My
advice to others who are considering doing an ironman has been to get a
coach. I finally heeded my own advice
and a little over three months ago, right after I signed up for the race, I
approached a coach about taking me on to train for ironman Lake Tahoe. He
agreed and a new phase in my quest for fitness began. In doing so, I’ve decided to commit to
following all of my coach’s advice without questioning. In addition to expert
advice and a program that is based on science and continual analysis of my
lactate and heart rate data, probably the most important aspect of coaching
that I need at this point in my journey is ACCOUNTABILITY.
I’ve
found that the motivation to keep active and lead a healthy lifestyle has
gotten harder in my early 50s. Unfortunately, from everything I have read and
through my discussions with others it looks like it continues to get even more
difficult to find the motivation to pursue most things. Even with my practice of
setting fitness challenge goals it can be hard to get out of bed at 5:30 or 6
am to get a workout in before I go to work. After work it is so tempting to
skip that workout and just sit down with a glass of wine and unwind. Reporting
in daily to someone that I respect and admire adds that little extra ounce of
motivation that has given me a big boost in training.
Being
accountable to my coach and his expert advice has definitely paid off as
demonstrated by my performance at Austin Ironman 70.3.
IRONMAN AUSTIN 70.3
OCTOBER 28, 2012
I wanted to do a late season
triathlon because it would give me a chance to see if I was really making any
progress through getting a coach. Getting
ready for this race, I did pretty much everything my coach told me to do and
not do, from the workouts to what to eat while training and racing. I only
missed about 4 workouts in the three months and they were not crucial ones. I
felt prepared.
Race
Morning
My start
time was 7:40 am. I woke up as planned at 4:15 to eat 400 to 500 bland calories
for breakfast as my coach recommended. I
really had to force myself to eat this much so early in the morning. Breakfast consisted of gluten free oatmeal
with a scoop of soy protein powder, a honey and nut rice cake with honey and 2
tablespoons of peanut butter, a small banana and green tea.
I left
the hotel a little after 5 am and drove about 20 minutes to the race venue. This race, like many others, had the bike to
run transition (T2) and the finish line a distance away from the swim to bike transition
(T1). The parking was at T2 with buses
to shuttle athletes and spectators to the start. We had all put our bikes in T1
on Saturday and our bike to run gear in T2.
As I was walking from my car to the bus, I realized I had left my water
bottles with electrolyte mix in my hotel room.
Snap decision time. I decided to go back to hotel and get the bottles.
By the time I parked again at T2 it was about 6:30 and there was a huge line
for the bus. STAY CALM!!!!! I waited in
line, got to the swim start and got body marked, leaving about 10 minutes to
re-find my bike in the dark, get my tire pressure right, and set up my bike
stuff before they closed the transition area.
I was rushed and worried about forgetting something but I got it all
done and outta there. I had just enough
time to hit the port-a-potty, put on my wetsuit and get down to the start as my
wave was being let into the starting corral. I hoped this was not an indication
of how the day was going to unfold.
This is
the first time I’ve done a race with a strategy laid out by someone who has
done the course and has a proven record of knowing what he is
doing/saying. My challenge was to correctly
understand what he meant, remember it as I got tired and carbohydrate depleted
and then to execute it. So I’ll lay out what I was trying to do as I understood
it combined with the execution. In other
words, what I did versus what I was supposed to do.
The Swim
While
the air temp was about 47 degrees the water temp was 71, so it felt good to get
into the water. It was a deep water start and I lined up in the front row. My wave was women over 50 and women under 20
years old.
The 1.2
mile swim course had three turn buoys, nicely set up so that the low morning
sun was never directly behind any of them. The swim start is always crazy
especially if I line up in the front. I
got kicked pretty hard in the head right off the bat and there was the usual
unintentional bumping and hitting. The swim to the first buoy was: high arm
turnover and a bit harder than I wanted to go-like “Uh-oh, should I be swimming
this hard?”; pretty much as planned.
I felt
like I swam a little too wide on the turn at the first buoy. During the swim to
the second buoy, I concentrated on lengthening out my arm stoke and not letting
my mind drift off, not getting too relaxed.
Nearing
the third buoy I was catching a lot of men from the wave before mine. After turning
around the third buoy, I just tried to keep my speed up and keep pushing. This
put me a little out of breath as I exited the swim. I did take advantage of the
wetsuit strippers on the way to T1. Swim time was 37:51, pace 1:57 per 100
meters. Although I didn’t know it at the
time, I was in 4th place after the swim. I could tell there were a
lot of bikes still in my area, but didn’t have any idea of where I was rank
wise at that point. I could have pushed a bit harder from the swim exit to my
bike and had a better transition time. Since it was so cold out, I wore arm
warmers under my wet suit and took the extra time to put on a vest as recommended
by my coach. I also put on socks since I’d have to put them on for the run
anyway. My transition time was 6:18 which was the 6th fastest
transition in my age group. Not so great, since a fast transition is an easy
way to gain time on the rest of the field.
