Ironman Lake Placid Race Report

Ironman Lake Placid was one of my A races this season. Given how well I did in the races preceding it:

- 1^st woman at Tri Mania’s Campus Dash (by a minute on a 2.8mi course!)

- 2:56:51 and 98^th woman at Boston Marathon

- 1^st woman overall at Season Opener (by 2.5 minutes!),

- 3^rd woman at Quassy Half

- 4^th woman and 1^st in age group (by 19 minutes) at Syracuse Half

I thought I had a pretty good chance to win my AG at Lake Placid and maybe even contend for the top 3 overall. But once again, GI issues got the better of me :-\ (maybe worth mentioning that I had slight stomach discomfort / side cramps at Quassy and Syracuse as well but not to the point of multiple bouts of diarrhea – sorry for the TMI but if you read my report from IM Switzerland 2013, you are probably used to this :-p)

As for my training for IMLP this year, it was similar to last year’s training for IM Mont Tremblant except I did quite a bit more cycling volume earlier in the year. As a result, I was not as out of shape at Tri Mania in March as I was in March 2014 :-p Also, I tried to do some strength training in the winter and the beginning of spring but once my training volume increased, I abandoned it… I should probably get back to it because it seemed to help my swim/bike/run a bit. To be honest I did not exactly follow a training plan after Boston Marathon… I think I did a very good job following a plan for Boston but after that I slowly but surely became more and more lax about what, when and how much to do. I had a rough training plan laid out at the beginning of the year (mostly just the weekend workouts since those are the key, I think) but I was often too unmotivated/tired (mostly for not triathlon-related reasons…) to fill in the details for the weekday workouts. As a result, most of my training was “planned” only a day or two in advance and sometimes skipped if I didn’t feel up for it (this was true especially for evening swims…). This was definitely not ideal and I know I need to do a better job for my next A race.

Another not-so-ideal thing was that I crashed my triathlon bike mid May and destroyed its fork. This was my first crash on a TT bike and it did undermine my cycling confidence a bit. Fortunately, other than a few scratches and slightly bruised ribs, I was OK. Justin (my trusty mechanic J) was able to find a pretty much identical fork on E-bay and the bike was all fixed a week later. The next day I took it for a maybe a bit too ambitious 110mi ride to and up Wachusett Mountain. I was super-careful the whole way, especially when switching between aerobars and handlebars (my first crash happened during one of those switches when I hit a bump in the road a bit earlier than I expected…). I was getting pretty tired around mile 80 of the ride and started questioning why I was even doing such a long ride when my training plan called for 5h. Also, I was getting distracted by the thought of having to run 6 miles afterwards. I was about to turn on Pine Hill Road, which has always been full of pot holes, so I put my hands back on my handle bars. When I was about 5m from the turn, I noticed that the road didn’t have any pavement. I started braking and somehow fell of my bike. Still not exactly sure what caused the fall – there were no significant holes or cracks in the road. As luck would have it, this fall cracked my bike’s top tube (and also resulted in a bit more extensive road rash). I was heart-broken since I thought that was the end of my frame. Fortunately, it wasn’t – I got it fixed again (by the very experienced guys at Hot Tubes in Shirley, MA).

Back to IMLP… Justin and I arrived at our accommodation (a cabin about 35min from LP but very reasonably priced and in a beautiful setting too) on Thursday night. I took Friday off training, which drove me slightly crazy, especially since Justin went for a nice long ride :-\ Saturday I did a 30min ride, 15min run and 7min swim and felt good during all of them. Justin and I also visited the ski jumping center, which happened to have an aerial ski jumping show that day. It was a fun experience – definitely worth $16/person. We also drove up Whiteface mountain and walked the 1/3mi to the top. The views were very nice. Afterwards, we drove back to the cabin, had an early dinner and were in bed a bit before 9pm.

Race day:

My alarm went off at 3:45am on Sunday, which was just enough time to get ready, drive to LP and finish setting up my transition by 6am.

