Bassman
International Race Report
May 4th,
2014
Background
Location:
Bass River State Forest, NJ
Distance:
0.69-mile swim/31.1-mile bike/5.1-mile run
2014
Triathlon Race Number: 4
Career
Triathlon Race Number: 141
Conditions:
Partly cloudy to mostly sunny. Chilly at
the start but rising to mid-60s by race end.
10-15 mph wind. Clear lake swim
with water temp around 58 degrees.
The
fourth triathlon of the 2014 campaign and the “official” start of my “regular”
triathlon season. I was coming off a
three-week period where I recovered from IMNOLA70.3 and had a solid 8-day
training block. While, I was still way
behind in my 2014 training I felt like I was beginning to make some progress in
gaining a more normal level of fitness.
This race was part of a menagerie of Half, International, Sprint
triathlons, duathlons and Aqua-bikes (a bit of an organizational challenge IMO)
and there were just 106 finishers for the International this morning. There were just 4 guys in my 55-59 YO AG and
indeed I was the 3rd oldest person in the race. (Yikes!)
I’ve done
this race 4 prior times in my career (I also have competed in a Sprint and an
Off-Road at this venue as well). I’ve
won all 4 of those International distance races. A big reason for that is the bike-heavy nature
of this race. The ratio between the bike
and run at this race today is 6.1.
Contrast this to a normal Olympic race (4.0) or an IM format race (4.3). Basically, this race has about 40-50% more
bike in it than a “typical” triathlon.
And that is good for yours-truly.
In any
event, as was the case last year, I had two main competitors: Ted Maglione and
Tom Senff. I’ve raced them both about 10
times before. I’ve beat Ted in all of
our prior races and have won 70% of my races with Tom. Tom won the first three and I’ve been winning
since. While I’ve beat Ted every prior
race, he has been steadily gaining on me and in my view posed the more
significant competitive threat on this morning.
Indeed, last year I beat Ted by just 25 seconds (although he was assessed
an additional 2:00 penalty so officially I won by 2:25).
The big
issue for me is my lack of fitness as compared to last year. This was especially a problem on the swim and
run but my bike was quite a bit behind last year as well. Given how close we were last year I knew I
needed to execute a strong tactical race plan to remain undefeated at this
race. I was hopeful there was a way for
me to do this and I opted for the following strategy:
1. I would roll the dice a bit on the
swim and go much harder than I have in the past—I was hoping to pick up 30+
seconds relative to my competition by going harder than I did last year. I was risking blowing-up on the swim or
impacting my bike but I felt the risk/return trade-off in this decision favored
going for it.
2. I would push hard on the bike but
respect the distance of this bike split.
At 31 miles it was just too long to pursue a path similar to my swim
approach. However, last year’s ride was
my first on my new BMC TM01 and my fit was way off and I had to sit-up a great
deal. While my fit is still not completely
dialed in, it is a whole lot better and I was hopeful I could stay aero the
whole ride and perhaps this better aerodynamic position would offset what I
anticipated to be a reduced power output.
3. I was planning on picking up time
in transitions but I was able to do that in 2013 as well so I didn’t expect
that to be a relative gain this year.
4. I was hoping my approach on the
swim and bike would put me in a similar position to last year. On the run, I was planning to run faster than
I did last year due in part to my improved bike fit. In 2013 when I dismounted the bike I was very
stiff and had a great deal of trouble finding my running stride. I was hoping I would have less of a
transition issue this year and that perhaps this would offset my inferior
running training and fitness.
There
were a lot of variables to consider and of-course, my opponents would certainly
have something to say about the outcome as well. That said, I entered the race “hungry” and
determined to keep my unblemished record at this race. In the back of my head I told myself that if
push came to shove I would be prepared to dig very, very deep this morning.
The Swim
SNAFU. Hey it’s Bassman, of-course it’s
disorganized! The Half started 15
minutes late and we ended up starting 46 minutes late as for the 3rd
time the Police support for some reason did not show up. The RD scrambled around and finally we were
off.
