Devilman Sprint Race Report

2010 Devilman Sprint Triathlon
Race Report #3: 5/8/10


Background

My 3rd triathlon of the 2010 season and the 89th of my career, this was to be my 4th “Devilman” triathlon. The first two were half-Ironman distance races and last year, as with this year, was a longish sprint.

I opened up the 2010 season with a couple of IM70.3s—Oceanside and New Orleans. There was good and bad news in these races but I did secure a Kona slot at Oceanside and that fact now must be a strong driver of all of my decisions regarding the 2010 season going forward. My prior race, IMNOLA70.3—20 days prior—was a bit of a setback for me. I discovered that I had indeed suffered some important injuries in my bike crash (just prior to NOLA) and during the race my bike and run were significantly impaired. Since NOLA, I have been involved in a rigorous (3X/week) PT program to try to regain my former fitness. As the DM race dawned I thought I was well on the road to recovery but still significantly off of my “A” game.

As I looked over the entrants for this race it was clear that it was going to be a 2-man race—that is if I could go at close to my capabilities. Robert Hartman, a very strong triathlete and cyclist was entered and even if I were 100% I would have my hands full. I was none-the-less excited to race as Rudy gave me the go-ahead and I needed to get a good read on my progress and whether I could ramp up my training again to get ready for IM Germany.

Race morning dawned with a pleasant but a breezy and overcast sky. The forecast called for significant winds, increasing temps and potentially some thunder boomers—interesting racing conditions for sure! Bring it on!
The Swim

I was in the 2nd wave with all of the other over 40 male swimmers. The wind was pumping—probably 20-25+ mph and there were literally waves on the smallish lake we were to swim in. The swim course was definitely much longer than last year—which was comically short—it looked pretty much like it’s advertised 0.4 miles. I was pumped as I have tremendous confidence in my swim this year and I knew I actually needed to open up a lead on the swim if I was to have a chance at staying with Hartman.

I lined up to the right—away from the buoy line—not really for a lack of confidence—but rather for the tactical advantage it gave me as a predominately left side breather. At the gun I surged ahead and felt fantastic right away. After 10 or so strokes I looked left and right and could see that I was leading the group. I looked back and could see that I was already 5+ yards ahead of the people around me. Wow—I was kicking it!

I backed off a bit and noticed a couple of guys separating from the pack to my left. I decided to vector left and to try to jump in on their (the leader’s) feet by the first turn buoy. This is what I did and I hit the first turn buoy, 3rd in the wave (with a guy next to me) and feeling really comfortable. I knew that I had more to give but decided there that it was unlikely that Hartman was one of the two guys in front of me and that I might as well just cruise the swim comfortably. In retrospect, this may have been a bad call.

So I cruised and exited the swim feeling calm and great with an elapsed time of 11:55 and an average HR of 156 bpm. This compares with last year when I did 8:20 with an average HR of 154. However, as I mentioned the swim course was substantially longer this year as the following comparative stats illustrate:

2010 2009

Swim split 11:55 8:20

OA finish 38/226 44/112

OA %-tile 83.6% 61.6%

AG finish 1/13 1/3

AG %-tile 100% 100%


From an AG competitive perspective, here is where we stood after the swim:

1. Christofferson --------
2. Hartman +1:10
3. Varley +1:30
4. Hutchinson +1:50
5. Ellsworth +3:21

In reality, given that the swim split was taken after a very lengthy run after the swim, my advantage was even greater than indicated above. As we will see, I lost quite a bit in T1 during the long run as my hip flexibility already was exhibiting itself as a significant limiting factor.

All in all, I’m extremely pleased with where my swim is. I could have gone quite a bit harder (and placed much higher OA) but even with my “easy” pace, I had more than enough to open up a competitively relevant gap in my AG.

Transition One

As indicated above, the T1 at DM is a very long run out to a transition area in the middle of a near-by baseball field. My hip definitely slowed me down but I did reasonably fine given that limitation. I took 4:01 with an average HR of 169 bpm to execute T1 today. Last year I did the same transition in 3:52. I had the 5th fastest of the 13 in my AG and even though I dropped 20 seconds to Hartman in T1, I still headed out on the bike with a sizeable 50-second lead.

The Bike

This 21-mile bike leg (as clocked by my SRM) was one of the main reasons I chose to race while still rehabbing from my hip/leg injuries. At NOLA70.3 I was unable to hold an aero position after mile 15-20 due to the tightness and pain. I was eager to find out if the PT had addressed enough of my issues to allow me to hammer a 21-mile bike leg. Rudy, my therapist gave me the go-ahead to test it out.

I knew that Hartman was a very strong cyclist—close to me when I’m on my game and I knew that today would be a real challenge. To beat him, I’d probably have to get off the bike at least 90-120 seconds in front of him. With my hip, this seemed unlikely. I decided the better course was to ride my race and hope that I got lucky competitively.

I was a little gun-shy in the early going, as I didn’t know if my hip would hold up for the whole race. I was a bit conservative and was content to keep my watts around 230—probably a good 20-30 below what I thought I could really do.

The wind was impressive! Steady at 20+ mph with a lot of gusts in the 30-40 mph range. The bike leg cuts across the flat, marshy area in the lower SW corner of New Jersey and there were ample opportunities for it to rip. It would funnel between houses, trees and other obstacles and suddenly and repeatedly change the force vectors on my bike. Despite this challenging environment, I had chosen to ride a 1080/sub-nine disc set-up both because of it’s inherent speed and because I figured the practice would be good as I looked down the road to my date in Kona. The wind was predominantly a side-wind, which really made bike control a challenge but was favorable speed wise vs. a more tail-wind/head-wind configuration. That said, the ride back to transition was more head-windish and quite challenging for sure.