Swim (1:10:08, 17^th out of 49 in AG, 460^th overall out of 2799):

The swim was a 2-loop course with a short run on the beach between the laps. It had a rolling start beginning at 6:30am. I didn’t warm up because I came to the lake only 15min before the start and I wanted to get a good position in the starting corral. Since my goal was to swim around 1:05, I positioned myself towards the front of 1:01-1:10 pace group. I crossed the starting mat around 6:32:30. Other than getting passed by a few people at the beginning, I was swimming next to or behind people of speed similar to mine, which was nice. When I exited the water after the first lap, I saw 33min on my watch and was quite pleased with that, though in the end my official time for the first lap was 34:06. I actually felt better on the second lap, mostly because it was less crowded, but in the end I swam 2min slower than on the first lap for a total of 1:10:08.  This was 27s slower than at Mont Tremblant last year, which was a bit disappointing. My Garmin measured about 300yd more than the official 4200yd, which was about the same amount of “extra” yardage as I did the year before, so I cannot really use it as an excuse :-p

T1 (5:59):

Passed a lot of people while running to the transition (about 1/3 mile run) and then probably got passed in the changing tent. Still, not too bad…

Bike (5:38:57 - very surprisingly, I had the 2nd fastest female bike split...):

The course seemed quite a bit hillier than when I pre-rode it during the training weekend. Even though the total elevation gain is similar to Mont Tremblant, this course was definitely more difficult. Rather than rolling hills, each of the two laps had one long and pretty steep descend (1400ft elevation drop over 4.5mi), about 20mi of slight downhill/flat sections and the remaining 30mi had almost 3000ft of climbing. I really wanted to ride significantly faster than I did in my previous two Ironmans (my goal was 5:15 or below) but now I realize that that might have been slightly over-ambitious since it looks like only 4 people ended up riding under 5:15... Still, the first 30mi seemed promising as I averaged 23.5mph. I knew the remaining 26mi of the first lap were going to be quite a bit slower since I had to climb about 2500ft but I guess I didn’t expect to be quite as slow as I was – my average speed for the remainder of the lap was only 17.8mph :-\ I clocked the first lap at 2:42:52 and was NOT happy with it. I really wanted the second lap to be faster but of course that didn’t happen. I have yet to negative split an Ironman bike leg but my splits here were way too positive even for me. My second lap was 2:56:05. I lost “only” 4 minutes on the downhill section (22.3mph average) but the uphill took me an extra 7min this time (16.6mph average). My total time of 5:38:57 was not only slower than Mont Tremblant last year (5:32:20) but also slower than my bike time at my first Ironman in Switzerland (5:35:49). Surprisingly, my bike split was still 2^nd fastest out of all women :-o I didn’t know that until after the race, but even if I did, I would not have been happy because, you know, I never compare myself to other people ;-) After the bike, I was 3^rd in my AG and 7^th woman overall – I definitely had a legitimate shot at doing well.

T2 (3:41):

Pretty uneventful. I was glad to be off the bike and felt ready to kill it on the run.

Run (4:04:20 – hard to tell how it compared to other women as I was not able to sort results by run split… In any case, my ranking at this one was definitely not worth to brag about :-\):

The run has been one of my strengths for the past 1.5 years. Unless I have GI issues, which was the case this time :-\

I ate one gel on the way from T2 and both my stomach and legs felt good. I think I fueled appropriately on the bike (2 Powerbars, 2 Clif bars, 2 gels, about 1.5 bottle of Gatorade and 3 or 4 bottles of water) except that I might have not drank enough since I didn’t really need to pee until T2. Also, my heart rate during the bike was where it was supposed to be – mid 150s on average and never higher than mid 170s.

Of course, my first mile was a bit fast (6:50) but I don’t think it was too fast given that it had a 120ft drop in elevation. I was keeping a good pace (~7:15/mile) at a reasonable heart rate (low 160s) for the first 5.5mi or so. I felt quite confident in keeping that pace and if I did (or if I averaged about 7:30/mile like I planned), I would have indeed made quite some damage in the women’s field – like the commentator standing around mile 2 predicted. I had very little idea about how I was doing compared to the other women (and especially the women in my age group) until about 5mi in when I started seeing the women in front of me coming back on the out and back stretch. At that point I was about 18min behind the lead woman and slowly decreasing the margin (I think I was 7^th overall and 2^nd in my AG at that point). And then things started going wrong – first with a little bit of stomach discomfort, then a very urgent need to run into a porta potty every few miles. I cried the second time I had to go (less than a mile after the first time), as I was pretty sure that my chances to run under 3:20 were starting to look bleak. After that second “bathroom break” I was not able to pick up my pace to significantly under 8min/mile any more without needing to run back into the bathroom that very second. Plus, I was probably getting dehydrated and slowly but surely running out of energy (after the 2^nd bathroom stop, I decided to not eat anything solid (including gels) and only take in Gatorade and water because just the thought of gels was making me feel nauseous and I was afraid that anything solid would just cause more stomach trouble). But mostly, I was simply discouraged that I was not going to achieve any of my goals for the day since my swim and bike were already slower than I wanted and there was no chance of me finishing in under 10 hours (my overall goal – again, maybe a bit over-ambitious for this course…) I really wanted to just stop and quit. But that would be kind of lame – I still had more than enough time to walk the remaining 18mi and so many of my friends and teammates endured much worse race conditions than what I was “fighting”. Plus, I was still in top 10 females, possibly even doing decently in my AG. Still, I started taking walking breaks. I thought: “Ugh. Not good. Why was I doing this? I think I’ll ever sign up for an Ironman again…” (yeah, right!)

