(My second attempt at Ironman distance)
Pre-race:
As many of you know, I signed up for this race together with
my sister, who got inspired after she saw me suffer have way too much fun at IM Switzerland last year
J
While I was home during the winter, I left her a book (Be Iron Fit by Donk
Fink), which I used as a template for my training plan both last year and this
year. My sister seemed to have been following the plan for the first 10 weeks
or so (maybe even did too much while attending a training camp in early spring)
but then kind of got off the wagon. She was supposed to come to the US a few
days before the NEMS training camp but because by mid June it was obvious she
wasn’t really motivated to train alone at home (Slovakia), I suggested that she
comes a bit early – about 5.5 weeks prior to the race (the training camp was 3
weeks prior). This turned out to be a great idea – both for our training and
for me having some extra company J.
My swim/bike/run preparation for IM Mont-Tremblant has been pretty
solid. Strava says I’ve ridden almost 4,000 miles and ran around 1,150 miles
this year prior to the race. (The crazy amount of running was also due to training
for Boston Marathon, though I did run more and with more intensity even after
Boston this year and also did longer runs right after my long rides (which was
not so much the case during my training for Switzerland last year)) Garmin says
I swam around 120 miles in 2014 so far but it might be closer to 150 miles since I don't record the swimming drills that usually make up 10-20% of my workouts. My swimming volume was probably still a bit low (especially compared to how much I rode and ran) but it was definitely more than what I did last year and it brought on some pretty significant speed improvements, which is what really counts anyway :-) I’ve also posted some good race results this summer (won my AG at Rev3
half and finished 3rd overall at Patriot Half with a 4:44 (a 24
minute PR!)), so I had pretty high expectations of myself at Mont-Tremblant. My
goal was to go sub-10:30 (ideally sub-10:15) and to at least make the age group
podium (and ideally qualify for Kona).
Well, I’m happy to report that at least my primary goals
have been met J
This is how it went:
Race morning:
Got up at 3:30am. I don’t think I’ve ever woke up so early
for a race but we were staying about 5 miles away from the transition and given
the limited parking space, we wanted to get there before 5am. We were done with
all pre-race preparations by 5:20, so we decided to go back to the car to get
money for some coffee. I temporarily forgot that the swim start was about ½
mile (if not more) from the transition area and as a result we ended up barely made
it in time to get in about 5min of warmup before the gun went off for our wave.
I wished my sister good luck and told her to take it easy, especially since
this was her first triathlon and she’s never ran more than 20K at once! (though
I think her cycling and swimming preparation has been decent)
Swim (1:09:41 – my goal was under 1:12, so I was very happy
about this! Plus, this compared pretty well to other athletes too - 14th/49 in my age group and 446th/2317 overall):
Since I don’t think I’m a mediocre swimmer any more (yay!),
I positioned myself pretty close to the front of my wave. The beginning of the
swim was pretty relaxed compared to most of the races I’ve done. It got a bit
more crowded as I started catching up with the waves in front of us. I focused
on swimming smooth, swimming straight, passing people and, when possible, catching
some feet moving at similar speed to my own. I also made sure I peed in the
last 10min or so of the swim, so that I didn’t have to go (i.e. stop) on the
bike right away. As I got up from the water and saw 1:09 on my watch, I was
elated J
T1 (6:47 – no goal here but this seemed a little slow even
with the supposedly 1/2mi of running total)
Sprinted out of the water and only noticed the wetsuit
strippers when it was too late to use them. (Almost all the people around me
seemed to have used them.) The barefoot run on the pavement made my feet a bit
numb but they were OK by the time I got on my bike. I was a bit clumsy and slow
in the changing tent (I noticed at least one person who entered the tent a few
seconds behind me and left a few seconds before me) but given the length of the
race, it probably didn’t matter.
Bike (5:32:20 – was hoping for around 5:30, so not too bad
but next year I’d definitely like to be 5:15 or under)
My heart rate was a bit too high (high zone 3) for the first
5 miles or so but then I settled into a sustainable high z2 to mid zone 3
effort. I wasn’t too fixated on the heart rate but kept reminding myself that I
should hold back, especially in the first half of the ride. I passed Ryan
pretty close to the first turn-around on 117. It was nice seeing a familiar
face! After the turn-around I kept looking for more familiar faces, specifically
my sister, since I wanted to make sure that she made it out of the water OK (it
was her first mass start swim) and was enjoying her ride. I finally saw her
about 5mi after the turnaround and she looked pretty happy and fast, so yay! J
I did the first lap of the bike in 2:43. Not too bad. I
suspected I’d be a little bit slower in the second lap despite having held back but I was confident
that I could still come in around 5:30. I spent much of the 2nd lap passing
(uphill) and then being passed (downhill) by another woman (not in my age group
though). Usually I really don’t like this kind of situation because I feel it
ultimately slows me down when I have to drop back too frequently but this lady
was very good at passing me at a decent speed, so it was actually kind of nice
having her to pace me for a bit. What was not so nice was that at one point we
passed a group of guys who proceeded to draft of us. Oh well, I guess I need to
get faster to make it harder for them to jump on my wheel next time J (we
got rid of them in a few minutes anyway) I saw my sister again while going back
on 117. She looked good and it seemed that she was still about the same
distance behind me (about 10 miles) – impressive! I managed to catch up with a
few more women the second time up and down the casino hill, so that felt good
too.