The men
were in the first wave this morning and at the starting line I positioned
myself to the right of Senff. Tom had
the top swim in my AG last year and what I wanted to do was to keep him close
but keep my effort easier for the first couple of minutes and then try to pull
away from him. Both Tom and I are
“lefties” and being on the right side I had the advantage of seeing him while
he could not see me.
At the
gun, Senff surged ahead a bit but I was able to keep him in view just a few
feet in front of me. I was way on the
inside on the buoy line (it was a clock-wise square course) and I drifted right
to find conflict free water. After a
couple of minutes I felt really good and I decided to go for it and soon I
pulled parallel to Tom and then moved ahead of him.
At the
first buoy I was cut-off by a swimmer that seemed to lose all sense of
direction but shortly after that I was around the buoy and back at it. I lost a few seconds but Tom was still behind
me. I tried to focus on my swim cues for
this race. (I had been working this
Spring on modifying my swim stroke a bit in the hope of simplifying my
mechanics and making me faster in the water.
Sorry for a bit of a diversion on swim technique but what follows is
what I had been working on and was now thinking about in this race):
1. I tried to make the recovery phase
of my stroke slow and easy.
2. I did not initiate my catch until
my recovery arm re-entered the water a few inches above my head. At that point I was fully rolled over with my
catch arm out and front of me and my head laying on the inside of my catch arm
near my shoulder. These two cues were
meant to help lengthen my average distance per stroke (dps).
3. At the initiation of my catch I
tried to get a very early vertical forearm and just did a forceful in-sweep
stroke followed by aggressive hip rotation to clear my body and to accelerate
my pull. I was trying to have a slower
than normal recovery and a more powerful and faster than normal catch and pull. This was a big change from my old stroke
where I executed an “S” or “?” stroke with first an out-sweep and then an
in-sweep. This “S” stroke had the
advantage of pulling less moving water but required me to change the pitch of
my hand mid-stroke. My old stroke
required less physical force but was slower and more complicated.
4. I also focused on consciously
engaging my Erector Spinae muscles in my lower and mid back. This had the benefit of lifting my hips and
legs up higher in the water and behind the hole I was punching with my
shoulders and head as well as tightening up and straightening my mid-section so
I had a bit less horizontal oscillation in my stroke. A friend of mine who was an All-American
swimmer at Stanford suggested this latter correction.
In any
event, I felt very good and smooth in the water. No one was catching me from behind and indeed
I was starting to catch some of the people who had started faster than I. I felt comfortable with my effort-level, more
than I intended, but I rationalized this away by taking comfort in the fact I
was out-swimming Senff. Since Senff had
out-swam me in 2013 and he is a very experienced triathlete with a
comparatively consistent swim, I figured I must have been gaining on the field
as a whole. However, this thought
process was, in retrospect, flawed, as the real threat this morning was not
Senff but Maglione. I knew Maglione
would be far behind me in the swim but there was no guarantee that just because
I was doing relatively better this year against Senff that the same would be
true for Maglione. The net effect of
this miscalculation was I swam easier than I intended to.
I was
aware that I was swimming a straighter, better course than many of the swimmers
in front of me—especially after the last turn.
The buoy line sagged in and the better line was actually wider to the
left and away from the buoys. Soon enough I reached the shore and hit my
Garmin and noted a swim time of 17:58. This
was initially disappointing as last year I had swam 17:12. As I was running up the beach I quickly
concluded that the swim was longer than last year because I had outswam Senff
and I “knew” I was faster this year.
Here in fact is how the two swims compare:
2013 2014
Distance
(miles) 0.60 0.69
Time 17:12 17:58
Pace
(min/mile) 28:38 26:11
Cadence
(spm) 36 35
Strokes 619 632
DPS
(yards) 1.71 1.92
So I did
indeed have a stronger swim this year despite being less fit—this highlights
the importance of technique for the swim.
The course was 15% longer this year.
However my DPS improved by 12% and this overwhelmed a slight reduction
in my cadence to yield a 9% improvement in my average speed through the water.
Not
surprisingly, this increased speed translated into competitive benefits. I ended up with the 18th fastest swim
OA (84.0%). This is my best showing at
Bassman in the swim to date:
2005 55.0 %-tile
2006 74.7
2008 71.8
2013 71.7
2014 84.0
I also
compared my swim in 2013/2014 to a group of 5 triathletes (Chesson, McGee,
Donohue, Senff, Maglione) who did the race in both years as well (in case there
was a significant change in the relative strength of the OA field from
year-to-year). I was 4.4% slower this
year while the group of 5 averaged 8.4% slower.
