IMChoo: First IM means incredibly long race report

Visualization FTW

I thought a LOT about this race beforehand. Some of my thoughts were calculations and helped me figure out time goals, and others were trying to imagine how different parts of the day would feel. I wrote out some of my best-case visualizations and read them to myself in the weeks leading to the race. This helped me to not invent worries and to feel good about my decisions.

Once I reached step 3.c of the morning "Start time uncertainty has been resolved, because you have a place in line." I was ready to try to stay relaxed and wait, but first I had to get there.

Pre-Race - Race day

Check, check, check!

Visualization 1.a "With two alarms, this will be easy. Your race day outfit is laid out and you put on timing chip, tri shorts, sports bra, HRM, tri top, and Garmin. Put on a layer of sunscreen. Over that add warmer clothes, old sneakers"

The checklists continued on race day. I made a ziploc of my race-day race clothes, and velcro'd my timing chip to my tri-top. This meant that I didn't wear it around with me all day on Friday and Saturday while also not worrying about losing it.

My race day breakfast was a fairly significant variation from my regular long-workout-breakfast, but it was hotel-compatible, while my regular breakfast (of egg&cheese burrito) was not. The toaster waffle + salted caramel peanut butter sat really well for the pre-race brick; it had slightly less fat & protein than my regular breakfast, so I wasn't expecting any surprise stomach behavior. I also loaded up on warm liquid calories with instant coffee + instant hot chocolate for a "camping mocha" and two scoops of apple-cinnamon Skratch, which was a great treat while sitting in line. Finally, while in line, I enjoyed one of the free Little Debbie snacks around 6am, so I had 90 minutes of digesting before race start.

But, rewinding a bit, before getting into line and finishing eating, I dropped off special needs bags, and made Katie go stand somewhere obvious wearing blinking green bunny ears. I'd wanted to eliminate the potential stress of not being able to find my wetsuit or chair (or sherpa) and the light up ears were a great solution.

In transition, I said good morning to my bike, put on my bottles and stashed my Gu's, and then taped my nutrition cheat sheet and my pseudo-cue sheet to my handlebars so I would be able to treat this like a training ride. I also set my checklists in a puddle, but thankfully was still able to check things off. Whew!

As it turned out, they had already announced that the race was not wetsuit legal while I was setting up transition, but letting Katie carry my bag of wetsuits back to the room was not acceptable, so, exhibiting excellent sherpa behavior, she continued to carry that bag, the chair, and my drinks around for me.

My paranoid schedule that had us waking up at 4A and at transition when it opened at 4:30A, worked out super well and we were on an early shuttle, and were able to join up with Jen in the swim line.

Getting in line resolved one of the major controllable uncertainties in the day and as I settled into the chair to wait, it was easy to continue working on eating my breakfast and drinking my calories.

From the half, I had these notes to myself:

  ·        Get on shuttle early and get in line for swim. Getting into the water early, and hence onto the bike course early was perfect for me – avoid passing people on the bike.
  ·        Bring something to sit on while in line. Send it back with your sherpa
  ·        Gu or other small snacky before swim start

Success! on all counts, except that my snackys were more like 300 calories :)


My family came out to the swim start line at a much more rational time, good wishes were shared all around, and loads of photos were taken.

Happy it is almost time to go

Swim

From the half, these were my swim notes:

  ·        Flow controlled by upstream dam. 8000 cu ft/whatever for 70.3 race day. 24000 cu ft/whatever last year on IM day. Calibrate expectations
  ·        Remember to start watch on the dock
  ·        Practice jumping in and starting swimming at swim practice. If I feel breathless at practice, the next day, jump in and swim slower.
  ·        70 degree water was ok with long sleeve wetsuit. For race day, last year, it was too warm for wetsuit. Research swim skins

For race day, we were looking at 6000 whatevers, so while it was a nice current, it wasn't the raging torrent that last year's swimmers had. I kept my planned swim goal the same, twice the half time, rounded up to the nearest 5 minutes, but was willing to accept whatever it showed when I came out of the water, since it was non-wetsuit :(

My visualization paragraphs for swimming included the great sentence "Your wetsuit is eager to give you a cozy hug" but unfortunately my wetsuit will have to wait for another day to embrace me.

