Fred D Mentor Group - Part II (Page 68)

Here are Tom's results.  

http://timing.rev3tri.com/2012/Race/2012/B4229BD8-C6CC-4A8F-B01F-4212BD4B4D17/Athletes/3/1022

Looks like nice even bike splits.  If the run splits are accurate, he may have had a rough patch in the middle of the run but then picked it back up for the last half of the run.  

Nice work Tom!

Thanks guys and gals,

I had the weirdest race of my life. It's when you don't expect things...Last week I could barely walk in the morning. It gets better later on in the day.

I volunteered part of the day Sat, I was on my feet all day and I think it actually loosened up my achilles. I woke up sunday and it felt tight, but better than usual. Friday I could barely walk but it improves during the day. I walked around from 6am to 8am just to loosen it up.

Started the swim with no expectations, first 500m were terrible sighting. But I got into a groove. I screwed up my watch, thought it would beep at 36 min, so when it beep at 30 and I had a lot to do I say "this is going to be a 41min swim". Get out of the water and it was 34. Happy. Get to the rack, lots of  bikes are there. Cool.

I rode the first 10km and my power was way to high for what I was targetting and the roads pretty rough (in my opinion). First 10km split was 30km/h. Yuk. this is going to be a loooooong ride. But the road became nicer, and the power a little more fluid. I rode at the low end of my target but with a very high VI (1.075). Not great. I need to lose weight.

I get to T2 and there is one bike on the rack. If correct this means I was 2nd. But would the achilles cooperate ? I decided to run 'easy' and if someone in my AG came by, I would decide at that point depending on my achilles. It was super tight all the way. No pain anywhere, just tight achilles. I remember what Fred said not to hurt myself. I just did my thing and was looking for the guy in my AG  as I passed people.

My average HR was crazy low (top Z1) so with 5km to go I started to push it a bit hoping to find the guy ahead of me. With 1km to go I chased down 4 or 5 people up ahead hoping one of them would be the guy in my AG. The last climb is brutal so sprinting up it chasing people was kind of weird. Nobody in my AG. I crossed the finish line and drank some water. I later found out there was no guy ahead of me, the bike was left over from a guy who didn't finish the swim.

I am happy because I did the one thing I wanted to do. An even paced run. I am pretty sure that if you exclude the first km, which is always too fast, I negative split this thing. I have never had a well executed run. I go out at 4:30/km and die off. Bryan threw out some numbers for training numbers and pacing that I followed very precisely and it paid off.

All 3 legs started out with what appeared to be a rough start, but they all fell into place and bikes in the T1, no bikes in T2 was a great booster. Having my son at the race helped a lot. When I took off for the run, he was directing the runners out of T2 and I thought it would be cool if he could see me podium hence my run strategy.

Here are Neil's results.

http://tracking.ironmanlive.com/newathlete.php?rid=1143239931&race=/events/ironman70.3/muskoka70.3/&bib=173&beta=&1347276600

Looks like he improved all of his splits over last year but the bike wasn't quite what he was hoping for in his last post.  Still great work to improve over last year by 15+ mins!

I believe he saw improvements across the board ? Swim bike and run ? run by a lot, which means bike improved. The two are so intertwined it's scary.

This was my first time doing it, but the bike was for sure slower than last year because there was 3 segments of road, about 2km each that was like a mixture of gravel and cement, very very rough, shaking all over. This killed speed. That's a big part of the split difference between the 2 halfs

Despite this, if I am not mistaken he improved all 3 splits since last year and seems liked a well executed race. His splits are as even as you could expect.

When working in transition saturday as a volunteer I saw Neil's bike so looked for him but never saw him. I recognized the bike from his posted pic, saw the new aero bottle, wired PT, so I knew it was his. As a matter of fact some guy tried to cram a bike in that section late Sat afternoon and I suggested he move a little further down the rack. I looked very official with my little yellow flag.

Well done Neil !!

Great work racing everyone.  Inspiring.  Really makes me look forward to racing.  I watched a lot of the coverage of that men's race and thought it was great.  Matt Lieto does an awesome job consistently.

Fred, Re: the powermeter.  I feel similar to you.  I ride with it because I got an extremely good deal on a Hed 6 laced to a powertap, but I don't train BY the power.  I really ride mostly by feel and rpe.  Power tells me if I'm having a good or bad day sometimes, but I can usually tell that without looking at the power number.  Once you ride enough, you know if you are riding hard or easy.  

