I'm It!

My friend and hero Jill tagged me in a recent blog entry. I'm it! That means that I have to write the following blog entry. Here are the rules:

1. I must post these rules.
2. I must post eleven random things about myself.
3. I must answer the questions set for me in Jill's post.
4. I must create eleven new questions for the folks I tag.
5. I must go to their blogs and tell them that I've tagged them.
6. I can't say, "If you are reading this, you are tagged!" I have to actually designate eleven people.

Here are the eleven things about me. I did not consider, by the way, the eleven most essential or representative things. These are just eleven things:

1. I am gearing up to support my wife Kacie in her Double Ironman. As you can probably guess, that means that she'll be swimming 4.8 miles, cycling 224 miles, then running 52.4 miles. Whew! She starts at 7:00 on Friday morning, and she'll be done on Saturday morning. It will be quite an event! (Jill, who tagged me, will be there, too! She's going to be on the crew for one of Kacie's competitors.) It will be very difficult but very fun for all involved.

2. I have almost 12,000 songs on my iTunes. That's about a month's worth of music.

3. I have never listened to about 70% of those songs. They're deep tracks on albums that I bought for two or three songs, or they are albums that I borrowed from friends and ripped (wait--that's illegal--never mind) and never got around to listening to.

4. I am a sixth-generation Georgia schoolteacher on my mother's side. The tradition stretches back about 150 years. I didn't actually know this when I decided to become a teacher.

5. My full name is George Washington Darden IV. The original George Washington Darden--the uncle of my great Grandfather--murdered a man in Warrenton, Georgia, and was lynched for it in the 1880s. We recently found out that the man he murdered is buried in a cemetery about three miles from where Kacie and I currently live.

6. I am very good at picking the right tollbooth. That is, given a choice of several tollbooths, I can normally choose which one will get me in and out most quickly. Sometimes, I falter, but for the most part, I'm golden.

7. I was the captain of the track and cross-country teams at Georgia Tech. As a result, I spent more of my time in college running and thinking about running than studying. I had good results--I was All-ACC in track and All-District in cross-country--but I had very poor grades. I didn't become a serious student until I went to graduate school. I finished my Ph.D. last semester.

8. I am a Lewis and Clark enthusiast, and I have followed the first part of the trail (from St. Louis to Bismarck, ND, near where they spent their first winter). I went through a three- or four-year period in the early 2000s where I was totally engrossed in everything Lewis and Clark.

9. I am a native southerner, but I have spent three years living outside of the south: one in Michigan, one in New Hampshire, and one in Washington, DC. I very much dislike cold weather.

10. I have two brothers-in-law, and they are both named Patrick. One--my wife's little brother--is eight. The other--my older sister's husband--is forty-two. I do not often confuse them.

11. I am always very adamant that I grew up in the city of Marietta. There are a lot of sections of Cobb County that have a Marietta mailing address but aren't part of the actual city of Marietta. The city of Marietta is much more diverse than the larger county, and I am proud of having grown up around a wide variety of people. Many people who say that they are from Marietta are actually from Cobb County, and they live in much less diverse environments. As a result of our different upbringings, I feel as if I am very different from most of the Cobb County folks. (As an aside: many people who are from Cobb County or from Marietta say that they are from Atlanta, and that kinda annoys me, too.)

Jill's questions:

1. Do you consider yourself a person who uses time efficiently?
No. For example, right now, I have a lot of papers to grade, and I'm writing this blog. :-)

2. Would YOU wear a Rev3 Sparkly Suit??
Yes, but I wouldn't pose for a picture in one.

3. What was your Best Moment in Sports?
In 2003, a former student that I taught and coached in New Hampshire was killed in a car wreck. His brother was also killed. It was a huge blow to the community where I spent a very formative year, and a lot of people who are really dear to me were deeply hurt. That summer, his parents organized a 5K road race to raise money for the scholarship fund that they had established in their sons' names. Four athletes that I coached in Atlanta and I drove all night so that we could be on the starting line. Since we didn't sleep, I didn't know if I would be able to run hard in the race. I was also a bit out-of-shape. Nonetheless, I took the lead at the two-mile mark and won going away. It was my best moment in sports, without doubt.