I had researched swim skins, and decided that since I couldn't rent one and since they were expensive, I would just wear my tightest tritop and move on with my life.

I had some anxiety jumping from the dock at the half in May and had been practicing jumping in at all swim practices since then. While jumping in still doesn't feel easy, knowing I had done all that practice helped on race day. When we were being rushed down to the dock, I knew I had done everything I could have to get ready to jump off that dock, so I did it!

No excuses, no regrets.

My next visualization sentences were
"5.a. Stay relaxed & steady – start time uncertainty has been resolved!
5.b. How many buoys are there? Count them down."

This led to the first, and probably biggest, mental hurdle I had in the day (which should tell you how perfect the rest of the day was). 10 minutes into the swim, my watch buzzed, and I was just at the third buoy!! Since the announcer had said they were going to be about 100m apart, that would have meant a record slowest swim. I worried about that for a breath or two, decided the swim felt good, so probably the buoys are farther apart, and calmed myself down.

Starting to worry 10-20 minutes into my day also almost kicked off a spiral of crazy, but I worked on focusing on where I was, not on the big picture, or in other words, I stayed "in the box". I used that box All Day Long! and it never let me down.

The announcer had also said the buoys would switch color half way through. When that happened around 30 minutes into the swim, and after 10 buoys of the first color, I extrapolated that there would probably be 10 of the other color, and stopped worrying I was going unnaturally slowly.

The rest of the swim went well. I dunked someone, but he bobbed up OK, and I apologized. Otherwise, it was a very spacious swim. Every once in a while, I jumped on someone's hip to draft as they passed me, but generally kept it super relaxed -- even to the extent that I consciously noticed I was sliding my hand through the back of my stroke instead of pushing the water. Oh well! I decided not to try too hard to fix it, but it is an area for improvement and something I wouldn't've gotten away with if we hadn't had the current assist.

In a glaring oversight of prep, I had thought we would only swim under two bridges, until I was sighting and realized there were actually three. I'd only been driving/walking across these bridges for the last 3 days, and somehow didn't put that together.

I finished the swim in 1:02, which was perfect.

IMChoo: Leading up to the race...

Weds pre-race - Great day of driving and eating

I started the drive to Chattanooga after 1 last track practice and had an uneventful drive. The only good part of road trips is planning in good food stops so for this trip, I had

1. an unplanned gas station CrackerJack refuel stop
2. lunch at Harvest Table in Meadowview
3. coffee and a snack for later from Blackbird Bakery in Bristol
4. and a pizza to go to eat in my room from Community Pie in Chattanooga 

Harvest Table was even better than I had hoped. The town of Meadowview is rather desolate, but ending up at a place that is so committed to local/seasonal foods that they couldn't have tomatoes on the hamburger since they had stopped growing for the year was a great find. I had the trout cakes and it was an entirely appropriate lunch size portion. If I hadn't been aiming for Blackbird Bakery in less than an hour, I absolutely would have had dessert as well.

Blackbird Bakery overwhelmed me with choices as usual and I took away a slice of chocolate pie for later after sotcking up on iced coffee, water and ice cubes for the next long leg of the drive.

Community Pie, thankfully, still carried the Sweet Fig pizza that I'd enjoyed there in May, so I got that, and started vacation with some binge TV in my hotel & pizza and pie. mmm.

Thurs pre-race - More eating! Checking off checklists

Breakfast - Check!
Julie Darling Doughnuts - Salted Caramel on the left, Oreo/Vanilla on the right

Registration and packet pickup - Check!

I had a pretty extensive race plan document that included a number of checklists, so I was excited to start checking off things.

