C + C Triathlete Factory 2013!

So my good buddy Chris Daniels and I have partnered together a number of times to put on this triathlon camp near Peoria, IL.  Our target audience for the first two earlier iterations was beginners looking to improve at the sprint and olympic distance.  This year we switched things up a bit and are targeting beginner and intermediate athletes looking to either race their first half or full Ironman or to improve at those distances.

Triathlete Factory Camp information can be found here

Basic camp need to know:

· When: June 28-30

· Where: Camp Wokonda (Near Peoria)

· Who: Organized by USAT Certified Coach Chris Sweet and long-time elite age group triathlete Chris Daniels

· This weekend camp is for novice and intermediate triathletes who want to either finish their first 1/2 Ironman or Ironman or to improve at those distances.

· Cost $300 (includes camp, all meals and lodging!)

 

Favorite workouts

My favorite sets (as opposed to more general workouts) are always done in groups. I have always thrived athletically when part of a strong team. For years my primary training strategy has been to seek out the strongest athletes in each discipline and train with them as often as possible. Although I am not actively coaching triathletes now, I dug into my workout sets for a few of my favorites.

Swim
For a main set I really like this classic sprinters set from my high school days. Attribution goes to Jim Runkle who coached the Peoria Woodruff High School team and the C.I.A. club team I swam on.

The basic block for this main set is:
75yd rest 10 sec
50yd rest 5 sec
25yd rest 45 sec

This doesn’t look too bad on paper, but it is meant to be done all-out. Each block totals 150 yards. If you can string 10 of these together without yakking, you’ll come out the other side a better triathlete!

Bike
OK, switching gears to long course training for this one. Over time this workout has become a key benchmark during my Ironman training. This is not a base-phase workout. In fact, the only time you are likely to successfully complete it is during your build or peak phases. Again, I think this looks quite manageable on paper. It is the last hour (and specifically the last 30 minutes of that hour) at 80-85% of Functional Threshold Power (FTP) that always gets me. I’ve probably done this workout 10 times and successfully completed the whole thing twice. A word to the wise is to stay within the ranges early on! Credit for the basic structure of this workout goes to coach Mike Ricci from D3 Multisport.

20 minute easy warm up
1 hour at 65%
1 hour at 70-75%
10 min easy at 50%
1 hour at 75-80%
5 min easy at 50%
1 hour at 80-85%
15 min at 90%

Cool down.

Run
With run workouts I am a big believer in teaching your body to run fast when you are tired. Much of what I do is designed to be faster at the end than the beginning. I try to negative split all of my long runs and tempo runs. I also incorporate some harder efforts into all of my long runs. The track workout below uses decreasing distances to help teach your legs to turnover when fatigued.

15 minute easy warm-up
1600m @5K pace
400 very easy jog
1200m @3K pace
400 very easy jog
2X800 @2 mile pace
200m jog between the 800s
4X400m @ mile pace

1 minute recovery between quarters10 minute cool-down

What's your motivation?

It's sometimes disheartening to me that most people don't "get" great literature and poetry. I don't mean "get" in the cold, analytical, academic-sense. We academics have done more harm than good in terms of helping society as a whole gain a better appreciation for a poem or a play or a novel.  Many academics that study literature -as opposed to those who create it- focus on ever-narrower ways of interpreting and dissecting poetry and prose. Yes, knowing how to do a post-modern, feminist analysis of a piece of literature can increase appreciation among a certain literati-geek subset of people, but that sort of thing is only further off-putting for the average Joe.

The real, deep, value of literature and poetry lies in its unique ability to help us to make sense of ourselves and our interactions with others. Being human is a singular experience- we can never really know what is like to be someone else, but a poem, song, or novel can help bridge that gap to the "other".

I often turn to literature and poetry to help me understand the big questions in life.  Understanding what motivates me to participate in endurance sports month after month and year after year and now decade after decade is certainly one of those big questions.  Anyone that has followed my blog for a few years will have noticed a pattern that my more philosophical posts that try to get at the concept of "The Goal is the Journey" usually lead with (or contain) a quote from outside the sporting world.  That is the sense-making ability of literature in action. The question at hand: "What motivates you?" is fundamental to both success and longevity in sport.  I have many thoughtful answers to this question, but for today I will turn first to a poem I recently discovered and then share one of my own.

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

-Louise Erdrich

When a friend (Thanks Erica Charis!) first shared this poem, I left it open as a tab on my browser for a about two weeks. I would re-read it every day or so and it is quickly becoming one of my favorites.  This is an outstanding example of a poem that is accessible to anyone.  Erdrich is writing about a fundamental human problem: cutting through the clutter of daily life to find the authentic.  She writes:

Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.

This is the first part of the poem that made me stop and reflect on sport and the question of "What motivates you?"  There is something about sport -and endurance sport in particular- that can strip away all the problems, distractions, and excuses that fill up our days like nothing else can.  This sentiment is echoed later in the poem:

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

If you replace the word "read" with "do" (academics, reader-response theory says I'm entitled to make this mental substitution!) then this could darn-well be a simple recipe for prioritizing your life, or discovering your real motivations. Endurance-based exercise, and in particular, really long and really hard endurance exercise strips away the insulation (read: crap) of daily life and returns me to the most basic of human needs: eating, drinking, breathing.  I've never appreciated a drink of water more than when I've been 8+ hours into an Ironman race on a hot day.  Sitting down after 9 or 10 hours of continual movement is a singular, exquisite, experience.

So that's a big part of what motivates me. A desire, a need, for truly authentic experiences.