No doubt about it, I had a very encouraging swim this morning.
In my AG
this is where the top 3 stood after the swim:
1. Christofferson --------
2. Senff +
0:16
3. Maglione +
3:31
The above
would seem at first glance to be very good news. With respect to Senff, he had beaten me by
0:33 last year so I was 49 seconds relatively better off this year than
last. However, I was 4:40 better than
Maglione last year so in a sense I lost 1:19 this year vs. Maglione. Since, for the race as a whole, I only beat
him by 25 seconds last year (not counting his penalty) this would have been a
real concern to me had I known it.
The Transition
I was
blissfully unaware of Maglione’s swim as I ran up the beach. I was consciously trying to run hard through
transition and when I arrived at my bike I did a very good job of turning into
a cyclist. I elected to forgo putting my
long-sleeve jersey on this year, as it was a fair bit warmer this year than
last. Soon I was pushing my bike along
the lengthy path to the mount line.
I executed my transition in 2:42, which was a marked improvement
over my 3:50 last year. How this
compares competitively we’ll never know as for some reason, the RD decided not
to measure (or at least report) that information. This would have been good to
know of-course because back in 2013 I was 57 seconds faster than Maglione in T1
and I would have wanted to be at least that much faster this year. Last year I was 80.0 %-tile OA, so my guess
is I was better than that this year.
The Bike
The bike
course was once again changed this year—I think it’s been different all five
years that I’ve raced here—why, I couldn’t tell you. This year it was longer than last at 31.15
miles vs. 29.78 miles. I felt pretty
comfortable on the bike and really tried to settle in and relax—I wanted to
stay in the aero position for the full ride, as the course here is pretty flat.
I had set
my Edge 800 to auto-split at 2-mile intervals and the first few splits
confirmed what I had expected—my watts were down this year at a comparable
effort level vs. last year:
2014
Mile 2:
227 watts @ 161 bpm
Mile 4:
212 watts @ 160
Mile 6:
221 watts @ 159
2013
Mile 2:
241 watts @ 161 bpm
Mile 4:
227 watts @ 159
Mile 6:
230 watts @ 158
I
absorbed this information with little surprise.
I wasn’t happy about it but I fully expected it—my bike fitness this
year, at this point in time, is not that good.
Still, I decided to stick to my tactical plan and really focus on body
position and trust that my better fit would offset my lower power production.
The ride
was pretty unremarkable. With so few
people on the road it was pretty lonely.
For some reason I was never able to get a visual ID on either Senff or
Maglione during the out-and-backs so I had no idea where I stood competitively
(aside from the fact I knew I was winning).
I focused on good position and my nutrition. It was relatively cool on the bike so I ended
up drinking one 24 oz. bottle of Cytomax and about 200 calories of Hammer-Gel
(a total of about 450 calories). It
wasn’t the most comfortable ride but I was able to hold an aero position for
95+% of the ride.
I completed my bike leg in 86:53. This translates into an average speed of 21.5 mph. Here is how the key bike parameters this year
compare with 2013:
2013 2014
Distance
(miles) 29.78 31.15
Time 82:35 86:53
Speed
(mph) 21.6 21.5
Climbing
(feet) 308 278
Temperature 47 66
Avg. HR
(bpm) 155 156
Avg.
Power (watts) 231 215
NP
(watts) 233 217
Cadence
(rpm) 81 83
So it
panned out pretty much as I had hoped.
My better position more or less cancelled out my lower power (I’m assuming
the wind’s impact was similar, which I believe is a good assumption as the wind
speed was similar in both years). I spun
a little better this year, though I would like to see that up around 85 rpm for
a ride of this length. Most importantly I jumped off my bike
feeling vastly better than in 2013.
Competitively,
I had the 9th fastest bike OA (92.5 %-tile). This was considerably better than last year:
2005 85.0 %-tile
2006 94.0
2008 93.6
2013 85.0
2014 92.5
I was
4.8% slower this year and my comparison group of 5 was 5.0% slower. The quality of the bike field overall may
have been a little lower this year than last.
