MD Olympic Duathlon Race Report

MD Olympic Duathlon

This was my A race for the year.  After a huge disappointment in this race last year (I became ill 10 days before the race), I returned this year determined to make up for last year’s failure and set a new PR in the process.  I was having a productive season up until this race, and I was psyched and fit going into the event on July 12th of this year. The race consists of a 2 mile run, 26 mile bike and a final 4 mile run.  The course has significant elevation challenges.  Here is what I needed to beat to claim my PR.

2011 race
Run #1: 15:49 (7:54 per mile)
T1: 1:13
Bike: 1:24:30 (18.46 mph)
T2: 1:03
Run #2:  38:48 (9:42 per mile)
Overall: 2:21:20

I set my race goals as follows:
Run #1: 15:00 (7:30 per mile)
T1: 1:00
Bike: 1:25:04 (18.62 mph, 95% FTP)
T2: 1:00
Run #2: 36:00 (9:00 per mile)
Overall: 2:18:04

Before I reveal my actual results, let me discuss the lead up to the race in terms of my training.  For the last two years I have been focusing on the second run portion of the duathlon.  Let’s face it, if you are strong in this phase of the race you will do well.  For the last 2 years I have been getting stronger in this portion of my races.  I knew I would need to be strong at this race since it has a significant climb on the final run which you have to do twice.

My last 12 weeks of training were not without challenges.  11 weeks prior to the race my Dad died. Coupled with the emotional toll and the added responsibility of taking care of my Mom (who is in a nursing home), not to mention arranging the funeral, this could have seriously derailed my training.  I actually found solace in my training during this time, both as a form of enjoyment and a distraction from the stress and turmoil of dealing with my Dad’s death.  Eventually, though, there was just too much to do, and I decided to take an entire week off.  This was a REAL rest week.  When I went back to training a week later I was well rested both emotionally and physically.  I started immediately working to improve my FTP and since my legs were fresh, I threw in some track work, doing 4 x 4 minute intervals at a sub 7 minute pace.  I eased off just a bit in preparation for the Cascade Lake duathlon (read that race report here).  That race went very well, as I just missed out on 1st place in a sprint to the line.  I resumed training that Tuesday just as I would have if it had been a normal training weekend.  I was feeling good after my strong weekend race, so on a whim I jumped into a bike race.  This, of course, is how you screw up your training. Early in the race, I was sitting in the back of the field and a racer blew a tire, crashed spectacularly, took out about ¼ of the field, and while I stealthily managed to avoid the carnage, I got gapped badly off the back.  I now had to chase for the rest of the race, which essentially became a 1 man time trial to catch the field.  I didn’t catch the field, but that may have been the hardest I rode all year!

The last week of May rolled around, and I decided I need to start accessing realistically the pace I would be trying to hold for my A race.  I then went to my one of my key workouts, 2 x 20 minute intervals @ FTP, with a further 20 minutes at the sweet spot; with 10 minutes of recovery between each and a 15 minute warm up and cool down.  For those who are not familiar, this is a tough workout!  Two twenty minutes efforts at your FTP (a power meter is helpful here to make sure you don’t go too hard or too easy) followed, after a brief recovery, by 20 minutes at the sweet spot (the sweet spot is just below your FTP, approximately 88 – 92 % of FTP).  The purpose of this last effort is to build endurance so you can ride strongly as you approach the end of the bike portion.  The first time you do this work out the last 20 minutes may seem like an hour, but the results are well worth it.
I followed this workout with a 2 mile transition run.  The purpose was to begin getting my legs used to running after a hard bike effort, and it did take some getting used to!  I felt pretty crappy the first time I did this run.  After a very challenging weekend it was time to get an idea of where my fitness was so my first 5k run test was scheduled for Thursday (thanks Derrek Sanks for the inspiration) I ran my best 5k in years cranking out a 22:06 (I need to break 22 by the end of the year!).