I will leave off with a poem of my own that I wrote in college and dedicated to my XC/Track Coach, Paul Olsen.  It pales in comparison to Erdrich's but does say a little bit more about what motivates me.

A Runner

I kill myself

Everyday

Really though, I am only trying to live

Holding my body to the turning grindstone

I search

for the edge

for something greater

for me

Sometimes

I wish it would stop

I can’t. It won’t

The body craves the pain

Sparks shower from the stone

and I know

the edge

will never be sharp enough

-for Ols’

 

A week in the life

Recently my EvoTri team put together a series of posts about what an average day or week in the life of an age group triathlete trying to manage training, work and family looks like.  This was my contribution.

I hate, loathe and detest short workouts. Over the course of 20+ years of competitive endurance activities this notion has become ingrained in my being.  High school swim workouts often ran 2.5 hours including a short weight session. College track and xc workouts were usually at least 1.5 hours (not all of it running, though). As I began competing in Ironman distance events, this resistance to short workouts only got worse. When you start thinking about long rides as only those over 5 hours you can be assured that your exercise worldview has become terribly skewed!

Finding these large blocks of time for long workouts is just not a part of my reality anymore.  I have two kids that I want to spend as much time as possible with when they are awake, a wife that it is in my best interests to keep sane, and a really demanding tenure-track  university job.  In the past if I couldn't devote at least an hour to a workout I just ended up skipping it. In recent years this would lead to many days back-to-back without any workouts.  Thus it was, that this year I've decided to try and cast aside my silly notions of only doing long workouts and better utilize the 30 and 45 minute holes in my weekly schedule. In addition to the above-mentioned reasons for being resistant to short workouts is the issue of efficiency.  I am incredibly efficient in everything I do to make the most out of my very limited time. Even a 30 minute workout requires at least 10 minutes each for prep and clean-up so the real time cost is 50 minutes. That is why in general, I'd much rather do a single 1.5 hour workout than 2 x 30 minutes.

Over time I have become completely and utterly reliant on my Google calendars.  If something is not on my Google calendar it simply doesn't exist. Meetings, sure there are gobs of them.  But birthdays and anniversaries too.  My system consists of multiple, overlapping calendars.  I'll start by showing you my "workout calendar":

This looks pretty awesome- enviable- even, right?  Well it is not actually a traditional workout calendar in any sense.  What this represents is all my possible training blocks in some sort of ideal week that never happens.  As my life has gotten more hectic I've found it better not to schedule workouts ahead of time because I just get depressed when I can't fit them in.  Even so, this looks pretty good.  There are around 20 hours per week of workout possiblities.  Keep in mind that these blocks generally include prep and clean-up.  So, if I do manage to get a lunch hour workout in, I usually spend around 20 minutes total getting ready and cleaning up (I told you I am efficient).  I fear I need to remove all the 8-9pm workout blocks from this calendar as well.  I have never been able to work them in regularly because I am falling asleep around this time whenever I put the kids to bed.  There go 4 potential hours per week.....

Here's where things get interesting.  My calendar has multiple layers.  The layer that interferes with workouts the most is the work calendar layer shown in blue below.  Any of those boxes that overlap with the brown boxes usually mean that workout is a no-go (the exception is some of my lunch workouts where I've inserted  place holders in my work calendar).  The work week pictured below is fairly typical. 

But, that's not all folks!  My third calendar layer is our family calendar.  The family calendar doesn't have all the routine, daily things on it, but rather things like kid's swimming lessons, potential weekend races or other events.  Oh, and a note for me to take the garbage out on Wednesday night, because if its not on  the calendar, it doesn't get done!

So at this point all my nice little brown workout blocks have been shot to hell. So what does an actual, average, pre-season workout week look like for me?  Something along these lines:

Mon morn: Bike at home 45 minutes with some quality VO2 intervals
Mon noon: 45 minutes of swimming.  About 2000 yds, lots of quality, short intervals.

Tues morn: 45 min swim.  Some quality here, but I find it harder to really get after it early in the morning, by myself in a cold pool!
Tues noon: 1:00 bike.  Spin class with other IWU faculty and staff members.  These lunch spin sessions usually involve some quality intervals.
Tues night: Jonah wakes up with bad dream about Midnight.  Go to lay with him in his bed and promptly fall asleep.  Cara doesn't wake me up at 5:45am which I need to do if there is any hope of having an hour's worth of morning workout time.

Weds morning: Due to above, I opt for a quick 30 mins core work
Weds afternoon: This was my first track workout with the Illinois Wesleyan track team. In-season I try hard to make it once a week to their hard interval sessions.  This workout was a long warm-up followed by 20 minutes of tempo for the team, probably 5K race pace for me (5:30 ish).  I finished in the middle of my group for the tempo and then we hit 4X400M hard hill repeats.  My legs were toast after my first hard intervals of the season.

Thurs morn: 45 minute morning swim about 2000yds
Thurs afternoon: Meeting interferes with first 15 minutes of spin class.  45 mins mostly easy spin to start clearing yesterday's track workout from my legs.
Additional meetings push lunch back to 3PM!
Thurs night: Lorien wakes up at about 1AM.  To quiet her down we bring her into our bed then she squirms and keeps us up until about 4am. For you non-parents out there that think it might be nice to sleep with a sweet, cuddly baby girl, DON'T BELIEVE IT!  The diagrams below are incredibly accurate.  Lorien has a particular fondness for "H is for Hell."

After restless night, skip morning workout and "sleep in" until 6:30am

Fri: cannot fit in a either a  morning or afternoon workout.  Leave work early to get a 1.5 hour, very cold outside ride in.