According
to the official race results, here is where we stood after the bike in my AG:
1. Christofferson --------
2. Maglione +
5:03
3. Senff +
7:42
Last
year, at this point, I was 5:02 in-front of Senff, so a net improvement of
2:40. In 2013, I was 6:49 in front of
Maglione, which at first blush indicates I was 1:46 relatively worse off. However, this includes Maglione’s penalty and
if we ignore the penalty my swim/T1/bike was actually 14 seconds better
relative to Maglione than last year. I
had managed to execute my tactical plan and despite being in considerably worse
fitness this year, I did relatively better.
However,
there is the matter of the 2-minute benefit that I received last year. I would not be so lucky this year. Last year Maglione had erased 4:26 on the run
and I was just 5:03 ahead.
Unfortunately, I was in considerably worse run fitness this year and if
I had known these facts I would have been concerned indeed.
Transition Two
I
initially had trouble finding my transition area when I first arrived back in
transition. This wasted several seconds
(which would have some impact as we will see) but soon I found my transition
spot and then executed a very quick transition.
My transition took 1:52 at an
average HR of 156 bpm. This was similar
to 2013 when I had a 1:53 transition. In
2013 I a 90.0 %-tile OA so I imagine this year’s transition was relatively good
as well.
With a
little data manipulation I can back-out the impact of transitions this year
versus Maglione. I was 37 seconds faster
this year in the two transitions than Maglione.
In 2013, I was 59 seconds faster in the two transitions.
The Run
I was
hopeful that my better bike position this year would enable a better run as
well and as I left transition I could tell I felt a lot better than last year
(last year I was in so much pain I still remember it very distinctly). I felt so good in fact I thought I might very
well be running at an 8:00 min/mile pace.
Since I averaged 8:39 min/mile last year this would be very good news
indeed.
However
this proved optimistic as I hit mile one in 8:29 with a HR of 163 bpm. Importantly, this was a slight improvement
over 2013 where I went 8:36/161. I was
modestly disappointed with the 8:29 but I was pleased none-the-less as I had
memorized my prior year’s result. As I
continued my run I became more and more confident that I would beat last year’s
time. Mile 2 was 8:37/163 vs. 8:42/162.
Around 2
miles there is an out-and-back section and I was able to see I was about 4
minutes or so ahead of Maglione and I remembered this is where I was last year
as well. Since, I was running well, I
felt pretty confident—I knew I couldn’t relax but I felt if I just stayed “on
it” that I could hold on for the win.
I made a
concerted effort to push mile 3 and I was rewarded with very good news: 8:13
min/mile @ 169 bpm vs. 8:46 @ 160 bpm last year. I was much more engaged and aggressive this
year. I was hurting for sure but was
dialed in on sustaining through to the finish line.
Around
the 4-mile mark I saw Maglione again and could tell he would be unlikely to
catch me—he was close enough that I couldn’t relax but I seemed to be in a
pretty good spot competitively. Mile 4
saw me split 8:22/mile @ 169 bpm vs. 8:37 @ 160 bpm last year. I was pretty close to redlining it this year.
I began
to turn my intention to Tim McGee, a 50 YO friend, who had beat me by 6:42 last
year. He was directly behind me this
year but steadily gaining. I didn’t want
to blow up by pushing too hard to stay in-front of him, but at the same time as
the finish line came closer and it was certain the Maglione wasn’t going to
catch me, I wanted to try to hold him off.
With about 600 yards to go I began to push it harder.
My 5th
mile was 8:25 @ 170bpm vs. 8:44 @ 161bpm in 2013. I pushed very hard the final 0.11 miles and
more or less rigged up with about 20 yards to go. Tim caught me a few yards from the line and
we both stumbled across laughing and trying to avoid puking. My final 0.11 miles were at 6:50/mile pace
and my HR averaged 173bpm—definitely above my redline.