Somehow I made it back into the town (about half of each of the two laps went through farm land and countryside, which was quite scenic but not very high in spectator density). Seeing Justin and Trent around mile 10 was encouraging but I mostly felt embarrassed for shuffling at 9min/mile… Justin said that the women in front of me didn’t look very fast and I could probably catch them. I said – “I don’t think so. I’m having quite bad stomach issues…” He said “Don’t give up!” A mile later, I was glad I listened to him as I caught some kind of second breath, albeit a very shallow one. The spectators definitely helped. I managed to run about 3 miles at sub-9min mile, but then had to use the bathroom again… The negative, wimpy voices in my head were getting louder. At this point, my total time was definitely going to be slower than at Mont Tremblant – what was the point?? The walking became more frequent and my shuffle was closer to 10min/mile. I envied the spectators for not having to do this. I was by far not the slowest person and most people around me were still on their first lap and looking like they were enjoying themselves. Ugh, I know that I should feel lucky to even be able to do this race and I definitely felt very grateful to all the volunteers, spectators and people who supported me before and during the race, but I still hated that I wasn’t going to achieve any of my goals and that this run seemed like the worst run of my life... Fortunately, at about 4mi to go I decided to just keep running until the finish line. It was not comfortable but as long as there was no REAL danger of diarrhea dripping down my legs, I had no right to walk or stop. I wish I made that decision earlier. If I just kept shuffling at 9:30min/mile instead of walking, I might have had a chance of getting a Kona slot. Yeah, it’s always easier to look back at things and speculate but seriously, next time I need be tougher. Or make sure to not have stomach issues :-p

I managed to accelerate quite a bit in the last 1/3 mile and crossed the finish line in 11:03:05, which was over an hour slower than what I hoped for. I still finished 3^rd in my AG, which was quite incredible to me. Also, that marathon felt closer to 5 than 4 hours, LOL.

I felt pretty wiped out, probably mostly due to not eating anything for the last 4 hours of the race. After I found Justin who helped me collect my stuff, we decided to go back to our cabin because we were both pretty tired and not too keen on sticking around. We ended up watching the live stream of the finish line until around 11pm and then went to bed.

Next morning we needed to pack up our stuff and get to Lake Placid by 9:30am for the awards ceremony and Kona slots rolldown. I suspected that my age group would have 2 slots and that the top 2 girls would take them, which is exactly what happened. Of course, I was disappointed but at the same time maybe it’s for the best that I’ll have another year to get ready for Hawaii.

Lessons learned:

1) When things don’t go as planned, don’t immediately throw in the towel.

2) Have a backup plan (and goal!) for when things don’t go well.

3) Do more to prevent things from going wrong. Maybe being a bit more careful about what I eat the week before an Ironman, would have saved the day. I’ll probably try to reduce my fat intake and anything that might be kind of hard on my stomach next time… Also, I should experiment with non-gel running nutrition since gels have seemed less and less appetizing lately (probably also because of the heat). I’ll probably start using the blocks or maybe some of those fruit sauces in a pouch that my sister really liked last year…

4) Have a more defined training plan and follow it.

5) Make it back to the finish line to watch the final finishers?

What’s next?

Well, to offset my disappointment a bit, within the first three days after the Ironman, I signed up for 5 more races. 2 days later I was horrified at what I’ve done :-D, especially since I will not have my triathlon bike available for at least 2 of them due to shipping it to the 70.3 World Championships 2 weeks in advance. But oh, well, what is done is done and I’m not too sad about my (slightly rushed) decisions now.  The next 5 weeks are going to be kind of busy with Cranberry Sprint and Olympic triathlons in 2 weeks, 70.3 World Championship in 3 weeks and Pumpkinman Sprint Triathlon and Half Ironman in 5 weeks. After that, I might take it a week easy before starting the build-up for Ironman Arizona, which I’m doing with a charity group called Smile Train that raises money for cleft lip and palate surgeries for poor children around the world. You can learn more at http://www.smiletrain.org/ and if you think this is a good cause, please consider donating through my fundraising page: http://support.smiletrain.org/site/TR/AthleticsEvent/General?px=3616546&pg=personal&fr_id=1530

Thank you! J