Sat: 1:20 long run then head into town to see teammate Simply Stu doing bodpod and threshold testing at the ISU Exercise Physiology Lab with Laura Wheatley

Sun: 1.5 hour trainer ride with quite a bit of quality work.

So without a day off, all of my here and there workouts actually add up to around 11 hours of workouts!  That is a  really big week for me.  This is where consistency in working out easily triumphs overall volume.  You'll notice a lot of quality in my workout schedule. As I gain fitness almost every one of my workouts will have some sort of quality/intensity involved.  I no longer have the luxury of easy days or so-called "recovery workouts."  Rather than doing a recovery workout, I simply take that time completely off to play with my kids or sleep an extra 30 or 45 minutes.

I'm coming into my 20th year of triathlons with a really high level of motivation.  My bike power is currently quite good due to my cyclocross training and racing.  Bike endurance will come back over time (particularly when there is enough daylight to get back to bike commuting). If I can continue to utilize all these small blocks of time in my schedule then my 2013 racing outlook should be quite good!

Adventures in Race Directing and Cyclocross Nationals

Adventures in Race Directing

Well, this weekend I'm packing up the family Griswald-style into the family truckster (aka Subaru Forester) and heading down to Louisville to spectheckle (spectate and heckle) at Cyclocross Worlds. Having a cyclocross World Championship in the U.S. is a huge deal! Cross has deep European roots.  For the entire history of the sport the World Championship race has never left Europe.  U.S. cyclocross racing has been absolutely exploding in the last 10 years.  It is far and away the fastest growing form of bike racing.  The fact that a World Championship race will be held on U.S. soil is a huge testament to the growth and popularity of the sport here.  5+ years ago when I started racing in some actual sanctioned events I could probably count on my hands the number of people in Bloomington-Normal (combined population of about 130,000) who had ever done a cross race.  This year the Bloomington Cycle and Fitness team often had more than 10 people racing in a given weekend.



Cyclocross in Illinois has been almost completely defined by the highly successful Chicago Cross Cup (CCC).  The CCC series extends from September through December with one or more races almost every weekend.  These races bring in huge (for cross) fields.  There are frequently two Cat 4 races with nearly 100 riders in each.  Cat 1, 2, 3 races usually see 50 or more riders. If you are in the Chicago area these races are super-convenient with a decent amount of variety across courses.  I love getting up there to race, but driving 4-6 hours round trip for a 45 minute race gets to be challenging both in terms of time away from the family and in terms of travel costs.


I've wanted to see more downstate races for a long time, but in recent years there have only been 1 or 2 races outside of the Chicago area. You can't just plop down a new cross course anywhere.  Great cross courses usually have all the following elements: hills, sand pit, some pavement, a run-up where you have to carry your bike, and lots of corners.  Outside of assisting with putting on some of our local triathlons I didn't have any race directing experience. What I did know was that if I was going to commit all the time it takes to put on a race that I wanted it to be in a venue that I loved and believed in.  That venue is Miller and Forest Parks in Bloomington.  The two parks combined create what I think is just a classic cyclocross course.  We've got the hills, the long beach section and best of all an old-world style stone bridge with a flyover (that means stairs up, ramp down for you non-crossers!).  After slashing through more city red tape than I ever imagined I got the new Miller Chill CX race approved for last December.

Great logo courtesy of Ryan Bertrand!

Race week and race day were drizzly and rainy, so we ended up with the sort of iconic muddy cross conditions that make for lots of good pictures and videos.  By all accounts the race was a success.  50 riders would have been around the break-even point and a good turnout would have been 75.  We ended up with about 120 which is certainly the largest-ever downstate cross race.  Even more important to me is that we had around 30 first-time cross racers!  I love that we introduced so many people to the sport during a single race!

Teammates Bill Perry and Nick Ramirez playing in the mud

Huge props to Bloomington Cycle and Fitness for believing in and sponsoring the race and the BCF team for all the volunteer hours before, during and after the event!  Special shout-out to my buddy Chris Daniels who designed, built and then disassembled a huge flyover ramp.  It was a ton of work making the race happen and I have even higher levels of respect for all the race directors out there. Fortunately the event has been reapproved by the Park District for 2013 and I'm anticipating an easier go of it from a directing standpoint the second time around!

Cyclocross Nationals- Verona, WI 1/12/2013

This past fall I did not swim a single lap after finishing the Rev3 Cedar Point Ironman in September.   I also cut my running back to just one or two easy maintenance-style runs per week.  The idea was to take my triathlon bike fitness and build on it to have a big cross season.  This sorta worked.  Fall and early winter is still my off-season.  It's just unrealistic for me to try and maintain my highest levels of fitness year-round.  Fall is also my busiest time at the university.  I can say that I managed to put together a solid cross season, but the actual training was usually 2 or 3 rides per week.  I really struggled early on as I started converting my steady-state sub-threshold triathlon fitness into the super intense threshold and VO2 efforts required by cross.  By late November my legs were finally starting to come around.  I had a pair of top-20 finishes in the Cat 3 races at the very competitive Jingle Cross Rock races.  I followed that up with another good showing at the Illinois State Cyclocross race placing 18th out of about 80 riders.

