bike. I was the 5th person out of the water in my age group, that’s out of 72.

Time 0:31:34

T1

Uneventful transition, took my time and made sure I had everything and headed out.
Time 0:02:39

The Bike

I knew the bike course was flat and going into the race I had set the goal of 2o mph for the ride. I felt like that was reasonable. When I had come out of the water Julie was there, she started 8 minutes ahead of me and so we started out on the bike together, sort of. She blew past me and I could see her out in front of me. I was keeping my cadence high and spinning to get my legs warmed up after the swim. Julie probably stayed about a half mile in front of me for the first few miles, then I caught and passed her on one of the slight inclines on the course. Which followed her passing me on the downhill. I have to say she had an amazing bike ride. I just couldn’t believe how easily she passed me and would get so far out in front then we would come to another incline and I would finally catch and pass her. That happened for pretty much the whole ride, maybe I just don’t try to push myself enough on the downhill or she isn’t pushing on the uphill. I don’t know, but she needs to pull more on the Sunday rides!!!!

Learned many things on the bike ride. One, I need to work harder on my tuesday and thursday rides to increase my biking fitness. Two, drink, drink, drink and make sure to take more salt sticks. I lost a lot of electrolytes during the race and became dehydrated. When I finished the race I though I just pushed too hard on the bike. Having looked back on it and weighing myself when I got home from the race I learned that I lost 4lbs. Far too much weight to lose during a race and that is AFTER having a large milk shake on the way home and drinking a couple bottle of water after the race. NOT GOOD! Third, don’t mix ice with your drink, it dilutes it too much! Four, water bottle exchange, make sure to squeeze ALL the water, Heed, or water you get into the tank. I ran out of water with 5 miles to go on the bike. That caused problems on the run.

Time: 2:45:42

T2

This was another uneventful transition, the one thing I did learn from it was to make sure that I have my watch find the satellites earlier in the day so that when I start the run the watch is ready to go!
Time 0:02:27

The Run

After letting myself get dehydrated on the bike the run was not good. I knew I was in trouble about a half mile in. I was relaxed and running and the watched said 8:30 pace, but I felt I was running too hard and couldn’t catch my breath and backed off. I could feel my quads tightening up and at the time I thought I had just pushed too hard on the bike. Looking back, I was dehydrated. From this point on I ran from one water stop to the next and then walked through them taking ice and water, mixing them and drinking it to cool down. I took a Salt tablet as well as two gels on the run. The result was one of my slowest half-marthon times ever.

Time 2:02:31

The race overall was very well supported and run. I would definitely do the race again. Even though I didn’t do well with my nutrition I was still able to set a personal record for a half-ironman. I also had a personal best on the bike ride at 20.3 mph. This was the first event of any distance that I was able to maintain over 20 mph. I still wonder how I was able to maintain 19.3 on the Timberman bike course that is much hiller.

Total Time 5:24:50

Weight: 160

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

The Friday Swim

I showed up at the pool a little early today and got in a few laps before the rest of the crew showed up. Not only was I early but it seemed like quite a few people were late. I ended up doing 800 warm up. Friday seems to be a lazy day in the pool. At least it was today as people drifted in and out of the workout and there seemed to be a lot more chatter in between sets. I can’t complain too much, after yesterdays CompuTrainer session I was plenty happy to just go with the flow today.

The workout:
800 warmup
400 pull
400 – 8×50 (The real swimmers do IM order, I just do free for everything)
600 – 12×50
750 – 3×100, 3×75, 3×50, 3×25
600 – 12×50
500 warmdown

Total: 4050

For some of the sets you are supposed to do other strokes, maybe someday I will start doing those, for now I just do free all the time.

Weight: 170

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

CompuTrainer Test Set

This morning was test day for the CompuTrainer P.I.G. program. The last time I did this test I had just setup the trainer and didn’t really understand what I was doing. I was probably paying a little too much attention to the mph value and the Metal Man I was racing and average 209 watts for the 30 minute test. This time I was a more focused and did 248.6 watts for the test with an average heart rate of 159.2. I’m not sure if this was a good thing or bad thing yet, because the next 4-5 weeks training is going to be based off of this new average watts number. I’m happy with the improvement and I don’t expect there to be such a dramatic jump for the next test. I’m definitely looking forward to the warmer weather to see how this all translates to actually riding on the road.

