Liberty Triathlon 70.3 Recap

Liberty Triathlon

Rockford, MN
Saturday, June 11, 2016

1.2 mile/ 56 mile/ 13.1 mile

Ooff, where do I start?  It was a long day of racing, and it was a long span of training to get to this race.  Now that it's all done, I suppose I'll call it a success.  It didn't go quite as well as I  hoped, but it was a good first effort at the half-ironman distance.

Pre-race

In the five weeks leading up to this race I was averaging about 7.5 hours a week for training. I didn't use a training plan, I just kind of go with what feels right on a given day. My long bike in training was a 40 mile/ 10 mile brick.  My long run was a half marathon, which I did a couple times.  I often swim the 1.2 miles or longer in the lap pool.

I did this race with my sister.  She's done many sprint and olympic triathlons and a couple marathons. Her strength is the run, and she kicked my butt on that leg of the race (more later).  I met up with her on the morning of the race in the transition area, and prepped our stuff for the day ahead. The race site was only about 50 minutes from my house, so I just drove up race day morning.  

The weather predictions for race day were the same all week: hot, sunny, humid, no wind and no rain. The predictions were right on.  The temp started around  72° and it was over 90° when I finished.  It was pretty uncomfortable, but it still was better than rain and wind.

Swim 1.2 miles

Goal: Under a 1:50 min/100 yds average, hopefully under 38 minutes

Actual:  Not really even close. 

I'm not really sure what happened on the swim. It was a beautiful morning for a swim.  It was in the low 70's and no wind.  The lake looked like glass it was so calm.  The water temp was in the 70's as well, and with a wet suit on it couldn't have been a better morning for a swim.  

I went off in the second wave with age groupers 39 years old and under. It was a pretty big group; we probably had 50 people or more.  This was the roughest start that I seen thus far. I gave and received kicks and hits. After a hundred yards or two, things started to thin out.  I had a swim in the pool a week ago where my left arm and hand fell asleep, and it kinda freaked my out.  Since then, I stopped a lot of my upper body strength training and dialed it back a bit on the swimming.  I'm not sure what was up with my arm in the pool, but everything felt fine on race day.  

After the first couple hundred yards, I got into what I thought was a good rhythm.  I felt like I was working similar to the previous week in New Brighton (1:44 min/ 100 yds).  I had set my watch to alarm when I hit 17:30 into the swim; I figured this would be a good gauge for my pace.  When the watch went off, I was a bit short of the halfway point.  However, I must have covered the first half of the swim in 18 to 19 minutes.  I slowed way down on the swim back to shore.  It didn't feel like I slowed my pace, and I had plenty left in the take.  I guess I just underestimated my speed.  It wasn't a big blow to the time, but my ego took a hit.  Usually I can hang my hat on my swim time, but this time around I didn't even beat the male average.

Swim Time: 40:10 with a 1:55 min/100 yds average

Swim Rank: 115 out of 225 swim finishers

                       83 out of 144 males

                       17 out of 22 age groupers                       

                      

My time is noted in green.

T1

Goal: On the Bike by the 40 minute mark

Actual: Never had a chance

I knew that if I was on the bike by 40 minutes, then a 17 mph bike and a 11:30 run would break 6:30 for the race. As it was, I figured 4 minutes in T1 would put me around 44 minutes at the start the bike.  By my race day memory, that would mean I needed 17.3-17.4 mph to start the run by the 4 hour mark.  I had forgotten to take the wrapper off my gatorade before the race, so I had to frantically work on that in T1. That probably cost me about half a minute; not a big loss for a long race.  I threw on my shoes (and socks), walked my bike out and mounted after the line.

T1 Time:   3:52

Positions:  115 out of the water, 

                   129 out of T1

Bike 56 about 55 miles

Goal: At least 17mph, Hopefully closer to 18mph

Actual: Pretty good

My plan was to eat a couple cliff bars in the first couple hours, and then switch to Gu for the rest of the day. I think the temp got to me, because my gut didn't want the cliff bars. After about 10 miles and half a bar, I knew is was going to be just a Gu day. My lost carbs probably hurt me a little bit, but the water was a bigger problem.

I knew I was going to spend more than 3 hours on the bike.  I figured I was going to need at least three bottles of water/gatorade.  My bike carries two.  My plan was to drink my two and then pick up a bottle at the mile 42 bottle exchange.  The guy ahead of got the last bottle, I got nothing. They temporary ran out of water at the bottle exchange (My sister got some water when she passed by later).  Let's go ahead and repeat that: THEY RAN OUT OF WATER ON THE 55 MILE BIKE COURSE ON A DAY WITH A HEAT ADVISORY!  I'm sure it was just a miscalculation, or some sort of lag in communication, but that is straight up bullshit.  This meant I was stuck for about the last 12 miles (40 minutes), during the hottest part of the ride, without any fluids.  This one definitely cost me a little bit of time.

