I still owe a couple of race reports (marathon and iron aquabike) but haven't found the time to write them yet. This is a bummer to me since I both don't want to forget details and don't want to post things out of order. But a friend asked innocently enough if I felt ok heading toward my big race (Challenge Penticton, Aug 30) and I got diarrhea of the keyboard as I listed all the things racing through my mind over the last couple of weeks. Now, finally through my big hours, it occurred to me that I could share those thoughts here too. In no particular order:
1- The prior IM Canada, which is nearly the same course as Challenge Penticton, has a CompuTrainer course, and both the shop I train at regularly (Cadence), and the tri club of which I've been a member but due to location I am not at all a part of (Endurance Multisport, in Emmaus) have it. It has been my long-held plan to ride the entire course at least once prior to traveling, to be as well-prepared as I was for Zofingen. But, this didn’t happen. Not only did this not happen, but as I looked back at my training I hadn’t done any hill climbing at all since Zofingen and, looking up and finding a course elevation gain of 8000 ft for Penticton, I got a tad panicky. After freaking out about this, further digging returned more probable gains of upper 4000-mid 6000 ft, putting it in the same range as all my other IM's.
2- The bike in general. With an oh-f’-it mentality for Challenge Atlantic City this year, I took risks you aren’t supposed to take: wearing a brand new helmet (that turned out to be too small); wearing new shorts for the first time (they matched my tri club top and though ordered well-ahead of time, they were delivered with no time to test them); and… taking it upon myself to lower my handle bars by 1 carbon spacer ring (1 cm?), to steal a bit more speed through a lower bike position. Outcome? >20 min PR for 112 mi, and some f-ing incredible soreness from my neck and saddle.
Now, given the flat and windy nature of CAC, I endeavored to ride in aero for every mile I possibly could, save sitting up to stop my neck and crotch from screaming. This lower position undoubtedly contributed to my pronounced saddle discomfort. The neck discomfort is more like par for the 112 mi course. However, despite my continued physical discomfort, I’m pretty resistant to put the handle bars back; I mean, twenty minute personal record (!) - what if that was all due to the lower position?
Moving forward my belief is, given the hillier nature of Penticton, I should really be able to get away with keeping this set-up for that race with improved comfort, b/c I won’t be in aero as much; I will be sitting upright spinning up inclines, because I don’t believe that while climbing at 6 mph there is any aero advantage by staying on the pads (unless it's super windy) - despite what other iron competitors may do. However I really do feel this saddle (Koobi) is too wide and needs to go, and I’ve developed a hair-trigger of discomfort for it.
An acquaintance is looking to sell a barely-used saddle that some triathletes I'm tight with love, so I asked to try it and he said he'd drop it in the mail. After enough weeks that I've lost track, it hasn't shown up. Checking back with him, he said he sent it to someone else. So my situation has gone from 'it's really too late to be messing with changing saddles before my race' to an absolute panic to find a different saddle, now 3 weeks before my race (and less than that with travel time).
Waiting for that above saddle to arrive, I continued to alter the position of my current one to see if some better position could be found. Well one of the two bolts that lock in my saddle height snapped in half. This is actually the better result because the broken screw could be drilled out and a new one put in. When the bolt first broke free I was hugely concerned that I'd sheared out the threads inside the carbon frame (even though I was using a correctly-set torque wrench), which I think would be a major problem. I rode the bike for 3 one hour rides on a trainer with just the one bolt, but was advised by the shop that if the seat post slipped it could occur faster than I could take my weight off it. This happened to another customer and when the seat post hit bottom, it cracked the carbon frame. There's no fix for that; that's a broken frame and a very expensive problem. My bike was out of commission for a couple of weeks, during which no saddle testing could occur.
3- Technology, specifically Garmin + Stages + phone issues (+ home internet). This has been an absurd saga. The new Garmin (Forerunner 920XT, a GPS watch commonly used by multi-sport athletes) was a bitch to get data off of unless I plugged it in with a wire, because the Bluetooth version on my phone and tablet was incompatible, and it is not possible to set up the wifi access without using GarminExpress, which won't run on either of those devices. This seemed like an annoying step backwards from the 910 which transferred wirelessly with a USB stick receiver. And either the extra battery life for the 920 or the slimmer design comes at the expense of antenna size/position/strength in the watch. Ergo, the 920 pairs miserably with the Stages (which is the power meter that is built into the crank arm of my bicycle).
And the Stages battery compartment has some darn connectivity issue, that once I changed my battery it seemed the thing no longer worked unless I was physically pressing on the battery door at the time. Trouble shooting, everyone says "be sure you have the most recent firmware", which I couldn’t download because I didn’t have a new enough cell phone/tablet and Bluetooth connectivity is the only way to update the Stages.
After extensive trial, error, and internet sleuthing, I found that if I shoved a food wrapper in with the Stages battery that it keep a snug contact. Additionally, it is necessary to wear the watch in a specific orientation on my wrist, with the watch band pretty loose, else my wrist actually blocks the 920's ability to find and hold the signal from the Stages, which is capable of spanning 10-15 meters according to the Stages website though we are only talking about a distance on my set up of 1-1.5 m. I also came to understand that I need to buy another new thing or I’ll have no power data for my race because I can't see the watch face in the orientation required to maintain pairing with the power meter.