4. What do you think of "Shock and Awe"?
If we're talking about the American strategy in Iraq, I think it was a completely ridiculous strategy. We blew up all of their infrastructure and dismantled their social, political, and economic institutions. Then, we said, "Okay, you're free, now govern yourselves." As it turns out, it was really hard for them to establish a government or provide governmental services in a country that we had completely devastated. Shouldn't we have foreseen this? And should we be surprised that they didn't see this as an act of generous liberation??

5. What one thing would you like to change about yourself?
There are a lot of ways that I could improve. Rather than getting all serious, though, let's just say that I wish I was a good dancer.

6. What one thing do you love about yourself?
I picked a good wife.

7. Why is Rev3 Running Across America? (yes, shameless promotion plug)
The stated reason is to raise money for cancer research. The underlying reason is that it's TOTALLY AWESOME. One day, I would like to do something that takes me all the way across the country--be it running, cycling, or whatever. Kacie and I actually had plans to ride bikes across the country in the summer of 2009, but I got badly injured in a race and we had to cancel.

8. What is the first thing you would do with a million dollars? (you can't say "invest half"; okay you can, just also say what you'd do second.)
We would invest, pay off our debts, probably buy a new house in the area, and get new bikes. In fact, I was thinking that if we somehow won a lot of money, my first words would probably be, "We're getting new bikes!" It's not because we need new bikes, mind you, but as a cyclist, there's always a nicer bike to be bought.

9. Which is better, Long Run? Long Bike? or Long Book?
They are all good in different ways. Each of them are better, though, if you are with a group.

10. What is your current "favorite" song?
"Current" is the main word. I change my favorite song almost weekly, and it's often not a current song. My current favorite song is "Otis" by Kanye West and Jay-Z.

11. If you had the chance to implement one change in America what would it be?
I wish that we valued thoughtfulness. That is, I wish that we considered it a virtue to take time and think things through. Likewise, I wish that the people we held in highest esteem were the ones who were the most contemplative. Of course, this is a multifaceted problem, but I think that we could design schools in ways that would reward deliberation and thoughtfulness. As it is now, very few schools do this, and educational policy designed to "improve" schools actually works against making them more thoughtful places.

Okay, now for the tagging. I'm about to break one of the posted rules. I don't have eleven people I can tag. :-) I will merely tag three: Nate, Shannon, and Meredith. I had the fortune to teach and/or coach each of these folks during my career. I look forward to reading y'all's stuff!

Here are my eleven questions:

1. What is your job and how did you choose it?
2. What is the destination of your next big trip?
3. What was the last good book you read?
4. What is the most interesting place you've ever been?
5. Who is your best friend?
6. How did you come to live in the place where you currently live?
7. Describe one of your mid-range (next 5 years or so) goals.
8. If you could fill a swimming pool with anything, what would it be and why?
9. What do you do on a typical Friday night?
10. What was your favorite subject in school? Do you still "use" it?
11. And, because Jill asked it and I liked it, If you had the chance to implement one change in America what would it be?

This Is Not My Foot, Part II

The saga continues.

In the last ten days, I have done several things, including power plate therapy:

In case you--like me--had never heard of this: the bottom section vibrates really rapidly. I put my foot on it, and it shook it all about. The general goal is the same as the shockwave therapy--to activate the body's natural anti-inflammatory response. Verdict: my foot still hurts.

I've also undergone more massage, and yesterday, I was dry-needled. This was a first. I had been told how much it hurt, and I can say without equivocation that it was a field day compared to shockwave therapy. Of course, perhaps shockwave therapy only hurt as much as it did because . . .

I evidently have bursitis on my heel. Super. Check it:

See the bursa that sites behind the achilles and the heel? It's swollen, and it hurts. I'm not sure if this is the source of my foot/ankle pain or an additional effect. But it sucks.

Speaking of the causes of my foot pain, I've received two additional diagnoses. My massage therapist told me that it may be plantar fasciitis. That would be a surprise because it's not hurting in the place where plantar fasciitis normally hurts. However, my plantar fascia is super tight, so . . . ?? And the physical therapist that did the dry needling yesterday said that it may be related to my posterior tibialis mucle, seen in the middle here:

By the way, do NOT search for images on "posterior tibialis" unless you are ready to see some pretty disgusting stuff. (Of course, I suppose a surgeon might find it "interesting.")

