Ironman Louisville: First Professional Ironman: 5th Place

Since my first Professional race at the shortened Muncie 70.3, my training had been focused on getting ready for Ironman Louisville.  Since Muncie was basically an Olympic distance, it didn’t provide the race day simulation that I had expected, but it was very helpful in seeing where I stand against the other professionals.  Mainly, my swim needed some serious help and focus before Louisville.  With that in mind, Coach Bonnie Karas from Fraser Bicycle and I developed a plan to do what we could in the 7 weeks between the races while still developing as needed on both the bike and run.  To sum it up:  more swimming!

Everything was going according to plan and my times/paces were peaking in all 3 disciplines, until my last weekend training…..This is when 10 minutes into my ride, I needed to avoid a deep pothole in the road, and I instead hit a baseball size chunk of asphalt, that I didn’t see until after I hit it! This shot me into the bushes on the side of the road, bending my front wheel in half, which then launched me over the bars, back into the road landing on my back and cracking my helmet in 4 places.  Not exactly that way you want to end your final training weekend!  Luckily, a scraped back, road rash on my hip and really stiff neck were the result.  No doubt I was really lucky that my injuries were so minor.  As a side note, I will forever wear a helmet when I ride.  Without a helmet, who knows what would have been the result.  Equipment-wise, besides a broken helmet and destroyed front wheel, my bike was fine with only a few minor scratches where it hit the pavement.

This unexpected little twist changed my whole outlook on race week.  Instead of resting, packing and preparing, my focus turned to injury repair and damage control.  I was doing everything I could think of to heal my wounds and loosen up my neck: ice, heat, massage, ointments, and ibuprofen.  Everyday I was getting incrementally better and while neck didn't seem too limiting in my range of motion it was definitely a nuisance.  After a few short training sessions, at least I knew that I could still swim, bike and run at my expected paces, but he big question mark is how would it feel after 6, 7 or 8 hours into my day....and would it hold up to 112 miles on the bike?  There was no way to know until race day, so I just focused on what I could control in the final days and knew I would just deal with it on race day as required.

Pre-Race:

I arrived in Louisville on Thursday, and basically went through the usual list of activities.  Get my equipment ready, get mentally ready, and develop a plan to deal with the forecasted 92 F heat and recon the courses.  Pretty uneventful, so on to race day!

With the Pro start at 6:50, my day began 3 hours earlier at 3:50.  No matter how many times I get up this early for race day, it really doesn’t get any easier.  Yes I was excited for the race, but man, that it early!  Maybe I need to streamline my morning rituals so I can get a little extra sleep next time…..  Again usual pre-race activities, breakfast which included a bowl of Bare Naked Chocolate granola with almond milk, a Lara Bar and some coffee, all consumed about 2.5 hours before the start.  At about 5:10, I left my hotel for the 10-minute walk to the Transition area.  Again, pretty uneventful as I stashed my bike and run flasks in the transition bags, and then got my bike ready.  By 6:00 I was walk down to the start area.  At 6:20, I took my Biest-Booster for an extra kick at the start and about 1 serving of First Endurance Liquid Shot.  As expected the water was warm so this was not a wetsuit legal swim, and I decided to wear the SLS3 Fobic tri suit over my typical race kit.  When it came time to head to the start at 6:30, the sky was still pretty dark, since the sun had just broken the horizon.  As a result, instead of my usual tinted race goggles, I went with lighter lenses and I am glad I did.  I would not have seen a thing had I used my normal goggles, so keep that in mind if you ever decide to do this race: bring light goggles.  In Louisville, the Pro swim start is definitely a benefit over the age-group start.  Besides starting early, we are able to get in the water about 5 minutes early for a short warm-up.  For me this is huge, since I really don’t start well without getting in the water first.  Now race time!

Swim:

At 6:49 they made the announcement to get lined up for our in-water start.  We all lined up, pretty much shoulder-to-shoulder all on the start line, and I chose to stay off to the side closer to where we entered the water.  Finally, the horn sounded and we were off!  The swim start was great!  There was not really any congestion and I was able to get into a good rhythm rather quickly.  I focused on my technique and stayed with the large pack for about 3-4 minutes until it started to stretch out a little, and finally a small gap formed.  For the next 5-6 minutes I just stayed on the feet in front of me in a smaller pack, which ended up being Tim Beardall, trying to get whatever benefit I could from the draft.  At about the 10-11 minutes mark, I decided to look up and sight…..which was not a good decision.  When I did this I lost the feet in front of me and he slowly pulled away until it was about 10 meters in front, where we stayed for the next 30 minutes or so.  After rounding the turnaround buoy, we headed back down stream towards the river, and once we passed the start area, I began to close the gap, and shortly there after made the pass. After this it was a lonely swim to the finish, and my neck was starting to affect my reach on my left arm.  I don’t now if this was actually slowing me down, but it was definitely starting to bother me and I couldn’t wait to start the bike.  As I crossed under the last bridge I glanced at my watch and was surprised to see that I was already at about 54 minutes….damn!  This was about 5 minutes slower than I expected!  Regardless, I continued on until I finally exited the water at 1:06:30 and I was in 11^th place.