One of my goals for this season was to race in my first cyclocross masters nationals.  To outsiders this may sound a little more prestigious than it is.  In triathlon and other sports you have to meet certain qualification standards to race.  For the masters events you just need to have your category 3 license (Cat 1 is the highest, 4 the lowest).  In any case, the race was just outside of Madison, WI so a pretty short drive and a chance to get in a mid-winter visit with Evotri teammates, Stu and Rob.  Given the location and time of year I was hoping for some snowy conditions that would limit the ability of the top riders to use all their power.  My #1 goal for nationals was not to get lapped and pulled from the course.  For an event like this if it looks like you might get lapped and interfere with the leaders, then the officials will pull you off the course (this is a good rule for big events).

This video gives you a good sense of the course conditions during the week!

The same course is raced on for almost a full week at nationals. The week started out with a bunch of snow on the ground, but then a warm snap hit.  The course deteriorated (read became a mud pit) from day-to-day.  My 30-34 race was the last one on Saturday.  When I arrived the windchills were already below freezing, but the course was still mucky.  There are no provisions for pre-riding the course unless you were there super-early.  I scouted most of the course on foot with my buddy and IWU colleague Rick Lindquist.  The course was not technical (in order to accommodate big fields).  The muddy and icy conditions made it much more technical than it would have been dry or completely frozen.  As my race got closer the temps just kept plummeting.  I put on all my warmest cycling gear and stuffed those chemical handwarmers every place I could.  Watching recaps of the races earlier in the week I knew that I would need a pit bike for this race.  In cross you can swap out your bike or twice per lap due to mechanical problems, or in this case mud.  I couldn't find anyone to loan me another medium-sized cross bike, so I did what I could to make Cara's extra-small frame make due.  This bike actually deserves a few words.  Her black bike has pink decals that say "Punisher."  The frame is actually a hand-me-down from my sister-in-law Heather.  To make the story even better, my mom raced this bike at Miller Chill (her first-ever cross race)!  To put this in perspective for you, riders were bringing matching high-zoot team issue carbon cross bikes with carbon wheels into the pit and I was bringing an extra-small pink Punisher...bring it on!

THE PUNISHER!

I was happy that my ranking points did not have me staged all the way in the back row.  Close to it, but not the back row!  When the race started, temps had dropped under freezing.  The first quarter mile as all pavement and insane speeds.  We hadn't strung out much when we moved into the mud and first corners.  The course was super-muddy, but actually beginning to freeze as we raced.  Frozen ruts are one of the trickiest conditions to handle.  They suck your wheel in and then out from under you if you're not careful.  The Madison course had one smallish hill that was rideable earlier in the week and then again for the elite races when the ground froze solid on Sunday. Not for our race.  I don't think anyone was riding the hill- which is good for me since it meant more running!  There was a second longer forced run-up with railroad ties midway through the course.  My plan was to go pretty close to all-out early on in order to accomplish my goal of not getting pulled.  I picked some good lines and stayed upright as people wiped out around me.  I went down hard once in a frozen corner and had a few spots where I had to unclip and save myself from going down.  The pace was pretty intense and the field started to string out pretty quickly.  Since the Punisher didn't fit me and also uses Shimano instead of SRAM shifting my plan was to wait until the second lap to switch bikes.  Ideally,  I think I would have swapped every lap and kept Rick, my pitman, hopping back and forth to the power washers to clean off all the mud.  Heckling is a big part of cross culture and wow did the crowd pick up on the Punisher.  I got way more heckles -and some cheers- on the lap where I rode the Punisher.  The super-small frame really wasn't all that bad, but SRAM and Shimano shift in opposite directions so I kept screwing that up.  I don't know if it was from adrenaline or from learning the better lines on the course, but my Punisher lap was my second fastest of the day.  On my last lap I could sense there weren't many people behind me, which confused me because I was pretty sure that I was ahead of a decent amount of riders.  Only later when oxygen returned to my brain did I realize that most of the riders behind me had been pulled- so I succeeded in riding all my laps and not getting yanked!  I ended up finishing 23rd.  I was also the highest-placed category 3 rider which I was pretty happy about.

Looks like mud on my bike, but it was frozen solid by this point!

Race conditions were just plain brutal.  Windchills were down near the single digits.  During and after the race there was this weird phenomenon that I have not encountered very frequently during all my winter riding.  The mud on the ground was still warm enough to get picked up and lodge on our forks, frames and brakes.  After it left the ground though, it started to freeze solid on the bikes.  The water coming out of the pressure washers was probably near freezing itself so you actually had to forcibly chip iced mud off the bikes.  The race was a good experience all around.  Huge props to my Augustana Cross Country teammate Lauren "Shorty" Habenicht for braving the elements and cheering me on!  Glad I went and I made some mental notes about course design that I can apply back to my Miller Chill race.

CX magazine covered my race here.  I actually made it into their photo gallery:

A great example of my mad "riding" skillz!

If you look back at my post from the beginning of last year I had hoped to race both Nationals and the Masters World event.  I really hoped to make this work, but the logistics just sucked.  In order to race in the official Masters World race for my age category I would have had to go down to Louisville on Wednesday for a qualifying heat.  If I managed to place in the top 80 then I would get to race again, but not until Friday.  Seeing no good way to take 1/2 a week off work and away from the family I decided I would be happy enough to just go down, meet up with my brother and his family, drink some beers and cheer on the USA!

The Gambler: Rev3 Cedar Point Ironman Race Report

If you're gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.

-Kenny Rogers, The Gambler


"Know when to hold 'em"

Racing two ironman races, two weeks apart, after a 4 year hiatus from long course racing was a huge gamble. This was not some haphazard, macho, lookee-what-I-can-do endeavor, though.  Instead, it was a series of carefully calculated risks. The first gamble was that I felt I was in far better shape than my performance at the Michigan Titanium showed. Cedar Point was a slightly easier course and race conditions would almost surely be better than the heat I had to deal with in Grand Rapids. If things went right I thought I could race faster than 2 weeks earlier and potentially set a lifetime best (9:53 currently).  That was gamble #1. 

