Eagleman 2012

I have been looking forward to this race for sometime.  My 60 yr old uncle and I have been trying to find a yearly triathlon and this year we both decided to travel to Maryland for the adventure.  I figured the terrain would be a good match for my usual training in Chicago – flat intermittent swirling winds and a nice open water swim.  Originally, had planned on the race as an early season A race, but that plan was modified after a foot injury in early February that kept me from funning for 3 months.  So exactly one month ago, on May 10^th, I went on my first run after giving myself a chance to heal.  The first run, even though only a mile, was quite a bit of a struggle to remind my body how to run again.  I then increased the mileage over the past 4 weeks to a long run of 10.5 miles without pain and figured I was a go for the race.  

I packed up my bike and travelled out to Baltimore on Thursday and due to a flight cancellation ended up flying to Dulles instead and getting picked up there instead.  

 

Friday was a nice easy 15 min swim, a 30 min very easy ride to make sure the bike was riding smoothly after I put it back together, and a short 20 min jog.  

We drove down to the site on Saturday morning, registered, walked around the expo, and then racked our bikes.

Short version:

Great race, well executed, hit my expected goals on a really hot day, felt pretty decent after the race and not too sore the following day

Swim 34:42 pace 1:47/100m

T1 3:07

Bike 2:44:08 pace 20.48 mph

T2 3:59

Run 2:10:53 pace 9:57 min/mile

Overall 5:36:27

After the early morning breakfast of a bottle of infinit and a bagel, we left the hotel and headed over to transition for an absolutely beautiful morning the sun rising over the calm Choptank river with a reported temperature of 75.6 degrees making the swim wetsuit legal.  

 

I met up with my teammates from Endurance Nation in transition before the race started. 

During the hour of waiting for the swim to start I had a cliff bar and a bottle of Gatorade.  After waiting around for an hour for my wave to start I put on my sleeveless wetsuit and got in the water.  It felt fantastic.  I brackish water was something new for me, luckily it wasn’t too salty, I don’t know how I would have done with that.

Swim

I started halfway between the two start bouys, and in the second row.  The gun went off and I started swimming.  I wanted to stay away from the initial chaos of the bouy line, but figured that I would start to migrate over in that direction.  I found some feet in the process and drafted for a little.  Kept the turns wide to avoid as much contact as I could.  See my wave was the 30-34 males and the clydesdales.  I was going to lose that battle if one occurred.  The overall contact wasn’t too bad.  Apart from one guy catching my watch and hitting every button in the process it wasn’t a problem. 

Apparently there are jellyfish in the Choptank river.  I saw one as I was swimming and just missed punching it and probably getting stung.  Good times.  (I took this picture the night before)

I got out of the water in 34:42 and felt great.  One of my fastest swim times for what I assume is a correctly marked 1.2 mile course.

T1 was fine, I don’t really know what took long,

Bike

My bike strategy was to ride at 180 watts for the entire race which would have been an IF of 0.8.  I also knew that on this flat course I should be able to ride 20-21 mph without dying.  From a race rehearsal several weeks prior when I was pushing an IF of 0.85, my run afterwards suffered a little.

The course was as flat as a pancake.  There were three “hills” on the course that I can remember, all of which were bridges with about a 1-2 foot incline.  Luckily not too much wind to contend with during the course of the bike.  The hardest part was staying aero for the entire time and barely changing gears.

I started out for the first 30 minutes with watts in the 150-170 range, just trying to settle into a pace.  Even with that I was flying along at 20+ mph. After 30 minutes I picked up the watts to try to get to the 180 range.  I recalibrated my quarq several times on the ride, it just seemed like I was a little lower than on usual training rides.  But I listened to the numbers, kept my HR just under 140 the entire time, and felt good.

Nutrition was 2 bottles of infinit for 550 calories, probably filled aerobottle around 4 times.  No other nutrition.  Hit all of the aid stations for water, successful bottle grabs, filled aerobottle and used the rest to cool off.  Worked well.  I noticed that my jersey was starting to get salty around mile 40.  Couldn’t figure out if this was me sweating (usually never see on my jersey during a ride) or if it was the salt from the river finally starting to dry.