The Bike
I was
supposed to start out keeping the pedal pressure light and to get situated and
comfortable, eat something and settle into my target heart rate which was the
middle of zone three. In the moment, I forgot all of that and started off
trying to hit my zone three watts right away.
This really brought my heart rate up too high too fast. I started to eat
a 200 calorie Kit’s Organic Bar at 20 minutes into the bike. The bar was too
dry and I was breathing too hard, but I knew I needed to get in at least 200
calories every hour. It took me twenty-five minutes to force that bar down,
even though my coach specifically said “do not force food down.” The first part
of the course had the most hills and I really didn’t think I could keep up the
strenuous pace I had going. My heart rate was too high for my watts and I
decided to concentrate on my heart rate zone and keep it in mid zone 3, which
is what I had been instructed to do but had forgotten. Sometime in the second
hour my heart rate and wattage zones began to match up in the way that they
should. Instead of attempting more solid food, I ate two gels during the second
hour for another 200 calories.
The
course got flatter for the last hour and I was able to keep a pretty good
pace. Since my breathing was under
control, I attempted to eat another bar. I chose a Bonk Breaker Bar which was
much moister and went down easily which put another 290 calories in the bank. After
two and a half hours of riding, it was looking like I would do the 56 miles in
less than three hours, IF I could keep up the pace and didn’t get a flat
tire. Potentially finishing the bike in less than three hours motivated me even
more, since my previous half ironman best bike time was 3:03 hours.
When I
got to my bike rack spot in T2 there were only two bikes in my area and I
realized it was possible that I was in third place in my age group. Another 50 to 54 year old rolled in right
after me. My bike time was 2:56:36 which
is an average pace of just over 19 mph. My average heart rate during the bike was
142, only two beats per minute over my target. YEAH!!! On the bike I drank 2
and a half bottles of water with one Nuun electrolyte tab in each bottle. I was
aiming for one bottle an hour, so that wasn’t too bad.
The Run
The
woman who came into T2 right behind me passed me very soon after I got out of
the transition area. The 13.1 mile half marathon was set up as a three loop
course running through the convention center parking lot, out onto a road, and looping
through the lake park where the swim had taken place. I was supposed to use the
first mile through the convention center parking lots to “get settled.” It
ended up being my fastest mile at about a 9:30 pace. Once out of the convention
center and onto the road there were big rolling hills that dictated my pace. I
followed instructions and did not “attack” the hills but ran up them at a
slower pace, running faster on the flats and on the downhills. The great thing is that I ran up the hills
rather than walked up the hills. That in
itself felt like a triumph. The other piece of advice that I remembered and
followed was to run harder than I think I want to or can. My internal mantra during the second half of
the run, when all I really wanted to do was walk up the hills, was “don’t let
all that training go to waste.” The other thing that kept me going was I just
wanted the run to be over.
I consumed gels at about miles 4, 8, 10 and
12. I drank water on the run at every aid station, except around mile 8 when I
walked just long enough to take 2 salt tabs and 2 Advil. The muscles in the
left side of my lower back were tight and as a result my left hip was hurting.
I felt relief during the third loop of the run.
Because
it was a three loop course, there was no way to tell what loop anyone was on.
It was also getting pretty crowded by my third loop so I had no idea if I had
been passed or if I passed anyone in my age group. I was getting pace information every mile
from my wrist GPS until it froze at one hour and 57 minutes. I ran to the
finish line inside the sports arena not having any idea of what my run time
was. I thought despite the fact that I
pushed myself hard my pace sure was slow. I forgot to look at the clock as I
was coming through the finish line. When
I looked back it read 6:15 and some fraction. My wave started 10 minutes into
the race, so that meant my time must be around 6:05. WOW, could I have had that
much of an improvement from my prior best time of 6:31?
Results
weren’t being posted yet, and I went to gather my stuff so I could get to my
cell phone. Surely my husband was tracking me and I could call him and get the
low down. I thought there was a possibility that I was in fourth place, then
again, maybe not. My stuff included my
bike and three bags, one with my heavy, still wet, wetsuit. I decided I’d first
schlep my stuff to my car and call home from there. Then I saw Sag Monkey, my
bike transport people, set up right near where I picked up the last two bags,
no need to take the long walk to my car with my heavy burden. HUGE RELIEF!!! They took my stuff, sat me
down in a lounge chair, and gave me a Gatorade.
I dug out my cell phone and called my husband. He said I had finished in
4th place. My run time was 2 hours and 20 minutes which works out to
an average pace of 10:42 minutes per mile.
A finish
time of 6:04:50 was a great improvement and a fourth place trophy was just
icing on the cake. My coach said “this is just the beginning.” Now I get a day
of rest followed by a light training week, only 9 hours of swimming biking and
running… Ironman Lake Tahoe will be here before I know it.
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