Drove out to Tempe early on Thursday to get registration
done before the crowds arrived. Managed to get in a 90-minute ride and
30-minute run on parts of the course that afternoon, then tried to relax that
night. Got in a short 30-minute ride the next day and finished as much of
the logistics as possible – coming up with a nutrition plan (apparently I was
supposed to do that in July), packing transition bags, etc. You drop your
bike & bags off on Saturday for these things, which is actually nice for
procrastinators like me – it forces me to get everything put together early
instead of the morning of the race. I was sort of winging it on the
nutrition plan, but figured I’d just eat all the gels I could shove in my face
and see what happened from there. I bought some shorts and jersey at the
expo to wear during the race, so I guess I was winging it on that side of things
too. That’s probably something I should work on in the future…
Got down to the race site fairly early on Sunday.
Weather was looking great for the day – it’s the desert, so there’s always
going to be some wind out there, but the temps were going to be in the upper
70’s, which is pretty nice. Racing in the 90’s is pretty miserable.
The water temp was around 62/63, which was a lot better than when my friends
did it last year, so I was pretty happy all around. It’s a deep-water
start, so you end up jumping off a dock into the lake about 20 minutes before
the race starts so you can swim 200 yards under a bridge and then cram in tight
with 2500 of your closest friends to wait for the canon. I was in the
front row for a while, but then more and more people were crowding in and
swarming, and the kayaks were trying to keep us behind the start line so I was
probably in the 3rd row when the race actually started. Lots
of incidental contact goes on in these swims. I was apparently starting
between 10 water polo players doing egg beater kicks. It’s tough to sit
in the water for 10 minutes with one hand treading water while the other is
protecting your junk. Got lots of kicks to the quads and calfs.
Wetsuits are buoyant folks – if we all just sit here and float, no one has to
get kicked… The other issue with these starts is that you’re basically
shoulder to shoulder with everyone, and then when the canon goes off, everyone
gets horizontal and starts kicking. There’s really no way to avoid getting
kicked by the row in front of you, but hey – that’s half the fun.
Besides getting mildly molested and taking a heel to the
lip, there’s really nothing to report on the swim. It lasts a long time,
you have no indication of how much time has passed, you start to recognize
wetsuits of people that you plan to punch in the face if you meet them in the
transition tent – pretty normal stuff. The exit of this is up a steep
ladder and the lowest rung is about 6 inches below the water line, so it’s
pretty tough to climb up. There are volunteers to try to pull people up,
but lots of guys were trying to get their legs up and would fall back in the
water screaming “Cramp!!!”. No real issues for me, so I was off through
the transition tent and on to the bike.
It’s a 3-loop course of a gradual uphill which steepens a
bit near the turn around, then you get a nice slight downhill all the way
back. Maybe five 90-degree corners in each direction so you could watch
triathletes try to corner (note: I’m not the worst one out there).
I’d been slacking on my training a bit over the last six weeks, so I was
nervous about taking the bike too hard. I really wanted to save it for
the run so I wouldn’t struggle late. Based on testing and previous
training rides, I should have been okay keeping the watts in the 200-205 range
for the day and still would have been able to run okay. Yes, I know that
sounds ridiculously low compared to LTJ and his 370W TT’s, and it is – but I
have a decent aero position and tend to get a lot of speed for my tiny
watts. I wanted to take the first lap easy, so I was keeping the power
around 190 watts. I don’t look at speed when I ride, but I had a Garmin
screen set up with the overall average so I could get a ballpark estimate after
each lap. I was in the top 12% or so of the swimmers (which just shows
the sad state of triathlon swimming these days), so it wasn’t too crowded on
the first lap. By the time I was on the second, everyone else was on the
bike so I had to dodge a lot more people. After the first lap, I looked
at my average speed and I was just over 22mph. I had wanted to be in the
high 21’s to get a low 5-hour split, so I was happy to see that it was going
well. Since I wasn’t putting out too many watts and had a speed I wanted,
I decided to hold back for the rest of the bike to try to bank some energy for
the run. The next two laps were kind of a blur. Ate a lot of gels,
had the straw fall out of my front aero-bottle so I had to switch up the plan a
bit, got completely soaked in all sorts of sports drink, snot and sweat, passed
a lot of cheating drafters and more than a few crashed cyclists – again, pretty
standard IM stuff.
Off the bike and onto the run. My only goal for the
race was to break 10 hours. Throughout training, that goal seemed
reasonable or ridiculous depending on the week. When I started the run, I
saw the clock leaving transition and knew I had to run around a 3:45 to make
it. Seemed possible, so I was in good spirits. Tried to run the first
lap conservatively, which is difficult in these things. I wanted to sit
at 8:30’s, but my Garmin kept showing low 7’s and high 6’s during the first
mile, so I would actually start walking to slow down. It’s amazing how
whacked out your perception gets coming off the bike, but taking the first 6
miles easy is pretty crucial to not collapsing in a pile of tears around mile
22. I finished the first lap right on pace, so I decided to do the next
lap at the same effort. I sped up for a few of the flatter miles to try
to bank a few seconds, but really I just wanted to be stead and keep up with
the nutrition. Lots more gels – yummmm… Started the 3rd
lap and figured I would keep it steady for a while and then give it what I had
left for the last 3 miles, after the final hill. And that’s pretty much
how it went. Felt good, sped up late and finished strong.
Crossed the line at 9:57 and felt pretty awesome. Felt
much better than any previous IM – probably a combination of actually training
and then racing conservatively. Got a massage, ate a bunch of pizza,
chatted with other finishers – felt great, when I wasn’t trying to walk.
I probably could have pushed the bike a bit more and maybe sped up the whole
last lap instead of just the final three miles, but I was hitting my goal and
there wasn’t much difference to me of a 9:51 vs a 9:57, so I’m happy with how
it all went down.
Thanks for all the support & cheers. Glad that’s
over with…
Noah
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