Saw a lot of road kill on the ride, 2 skunks, a snake, a crab, and something unidentifiable.  Luckily not me.

Got back to T2 feeling ok.  My left hamstring was started to get tight, not quite sure why.  Overall bike time of 2:44:08 for 20.48 mph.  Might not be my fastest half time, but probably one of the smartest rides.   I was hoping that I could have a good bike and a good run, and not a great bike per usual and implode on the run.

Summary of data from the ride:

Duration: 2:43:11  Dist 56.149

Work 1517 kJ

VI 1.02

IF 0.706

Avg Power 155

Avg Cad 78

Avg Speed 20.5 mph
Avg HR 137

My interpretation of this data

My power was a bit lower than I was hoping.  That said, I still held a pretty good pace.  My VI was nearly 1 so at least I was riding steady the whole time.

T2 was 3:59.  Popped 2 salt tabs, which I think would end up helping on the run.  I might have to develop a better strategy for salt in the hot races.  Some of this time was filling up water bottle.  I think I might have also laid out in a lawn chair for a minute or so - no not really, just can't figure out what I did for so long

Run

My execution strategy on the surface was rather simple, try and run as much as possible, don’t walk if there wasn’t an aid station and do my best to stay hydrated.  In the days up to the race I watched as the predicted temps continued to climb up to a predicted high in the low 90’s.  One of the things that I have learned in running several half marathons in the year prior was that I needed to have water and Gatorade accessible throughout the entire run and not just at the aid stations.  When training and in previous races I have used the Amphipod belt which has worked great.  For this race however, I had no idea how to keep the bottles cool for the hours that would elapse between leaving transition and finally returning after the bike.  So at the expo I went out and bought myself a hand held bottle from Nathan.

It provided several great advantages.   I had constant access to Gatorade the entire run.  I filled with Gatorade and ice at each aid station and it kept my hand cool which probably helped my overall temp.  When the fluid started to get too warm I just dumped out and started over again.  Overall, fantastic addition to my race strategy, and I don’t think I could have made it through the race without it.

I knew that the run had the potential to completely derail my entire race plans for the day. The combination of the heat and still building my base was going to be troublesome.  Based on recent run pacing and vdot from prior to my injury, I figured I should run around 9-9:30 min miles to get through the race and not blow up.  Based on the additional heat, refueling at aid stations, cooling off etc, I added another 30 sec per mile for a goal of 9:30-10:00 min/mile until mile 10.  At mile 10 depending on pacing I was either going to open go for broke or hold onto the pacing strategy.  I tried to up the pace, wasn’t feeling it, so held on to the pacing.  I figure this was due in large part to a lack of base.  As I hit about 0.5 miles left the engines started to fire again and I was able to get a last little kick to get me home.

My splits were relatively decent, 9:43 min/mile for the first half, 10:13 min/mile for the second half.  I was really working on keeping cool during the second half, and middle of mile 11 had to walk a little more than expected. 

Once I was able to get back to transition I checked the weather.   It was indeed a little warm at the finish.

We got to meet Craig Alexander who was very gracious with his time and took many pictures with the age-group athletes.

After the race I got to spend some time with my uncle who also raced and this year while we were awaiting the award ceremony.

After a 3 month hiatus, coming back to run a really hot half marathon made my day.  While not a PR, definitely a major victory in my book.  This time is about 25 minutes faster than my last 70.3 in Florida 2 years ago when the heat completely destroyed my run.    My goal was somewhere around 5:30.  Adding to that the 92 degree weather I am very happy.

Got back Baltimore, repacked my bike in its case and headed off to the airport.  This makes 4 flights total this year with these bags and zero baggage fees.  This case is great, it makes travel to races much more affordable.  It takes a little time to put bike back together, but overall, definitely worth the investment.

With that, it is a week trip for work, the running shoes are coming along incase I get the urge to run, then it is time to drop into the full on ironman plan in preparation for IM Wisconsin in Sept.