The posterior tibialis sits behind the gastrocnemius and the soleus, and it is responsible for holding up the arch. (Before yesterday, I didn't realize there were any additional muscles in the calf.) I have very high arches, so supporting them in a tough job, and it's possible that the posterior tibialis is just not up to it right now. Without a doubt, the muscle that got the biggest response from the dry needling (and was sorest afterwards) was the posterior tibialis. The physical therapist taped up my arch, and I'm thinking that I'll start doing that for the next little while.

And so it goes. The past two mornings, I have felt very good. Right now, it's bothering me a bit, which is why this blog entry might sound a bit morose. I have until the end of next week for it to get better, and I won't start getting nervous about my CdA prospects as long as I can run by March. What I've found, though, is that being prevented from doing one of the three sports actually has a very negative impact on the other two, as well. It's been difficult for me to motivate for cycling and swimming when I can't run. I'm not sure why that is.

This Is Not My Foot

Last year, I read Running on Empty by Marshall Ulrich. Ulrich is a legendary ultra-runner whose exploits include such things as the "Badwater Quad"--running the uber-difficult Badwater 146-mile race in Death Valley, then running it backwards, then forward again, then backwards again. (He still holds the course record for the 146-mile course, even though these days, it has been shortened to a much more reasonable 135 miles.) On another occasion, he ran Badwater without a crew, choosing instead to drag a wagon behind him that weighed over 200 pounds. Check him out:

On yet another occassion, Ulrich finished the Pike's Peak marathon, jumped in a car, and hightailed it to Leadville in time to be at the start of the Leadville 100. In Running on Empty, he focused on his failed attempt to break the Trans-America running record. Although he broke the Master's and Grandmaster's record--he was 57 years old at the time--his mark of 52.5 days was only good enough to be the third-fastest crossing of the continent. That's all: third-fastest, at age 57. Amazing.

Throughout the book, Ulrich told all sorts of stories about experiences he had along the way. He was nearly hit by a car. He listened to the same songs over and over again. His sex drive was kicked into overdrive. His hair and nails stopped growing. He didn't drink any water during the entire trip (because he must take in calories constantly). He managed issues with his crew and his sponsors. And, of course, he dealt with injuries. His most dogged problem was plantar fasciitis, which inspired him to divorce his foot from the rest of his body. "This is not my foot," he declared. Right now, I know how he felt.

For the last three weeks or so, I have been dealing with pain in my left foot. Although it evidently orginates from the ball of my foot, it manifests itself in a tight, sore feeling under my medial ankle. I initially thought it was some sort of achilles issue, but my actual achilles wasn't hurting. And in fact, I'm not sure what the injury is. One doctor posited tendinitis in my flexor digitorum longus and flexor hallucis longus.

See how the flexor hallicus longus goes right under the ankle, out of the foot, and into the calf? That's exactly where it hurts. Thus, tendinitis in these two tendons made sense. In addition, since those two tendons were the site of the SEVERE hot spots I developed in Ironman Cozumel, I figured that perhaps I irritated them during the race and then didn't give them enough time to recover before starting to run again. After all, as I wrote in my race report, my feet were undoubtedly the most uncomfortable thing on my body during the run. However, an experienced doctor this week told me that if it was in fact tendinitis of one or both of those tendons, it would be the first time that he had ever heard of such a case. [Sigh.]

Whether it was the cause of my foot issue or not, I knew that I needed to address the hot spots on the bike, so I went to my bike fitter a couple of weeks ago. He found that my fit was fine, but my heel down pedaling was putting too much strain on the nerves and tendons that come out of my calves and into my feet (such as the flexors--more evidence that they were the root cause of the injury). This was magnified by the ultra-thin insole that comes in my otherwise totally sweet Sidi shoes. Thus, we modified my pedaling, we put in new insoles, and since then, I have had no problems with hot spots on my bike. Woot! At least I'm not making things worse now.

