It's a bit belated but here it is:
Shoreman H-IM
Race Report
September 8th,
2012
Background
Location:
Port Republic, NJ
Distance:
1.32-mile swim/57.3-mile bike/13.1-mile run
2012
Triathlon Race Number: 10
Career
Triathlon Race Number: 124
Conditions:
Mid-80s, Intermittent rain—at times torrential.
Very humid. Quite windy with
periodically challenging gusts. 76
degrees water temperature.
I wanted
to return to SkipJack this year given the success I enjoyed last year (2nd
OA). However, with Parent’s Weekend at
Boston College overlapping with that event I decided to substitute another 2nd
year race—The Shoreman H-IM distance race.
This is a DQ event held at the same race venue as the Jersey Genesis
sprint triathlon. This would be my last
race before Kona.
Last
year, the fastest time in my AG was over 6 hours and looking at the 14 other
gentlemen in my AG I figured that I should be able to post a relatively easy AG
victory. I also wanted to try to break
five hours (I had done the equivalent of a 4:52 at SkipJack last year) but knew
this might be a challenge with the rain and wind and the fact that the RD
announced that the course was longer than an H-IM.
The Swim
The swim
is a two-lap affair this year due to the low tide in this tidal estuary. The water was a little warm for my liking,
but not so much that I considered ditching my wetsuit. I was in the second wave with all the other
dinosaurs and I elected to start to the right--away from the buoy line. The course had a counter-clockwise rotation
so with my left-hand breathing I was able to keep a good eye on things.
At the
start I was surprised to see quite a few folks ahead of me. My assumption, given my scouting report, was
that these folks were likely in the under 55 YO AGs (this did turn out to be
true). I swam comfortably and with what
I felt was a reasonably strong effort. I
exited the water in 17:20, so I was pretty sure that the course was a bit long
(I had expected to exit around 16 minutes or so).
I jogged
slowly down the beach and jumped back in for the second lap of the swim. I pushed a bit harder on the 2nd
lap and passed a few folks who had outswam me during the first lap. I
finished the swim in 34:32. It
turned out that my GPS measured the course at 1.32 miles. This is a 26:09/mile pace. I took 1211 strokes and burned 911 calories
during the swim. I averaged
5.76feet/stroke and 35 strokes/min. This
turned out to be a modest SGolf score of 70.
Part of this is of-course due to the distance but I also feel this was a
relatively mediocre swim for me. Still,
the time was the equivalent of a mid 31 Half Ironman swim so I won’t beat
myself up too bad over this effort.
Competitively,
my time was only good enough for 40th place OA (out of 275). This was a disappointing 85.8 %-tile. I was considerably better than the other
folks in my AG—as I would have expected.
Here is where we stood after the swim:
1. Christofferson --------
2. Gusrang + 4:31
3. T. Wright +
6:47
4. Vlacich +
8:04
5. Montgomery +
8:16
Transition Two
I ran
into transition and noticed that an older looking guy was also executing his
T1. He finished a few seconds before me
and as he left I notice a 56 on his calf.
Oh-oh! This was
disconcerting. Of-course, there was
still the chance that he was competing in the Aqua-Bike, but I decided I needed
to catch him and put as much distance between us as possible.
My T1 took 2:50.
This was the second fastest in my AG to Vlacich, but I was considerably
faster than the majority of guys in my AG.
Overall, I had the 49th fastest T1 (82.5 %-tile). Here is where we stood after T1:
1. Christofferson --------
2. Gusrang +
5:49
3. Vlacich +
7:50
4. T. Wright +
8:13
5. Montgomery +
8:37
The Bike
After
mounting and leaving T1, I focused my gaze on “Mr. 56” ahead of me. I
start pushing hard but I can pretty quickly see that I’m not really gaining on
him. In fact, it soon becomes apparent
that he is pulling away from me. I
decide to shift my focus back to myself and it soon becomes apparent that my
legs are lacking their usual “pop”. I’m
having a real challenge just getting my watts over 200. It’s real clear that I just don’t have it
today.