Otherhows, the bike course was pretty nice.  The nine miles from the lake to the loop was pretty flat. The first corner of the loop has the most hills and the rest of the loop is rollers.  My watch clocked it a 1400 ft of up hill; that's very similar to my long bike ride route at home. Most of the course is on pretty nice roads, but there was one stretch where the shoulder was loose gravel.  I just stayed on the road for that part, and it was fine.  

I had the course at 54.6 miles.  I may believe a story that it was 55 miles long, but there is no chance it was 56 miles.  The official results used 56 miles to calculate average speed, so all the speeds are inflated.  My speed on the official results is listed at 17.9 mph, my watch had me at 17.5, and I recalculated everyone's speed for my table based on a 55 mile course.  Eight people didn't finish the bike, and an additional nine people finished the bike but did not log a T2 split.  I don't know what's normal for a 70.3 race, but we had 24 out of 225 people (more than a 10%) dropout after finishing the swim.

Bike Time:  3:07:30 with a 17.6 mph average.

Bike Rank: 159 out of 217 bike finishers

                     121 out of 140 males

                     19 out of 21 age groupers

                     

T2

Goal: Start the run by the 4 hour mark

Actual: Time to spare.

Having the bike course be a mile short made the 4 hour mark easy to hit.  I started the run at 3:54:57. Even with the full 56 miles I would have been pretty close to the 4:00 goal. I hosed myself down with sunscreen in T2.  It turned out that I got a pretty good sunburn from the bike. That might have hurt me on the run course as well. Otherhows, T2 wasn't too interesting. I walked in, changed shoes, grabbed my visor and water belt and I was on my way.  I had a phone in my water belt so that Tina could track me from home and come see me at the finish line. 

T2 Time:  3:26

Positions: 153 off the bike out of 217 bike finishers

                  146 out of T2 out of 208 racers with a T2 split

                  

Run 13.1 miles

Goal: 2.5 hours

Actual: Not close, but still proud

I didn't have a whole lot left in the tank by the time I came to the run start.  It was probably a combination of the heat, failed water stop on the bike, failing to eat much on the bike and minimalist training.  

I have decided to only run twice a week.  I was getting in three (maybe four) runs a week in before I hurt my foot in March, but after that I cut back.  In place of additional running, I now do strength training twice a week (about 40 minutes each time).  I do a lot of hip and thigh stuff with resistance bands and some upper body stuff with some hand weights.  It seems to do the trick; my knees have felt much better since I started this routine in March.  Two runs a week really isn't enough to build any speed, but I'll take slow runs and minimal pain over the alternative.  

Anyhoo, coming out of T2 I walked for the first few minutes. I ate a banana and hit the first water stop pretty good (plenty of water there, what a shocking plan).  I wore my water belt, but the gatorade I carried was quite warm from sitting in the sun for four hours.  I'll have to put some ice in the bottles next time.  The run course has a fair amount of hills.  A couple of the climbs are tough, but it's no worse than my 13 mile run at home.  I gave it a shot for about three miles, and then I had to pull back. I genuinely contemplated walking off the course at that three mile mark. There was no way I was going to be able to keep any sort of reasonable pace for the entire run.  Having a DNF would have killed me, so I pressed on.  I started walking all of the up hill parts. This put me at about only a 13.5 min/mile clip, but it was all I had in the tank. There was a good amount of shade on the run, but the heat was killing me. The water stops were well stocked and no one minded if you took a cool cup shower at each stop.  After about 9 miles I had to stop the splashing because my shoes were getting water logged.  

I saw Nic at the turn around and noted that she was only about 10 minutes behind me. That meant she was going to beat me.  Her swim wave went off 12 minutes after me. I tried to use that to get my legs to fire again, but they were shot.  There were points where I really didn't think I could even make it up some modest uphills at a walking pace, but I managed to keep going. The only stopping I did on the run portion was at the water stations.  After seeing Nic and noting how fresh she looked, I figured that she was going to pass me at any minute.  That would have bothered me a bit, because that would mean she bested me by over 12 minutes.  As it worked out, she never physically caught me.  She beat me on the run be 26 minutes, and overall she beat my time by 5 minutes.  I'll take it.  She's a monster, I didn't expect to beat her.

At the end of my run the temp was into the 90's and the heat index was pushing toward triple digits. At least I got through the entire course; 16 people finished the bike but did not finish the run.  Out of those 16, there were 11 people ahead of me before the run.  I'm sure some of those folks had already completed some 70.3 races and it just wasn't worth it to finish in these conditions, or maybe this was just a warm-up race and not worth getting injured.  Either way, it was tough conditions and I was happy to move up a couple spots by completing the race.

Run Time:   2:55:36 with a 13:25 average

Run Ranks: 169 out of 201 finishers

                      115 out of 129 male finishers

                      17 out of 19 age group finishers

Which way to the gun show?

Total 6:50:32

Positions:  163 out of 201 finishers

                   115 out of 129 males

                   17 out of 19 age groupers

Stacked Time Comparison

Here's a look at my times compared to the male and field averages.  It's not too impressive, but I hung in there pretty well until the run. I have Toughman 70.3 in July, maybe I can knock off a couple minutes on the swim and 10 or 15 minutes on the run.