My foot was feeling good enough this past Saturday to try running again, so I went out for an eight-mile run on soft, flat trails. While my foot didn't hurt much during the run, it got steadily more painful in the hours after the run. Thus, I have decided with my Coach to take all running off my schedule until February 19. Missing scheduled runs was frustrating, but trying to run when I wasn't fully healed was only prolonging the injury. This certainly compromises some of my secondary events, but all of my major training plans are still intact. As I told my coach, I don't want to still be dealing with this issue in April, so we're better off missing some miles now and getting it entirely better. I have a very deep running background, so I'll be fine.

In the meantime, I'll continue to swim and bike, but I'll also continue to be aggressive with my foot rehab. So far, I've done graston, electric stimulation, ice, ultrasound, cold laser, shockwave therapy, chiropractic, massage, and ART. Right now, there is kinesio tape on my foot and lower leg. I'm thinking of getting a prescription for dry needling. As my wife calls it, I'm taking the "dartboard approach," and seeing what sticks. Each treatment has had some measure of success. One of them--shockwave--deserves special mention. Shockwave therapy was undoubtedly the most painful therpy I've ever done, including the therapy I had to undergo after my shoulder was pieced back together in 2009. In shockwave therapy, the doctor takes a weapon--yes, I called it a weapon--that looks like this:

He runs the tip over the inflamed area, and a piston inside the weapon pounds away at the spot. The therapy causes micro-injuries to the area and triggers the brain's natural anti-inflammatory response. The same thing could be accomplished by hitting my ankle with a hammer, and this is exactly what it felt like. I had visions of battlefield surgeries during the Civil War; on a couple of occassions, I had to check and make sure that he wasn't hacking off my foot with a chisel. Throughout the torture, er, therapy, I was asking myself, "Why am I doing this??" I had more doubt about myself as an athlete in those ten minutes than I have ever had in any race, including the last six miles of the Ironman. The doctor told me later that it's possible to use a lower, less-painful setting, so if you have to get this done, I recommend that you ask him to start gently. And it is effective, at least in the short term; even though I repeatedly thought, "This is not worth it," my foot felt much better that night.

So until my foot gets back with the program, I am going to take Marshall's advice and kick it out of my big Ironman party. While the rest of us are getting fit, I'm going to force that little jerk to be submerged in ice, roasted with lasers, and shocked with electricity. I'm hoping that this will bring it back into line and we can get on with the business of swimming, biking, AND running.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year . . .

. . . is July. Although Andy Williams would disagree, Kacie and I believe that summer vacation, warm weather, and the Tour de France trump Christmastime. Nevertheless, the last month has been very nice. Since Cozumel, I've been doing all of the things that I did not do during my Ironman buildup. I've relaxed my eating standards, which coincides nicely with the holidays. I've read books like Hellhound on His Trail and The Fall of Giants, both of which I recommend. I've even gotten a cold after staying completely healthy for the entire first half of the school year. (I'm not sure that that last one fits with the overall festive mood.)

All of this means that I'll sneeze my way into the new year tomorrow night heavier, smarter, more relaxed, and ready to conquer the next set of goals. My coach and I worked out the following list for the first half of 2012:

1/16 ~ MLK 5K

1/21 ~ 200K Brevet

1/29 ~ Callaway Half-marathon (training tempo run)

2/11 ~ Chattahoochee Challenge 10K

2/18 ~ Tundra TT

3/3 ~ 200K Brevet

3/18 ~ Georgia Half-marathon

3/25 ~ Powerman Alabama

4/14 ~ Wheels ‘o Fire Century

4/22 ~ Cheaha Challenge

4/28 ~ Issaqueena’s Last Ride

5/6 ~ REV3 Knoxville 70.3

5/12 ~ Brasstown Bald Buster Century (this is a maybe)

6/2 ~ REV3 Quassy 70.3

6/24 ~ Ironman Coeur d’Alene

I'm looking forward to each of them, even though it's a little bit difficult to imagine running a 5K in two weeks given how terrible I feel right now. I'm sure that I'll bounce back soon.

