Overtaken - 4:00

This past weekend I had my first triathlon of the season and it was an important reality check of my base fitness heading into the 12 weeks leading up to the Ironman U.S. Championships in early August.  That's my goal race this season and will be my 3rd IM.  I'm at the point where the workouts need to start more specific to the race - increased volume and more long moderate intensity, particularly on the weekends when I ride 7-8 hours between the two days.  Up until now I've mostly been doing tempo and threshold intensity work along with a occasional long run.  I think I've only gone over 50 miles on the bike twice since last summer and I only got back into the pool about 6 weeks ago after forgetting where it was since Sept.  I scheduled in a half iroman distance triathlon to test my fitness before I shifted gears and got serious into the race preparation block of training.  It was also just a good opportunity for a long training day.

Kinetic Half is held at Lake Anna State Park in Spotsylvania, VA.  I raced this event back in 2008 and finished 4th OA.  It's a single loop swim in the lake, then 2 loop bike on rolling hills (2400ft of climbing total), and finishes with a 3-loop run with 2 tough hills on each climb.  It's definitely a challenging run course but I tend to prefer that to a flat run because it plays to my strengths.  The weather was great aside from some fog that settled down on the lake and delayed the start by 15min.  Once the sun started climbing the fog burned away and we were off.  Swimming is my least developed sport at this point in the season.  I've been hitting the pool 2-3x per week and doing somewhere in the 1800-2400m range for each workout.  The swim at this race is just over 1900m.  I knew I had the basic endurance to not struggle but needed to keep the intensity in check and just accept that it wouldn't be one of my faster swims - my swim times are never impressive anyway.  No issues here and I clocked a 32:17 which was the slowest of the top 15 OA finishers in the race.

On to the bike where I can start to settle in and slowly pull back some time.  I'm on a new bike this season and I haven't had a lot of time on it yet to tweak my position but I think I just about have it dialed in.  Everything felt comfortable and spending 2+ hours in the aerobars didn't kill my neck or back too much.  I did however have a small issue on the ride that I didn't confirm for sure until after the race.  I spent most of the 56 miles playing cat and mouse with one other guy.  It wasn't intentional but we were constantly trading positions because of the type of bikes each of us were riding and our riding style.  He was on a road bike and I was on my tri bike.  The tri bike has more of an advantage the faster you are going because of the aerodynamics.  So on the rolling descents and flats I would tend to pass him but as soon as we get to the incline I'd back off the power and he'd end up passing me.  We probably traded positions 30-40 times.  In this kind of triathlon there are rules about how far you need to stay behind the person in front of you to avoid getting an advantage from riding in their draft.  You also have to drop back a certain distance when you are passed before you are allowed to pass them back.  The official apparently thought I didn't drop back far enough once and I got an "overtaken" penalty which tacked 4min onto my total time.  I don't care about the time but I was a bit pissed that they gave me a penalty when I know they weren't in a good position to judge the distance between us.  This is the first penalty I've ever got in 8 years of racing.  Anyway, I roll into T2 clocking a 2:25:25 bike split.

Check out my Garmin file from the bike on TrainingPeaks.

My new rocket ship for the season decked out in full race kit.  I'm heading out to FASTER in Scottsdale, AZ in 2 weeks to see if I can squeeze a little more speed out of it - stay tuned for a future blog on that experience.

Heading out of T2 on the run there is an immediate 130ft vertical climb up from the lake before heading out into the park and dropping down another hill back to about lake level before climbing out and looping around and eventually down a trail back to transition - then repeat 2 more times.  All total there are 6 climbs of about 130ft vertical and .6 miles each.  The profile is painfully obvious looking the my Garmin file.  I tend to pace pretty well and have a good strategy for dealing with hills but they still weren't fun.  My first lap was a little fast at 6:29/mile average, or I might have over-cooked the bike slightly and paid for it later in the run.  On a flat to rolling course I tend to run in the 1:23-1:25 range off the bike but today I had to settle for a 1:27:47 - 11th fastest of the day out of 350 male finishers.

Once the 4min penalty got tagged on my official time was 4:32:27.  I would have been 8th OA without the penalty.  I'm not thrilled with my times but not disappointed either.  I've barely been doing long enough workouts for this race distance so it was really my tempo and threshold work pulling me through.  That gives me a decent base to start layering on some volume.  Within about 8 weeks I'll be consistently riding 200 miles a week, running 35-40 miles, and getting 2-3 60-90min swims.  I don't have a particular time I'm shooting for at the IM. I prefer to approach races like that with goals based on executing my pacing and nutrition plans perfectly rather than chasing splits.  You show up with a certain amount of fitness and all you can do is use it wisely and see what that gets you.  My best guess is that it's going to take a sub-10hr finish to have any chance of grabbing a Kona Qualifier spot in my age group.