Registration went super well, I bought my mug, which I decided I wanted to own, even if the whole race day fell apart in some dramatic manner, and picked up a new Little Debbie water bottle, two Oatmeal Creme Pies and a Little Debbie magnet.

The athlete briefing was good as well. It was rather sunny, so I was glad to get it done at 11A instead of waiting until it was hotter in the afternoon. When I watched IM Mont Tremblant last year, they got buoys every 100m on the swim that were numbered. I was hoping for that for us as well, and the announcer said that the buoys would be about 100m apart, but I didn't go down afterwards to ask how many there were, which was one of my prime questions that I wanted answered from that meeting.

Lunch - Check!
At Milk & Honey, I had a turkey, brie and raspberry jam sandwich. Yum!

After lunch at Milk & Honey, I went to The Hot Chocolatier and bought loads of presents for my extensive support network. It was great fun, and even more fun to hand out surprises to people.

Then finally, some downtime before meeting a rolling group of friends for dinner at Taco Mamacita, which I found while in the plaza for lunch. It was a great find and it was nice to enjoy a margarita, trying to put some of the fears to rest. Luckily I was joined at first by people who had done this Ironman thing before, so they kindly didn't laugh at me for wearing my timing chip on my wrist because I was so anxious about misplacing it.

I wrapped up the day with a massage to work out twinges that had built up over the last 6 weeks and new ones that came from the driving.

Friday pre-race - More eating! And some much-needed seclusion

My Friday checklist was much less extensive. I briefly considered getting the short bike in that I had skipped from Thursday, but it was rainy, so I mostly hibernated in my room.

I'd intended to go to Waffle House, but realized that what I really wanted was a fluffly waffle with whipped cream and strawberries, like it should be, so with a little help from Google, I found the perfect solution at the Wafflez Factory

Then some foam rolling, lunch at Cracker Barrel, and more television watching, and finally my family came to town.

After spending the day mostly with myself, I was ready to talk as much as was needed to hopefully make my family feel ready to share in this selfish adventure. I hadn't explained much about the race before hand, so we took a wander around the river front and used my dinner voucher at Pucketts where my dad had his first (of many) tastes of BBQ for the weekend, and looked at maps, and talked about time lines, and so on.

Saturday pre-race - Brick and more planning

Saturday had another fairly extensive checklist, mostly concerned with packing, but before I could pack my bags, I had a quick mini-tri on the schedule.

Swim with friends, bike carefully on rainy roads, and a happy run finish.

After the brick, I changed into dry clothes and we had an early lunch at Mellow Mushroom. This was super important, because I needed left over pizza in my hotel room in case I was post-IM-starving! Also, it was another chance to let my family ask questions and plan for race day with some more experienced Ironman racers, Mary and Katie (my main sherpa for the weekend)

Then I packed my run and bike bags, using a lot of ziplocs for sub-bag control. Like, 1 gallon ziploc had everything I had to put on or use in some way from swim to bike, so I knew in T1, if I touched each item in that bag at least once, I would be ready to go biking. There were also a few optional things, so I put those in a separate ziploc so I wouldn't get confused. After dropping these off Katie watched me pace the room while packing special needs bags, and basically doing a terrible job of staying off my feet.

More checklists means more control, right?

Pre-race dinner at Alleia was amazing, though it was rather too crowded and noisy for me to enjoy at the time. I got to hand out support-crew treats that I'd got on Thursday, and got to enjoy extra helpings of the family style food that wasn't vegan by carefully seating myself near vegetarian and vegan friends. I also got a second helping of the chocolate cake for dessert by seating myself next to Katie - the non-chocolate-liking anomaly :)

Ed and Alexis had an amazing skit that helped introduce some of the crazy and disgusting things we get used to in training to our families while relating a (supposedly real) Waffle House interaction, and then it was time for photos and bed!

Racers and team-mates who came down to cheer, with no particular direction on where to look

Lights out at 9 meant there was a chance for at least 7 hours of sleep before race day, which was really reassuring, so at 9, I stopped chattering about everything in my head, and settled down to try to sleep.