The Georgia Half-Marathon and Powerman Alabama are going to be major focus events, as will be the two half-iron triathlons. Of course, they all lead to the grandaddy event of the summer, Ironman CdA. The Half-Marathon and Powerman are going to be important markers, too, because they will represent the moment in my training when I switch from shorter VO2 max stuff to longer LT stuff. As I've written before, starting with the shorter repeats and moving to the longer stuff is new for this training cycle, and I'm looking forward to it. Between now and mid-March, I'll do a lower number of hours but with higher intensity. This will include my Coach's "Ultimate Cycling Sessions" twice a week, some faster stuff in the pool, and plenty of shorter repeats on the gravel track across the street from our house. After the Georgia HM and Powerman (both of which should be faster as a result of the shorter, faster training), I'll build my hours and switch to longer, less intense training sessions. As a result, I hope to be better prepared to perform well at Ironman CdA.

With the start of the new year, I'll clean up my eating, I'll quit missing workouts, I'll start losing the weight I've gained, and hopefully, I'll kick this cold. After a month of rest, I'm looking forward to it!

On to the Next One . . .

In the last two years, I have listened to Jay-Z's "On to the Next One" more than any other song on my iPod.

Parental advisory . . .



I like it because it makes the monotony of endurance training and racing seem dynamic and even edgy. Even though I am CERTAIN that Jay-Z didn't have this in mind, the song helps me to put one workout or race behind me and look ahead (with a bit of swagger) to the next one. Over the last several months, I often listened to this song immediately following hard workouts or good races, and it helped me focus on what was next. Post-Ironman, I wasn't ready to do that for a little while. I am ready now. Enough wallowing on Cozumel. It's on to the next one.

Of course, I won't be doing any eight-hour bricks just yet. Unlike Kacie, who has a double Ironman in February and is already back to doing two-a-day workouts, I I have a bit more time to chill. This will let me catch up on stuff that has fallen by the wayside in the past few months. Among other things, I will be sending out our Christmas cards that will feature pictures of us in Cozumel. Check them out!

I have started thinking a lot about how the race felt and what I did to prepare. In particular, I have considered the overall arc of my training and what I can change in the next six months ahead of Ironman Coeur d'Alene. In December, I hope to spend time recovering and gathering up my motivation. Come January, February, and March, I'd like to put in some miles, but also some short fast stuff to build my power and speed. Around mid-April, though, I want to switch to higher volume LT work on both the bike and the run. In other words, I want to switch the traditional means of race-preparation.

The standard means of going about training an endurance athlete is to have them do base training and then some tempo work when they are several months out from an event. As you approach your event, you shorten the workouts but increase their intensity. By the time that the target event arrives, athletes should be feeling rested, "sharp," and speedy. This is the overall plan that I follow with the high school cross-country runners I coach, and it's one that I've followed myself several times over several seasons.

Ironman, though, is a totally different type of race. The race, as I learned the hard way, is not about going hard from the gun, but rather moving through the day at a moderate intensity. Even in the last two hours when it gets hard, it's not hard because you're pushing to run fast. It's hard because you're pushing to run AT ALL. Given this, it seems to me that the trick is not to arrive at the start line feeling speedy, but to arrive at the start line feeling as if you could go all day at a moderate intensity--which, after all, is precisely what you have to do!

To this end, I've asked my coach to design a training plan for the next 24 weeks that will start with the hard, fast stuff and then add the moderate-intensity volume at the end. I'm excited to give this a shot. Anybody have any feedback on this idea?

Ironman Cozumel Race Report; Part Three!

I've decided to split my Ironman Cozumel race report into three parts: the pre-race, the race itself, and the lessons I learned from the experience. Part One can be found here. Part Two can be found here.

On Tuesday, we traveled home via ferry, bus, plane, and car. It was a long but hassle-free trip back. On Wednesday, I went back to work, and one of my students had put this on my dry-erase board:

Sweet.

Team Darden had two major goals when we first signed up for Ironman Cozumel: to gain experience for George and to get a PR for Kacie. We accomplished both of those. My superstar wife shattered the twelve-hour barrier with a 34-minute PR of 11:35:55. And I certainly learned a great deal that I can apply both when I start training for Ironman Coeur d'Alene in January and when I race it on June 24, 2012.

Training Lessons!