In discussing the race with my wife there was also a double-down on gamble #1. The double-down was this: if I managed to place in the top 3 amateurs at Cedar Point I would automatically qualify for my pro card.  This was somewhat of a revelation to me because I have never actively pursued a pro card.  For most of the last decade I have been content to fight my way up the amateur triathlete ranks.  As it now stands though, I have done most of the amateur races I wanted to do (Kona, 70.3 Worlds, ITU Off-Road Worlds).  Next May I will race in the Best of the US amateur race and that will be one the last big amateur races that I wanted to do.

I am under no misconceptions that I would be anything but at the very bottom of the current U.S. pro field.  It is actually more about finances than it is about real (or more likely imagined) prestige that might come with a pro card.  Financially, the only way I can really keep racing a lot -and in particular larger events- is if I can drastically reduce the costs of racing. Related breaking news story: kids are not cheap and librarians don't make big bucks- who knew?!  Going pro is about the only option I have for reducing racing costs since pros can do most races (except WTC races) for free.

So looking at past Cedar Point amateur results and assessing my fitness and recovery, I knew top three was not out of the question on a good day.  A gamble, yes, beyond my current abilities, no. The $500 I made at the Michigan race made that race nearly a wash financially, so I was willing to pull out the credit card again and gamble on another race.

Two other things helped finalize my decision.  My Evotri teammate and Rev3 media guru, Simply Stu, had a room that I could crash in for free.  I was also able to convince good friend and training partner Laura Wheatley to drive over with me and chauffeur my worn-out butt back home after the race.  So I actually didn't decide until Thursday morning before the race whether I was going or not.  This is nuts compared to signing up for a WTC Ironman a year in advance.  I'll admit that it felt rather luxurious to see what the weather would be like on race day and then decide whether I was going to race!  It was a whirlwind trip since both Laura and I had to work Friday and again Monday morning after the race.  We drove over (7 hours) on Saturday morning.  I raced Sunday and we jumped back in the car and got home after midnight.  Craziness.

Storms were brewing race morning, but mostly stayed away!

This race has gotten a lot bigger in the last year or two!

Swim

The Cedar Point swim is held in Lake Erie.  The days before saw the remnants of Hurricane Issac blow through the midwest and cause some good swells and currents in Lake Erie.  Race morning had a light breeze and some small rollers in the lake.  The race has grown to around 400 participants.  It was a shallow in-water start and I lined up near the front and inside (most aggressive position).  I got out hard (which involved lots of dolphin dives in the shallow water).  I settled into IM swim pace pretty quickly.  I had a decent draft for awhile, but keep getting stuck alone which is a problem in smaller events.  Having just raced two weeks ago I was really dialed into what I could do for a 2.4 mile swim and I wanted to try and know a few minutes off.  No issues in the swim.  I paced the race nicely and worked a bit harder than the previous race to overcome the waves in Lake Erie. My swim ended up being 1:00:28 (3 minutes faster than Michigan).  That was good for 12th overall and in-line with my previous IM swims which have all been around that 1 hour mark.

Bike

I had very clear goals in mind for the bike.  My last two long training rides prior to the MI Titanium were in the 190-200w range.  The Michigan race was super-solid at about 190w.  The temps were far better for Cedar Point (60s-70s most of the day) so I wanted to be right in that same range again.  I took off and was just reveling in the cool temps.  I immediately started racing my own race based off what the PowerTap was telling me and not worrying about anyone else.  The Cedar Point bike course is probably one of the fastest in the country behind Florida and Arizona.  There are no real hills to speak of and the little rollers aren't bad.  Being that close to Great Lake, though there is often wind.  More on that later.  Nutrition seemed spot on again since I had it dialed in two weeks earlier.  Sitting around 200w average felt very easy in terms of perceived exertion which should always trump all other measures.  I don't know exactly what place I was riding in, but somewhere around top 5 overall.  I hit 56 miles right around 200w and 2.5 hours (about 22.5 mph). Splits from the race tell me I was actually in 4th overall at the halfway point.  This was exactly the ride that I thought I could do and the kind of split I needed.  As it turned out I did not even come close to maintaining this power or speed.

"Know when to fold 'em?"

Somewhere around 3 hours my average power started to decrease slowly.  I was expecting a little fall-off as that is common in IM racing.  Perceived exertion seemed a little harder but still similar to all my other IM races.  I kept the calories coming in since I didn't want to dig the impending hole any deeper than need be.  Around 4 hours I was just falling way off pace.  My legs were just wasted and I couldn't put any power behind the pedals.  I would stand briefly and spike the power back up, but I couldn't maintain it. I was surprised to be struggling this much on the bike. I had thought that if my two week turnaround was going to get me it would be on the second half of the run. Some nasty combination of low overall training volume, short recovery between big races and a pretty strong headwind the last hour or so just completely wasted my legs. This is not a dramatic exaggeration.  I later looked at my power file and the last hour was around 130 watts- I literally had nothing.  I had it in my head that my goal bike split was 5 flat.  The upper end of my range was 5:15.  I thought that if I didn't go 5:15 there wasn't any point in starting the run since gamble #1 (PR) and gamble #2 (top 3) would be pretty much out of the question.  It seemed like tons of people were passing me, but I later figured out that I had to have been higher overall than I realized.  Cedar Point is tough because you can see the amusement park from the bike course almost 10 miles out and damn if those weren't the longest 10 miles of my life!  I did the math and didn't think I could hit my 5:15 benchmark.  I saw 5:15 click by on my computer, but shortly after that point I hit the edge of the parking lot that T2 was in. Decision time.