T1:

As I tried to quickly and efficiently move through T1, I lost some more time due to 2 issues.  First since it was going to be warm, I decided to use arm coolers, which were helpful on the ride, however, getting those on over wet arms was not easy.  Secondly, as I pulled my bike form the rack, my X-Lab rear water bottle holder slid off the seat rail mounts.  Since this has both a bottle and my CO2’s, I needed to stop and put it on.  In all I probably lost about 45 seconds to these 2 events, but that’s racing…it happens!  T1 time was 3:47.

Bike:

For those of you that might want to move up into the Pro race, my advice is this:  LEARN TO SWIM!  About 3 miles into the ride, Tim Beardall passed me back and took off, and from that point until about 1 hour in, I did not see 1 other rider and only a few cars.  Biking from the back is lonely and presents it’s own challenges, primarily maintaining the mental focus to maintain the correct power output.  It wasn’t until the out and back section around mile 20 did I finally see the leaders going the other direction, and just before the turnaround I finally started passing some of the Pro Women.  My pacing plan was to ride a little harder than average for the first 1-1.5 hours to try and close the gap a little, but after about an hour, my RPE was feeling a little higher than normal for the power and my HR was not settling down to where I like it for hot, long rides.  At this point I decided to drop my power back about 10 watts and just see how I was feeling over the next hour or 2.  This is where I ended up keeping my power for the remainder of the ride.  The first loop of the bike was pretty uneventful, every 20-30 minutes I would see a rider up ahead and make a pass, so I knew I was slowly clawing my way back into the race.  The second loop of the bike however, was nuts!  I expected it to be crowded, but this was unlike any race I hade ever been in.  The people were not only 2, 3 or 4 wide, but with cars also trying to pass, sometimes just driving up the center line, it made for some sketchy passes and moments.  I was happy to finally split off to the finish around mile 90.  From here I was alone again until about 3 miles from the finish where I spotted about 4 riders in the distance up ahead.  As we neared T2, I was able to pass 3 of them: 2 Pro Women (sorry I didn’t catch the names or numbers!) and Mike Hermanson.  Dismounting into T2 about 20 seconds ahead of me was another male, which ended up being the lead age grouper, Chris Hauth who was absolutely smoking the course.  I completed the bike in 5:06:17 and moved up to 8^th.

My nutrition plan for the bike was similar to what I have used in the past.  I started with 3 bottles of First Endurance EFS with 2 scoops each.  I drank one of these per hour, and then grabbed Perform at the aid stations for the remainder of the ride.  I lost track of how many Perform bottles I drank, but since I needed the extra fluids, I think it was 4 bottles.  In addition I supplemented with plain water to thirst and probably drank about 2 more bottles.  With the plain water and Perform, I also took 5 salt stick tabs to keep my electrolytes up.  Lastly, I drank 3/4 of a flask of First Endurance Liquid Shot (Kona Mocha) split at 1 serving per hour and took a First Endurance Pre-Race cap at 2:30 into the ride.  I ended up dropped it at an aid station before I took my last serving so I ended up also taking 2 Gu Roctane gels and skipped the other FE Pre-Race capes since the Roctane already was 2x caffeine.  In total, this averages to about 300 cal/hr.

T2:

Again, the plan is to move efficiently and quickly.  I put on my SLS3 Compression socks, K-Swiss Kwicky Blades, grabbed my sunglasses, visor and Liquid Shot flask and I was off.  I made the pass for 7^th in T2 and began the run.  Total time was 3:15.

Run:

My plan for the run was a little more aggressive than in my past Ironman races.  Typically I would hold back until the second half and then just run to feel for the remainder.  This was a great plan as I typically negative split my marathons and feel good, but I think I was leaving too much time out on the course.  My plan for Louisville was to start at about 7:15 min/mile for the first 2 miles, until I found my running legs then pick it up for 7:00 as long as I could hold it.  Since the race into T2 was so close, my plan went out the window and I immediately started at 6:58 for my first mile, then settled right into 7:00 – 7:05 min miles from there on out.  After about 2 miles, I was feeling good and getting in to a good rhythm, and just kept the pace on.  I didn’t know if I was catching anyone at this pint, but I knew that at this pace in the 92F heat, I wouldn’t be losing much time either.  Just like the bike, I slowly began to catch the other Pros in front of me.  First it was Terra Castro around mile 3 (I think), and then Jackie Arendt around mile 5.5.  Unfortunately at mile 6, my stomach was starting to revolt a little and I felt the need to make a quick stop at the next aid station around mile 7.  Luckily I only lost about 1 minute with my stop, and in the minute Chris Hauth again passed me back, but since he was running a similar pace I was able to pace off him and maintain 7:05 – 7:15 mile 8 through 15.  