My total run split was 42:56 and
my average HR was 167bpm. This was a very gratifying
improvement over 2013 when I went 44:43 @ 161bpm. (My per mile time improved from 8:39 to 8:23—16
sec/mile.) This 1:47 improvement proved
to be important, as this is where we finished in my AG:
1. Christofferson --------
2. Maglione +
1:18
3. Senff +11:51
Overall,
I had the 45th fastest run.
Here is how my OA %-tile has varied over the years:
2005 90.0
2006 78.3
2008 77.9
2013 52.5
2014 58.5
I was 4.0
% faster this year while the group of five was 3.9% slower. Based on that I’d say the run strength in the
OA field was stronger this year.
My final time was 2:32:30, which was 14th best
OA. Again a comparison to prior years:
2005 90.0
2006 86.7
2008 92.9
2013 74.2
2014 87.7
Conclusions
So what
to make of all of this? I had a pretty
good race this year—from a tactical perspective. I beat a triathlete that was probably fitter
than I with good tactical execution. I
feel pretty good about this effort—my 47th AG victory (of
141--33.3%) and 2nd this year (of 4—50%).
With four
races under my belt, I thought it might make some sense to step back and see
where I am relative to a notional “potential fitness level” that I might
reasonably expect to achieve this year.
I do this by comparing my OA %-tile results to a measure I created
called my “Demonstrated Fitness Potential” (DFP). The DFP is simply the average of my best
three OA %-tile finishes for each discipline for any given year. I can then compare this year’s races and
calculate how much faster I would have been had I preformed at these DFP
levels. It sounds more complicated than
it is.
The
calculation works like this. My average
DFP for the last three years are as follows:
Swim: 91.4 %-tile
Bike: 98.9
Run: 77.1
Overall: 93.5
For the Bassman
swim, I was actually at 84.0 %-tile. Had
I been at the 91.4 %-tile I would have been 1:37 faster, which indicates that I
was about 8.8% off of where I should be when I’m really on my game. Notionally this means I need to get 8.8%
faster by the time I get to Kona. This
seems both reasonable and doable to me.
In fact I can imagine targeting the following numbers for my races in
the latter part of the summer:
Bassman Target Change
Strokes/minute
35 36
+ 2.9%
Distance/stroke
1.92 2.03 + 5.7
Speed
(mph) 2.29
2.49 + 8.8
Pace (min/mile) 26:11 24:04
Pace (per
100 yds.) 1:29 1:22
Turning
to the bike, my shortfall turns out to be 9:14 or 10.4%. This implies I need to generate about 289
watts (vs. the 215 I did in this race).
This number strikes me as somewhat high.
To reach my DFP in a race with 106 people, I’d basically have the 2nd
best bike OA. It’s a reasonable
hypothesis that a bike heavy race like this attracts a stronger bike field than
typical short-course races. MY bike DFP
is very sensitive to the strength of the top 2-3 cyclists in a race—so probably
not a good estimate of how far I need to go on the bike. I personally feel that I need to be more in
the 240-250 watt range for a race of this length (my best prior power output at
Bassman was 240 watts). This would imply
a need to improve my power output by about 11%.
Now consider
my effort at New Orleans 70.3. There I
did 182 watts over 56 miles. An
equivalent wattage at 31 miles is about 193 watts. This implies an improvement at Bassman of about
11% (of course this implies similar conditions and the conditions at New
Orleans were considerably more challenging than Bassman). If you believe all of these numbers I bridged
about half of my fitness shortfall over the last 3 weeks—which seems plausible
to me. Of course, the next half will be
far more challenging.
On the
run, my shortfall is 4:04 or about 9.4%.
This implies a need to run about 8:02/mile—about 21 sec/mile—this seems
like a good estimate of the work I need to do.
It also seems very doable.
Overall,
my lack of fitness yields about a 14:55 aggregate time penalty for Bassman or
about 9.8%. In other words, if I was at
my historically demonstrated fitness potential I would have finished 7th
today instead of 14. As a point of
comparison, if we take my OA DFP of 93.5 %-tile it implies a smaller shortfall
of 9:22 or about 6.1%. This probably
reflects the over-estimation of my shortfall on the bike.
On
balance, I think an estimate of 6-10% improvement potential is reasonable at
this point in the season given my late start.
I look forward to doing the work and earning that improvement!