I am sometimes slow to learn from my mistakes however, or perhaps I just really miss bike racing, but I decided (once again on a whim) to go do a 40k USA Cycling time trial.  This turned out to be a case of Murphy’s Law.  Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.  After my normal breakfast, my stomach began giving me trouble.  It was a 2 hour drive out to the race and about 45 minutes after getting in the car, I was desperately searching for a bathroom.  Even after finding one, my stomach was still not happy.  I arrived ahead of my start time, got registered and went to warm up; as soon as I got on my bike I noticed a terrible sound coming from the headset of my bike.  This was VERY disconcerting, but after driving 2 hours I was not going to drop out now!  The ride to the start line is 5 miles, so you get a nice warm up before the big test.  The headset was making a horrible sound as I warmed up and it made me more and more nervous.  I tried to put it out of my mind.  I reached the start line a few minutes before my start.  I took in some fluids and tried to settle my nerves.  In a few minutes I was called to the start line.  After a good hold, I was off and rolling.

I got off to a good start.  I was gauging my effort based on my wattage numbers, that is until my power meter stopped working!  So 20 minutes in I am back to using heart rate and perceived exertion to gauge my effort.  Not as good, but I used that method for years before I had a power meter so it’s not exactly a mystery to me.  I now began to notice some serious numbness creeping up my left leg. This was a bad omen.  I have felt this before and it usually is a sign of great discomfort and loss of power further down the line.  Sure enough, about 50 minutes into the ride, the engine room shutdown and I had to struggle to the finish, recording one of the worst times I have ridden in years!

I decided right then and there I needed a new bike fit for my time trial bike.  This made it clear I would need to ride my road bike for the duathlon.  In some sense this was a good, since I now knew for sure that the TT bike was out until I got a good fit.  After that mishap I vowed no more racing on a whim until after my A race.  I went back to my tried and true 2x 20 minutes @FTP with 20 minutes at the sweet spot every weekend in June, even training on the race course itself.  I had a sprint triathlon on Father’s day just to change things up and put my fitness to the test, and even though I didn’t set any records, I had a solid outing.  My run was particular encouraging as I had the best kind of negative split, one where you get faster every mile, but my bike was not where I wanted it and I under achieved to some extent.  I wanted to get a better sense of where my fitness was, so I took 2 recovery days and then re-took my FTP test.  I was elated to find my FTP had shot up 5%.  This was a good indication that my training was headed in the right direction.  With a little over 2 weeks to go it was time to fine tune my fitness and draw up my race plan.

Race Plan:

Saturday July 11th.
Pre ride the course.  One of the advantages of racing locally is being able to train on the course.  This was especially useful since about ½ mile of the course was ripped up to be re-paved.  Knowing this was very useful as this was a dangerous stretch to ride all out in the aero position.

Get registered and check out the transition area.  Knowing the lay of the land helps make for a quick transition.

Check race day nutrition to ensure I have enough.  Nothing worse than realizing on race morning you are out of your favorite food/gel/drink etc.

Make dinner reservations and check breakfast supplies. I wanted to make sure I had my optimal fueling meals for my A race.

Pack race day bag and make sure my race kit is clean.  You want a comfy kit for the most important race of the year.

Get to sleep by 10.  Very early for me, but fully rested beats kind of tired any day.

Sunday July 12th.

Awake @ 4:30

Eat Breakfast @ 5:00 AM

Leave house @ 5:30 AM (another advantage of racing close to home, a short and known commute to the race). Drink coffee on the way to the race.

Arrive at the venue by 6:00 AM (gives me time to get marked, hit the bathroom, set up transition, warm-up, chat with friends.  NO RUSHING….  I like to relax prior to the start.

6:45 AM warm up.

7:00 AM at the start line ready to roll!


First run
And were off!  Guys are moving fast, as am I.  I zip thru the 1st mile in 7:10 (it’s downhill which is why I am slightly ahead of my goal pace) I have run the course enough times to know I can run slightly faster since it’s an easy downhill.  We hit the turnaround at mile 1 and I see some of my competitors from previous races about 10 to 20 seconds ahead of me.  No worries, I am conserving my strength, the real test comes on the last run. I zip into transition with a 7:31 pace, cool, right where I want to be.

T1

Kick off the run shoes, put on the bike shoes and helmet and get out of there. 1 minute 8 seconds, ok but nothing to write home about.  Next year all transitions must be sub 1 minute.

