Ironman Coeur d'Alene : Official Thread (Page 27)

Hello everyone.  I was curious to ask those who have done recent IM races if the powerbar perform that is on the course is what they trained with?.  From what I can tell it only has 70 calories per 20 oz.  How did you use this?  Obviously this could be used for fluid replacement and some calories but calories had to be supplemented.  I am a hammer guy.  In a race as long as a ironman I thought it would be good to use whats on the course.  However, I hate to replace my perpetum but do not want to be dependant on the special needs bag.

One other comment- The recent post on a early half IM near Florida - 2 in the first of may are the White lakes half by set up events and the Beast of the East in North Georgia - I have done White Lakes - great race but can be HOT on the run.  I'll be at one of them probably.

Congrats on your terrific season and Welcome, Randy! We'll (me and other newbies) be able to pick your brain some since you have experience with IM's. I do understand that unstructured training after the season can be challenging. Take it easy.

Lynn

Randy - welcome and enjoy some down time.....and in the down time post a picture of the tat that is 'forcing' you away from the pool! 

I have to agree with Josh on this.  I have a friend that is a HUGE Hammer guy also, but consistently finds himself in a bind on the course if he drops a bottle or something goes wrong.  I learned early, ALWAYS train with what is on the course...2 reasons:

1)  Ironman is a LONG day, something can ALWAYS goes wrong.  If you depend on carrying your "special mix" around the course and you hit a bump and lose the bottle, now what?  Or if you realize "holy cow, I need ALOT more than I thought over 140.6 miles"... you will.  or what if they lose your special needs bag... it happens...  Always makes sense to be acclimated to feeding off of the course all day.

2) On the same note, in IMLP I saw people with 3-4 bottles filled with their special juice being dragged around 112 miles, then a fuel belt for 26.2... Why would you do that??  How much $$$ did you spend to buy a seat with Ti rails vs. CrMoly to save 25 grams and then strap 8 pounds of liquid on your bike or labor to lose that extra pound and then strap a fuel belt on???  Just makes zero sense to me.

The rule is simple... As much as people complain about WTC, the aid stations at 140.6 races (not all 70.3 races) are pletiful, even for the 17 hour people.  There is absolutelly no reason to carry 1 oz of extra fluid or food one step/pedal stroke further than you need.  If you get hungry, there is another aid station soon, always is.  Granted, I had my twix bars in my special needs for the pick me up and prefer 3Bar's to Powerbars (to me, Powerbars are like eating a spoonful of sugar), so I did carry a few of those, but all of my liquid and 90% of my solid foods (which was mostly pretzels) came from grazing at the aid stations.

I feel for you on the marathon.  The reason I've learned what I have and had the success that I've had with the type of training I'm advocating now is that I learned the hard way.  All through high school I had shin splints and ankle problems that ruined my season.  I would be number 2 on the team a month into the season, and then fade back and barely make varsity (top 7) by the end of each season.  The reason for that - I was number 2 on the team and always tried to outrun number 1 in practice... whereas number 1 was in better shape than me in part through genetics and in part through consistency (he showed up in top shape after running big miles every summer... something I was too distracted to do while skirt chasing).

Fast forward to college when I decided I should run a marathon.  Did I learn my lesson?  Nope... I ran 3-4x a week and had long runs that were way too large a percentage of my overall volume.  And I threw some speedwork into virtually every run.  And I gained a bunch of weight while training for it because I justified that I could eat whatever I wanted since I was marathon training.  Now for the surprise - I was injured on race day and I didn't even come close to my goal and ended up walking a singificant part of the second half of the race.

Bottom line - I've been the injury-prone runner and thought it was based on my body type, bad shoes, too many miles, etc.  In the end, it turns out it was based on too much intensity for my given fitness... and this past year I consitently ran month after month more than double my peak mileage for that first marathon... plus swam and biked A LOT... and was the healthiest I've ever been without any real injuries.

Case in point - I'm just starting back up after a bit of an intentional hiatus... and slowly building my base up over the next few months.  I ran 24 miles this week... on pace for 100 miles a month if I just maintain and don't build.  I ran 6x and my longest run was 6.2 miles.  Which means the rest barely registered on my recovery-o-meter (3.5, 3.1, rest, 4.3, 3.6, 6.2, 3.5).  The scary thing is, LOTS of people run less than 24 miles a week durin most of their ironman training.

Sorry you'll be missing your race (but I commend you for not running on injured legs because of the recovery cost and the potential for seriously exacerbating the injury).  For what it's worth, I suspect you'll have a better IM because of it.  Not only will you not need to recover from the marathon (though a bit more injury recovery now may be smart), but you have some lessons to take away from this mistake that could really transform your IM training.  That's basically my biography, for what it's worth.

I'm just glad you didn't mean PBR...I was going to ask if they served it in the 40 oz cans.