"Know when to run" 

I have no idea what sort of incredibly deep, primal instinct got me out on that run.  My body was telling me that I was done and that absolutely no good could come out of attempting a marathon in that state of pain and fatigue. This logic was sound- if I fell apart that badly on the bike, then heading out for a marathon would surely be a recipe for disaster. In retrospect this was an incredible example of mind over body. I knew that fellow triathletes would probably understand a decision to bail and race again another day.  One thing I didn't want to do was try to explain to Jonah why I went away for a whole weekend and then quit in the middle of my race. A 4 year old's understanding of triathlon race strategies and time goals is pretty limited. There is also a quote from the great German triathlete Thomas Helreigel that goes something like: "Never drop out, because if you finish your legs will hurt for a week, but if you drop out your head will hurt for months." In more than 2 decades worth of competing in sports the only race I've dropped out of is the Desoto Triple-T when I broke my collarbone.  Even if it was the smart thing to do, I didn't really want to open that door. Lastly, I was kinda, sorta, a whiney bitch about the heat at my last race and here it was gorgeous race day conditions and I was thinking about dropping out.

Nut up.

Time to run.

I pulled on my now trusty retro red and white striped tube socks and sweatband and headed out onto the run. If I was going to go down in flames, at least I would look good/obnoxious doing it! Interesting side note: no blisters at all with the cotton tube socks: whodda thunk? Temps were around 70, but it was crystal clear with the sun beating down so it felt hotter than it was (see there I go again!).  I was immediately surprised at how, not exactly good.......but acceptable, my legs felt.  For someone who could barely turn the cranks over the last hour I headed out for a marathon doing mid-7 minute miles and feeling not all that bad. The Cedar Point run is almost completely flat, but terribly, horribly convoluted.  It just has way, way, too many turns and out and backs.  A big portion of the run course is running a mile down a city block, turning around running back, then going up a block and doing the same thing again and again.  It is flat, but all the turns will do a number on your knees during an Ironman marathon.

This is one loop, just try to add up the number of turns in two loops!

The first few miles I was still telling myself that I could bail at the halfway point if I needed to, but pretty soon I was in the groove and running sooo much better than I had two weeks ago. I knew I was in much better running shape than my 3:50 something death march in Michigan indicated.  I didn't try to push the pace at Cedar Point, but I tried to settle into a solid pace that would get me through the race and maybe still sneak me under 10 hours which became my revised on-the-fly goal.  At both of these races my stomach has done quite well on the run.  I did a great job of taking in some form of calories almost every mile which really helps keep things going in those last hours.

I saw Jeff Paul, my college xc and track teammate, and now professional triathlete twice during the run.  He was moving along at a far better clip than I.  It was looking like he'd end up somewhere around the 9 flat mark (he ended up at 9:17 and 15th in what turned out to be a surprisingly deep pro field).

I went through the halfway point still feeling decent.  I wasn't tearing it up like some of my previous IM marathons, but all things considered I was running tolerably well.  Frustratingly, I wasn't making up very many places.  I actually got passed twice in the first mile of the run, which rarely happens to me.  I got one of those places back pretty quickly, but the other guy was long gone and turned in a nearly 3 flat marathon.  My marathon ended up being a 3:37 (8:16 pace).  Not one of my better times, but almost 20 minutes better than the 3:56 from two weeks prior. I'll take that.

Overall I went 10:02:54.  On paper that was 13 minutes faster than two weeks prior.  The Michigan race had a long bike, so my adjusted time would have been around 10:07.  A few observations here.  #1 the Cedar Point bike course was a little easier than the Michigan Titanium bike course.  I fell apart at Cedar Point, but still turned in a 5:19 split. #2 I was happy to mostly redeem myself on the run.  I knew that I was in pretty good run shape and shaving 20 minutes from my marathon only two weeks after the last race certainly proved that. #3 As for my ambitious goal of top 3 and potential pro card, this turned out to be a reasonable gamble for me.  I finished 8th overall in the amateur race, but only about 16 minutes from 3rd. If I had been able to maintain pace on the bike and have roughly the same run, I would have been there. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, right?  The point is 16 minutes faster is well within my abilities- particularly if I had targeted this race and done more IM-specific training.  Here's another fun fact.  I took 8th overall, but 7th in my age group!  So even after they pulled out the top 3 overall, I still didn't place in my age group with a 10:02!

That's not a happy face....  (Clock time was for the pro race)

I've always needed big, ambitious goals to keep me both motivated and improving in triathlon.  Targeting races in 2013 that might get me to that professional level could be the new kick in the butt that I need to take my triathlon game up another notch. The 2012 tri season started out great with my best-ever finish in an amateur world championship and ended with 2 good overall finishes in ironman races that I wasn't planning on doing.  Along the way I shared a podium with some big name pros, made a little money racing and qualified for the 2013 Best of the US amateur race. Not too shabby.

Now it is on to cyclocross season! I'm putting on a new hat as race promoter for a local cyclocross event: check out the new Miller Chill Cyclocross Race!