Lesson #1: More time on the road bike and less time on the tri bike

In the run-up to Cozumel, my training on the bike wasn't what it could have been. Unfortunately, mental and physical breakdowns compromised my training a few times in the last few weeks, and it always seemed as if cycling was the discipline that was most heavily affected. I never missed a single run in the two months prior to Cozumel, and any swim that I missed was made up within a day or so. On two occasions in the last six weeks prior to the taper, though, I quit trainer workouts on the bike early because I didn't have the physical and/or mental strength to push. On at least two other occasions in the last six weeks, I shortened bike rides by an hour or two. I normally only had bike rides on my schedule twice a week, so missed and shortened workouts reduced my bike training by nearly 50% during that crucial final buildup.

The physical breakdowns were a result of not getting enough sleep. That happened because I was completing my dissertation. That won't be an issue in the spring, now that I'm Dr. George.

The mental breakdowns were a result of letting myself reach a burnout point with cycling that I didn't reach with the others. And the main reason that I hit the burnout point was that I rode my tri bike too much in the month of October. On the tri bike, there's no scenery. Even when I'm on the trainer, all I do on the tri bike is stare at the stem. Further, being in the aero position is automatically more intense for me. I appreciate this intensity during a race, but it makes sustaining weekly training much more difficult. Of course, specificity is important, but training a little less specifically (i.e. by riding my road bike rather than my tri bike) is significantly better than not training at all. I'm gong to be a bit more sparing with the time I spend on my tri bike in the spring so that I can make sure that I don't reach a point where I'm quitting workouts in the six weeks prior to IMCdA.

Lesson #2: More time on the bike in general

On a related note, I need to be on my bike more than twice a week. I'm going to lobby my coach to put a third ride on my schedule each week, even if it's a fairly short one or a mid-week brick. The timing should work better on this one given that the days will be getting longer in April and May when I'm reaching my peak training.

Lesson #3: Work on my power/HR decoupling point

My bike really went downhill after my power numbers and heart rate decoupled. Through training, it's possible to focus on pushing back the point where that happens. In addition to focusing on producing more power at a lower HR, I need to make sure that I do workouts that are particularly geared at keeping my HR and my power aligned. This means different types of rides than I've done: ones that are more appropriate for maintaining a moderate effort level rather than ones that help me recover quickly from hard surges (such as what is necessary in a bike race to stay in the peloton). Even though CdA is a hillier bike course that will require more surging and recovering, I think that I'll benefit as a triathlete in general by training more like a triathlete cyclist than a road racing cyclist.

Lesson #4: More running time at goal marathon pace, particularly when I'm tired

During the marathon, I found that when I had my brief "emergence" from the dark ugliness, my body sank into roughly 7:30 pace. Many of my long runs were at 7:30 pace. While many of my shorter runs were at 7:00 pace or better, and while I did plenty of running at faster paces, my "slog through it" pace was 7:30. I don't think that that was a coincidence that these two paces--the pace for my long runs and the pace for my Ironman marathon--were the same.

When I was solely a runner, I didn't pay much attention to my pace on my "easy" days. As long as they were easy, that was all that mattered. During that stage of my life, though, I was also doing a lot of very fast running (in the form of workouts). I also was never training for a race that I would be running while very tired (i.e. the Ironman marathon). In the spring, I need to make sure that my pace, even or perhaps particularly on days when I'm feeling tired, is close to what I want to run for the Ironman marathon--namely, about 7:00 pace. I need to get more locked into that pace. It needs to be the speed that my body knows to run when I'm tired and on auto-pilot.

Lesson #5: Keep swimming!

My swimming has continued to improve over the last several months. In June, I finished nearly last in the swim section of my first triathlon. A couple of months later, I finished a wetsuit-legal half-iron swim in 42:00. At Cozumel, I did a full-iron non-wetsuit swim in 1:20:00. Even though I don't feel like I'm improving, I clearly am. Further, my swim teacher told me when I saw her a couple of weeks before Cozumel that she saw "a lot of places where we can make you faster." I don't think that I will ever be the first out of the water, but there are several minutes I should be able to take off at CdA.

Racing Lessons!