Bike

This is the bike ride I have been concentrating on since last year’s debacle.  I knew the key would be to NOT GO OUT TOO FAST!  The crappy road surface in the first mile made that a lot easier.  I also knew at mile 3 there was a short but VERY steep hill that needed to be respected.  My plan was to stay 3 -4 % below threshold and then take the hill at 100 – 110% of FTP (OK so I went a bit overboard the first time up (note the average and max power) https://www.strava.com/activities/344801782/segments/8196800407, but I was much better the second time up  https://www.strava.com/activities/344801782/segments/8196800861). After that the plan was to settle in at 95% FTP for the rest of the race.  I set my Edge 500 to give me splits every 6.5 miles (the course was 13 miles x 2;  I gauge my effort by dividing the course into 4 parts). The overall race plan is to ride the first ¼ at 91 – 92% of FTP and ramp it up to 95 - 96% for parts 2, 3, and 4.  The idea is to get to the second run with enough left to run a good race.  I went through the first ½ of the race with a PR and was feeling pretty good, and then I had a few bad moments on some of the tougher parts of the course on the second loop.  This is where trusting your training really comes in handy.  I remembered having some of those moments in training and being able to ride through them.  Sure enough, a minute or two later I was feeling OK again.  That mental realization gave me renewed confidence to chase my PR and not back off.  Now I would like to be able to tell you I rode this course as a negative split, but it didn’t happen (next year for sure!) but my splits were not as close as my previous PR, so I guess I still went out too fast.  I’m not going to get too bummed about though it was still my fastest bike split on this course, a PR is a PR! The main thing is when I got back to transition I felt like I had ridden a good race and I felt like I had a good run in me.

T2

Took feet out of bike shoes as I pedaled up to the transition dismount line, hopped off, ran into T2, ditched my helmet, bike,  got my run shoes on and was outta there.  1:19, it is a big transition area but it ain't THAT BIG!  More transition work to come.

Second Run

This is “make or break” for the race and my PR.  Four years ago, I was solidly in the top 10 of my age group when I left transition and ended up finishing 17th when I imploded on the second run. I was determined to run a respectable pace this time.  My training had prepared me to run 9 minutes per mile off the bike, but my heart rate monitor was telling me more was possible and I hammered through the first mile in 7:50.  The next mile is mostly uphill so I watched my heart rate monitor closely and as long as it agreed I wasn’t going to blow up, I kept the pace as close to 8:30 as I could manage. Mile three gave me a bit of a breather as the course turned downhill again and I was just beginning to feel fatigue setting in as I started the last uphill mile to the finish.  That last mile was tough and I focused on holding off anyone who looked older than me.  No sense blowing a good finish by dying in the closing mile.  No one caught me in the last mile and I finished with a course PR.

Actual Results
Run #1: 15:10 (7:31 per mile) (slower by 10 seconds)

T1: 1:09 (I got work to do!)

Bike: 1:23:52 (18.9 mph) (faster by 12 seconds, I call that perfect execution)

T2: 1:19 (I got work to do!)

Run #2: 35:16 (8:25 per mile) (faster by 2%)

Overall: 2:17:30 (beat estimate by 34 seconds)

I’ve done a lot of races but this is BY FAR, my best execution of a race plan.  I learned a lot from training for this race and it has certainly changed the way I prepare for my races.  Here are some takeaways I would like to share.

Stick to the plan!  Don’t go off racing on a whim!  While my forays into races didn’t ultimately derail my race they taught me how easily they could have derailed the best laid plans.

Race at the pace you trained for.  Don’t think you are going to accomplish something on race day that you didn’t train for.  Your training tells you exactly what race day will be like.

Don’t guess!  Find out your heart rate or power data.  I use www.bestbikesplit.com to help me predict how hard I can go for a given race.  I do that in conjunction with knowing my FTP (function threshold power) and heart rate data so I have something to refer to during the race.  I don’t have to guess if I’m going too hard, I know when I am (now if I can control myself  with this knowledge I will have really accomplished something).

Do intervals, lots and lots and lots of intervals.

Enjoy the training every bit as much as the race, maybe more.  It makes the final run to the line that much more satisfying.

Finally, get some rest!  All that training is, quite literally, stressful!.

Peace and keep training.

Robert