I feel similar to Kienle from what he said in a recent interview.  He said he didn't like training with power because he'd the number would consume him basically...so stopped using it and I feel similar to him on what it does to you when you ride with it sometimes.  He seems to be doing alright for himself on the bike based on yesterday's performance  I think a lot of people feel similar even though it isn't the correct Tri-Geek thinking.

In a similar boat, mostly. For sprints and olympics, I don't use a computer at all (I have my head unit recording data for afterwards but have the display off). For long course racing I find power to be useful for the first 1.5 hours or so just to help measure my effort, but defer to HR and RPE afterwards - power is just a reference point to allow me to see if something is awry. Where I find training by power to be most useful is when doing intervals on the trainer, but you have a computrainer for that. The only time I really pay close attention to it on the road is when doing sustained climbs in the mountains, and maybe the occasional interval workout, but again I find these to be the most effective on the trainer.

Besides, you really want the bike, so get it. If it were the other way around there would be lots of ways to rationalize why you should use a power meter instead. Sell the power meter, or just keep it on your road bike if you prefer it over the computrainer. Heck, sell the computrainer as well before it is made obsolete by the new Wahoo KICKR power trainer....

Marc - awesome report - that is really funny how you were trying to run down the dude that did not even finish the swim. From a psychological standpoint I would actually have preferred that scenario as well - I would much rather think I am running offensively from the back to catch on than feel like I was running defensively off the front. Seeing that bike would have probably given me a little extra kick as well. Funny how the mind works...

Congratulations - really nice job this weekend.

Tom - even if the run was not quite a you planned, congratulations on the finish. That is the way IM goes sometimes, and in a weird way most likely the reason we keep doing them. I look forward to the RR.

Marc - thanks for looking out for my spot in transition!!  I would have liked to have met up, but it was a little crazy with the wife, etc.  You had an amazing race.  For anyone that doesn't know this course, Marc's 1:38 run was insane.  I know that's what I hoped to run, but there was just no way, much too fast for me on that course.  Huge congratulations for such an amazing race.

As for me, the swim and run I was very happy with, and went through some tough patches on the run but promised myself no walking except the aid stations.  Legs didn't like that idea, but they held on (very much in pain and protesting this morning), and I've done in my IT band again.

As for the bike, I was having a great race, on target, pace was actually a little faster than intended, but that was because my power was too high for the first 30-40min, and then I backed off.  Turned onto the last 8km and there's a short hill, shifted into the small chain ring and promptly dropped the chain.  Crap, that's going to cost a few seconds.  Uh, no, 12min.  The chain got wedged between the crank and frame, and no matter how much I tried I couldn't get it out.  Finally another racer called to a couple of spectators to see if they could help me out.  No luck initially, but finally one guy produced a screwdriver and I wedged it between the frame and crank and got enough space for the chain to come out.  Lots of time lost, but those guys saved my race.  If it happened anywhere else, my day was likely done.

After the race I found I was given a 4min penalty.  I have no idea what it was for, but emailed the RD this morning.  With the few different things that happened yesterday, this 4min upsets me more than anything else.  Like the rest of this group I really focus on racing an honest race, and I'm pretty disappointed to see a penalty beside my name because it leaves me feeling like I've been marked as someone who was cheating in the race.  Doesn't sit well with me.

Apart from the penalty, I feel I was pretty close with my estimates for my race times.  But ultimately, that 1:38 I hoped for the run was just not possible.  This race also made my realize that while I've gotten more competitive in some of the smaller races this year, HIM is completely different, and I'm just not there yet.  As a side note, WC spots rolled down to 5:15 and around 8th place in my AG.

was that right after  the 90 deg left turn before going back to deerhurst ?

I saw you there. I saw the bike, saw it was a trek and thought I hope that isn't Neil.

Awesome racing this weekend to Marc, Neil and Tom!!

I race my first Xterra this weekend - fastest swim split, second slowest bike split, decent run... had a blast and won my age group (there were only 2 of us!). Very friendly race, and much more social than a regular tri - no real drafting rules meant I could chat with racers on the open sections of bike course, and the run was just beautiful.

Did you race Dueces Wild? My BFF raced the double- Oly on Saturday and Xterra on Sunday. She won her AG at both I love that race and we were very sad that we couldn't get up there this year.

Yup, it was Dueces Wild! A bunch of friend raced Saturday, and I raced Sunday.

That's fantastic and really good race execution! Glad your Achilles held up.

CONGRATULATIONS!!! and of course ... {MELON PRESS}