Around mile 11, I started to feel a slight side cramp.  My only thought to address this was more salt.  So I doubled up on the salt tabs and took about 5 between mile 11 and 13 and the cramp started to go away.  From that point on, I made sure to take 1 salt stick tab per aid station, and I had no further cramping issues.  Finally at mile 15, focused on the maintaining my pace around 7:10 min/mile to try and close the gap to 5^th.  As I was heading out, I saw the bike escorts heading back to the finish with Patrick Evoe in First, Chris McDonald in Second, and Thomas Gerlach in third.  Then there was a gap and I knew I was about ½ mile from the turnaround.  I started to think a pass was possible, and then I saw Jason Shortis in Fourth, with about a 9-minute lead over me with 6 miles to go.  This gave me a boost since I knew 5^th had to be just in front of me.  As I neared the turnaround I finally saw the 5^th Place bike escort…..and he was only 30 seconds in front of me!  Jackpot!  I knew that since I had caught him, I could make this pass stick.  So at the fist aid station after the turnaround I passed Tim Beardall for 5^th!  In the chaos of the aid station the biker didn’t even see me pass until about ½ mile up the road, but that was fine and I wasn’t waiting.  I continued at 7:10 – 7:15 min/mile until finally at mile 24 there was no one in sight behind me so I started to back off a little to be sure I finished.  I closed the run at about a 7:30 pace and tried to take it all in.  In my first Pro Ironman, I never expected to be on the podium, let alone top 5 with a biker!  I enjoyed those final minutes coming down the finished chute at Fourth Street Live, cheering with the fans and giving high-fives.  It was awesome!  My day was finally over and I had the 3^rd fastest Professional run split of the day at 3:09:01, which was only behind Patrick Evoe and Chris McDonald (first and second overall respectively)!  My total time was 9:28:50, which put me in 5^th Place Professional!

My nutrition plan for the run is way simpler than the bike.  I started off carrying the First Endurance Hand Grenade (Liquid Shot flask that is 1/2 LS gel, 1/2 water with 1/2 scoop of Pre-Race) that I took at mile 4 and 10.5 (about 28 minutes in and 1:15).  Besides that it was Perform and water at each aid station, then Coke starting about mile 11 until the end and a tone of Salt Stick tabs, probably about 20 in total.

Later on in the evening I returned to the finish line area and the place was electric.  It was a really festive and cool atmosphere.  I saw Bree Wee, Patrick Evoe and Chris McDonald handing out medals to the finishers, and I thought that would be fun.  I know typically it is the winners that get to do this, but I felt it was something that all Professionals should do and I figured that being on the podium was good enough.  So I asked Head Volunteer in the area and she said go ahead.  If anyone gets a chance to do this I highly recommend it.  When you hang that medal around their neck, the look on their faces and their reactions are priceless. .  I know in my first Ironman when I finished in 14:03, I would have been blown away if I received my medal from a “Pro”.  It was a very fulfilling way to end my day.

It’s hard to sum up my day, but it was just an awesome and amazing experience.  Going into the race I didn’t really know what to expect in terms of placing, but I knew I would be satisfied as long as I executed my race properly.  While I was a little disappointed in my swim and bike split times, my run speaks for itself that I paced the first 2 segments properly.  This also really shows me where I need to focus from here:  swim and bike!

Ironman is by no means a solo effort and I need to thank those that helped me get to the starting and finish line.  First off my wife Erica who is the most patient and supportive person for helping me do this and achieve my goals.  The sacrifice she makes on a daily basis so I can train, I can’t put into words.  My 4-year old son Nolan and 1 month old daughter Sofiella I carried with me all day, and gave me the strength to maintain my focus especially when this did not go as planned in the beginning.  Paul Rogers and Ron Schmid at Fraser Bicycle that set me up and made sure my BMC TM 01 is ready come race day.  Coach Bonnie Karas, also from Fraser Bicycle that has helped me transform from a 10:18 Ironman in 2010, to 9:43 at IMCDA and 9:45 in Kona last year, to finally getting my Pro card and a 9:28 in 2012.  Ron Tew from BMC bicycles for setting me up with the rocket ship called the TM01, that saves me those precious watts so I can run that much faster. Sebastian and Sylvie from SLS3 for some kick-ass compression gear, speedsuit, race shorts and socks. First Endurance for the best products in sports nutrition that are critical in performing optimally both in training and racing.  The K-Swiss K-Fast program for my running shoes, and finally H20 Audio for keeping me sane in those long pool sessions.

What’s next?  At this point, I am not sure for 2012.  I would like to find another race that fits in my schedule, but I know this:  I’ll be back next year, stay tuned!