The sleeping was somewhat disrupted, but I told myself that my goal for right then was to go back to sleep, and all of the race morning tasks and checklists would be waiting for me when it was actually time to wake up. This worked surprisingly well, and I'll have to remember it for regular days as well.

IMChoo: First-timer from Alexandria, VA... You are an Ironman!

I did it!

Below are my results, compared to my plan, so you can see, the day was pretty much perfect.

Mini-goals for the next few weeks:

• Keep TSB score positive while starting to move again
• Go out to weeknight events! (Movie, book reading, theater)
• Cheer for friends! (IMMD and Tussey)

IMCHOO Build 8 recap

So this was taper. Mostly it still felt like work, but thankfully not like my real job since I wasn't smart anymore and couldn't hold a thought in my head.

I worried a little that I wasn't feeling bad enough, after listening to friends complain, but if my body wants to combat fatigue with stupidity instead of with failing to meet exercise goals, I guess that's what I'm stuck with.

Mini-goal assessment

• Focus on nutrition, really this time - At least the eating was more controlled than the previous 3 weeks, but it was not easy to control food-wants when tired, so I know I caved in to some unnecessary eating.
• Do at least 2 2.4 mile straight swims - Un-success. I had good yardage at the 90 minute swim practices, but only did 1 long straight swim, and that probably came in around 2 miles (forgot Garmin, see stupid taper brain above)
• Finish packing checklists - Success! Thank goodness I worked on this. I am packing bags and car tonight and tomorrow and am so thankful for these lists that I have been putting together.

Review of last three weeks

• 1 Monday bootcamp
• 1 Weds bootcamp
• Swam
• at 6 90 minute swim practices
• 1 time at the outdoor 50m pool
• 1 time at a warm lake, in full wetsuit. Great practice in staying steady to avoid overheating.
• Ran
• 3 Monday night run lead
• 3 track practices
• 6 mi at long run - should have been 16
• 12 mi long run on "light weekend"
• 6 mi long run on last weekend
• Biked
• 3 flat workouts
• 1 hills workout - got the 5x hill
• 44 Skyline miles
• 50 mi on "light weekend" - complete with bike "fall down"
• 30 mi on the trainer on last weekend
• 14 assorted commute miles

Goals for race

• Swim relaxed
• Stay in Z2 for the bike
• Stay focused on the run
• Cheer for others
• Experience the day

Race day is next Sunday. I'll be printing out the athlete guide, the TeamZ Cheer Guide, my race plan, and stashing them together in a binder, and hopefully, that plus all this training, will get me through the day!

Taper continues

I'm getting things checked off my to-do list during taper, including some things I wasn't expecting to do

Biking to-do's

1. Get bike tune-up - Check! My store looked it over and we replaced my tires, chain and cassette. I knew the chain would be due soon, so I'm glad to get that done now
2. 50 mile taper ride - Check! Took my freshly tuned up bike out into fall drizzle and had my lowest-energy ride of recent history. It's ok, I don't have to feel good for practice.
3. Bike crash - Check! Got that out of the way. It was super minor, and more like a bike-fall-down, but some rail tracks grabbed my front wheel and I fell down. My elbow is a little scraped and my hip is trying to bruise, but it's ok. Good reminder to really be cautious on rail tracks.

   

   Showing off the scrape

   

   Amazing bandage

   
   
4. Get bike checked again - in process. After the crash, there were some slightly bad noises coming from the bike, so I want to make sure the derailleur isn't going to suicide itself into my rear wheel or something terrible like that.
5. Re-pack saddle bag - Check! Since I had to take it off to leave my bike at the store, I decided to figure out how to fit two tubes, two CO2 cartridges, levers and multitool into my saddle bag. Pleased to report success, though if I have to unpack it, it may never all fit again.