Michigan Titanium Ironman Race Report

Yeah, that's right I went there.  I had the audacity to call an iron-distance race an Ironman. The MI Titanium race organizers -like most race organizers- judiciously avoided use of the name Ironman in all media related to this inaugural race.  For those completely unfamiliar with the legal underpinnings here, the WTC (World Triathlon Corporation) has trademarked the Ironman name and Ironman logo.  These trademarks are tightly controlled and policed.  For example, a few years ago a race director near me in Springfield, Illinois created a new race called IronAbe that was actually an olympic distance race.  Not long after advertising this race he received the inevitable cease and desist letter from WTC for trademark infringement (which is a stretch since he only used the word iron). Fortunately, he held his ground and the race is still called IronAbe. This policing of the Ironman name brings to mind a classic letter from Groucho Marx to Warner Brothers Studios in regards to the Marx Brother's film: "A Night in Casablanca."  It is well worth a read.

This background actually helps to provide some big-picture context for this race report. I want to contend that the term "Ironman" should be owned by the athletes- the one's that are out there putting their hearts and souls into 140.6 miles of racing. Anyone that covers the distance in a single day by rights is an Ironman no matter which corporation owns the race.  Let's face it, "Chris Sweet, you are an iron distance finisher" just doesn't have the same ring to it!

On to the race report. Astute readers of this blog will recall that there was absolutely no mention in my season preview post of my attempting an ironman race this season.  The general outline was the off-road tri world champs in the spring, a few sprints and olympics during the summer and then a fall cyclocross focus. So what strange string of events found me again at the start of an ironman after a four year hiatus from long course racing? (Kona 08 was my last Ironman).  Basically, I was having a better-than-anticipated triathlon season, then I saw and opportunity and seized it.  Two weeks prior to the MI Titanium I raced the new Rev 3 Wisconsin Dells Half Ironman (oops, there I go again!).  My teammate Michelle asked me why I thought I was racing better this summer than my last few years and my answer was immediate: I finally strung together a bunch of consistent months of training.  Consistency is huge in triathlon.  In recent years due to pressing family and work constraints, I just couldn't string together consistent weeks of training.  This is not to be confused with high-volume consistency which would have been even better.  Basically for about the last 6 months I was able to work out 5 or 6 days a week, but only for 1 or 2 hours a day on average.  Still, this consistency helped and I found myself sharing the podium at the Decatur Lakeside Triathlon with pros Daniel Bretscher and Bryan Rhodes.  At the great new Rev3 Dells course I turned in a solid 4:37 on a course that is on par with Wildflower in terms of difficulty.

Very good podium company in Decautr!

So it was that no more than 2 months before the Michigan Titanium that I got a message from Amy Bowden, a college XC teammate, and one of my most recent triathlon recruits asking me what I knew about the Michigan Titanium.  I was very surprised that a new Midwest Ironman race had somehow gotten under my radar.  As I poked around the website, I liked what I saw and started forming the seeds of a rather crazy idea.  The race was only 4.5 hours away.  I had family in Grand Rapids. The race offered good prize money for top 3 overall. It was a chance to support a non-WTC event.  A thought in the back of my mind is that a huge item on my personal bucket list is to have an overall win at every triathlon distance- and Ironman was surely going to be the trickiest.  Still, I didn't see any pros on the start list and thought I would have a shot at the win.  It seemed ill-advised to do an Ironman crash course training block and then taper all within two months (not to mention a tough half two weeks before).  I talked it over with my wife and pointed out that all my IM training would be compressed into two months and would primarily consist of only six key long workouts: 3 long rides and 3 long runs.  The great thing about a small race like this was that I could wait until the week before to decide whether or not I wanted to race.  If my training block didn't go well, or if I developed an injury I could just decide not to race.

Long story short, my training block went quite well.  I did two of my 100 mile long rides completely solo and one of them was at the same power that I put out for Kona.  I kept my long runs around 2 hours and those went great as well.  So it was that I found myself toeing the line for the first-ever iron distance race in Michigan.

Nice, flat water for race morning!

Swim

The Michigan Titanium swim and transition area were located in Versluis Park which is a bit northeast of downtown Grand Rapids.  For the swim start I staged myself right at the front and got out hard which as a former 50yd freestyle specialist is not a problem.  I led probably the first quarter mile until a better distance swimmer caught me.  I held his feet for awhile, but knew it wasn't a pace I could sustain for 2.4 miles due to my usual 3000yds, once a week, swim training strategy!  A second swimmer also went around me, but I held onto third for the rest of the swim.  The lake was super clear and clean.  The organizers did an excellent job setting up the buoys in nice straight lines.  The course was two loops.  I felt awesome swimming alone without any interference and even thought I might turn in a time around an hour flat.  Turns out I saw just under 1:04 which is my worst IM swim buy a couple minutes, but that was probably due to not having people to draft off of.

Coming out of the swim!