After some research, I settled on the Garmin 510 (a bicycle specific device). I called Garmin to order it (they’ll give a returning customer credit of 20% off), to learn the item has been discontinued, because they are releasing a new model. So the world waits for the 520, which was available last week if you were lucky enough to have been at Age Group Nationals before they sold out of them. It is uncertain whether devices ordered now will ship prior to the end of the month, which is too late for me. I also could use a new heart rate monitor because my optical one (worn on the upper arm or wrist) died and the stupid Garmin chest strap, which is highly uncomfortable by the way, cuts the crap out of my chest. Oh, and I bought a new cell phone, so there's that. Thank goodness too, b/c my home internet provider are criminals and the service is highly unreliable.
4- Swimming. I was super bummed to be 3 min slower in Boulder, after having spent maybe 6 months training with others in my swim group (where I push myself much harder than I ever did swimming alone), than I was at IMMT, for which I was late to start training due to injury (only 15 weeks prep, beginning from not-awesome base fitness). Yeah yeah, altitude, blah blah blah - I wanted a better time. I was doing so well the first part of this year, then I wasn’t so sure anymore. The Steelman (1.5 mi swim) official time/pace has me swimming only slightly better for an IM length swim, and my recent river and pool swims are also not showing as strong a performance as I had earlier this year. So I’m somewhere between wanting to believe it’ll all be ok, I’m just tired etc from training (which Jack also said), and thinking that I want an honest and realistic expectation and to meet it. Never mind the feedback from my 2nd swim group that makes me feel like everything I do in the water is wrong. This week Matt helped me to understand that his and Jack's feedback is designed to help me in open water, and that maybe the other feedback I get would help me in a pool, so it might make sense that the feedback appears conflicting.
5- Running. At the end of May my coach projected an ‘’upper three forties” marathon time. My target race paces calculated out to 3:47-3:50. Clearly that is not what I ran in South Dakota (4:24:28). But I’ve been working hard at not declaring “jeez, is he crazy?” when I read his workout/race advice, and I was somewhere between ‘work as hard as possible to make it true’ (which I did for the first 4-or-so miles), and ‘uhm I don’t think this is the course or conditions for this outcome’. So I have a good bit of uncertainty here with what I should expect for an IM run. And if I ask him point blank what he thinks I should be able to do, will it even be believable/realistic? Compared to his instructions, I under ran at Zofingen; I under ran in Boulder. So maybe I am just not as good a runner as my shorter efforts suggest I should be./?
6- Overall preparation. Yeah, I’m undoubtedly stronger this year vs prior ones. But I can honestly tell you I have not been working as hard since Zofingen as I was before it. I dropped the ‘every shift like it’s the last one’ focus and really did not work as hard. Legitimately so, I’d say, since Ed moved out. But still, what was in May a race I thought I could podium at turned in to something of an albatross for awhile there. I thought I’d do some smaller tri’s this summer, build up my confidence, but in the end that didn’t happen.
7- Mental state. This has been tough. Being walked-out on; questioning why. Trying to take care of everything I didn’t use to have to while fitting in workouts. Working to fix things (he's moving back in, by the way). Increased hormonal swings due, I think, to the dwindling release of them from my aging IUD. Re-organization at work, with the concern of being put into a pool for reduction. Being put back into a department with uncertain opportunities; being advised to get my resume in order to apply for alternate positions. Honestly, all told, I think I’m in a fantastic frame of mind. I actually do feel optimistic about this race, about Ed moving back in. But it has not been an easy road.
8- Execution. Not only do I want to break the 13 h barrier, the goal I had in the first place following IMWI and when first considering to hire a coach 3 years ago, but I really don’t think I want to do the full iron distance any more. It’s an obvious hardship on my personal life. It will be a hardship on my employment as I do anything new, and going back to being primarily a bench chemist would make this nearly impossible. I didn’t feel good coming off my marathon, or the 3-day/4-game Vermont hockey tournament played in mid-July, and I really do think I need to prioritize seriously improving the muscle imbalance I have that leads to my disproportionately stressing my right side muscles, or I may not get to enjoy many activities at all for much longer. So I have this one last shot to get it all right, and 52 min is a lot to shave, or more like carve, off a race time.
All these things, these concerns, said, my goal this year was to learn to enjoy the process, and to look forward to every workout, and to proving I could do them as written or even better than as written. If I did that, I’d win no matter the outcome of some particular race. And if I did that, chances are that the race results would handle themselves. So while I’ve put a ton of time into getting physically prepared to cover the distance (TP shows 22.5 h this week, admittedly this includes 1.5 h yard work), what I need to remember is to execute to my most basic goal -> to enjoy every minute of it, including the uncomfortable ones.
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| Prep'ing for a swim race in the Schulykill River. with Ashley. (Photo credit to French Creek Racing.) |
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| After a swim - run brick at Lake Ockanickon, with Jennie, Ashley, Mark, Jill. |