Running to-do's

1. Get new shoes - Check! They are a different color than usual, but I think they fit the same as my regular ones.
2. Break in new shoes - In process. They carried me around for a nice 12 miler with no new blisters.
3. Recalibrate footpod - Check! Oh, the responsibilities of being a data-junky are never ending.

Swimming to-do's

1. Pack OWS stuff together - Check! Wetsuit, gloves, and two pair of new goggles are bundled together in the wetsuit bag and ready for pre-race brick.
2. 90 minute swims - In process. I've made it to 4 of 6, with 2 more this week. Getting it done.

Other things that remain to do include buying many sizes of ziploc bags for all of my ziploc needs, buying unscented trashbags to make throw-away warmups to leave in T1/T2 & special needs bags in case of a rainy/cold day, and buying more bars for my bike nutrition since I ate my last one this weekend!

It's coming together well and except for being tired and stupid, I am super proud of how I am holding up to the taper crazies.

Goodbye boom-er-ang hill, see you next year!

At the beginning of this season, I faced down the trippple hill with a little fear, and came away with a PR result that I haven't beaten since.

However, I have improved in a lot of ways on that hill.

1. The repeats have gone up - Last night, I rode 5 strong repeats, which is the most I have ever done ever. 
2. My consistency has gone up - The first time I did 4 repeats, the times sort of got faster (which is a good thing), but the time between slowest and fastest was ~45 seconds. Yesterday, for 5 repeats, I was able to keep the gap to ~10 seconds.
3. My pacing has gotten better - I have been trying to descend across the repeats. It's nowhere near as good as my swim-pacing, but, if I exclude the third loop, I descended super steadily for the other 4.

Next year, when we come back to the hills, I think I want to focus on being less scared of how bad it feels to really work hard. I know I am stronger than I was when I set my PR in April, but that repeat hurt! I probably won't be facing down 4 or 5 repeats in my training plan next year, so I should work on making them each hurt a little more.

I also want to continue to get more confident in my bike handling. Over this season, I think I have improved in my descending but I should be able to U-turn in a wide street or in a cul-de-sac without unclipping my inside foot, so I'll work on that next year.

IMCHOO Build 7 recap

Time moves forward, so I have known all summer that eventually, I'd be checking off the longest long-workouts of this training season, but it's pretty amazing to be on the other side of them.

The mental reprieve that came from my camping vacation has continued. I'm not nearly as peaceful as I was while taking a week off, but I am also not nearly as cranky as I was before the vacation.

The left hip aches have continued, but continue to disappear within a few days. I have a massage scheduled tonight, so hopefully that will help reset my muscles for the last push of training.

Mini-goal assessment

• Focus on nutrition - Absolutely an un-success. While not lashing out at the world with a cranky brain, I have been giving into every eating desire I have had. This includes lowlights of a Slurpee and 3 Musketeers for dinner one night and Panda Express + Haagen Daaz another.
• Leave the cranky-pants at home for 20 mile peak run - Success! There were a lot of ways I could have complained about the 20 mile run, but I tried really hard not to focus on them, and ended up having a lovely run where I met my goals.

Review of last three weeks

• 2 Monday bootcamp
• 2 Weds bootcamp
• 2 Yoga
• Swam
• at 6 swim practices
• 2 times at the outdoor 50m pool
• 1 time at 20m outdoor pool. Tiny pool means super fast!
• Ran
• 3 Monday night run lead
• 2 track practices
• 6 mi at long brick
• 14 mi long run on "light weekend"
• 20 mi peak run
• Biked
• 1 flat workouts - skipped one with tummy ache
• 1 hills workout - thunder canceled the week where I was going to go for 5x hill
• 58 mi at long brick
• 80 mi on "light weekend" - wonderful to repeat Monocacy 80
• 118 mi peak bike
• 14 assorted commute miles

Mini-goals for next build cycle

• Focus on nutrition, really this time 
• Do at least 2 2.4 mile straight swims
• Finish packing checklists