It’s very
windy, which makes it quite challenging to control the bike. Soon the rain picks up and it’s coming down
so hard that visibility actually becomes a concern. There are rivers of water rolling across the
pavement and I focus on staying upright and avoiding trouble.
It’s
quite humid and I soon (around mile 20) finish my only bottle. My new front mounted hydration system was
delayed in shipping so I have insufficient water on my bike. This issue becomes magnified as I discover
that they only have 1 aid station on the bike and it’s located at the beginning
of the second lap around 29 miles into the bike. Here are my 5-mile bike splits—you can
clearly see how much I struggled during this ride. In particular, note how I am unable to keep
my HR up at 152-154bpm, which is my usual HR for a H-IM ride, and that my power
is a good 25 watts+ short of the 230 watts I averaged at SkipJack:
1-5:
22.7mph/153bpm/205 watts AP/206 watts NP/86 rpm
6-10:
22.3/149/209/211/85
11-15:
21.4/146/204/206/84
16-20:
21.2/143/199/202/85
21-25:
22.5/145/201/203/85
26-30:
20.9/144/205/208/86
I knew I
was slow but there was nothing I could do about it as I just had no power in my
legs. I was still passing folks and I
became convinced that Mr. 56 was likely to be an Aqua-Bike competitor, so I
tried to stay positive and decided to not worry about my time and just focus on
winning my AG. That, and avoiding a
crash in these challenging conditions. I
finally pick up my second bottle—its just water, no energy drinks on the bike
course! I know I’m going to be quite
dehydrated and depleted when the ride is over.
The second lap was more of the same—here are the rest of my splits:
31-35:
22.0/143/199/201/85
36-40:
21.5/141/202/205/82
41-45:
19.7/141/197/203/82
46-50:
21.6/139/195/198/84
51-55:
20.7/138/201/204/83
56+: 20.9/138/201/204/84
You can
also see in these numbers that I had trouble holding even the modest output I
achieved in the first lap. My power and
cadence suffered and my HR continued to fall.
No two ways about it this was a poor and difficult ride for me—probably
one of my worst bike performances in an H-IM.
My overall time for the bike was
2:40:18. Even with the extra distance, given the
flatness of the course, I would have expected something right around 2:30. My average speed was 21.4 mph. My average HR was 143 bpm and my average
cadence was 84 rpm. Power-wise, I
averaged 201 watts with a NP of 204 watts.
I burned 1249 calories. Not
surprisingly, this was not nearly as competitive as I usually am on the
bike. I had just the 26th
fastest bike OA (90.9 %-tile). Still, I
was 10+ minutes faster than anyone else in my AG. Here is where we stood after the bike:
1. Christofferson --------
2. T. Wright +17:38
3. Gusrang +22:48
4. Williamson +23:53
5. Jacobson +26:52
Transition Two
As I
dismounted and ran into T2 I saw Mr. 56 lounging in front of his bike. I knew then that I was in first in my
AG. I didn’t know by how much but I
assumed that despite my horrible bike, it was likely to be quite a bit. At this point, I still assumed that I would
easily win my AG. I executed my transition in 1:25.
This was 37th OA (86.9 %-tile) and once again 2nd
best to Vlacich in my AG. Importantly, I
put pretty big chunks of time on everyone else.
Notably, I put 21 seconds on Wright, which gave me a total transition
advantage of 1:47 vs him—this would ultimately prove to be pivotal.
Here is
where we stood after T2:
1. Christofferson --------
2. T. Wright +17:59
3. Gusrang +23:24
4. Williamson +24:21
5. Jacobson +27:14
The Run
Leaving
T2, I was confident that I was leading my AG, but had no real idea by how
much. If I had known I was leading by 18
minutes, I probably would have had two reactions. First, I would have been disappointed, but
not surprised. I would have expected 30
minutes or more coming out of T2 before the race. Obviously, with my poor bike, I knew my lead
was likely to be less than expected.