Enough of the wind as in the end I was able to deal with it just fine. Competitively I was surprised when Hartman came chugging by at 70 rpm and a huge gear around 9-10 miles or so into the race. I was really stunned by this and realized that I was most likely destined for second (at best) in the AG. I let him get 40-50 yards up the road and then decided to try to hold the spacing constant as we made the turn to head back to transition. My watts came up to 250+ and I felt pretty comfortable tracking him for a couple of miles.

He began to pull away a bit and I was content to stay around 250 watts and see what happened. About 14 miles in I saw him sitting up and stretching and generally appearing uncomfortable so I made a quick decision to see if maybe I could reel him back in. To my surprise I was able to do so in relatively short order. I began to get excited as my old competitive bike juices began to flow.

Soon I had erased the gap and I decided to “reintroduce” myself to him. I pulled up next to him and said his name and told him who I was and that he did not need to worry about my run—I was just going to push him on the bike. He completely ignored me and it seemed to me that something strange was going on. I decided that he was probably just an overly competitive jerk (consider the source here) and I got a bit riled up and decided to hammer it.

To my surprise I felt stronger as the bike went on and I kept pushing all the way to the dismount line. I hit the end of a bike leg with an elapsed time of 55:14 and an average HR of 162 bpm. My average power came in at 244 watts, which I’m not displeased with given my hip. Comparatively, last year I did a 55:19 with an identical 244-watts/162 bpm HR. That said, it’s clear to me that despite my early conservatism, this was a much stronger ride given the conditions (why my watts don’t reflect this is a mystery to me). (Also, my average cadence was 82 rpm, which is approaching my target of 85). The reason for my positive judgment is the competitive data below.

As I dismounted and began to run to the timing mat, Hartman immediately came running by at a much faster clip. Hmmmm. It sure seemed like he was very close behind me despite my higher power output down the stretch. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and just assume he picked it up as a competitive response to my challenge. In any event he hit the timing mat 7 seconds in front of me (my hip was very stiff and I could barely jog slowly—I almost had to walk my bike into transition).

I ended up with the 2nd fastest bike split in the AG and the 11th OA (95.6%-tile which compares favorably with the 88.4 %-tile level I posted last year). I can’t help but think that if I was 100% recovered from my bike crash that I’d been 1-2 minutes faster today but I’ll take it. I was able to hold my aero position and it’s clear that the PT is beginning to kick in. Here is where we stood after the bike:

1. Hartman --------
2. Christofferson +0:07
3. Hutchinson +3:46
4. Ellsworth +8:14
5. McMahon +8:37

Transition Two

I stiffly slogged back to my rack spot. Soon Hartman ran by and I called out to him and complimented him on his bike leg. Again he ignored me and it seemed that he wasn’t even aware that I was even there. OK, whatever, be that way! My very stiff left hip led to a 5th fastest T2 in the AG. I didn’t punch my lap button so I can only guess what the transition was but my guess is it was around 2:20 or so (versus 1:56 last year). I dropped another 20 seconds to Hartman in transition (officially, although I actually lost more time than that prior to the timing mat). In any event I left T2 trailing by 27 seconds.

The Run

I stiffly headed out of transition and began the 4.1-mile run. My running over the last few weeks had been severely limited (10-15 mpw) by my hip/leg and so my expectations for the run were quite modest. I was moving slowly and could see Hartman up ahead. He was pulling away from me but not very quickly—darn, if I were 100% then this race would have played out very different (easy for me to say I know).

My first mile was around 9 minutes or so with my average HR at around 163 bpm. These are estimates since as I mentioned I did not push my watch lap button correctly after T1. I did not know what my actual time was out on the course so it was a little difficult to know exactly how fast (slow!) I was running at mile 1.

We were running into the very strong wind so despite the sun and humidity it didn’t feel super warm—though the wind was clearly slowing things down a bit. I hit mile 2 and saw that I had an 8:54 second mile (166 bpm HR). I knew I was going to be slow but this was ridiculous. My loss of fitness combined with my limited hip flexor flexibility was really taking a toll on my running capability.

I tried to pick it up a bit and slogged through an 8:42 3rd mile (169 bpm). I was frustrated but resigned to my fate. It was heating up on the course as well and I began to feel a bit dehydrated. I could see that I was going to be way off of 1st but a long ways in front of the 3rd place guy. I salvaged a last mile of 8:13 (171 bpm) so I’m hopeful, with continued PT that, over the 6-7 weeks before IM Germany, I can recover a lot of my prior run fitness—we’ll see.

In any event, I ended up with a 35:07 (9:03/mile) run split, which was 4th (76.9 %-tile) in my AG and 63rd OA (72.6 %-tile). Interestingly, last year I was only 59th %-tile OA so clearly the conditions were far more challenging for today’s run than last year. Oh well, it is what it!

My total race time was 1:48:24, which left me 2:35 behind Hartman—had I been able to even run 8:20/mile I would have easily placed first today. As it was, I was 5:25 in front of the 3rd place finisher. I was 20th OA (91.6%-tile), which compares favorably with last year’s 82.1 %-tile.

Another way of looking at this race compared to last year is to compare people who raced both races. I took the average of Buckson, Tsouloufas, Saunders, Yanacek and Keefe (five triathletes who finished towards the front in both years) and found that their 2010 times were on average 7.7% slower than 2009 (longer swim, wind, heat, etc.). In contrast my time was 5.1% slower. Relative to my competitors I was 2.6% better in 2010 than 2009 which is encouraging and why my %-tile finish was so much higher.

All-in-all a good race that shows that my PT is beginning to work and that I am on the way back to full fitness. I do have along ways to go yet but the path ahead seems more manageable after today.

And one last thing, the reason Hartman ignored me on the course is that he is completely deaf! I take back my earlier observations! Live and learn.