Before the 30 minute test you are supposed to ride progressively up to 90% of your current maximum wattage between the 20-25 minute mark, from there you just spin easy and start the test. Watching my numbers and seeing how my legs felt during the warmup I was thinking I might be able to average 230-235 watts. I was concerned about being able to keep up the effort for the entire 10 mile course or 30 minute ride. As it turned out I was comfortable keeping the pace around 240 and then on the uphills going up to around 270-285 for short periods of time. I did start to fade over the last 3 or 4 minutes though, proably averaged around 230, just couldn’t keep the RPMs up.

Ride stats:
Watts: 248
MPH: 21.5
HR: 159
Cadence: 87
Overall SpinScan: 57 – that needs some work

Weight: 169

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Ten Degrees

Ten Degrees makes a bigger difference than I thought when running outside. On Monday it was 32 degrees and I felt warm running, hands were warm, nothing felt cold. This morning it was 22 degrees at the start of the run. I wore practically the same clothes and felt much colder, wish I had brought my hand warmers. I finally warmed up around 3 miles into the run, but my hands never really warmed up.

Wednesday is generally the day that I do long runs, but since I’m doing the CompuTrainer test tomorrow morning I was trying to keep my legs fresh, so I kept it to 5 miles. My GPS watch had trouble picking up the satellites early so my first split says 9:27 and when I got back to the Y it said 4.75 miles. So I ran another quarter mile to make it an even 5. I think I will let the watch sync up with the satellites a little bit longer next time. Another odd thing about the data from the watch this morning is that it says I burned 200 calories less than I did on Monday for pretty much the same distance.

Here is the Garmin results http://connect.garmin.com/activity/62050802

Weight: 169 (Taken at Y, I generally weigh a little less on that scale than at home)

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Active Recovery Ride

Up early and on the CompuTrainer this morning. Today was an Active Recovery ride, meaning about 60% effort for an hour. Usually tuesday is an interval based training day, but the scheduled called for the recovery ride because the week five re-test is coming up. On Thursday I’ll be doing the same test that I did at the start of the program to see if I’ve improved at all and to use that score for the basis of the next four weeks training.

Average power over the course of the ride was 170 watts and my average heart rate was 119 with a max of 128. Since I knew that I wasn’t going to be exerting a lot of effort for the ride today I tried to focus on my Spinscan numbers. Spinscan is a way to measure the efficiency of your pedal stroke. They say that the average road cyclist is between 70 and 80, mine is usually 60 and today it was 65.

Weight: 171

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Swimming and Hydration

Today was a swim day. Monday and Friday are my swim workouts. According to the Ironman program I need to be swimming two hours a week. That shouldn’t be a problem, as the swim workout usually lasts an hour at the Y. I was feeling dehydrated this morning. If you feel dehyrdated while swimming you must be pretty dehydrated! Wondering what it feels like to be dehydrated while swimming? The first sign is that you slow down considerably. The other sign is that your mouth kind of feels like you have cotton in it while you swim. Anyway, I think I should probably bring a water bottle with me while swimming. I’m sure part of it was from riding the trainer for almost three hours the day before and not following it up with enough water.

Here is the workout from today:
500 warmup
400 pull
300 kick
5×100 15sec    1×200 easy
5×100 15sec    1×200 easy
5×100 15sec   1×200 easy
500 cooldown
3800 yards total

Since I had the day off today I also went out for a run in the afternoon, just 5 miles. Here is a link to the stats 

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/61848919

Weight: 169

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Sunday Ride – Real Course Video Lake Placid

Before I get to the bike training part of the blog today I’ve decided that I’m going to post my weight to the blog daily as part of motivation to lose weight and get ready for the Ironman. Today my weight was 169. My goal is to be in the low 150s for race day. The lower weight will definitely help on the bike course with all the hills.

Now on to the Sunday ride. Sunday is long ride day. At least that is the way that I worked out the days for my Ironman training program. Unfortunately this time of year it means riding indoors on the trainer. I have a CompuTrainer and one of the really cool things about it is that it simulates riding outside and, even better, there are real course videos for some of the most popular Ironman events. Today I road for 2 hours and 45 minutes on the Lake Placid course. I made it 48 miles into the course averaging a little over 17.5 mph. The other great feature of training with a CompuTrainer is that your training is based on Watts. This really allows you to focus on how much work you are doing on uphills, flats, downhills. Knowing how hard you are working is important so that you don’t burn your legs out and really allows you to keep your heart rate in a nice tight range that allows you to ride longer distances comfortably. Today my average Watts for the ride was 192, actually a little more than I was supposed to be doing according the the CompuTrainer Performance Improvement Program (PIG). This week the PIG program has me testing again to setup the bike training for the next 5 weeks. Last time I average 210 Watts for the 30 minute test, hopefully I will be better this time!