Bike

My goal power range for the bike was 190-200 watts. I had hit this range in each of my training rides and it is similar to where I've raced in the past.  I took it out harder than that because I wanted to see how far up the road first place was.  Within the first two miles I had caught second place, but couldn't see first.  I was feeling very good on the bike and holding about 210 watts and just cruising the rolling hills without spiking my power.  Around 15 miles I finally saw first place.  I stayed steady and kept getting close to him, but he would put more effort into each uphill and pull away.  Somewhere around 20 miles I put in a hard effort and moved into the lead.  After that I led the next 90 miles!  Fortunately, there was a lead motorcycle which I was very thankful for.  Leading a race without anything or anyone up the road to look at is super-difficult.  Nutrition was right on- I started with a bottle of Infinit up front and had enough concentrate for 4 more.  I had about 5 espresso gels in a flask.  Bike aid stations were about every 20 miles and once the temps started climbing I wished they were every 15 or less.  Near the half-way point some jr. high kids forgot to direct us to an aid station and we blew by it until we hit a busy intersection and had to pull a U-turn.  I don't think it added or subtracted any distance, but I did have to go 40 miles without a water bottle refill.  I hit 56 right about 2.5 hours which is one of my best splits.  Lots of people have asked about the course.  The whole course is one big out-and-back.  It has rolling hills almost constantly, but none of them are very long and none of them are very steep.  The course profile listed 1500ft of climbing. My Joule said 4300ft!  I think the truth is somewhere between the two.  It is easier than Wisconsin or Couer D'lene, but not as flat and fast as a Florida or Arizona.  With the out and backs I could keep an eye on the rest of the field.  Just eyeballing it, I was putting time on everybody except for one rider who kept moving up.  We had moderate winds 10-15ish, but the temps just kept climbing. Somewhere around 3.5 to 4 hours my power started dropping off.  Some of it was intentional on my part because of the heat and how my quads felt.  The last hour was just plain awful.  Temps were near 90 and most of the last hour was headwind- fortunately there was also a net downhill.  Nutrition was still fine, but by the end of the ride my average power had dropped down to 191 watts (199 normalized).  According to my Powertap, the course was actually long: 113.8 miles.  This was actually good news to me because if I look at my time and ave speed at 112 miles, it would finally eclipse my 2003 Ironman Florida bike PR.  At 112 miles I was 5:07 and 21.9mph!  Just a great ride for me. Coming into transition, my pursuer finally caught up with me- which surely gave the spectators a good show.  He blitzed through transition while I took time to put on socks and sunscreen- a good decision for me based on past racing experiences!

Killing it on the QR!  Loving this bike.

Leading the bike into transition, but second place caught up right after this pic.

Run

First place came blazing out of T2.  If I had to guess, he looked to be running sub-7s (and yes that is blazing for an IM).  I on the other hand, was struggling and not at all in a chasing mood.  The first three miles of that run were the worst in my Ironman racing career.  The heat was the main thing that was getting to me, but my quads were also aching horribly.  If I hadn't been in second overall it probably would have been easy to drop- and if things didn't turn around I would have dropped.  After the first 3 miles I just maintained a slow, shuffle-pace that I was pretty sure I could maintain for 26 miles.  For the first time in my life (in training or racing) I wore a GPS watch (my wife's).  Going in I thought under good conditions that I could run 3:15-3:20 (I was 3:18 in Wisconsin, so within my abilities).  The stupid watch showed me mile times in the 8 minute range which was hugely depressing so I never looked at the thing again!  The run course was a double out-and-back loop.  Like the bike it has lots of rolling hills, but again nothing steep and nothing very long.  It was partially shaded, but with temps in the low 90's I just couldn't bring my core temp down with any amount of ice and water.  I could see first putting a bunch of time on me, but I held out hope that since he had to ride harder than I did and was running the first half so quickly that he could implode and I could still pull off a win (not that hard to delude yourself 7 hours into a hot race!).  Nutrition continued to go well. I listened to my body and took some sort of calories at almost every aid station along with what had to be gallons of fluid over the course of the day.  Consistently taking in calories eventually helped me to run a decent second half- probably a negative split.  In fact it started to cloud over on my second lap.  The last 6 miles actually felt pretty good and I started to pull back some time, but it wasn't nearly enough. Just to spite me it finally started sprinkling during my final mile (after that it actually rained pretty hard and got relatively cold).  Jonah was waiting for me about 100 yards from the finish line and was able to run in with me (Cara handed Lorien off, right before the finish line).  One of the great things about non-WTC events is that they encourage family participation at the finish line unlike WTC who have banned the practice at their races (to be fair this was in response to type A triathletes bitching about people's families ruining their precious finisher photos).  So the run ended up my slowest by a long shot: 3:56.

My overall time was 10:16 (only my first ever IM was slower).  I'm mentally subtracting about 7 minutes for the extra two miles on the bike which puts me closer to 10 flat.  Lee Sauegling maintained a good run pace to take the win in 9:57 (all that difference occurred during the run).  Strange to have my run be my weakness when usually it is my best event.  I ran a 1:26 two weeks prior on a tough course at Rev3 Dells, so my running was where it should be.  What happened I think can be attributed to two things: #1 I hate the heat and never race very well when the temps climb over 85. #2 my overall lack of volume most impacted my run.

Podium!

At the end of the day, I'm glad I took this risk and raced an Ironman under-prepared.  The frustrating thing is that I am in 9:45 shape, on the right day.  Second place yielded my biggest payday in the sport so far at $500.  The cost of ironman racing is one thing that has kept me away from doing more races.  There is almost never an extra $500 just sitting in our checking account.  For this race I put the entry fee on my credit card about a week before the race then paid it off right after with the race winnings.  I applaud the organizers for providing prize money for a smaller race- it really helps racers like me who are struggling with ever-increasing entry fees (see failed $1200 per athlete entry fee for WTC's cancelled NYC event).

I would definitely recommend this race to someone looking to do an ironman.  On paper the course should be pretty quick.  I'd love to see it moved back a few weeks to avoid the chance of more crazy-hot temperatures. It was well-organized for a first-year event with only a few small hiccups. Volunteers were awesome as always!  If you register early for next year's race (August 25, 2013) you'll pay far less than some of the other big name races out there and the experience will still be very good.  As for me, I'm glad to know I can still turn in a quick Ironman time.  Where I go next -particularly next season- is completely up in the air.