As for my nutrition, my plan was to eat about 1 bar
(Powerbar or Clif bar broken into 2-3 pieces) or 2-3 gels every hour. Since I
didn’t really train with a sports drink, I decided to just stick with water for
the whole bike (and potentially the whole race). It seemed to have worked out
better than last year when I consumed both water and whatever sports drink they
had on the race course (probably Perform). But then, the temperatures this year
were much lower (55-65F) than in Switzerland last year (80-90F), so I probably
didn’t sweat as much… In the end I ate 3.5 bars and 4 gels and drank 5 water
bottles on the bike (about 3.5 liters). I had the last 2 gels in the last 35min
or so, which I was a bit worried about but I didn’t plan to have anything in
transition (or rather, I forgot to put an extra gel in my bike to run bag), so eating
a bit extra towards the end of the bike had to do. I was pretty happy with how
the bike went – 3 minutes faster than in Switzerland last year but my average
heart rate was 155 (high z2) as opposed to 168 (mid to high z3)). I was ready to kill it on the run!
T2 (3:33): Pretty smooth other than that after I packed my
bike stuff into the bag, I put it on a chair and it fell and spilled all over
the place. Probably lost 20 seconds by putting it back into the bag from under
the chairs, lol.
Run (3:31:21 – the goal was around 3:30, ideally a bit
under)
I flew out of transition and knocked down the first mile in
only a little above 7 minutes, despite a few hills. For the first 8 miles, I
was feeling pretty good and my heart rate was where it was supposed to be (mid
160s). The leading professional men that passed me around mile 2.5 were not
going that much faster J
(they were a lap ahead of me, of course!) I was averaging around 7:30min/mile
(including a pee stop at mile 6), so for a while I naively thought that maybe I
can even beat my standalone marathon PR (3:12). Yeah, right! J
Around mile 9 I started having a slight stomach discomfort and a little bit of
leg/hip/feet pain and my pace dropped to the 8min/mile range for a few miles. That brought me back to reality (i.e. adjusting my goal to
finish in 3:25-3:30). I still managed to accelerate a bit before
and after the halfway mark, mostly thanks to the amazing energy of the
spectators and volunteers. Things started getting rough around mile
17. I still managed to pass
quite a few people, many of them still on their first lap but I was definitely about 30s/mile slower than on the same sections in the first lap. Around mile 20 I
caught up with a lady who seemed to have been leading the age group race
earlier (she was in the 30-something AG). She checked what age group I was in
and told me that there was another person in my age group not too far ahead and
that I can catch her if I push it. I tried to push it but all I could do was
about 8:30min/mile for the next 2 miles or so. My abs started hurting really
bad (not sure if it was a stomach issue or just the ab muscles) and my legs
didn’t feel the greatest either (what did I expect? That this was a walk in the park the whole way? :-)). I really just wanted to walk, which seemed
pathetic with only 4 miles to go, especially given my earlier pace. I made a
compromise and walked a bit at the aid stations and drank some coke (I was
eating gels about every 5 miles until mile 16 but they didn’t really sit well
in my stomach, so I decided to finish the race just on liquids). Eventually,
the 30-something lady caught me back and once again told me to push it. I felt
like a total failure because I really couldn’t go any faster than a meager
9min/mile at that point. I just couldn’t wait to be done with this! I walked a
few more times, only for 10-15 seconds at a time but I still felt really
embarrassed since I was less than 3 miles from the finish and not able to pick
up my pace above 9:15min/mile even while running. Also, I really didn’t want to
walk (or shuffle too much) in the last mile or so since there were so many
spectators around. So I took my last walking break with about 1.5 mile to go
and sucked it up. The crowd support helped a LOT and did manage to bring my
pace back under 9min for the last mile and finish with a little bit of an
acceleration J
My overall time was 10:23:42 (4th/49 in AG, 13th/626 women, 141st/2317 overall). I should have been happy but I
was mostly just relieved that it was over and a bit disappointed that I didn’t
catch the girl (in my age group) in front of me. I wanted to check the results
really badly but since there was no wifi and I didn’t have mobile data in
Canada, I didn’t get to see the results until about 2 hours later (after which
I was even more disappointed because of not even making what I thought was the
podium in my AG (top 3)) My sister surpassed everyone’s expectations and
finished her first Ironman (and triathlon!) in 11:44! I was so happy for her J and
was especially amazed by her 4:08 marathon! We were both pretty beat up, so we
headed back to our hotel soon after.
We almost missed the Kona rolldown at 10am the next day
since we didn’t get up until 8am and had to pack and check out of our hotel
prior to that. The rolldown did go as I expected - the top 2 women in my age
group took the slots. However, the awards ceremony was a bit different than
what I expected (in a positive way). Since this race was the North American Championships,
they had a 5-person podium for each age group, so even with a normally
disappointing 4th place, I still made the podium J
In summary, I really enjoyed Ironman Mont Tremblant - the
location, the people, my friends from NEMS and MIT, my sister and also the fact
that I could train on the course a few weeks prior to the race. Also, would
like to thank you everyone who supported me, cheered me on and tolerated my "occasional" fatigue-induced grumpiness in the months preceding the race and also during the race (special thanks to Isa, Eleanor and Colin for making
the trip to Mont-Tremblant to support the MIT Triathlon competitors!) and thank
you everyone who trained with me (even though I do not mind training alone most
of the time, it is definitely more pleasant (and motivating) to train with
friends!).
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