Second, I would have thought, no problem—I’ll run 8:15s and win by
double digits. However, in this second
reaction I would have made a bad miscalculation.
The Good
News was that because I didn’t know how big a lead I had, and I knew my bike
was poor, I figured I’d better run as hard as I could. The Bad News is that whatever had afflicted
me on the bike was still waiting for me on the run. That, plus I was seriously dehydrated and way
behind energy-wise. I could feel this
right away as my legs felt dead—way worse that they normally do leaving T2.
The run
course covers the four miles of the Jersey Genesis run with a 1.28-mile out and
back tacked on towards the end. This is
repeated twice. My Garmin was reporting
my splits so I knew I was running slowly.
Also, the rain had stopped and the sun came out so it was brutally humid
(dew point was 74 degrees). Here are my
splits for the first 6 miles of the run:
1: 9:33/150 bpm
2: 9:28/152
3: 9:10/153
4: 9:45/153
5: 9:30/154
6: 9:31/155
I could
see that I was working pretty hard—normally I’d expect about a 155/156 bpm HR,
so I was just a couple of beats below target.
However, I was running a good 1:15/1:30/mile slower than expected. I walked through the aid stations and made
sure to grab as many of the ridiculous 4 oz. drinking cups that I could at each
aid station—fortunately, these came about every mile. I continued to be very dehydrated and the
heat and humidity were not letting me catch up.
Because I
was running so slowly, I really tried to figure out, on the out and back
segment, if anyone from my AG was close-by.
I thought I saw a couple of guys who might be my age but I couldn’t be
certain. They were quite a ways back
anyways so I wasn’t in any immediate danger.
I passed
the finish area and headed back out for my 2nd lap. As I did, my lack of energy and fluids really
began to take it’s toll and I really began to struggle:
7:
9:49/151
8:
9:58/150
9:
9:57/150
10:
10:06/151
11:
10:57/152
As I was
on the out and back things really fell apart—I was fried at this point. I could still run but not very fast. After the turnaround I saw someone who looked
to be in my AG, just 2-3 minutes or so behind me (this was T. Wright). Given my 10:57 11th mile I knew I
was in trouble. I figured I had to pick
it up or this guy would run me down. I
gave it everything I had down the stretch—this is the best I could do:
12:
10:09/159
13:
10:21/163
13+:
9:32/161
I crossed
the finish line with a sigh of relief.
Just 33 seconds later Wright crossed and when he walked past me I saw
his age on his calf and saw that he was indeed in my AG—whew! That was a close call—it was critical that I
pushed it in over the last 1.5 miles or so!
I finished the run in a very
mediocre time of 2:08:25. I averaged 9:48/mile and had
an average HR of 153 bpm. I burned 1876
calories on the run. This of-course was
not very competitive as I was 83rd on the run OA (70.2 %-tile) and I
was just 6th in my AG (66.7 %-tile).
My overall time was 5:27:36,
which was good enough for 32nd place OA (88.7 %-tile).
Here are
the final standings in my AG:
1. Christofferson --------
2. T. Wright +
0:33
3. Jacobson +
5:06
4. Vlacich +17:50
5. Williamson +28:11
Final Thoughts
Obviously
from an absolute performance point of view not much to be happy about in this
race. Well, my swim and transitions were
decent but my bike and run were very poor.
I had something going on physically this day and when you race LC,
that’s a real problem—I might have been able to hide it in a Sprint Tri, but
not in a H-IM.
Still, I
hung in there and won my 3rd consecutive AG race. This is not a bad thing to have heading into
Kona. Also, overall, I’ve won 5 and
finished 2nd in 4 of my 10 races this year. Things could be worse.
Oh well,
at least it was a good workout and hopefully will help in my preparation for
Kona!
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