Lesson #1: Control myself on the bike

This one is obvious. Our friend Sonja--who beat me, by the way--told me after the race that you have to race the cycling leg "with your brain." I didn't do that. Rather, I ignored what I knew was right in a vain attempt to exceed my physical limitations. This is precisely what you have to do in a bike race in order to achieve. To win a bike race, you have to turn your brain off and as Jens Voigt suggests, you have to say, "Shut up, legs!" If you fail, it's okay, because there's a good chance that you would have failed anyway (given the team tactics, the win-or-go-home nature of bike racing, and how hard it is to win), and you'll probably get another chance the next weekend to grab a win. I'm good at that type of headbanger racing. Long distance triathlon is not for those who want to kill themselves on the bike. I have to learn that.

This is a particularly important lesson to apply in CdA. According to the good folks at RunTri.com, a great deal of people at Coeur d'Alene in 2011 actually did precisely what I did at Cozumel: went too hard on the bike and didn't save enough for the run. Here's their scatter graph:

The x-axis is bike split. The y-axis is run split. All of the dots in the upper left quadrant and lower right quadrant are people who didn't have comparable bike and run splits. The folks in the upper left went fast on the bike but slow on the run. The folks on the lower right went slow on the bike but fast on the run. While most people had comparable splits, the people who made these graphs for each Ironman said that there was an overabundance of upper-lefters compared to other races. In other words, Coeur d'Alene seems to be a course that inspires going too fast on the bike and not having enough left for a good run. Given that I have done exactly that in 100% of my Ironmans so far, I need to make a special point to ride "with my brain."

Lesson #2: Bad patches do indeed fade

When I started hurting on the run, I was actually kinda scared. I was worried that I was going to spend the next several hours on the run course walking and barely jogging. But after a few miles, I felt better--good enough to pick up the pace significantly. I had always heard that it was possible to go through both good and bad "stages" in a long race, but I had never experienced it. The take-away is that if I start feeling bad, my race isn't necessarily over.

Lesson #3: A good Ironman isn't all that exciting until the last hour

On the ferry heading home, I talked to a doctor from Boston who qualified for Kona in the age group above me. He said that he almost blew it because he was passed by four guys in his age group in the last eight miles of the run. Some of them put ten minutes on him in that section.

Clearly, the way to be successful is to treat the race like a long warmup to the last hour, and that's precisely how I'm going to approach the next race. In and of themselves, the paces that I need to do on the swim, on the bike, and on the first fifteen miles of the run are not all that tough. It's the accumulation of fatigue and the onset of aerobic creep that makes the Ironman a race. I've never done a race like this before--where you basically jog and jog and jog until you're the last one jogging. Rather, every other race I've ever done--and there have been hundreds of them--have been races from the gun. Kacie told me before the race that my general race experience would probably serve me well when I did my first Ironman. I thought it would, too, but in reflection, I realize that the Ironman is a unique style of race. I'll be better prepared for what lay ahead of me at my next starting line.

After a few weeks of rest, I'm going to start training seriously again. I haven't had a solid break from training since last September, so I'm keen to rest. In January, my job will be to help Kacie prepare for the DOUBLE IRONMAN that she's doing in Florida in late February. And after that, it's all about Coeur d'Alene. When I crossed the finish line in Cozumel, I was not sure that I ever wanted to do another Ironman. That night, after Kacie finished, I still couldn't talk about it. By Monday, though, even as I hobbled around with my wrecked body, I began to get excited about what's to come. Now, after a week, I'm looking forward to the training. I'm not ready to start it just yet, but I'm eager to undertake the next challenge.

Ironman Cozumel Race Report; Part Two!

I've decided to split my race report for Ironman Cozumel into three parts: the pre-race, the race itself, and the lessons I learned from the experience. Part One can be found here.

Even though we had three alarms set, I woke up on Sunday morning just a few minutes before the first one went off. We got dressed, ate a fairly leisurely breakfast, and made our way down to the front of the hotel. There were to be shuttles from our hotel to the race start, beginning at 5:00 a.m. When we arrived around 5:15, the first one was leaving, and the line for the second one was pretty long. We got in line behind some other folks from Atlanta, and we waited for the next bus. And waited. And waited.

Kacie and I were immensely careful throughout the week about what we ate. Not only did we feel it necessary to make sure we were taking in high-quality calories during the taper period, but we both wanted to make sure that we avoided any food-borne illnesses in Mexico. It did not appear as if everyone was as concerned as us. We saw several people who ate and drank indiscriminately throughout the week. I'm not sure how they fared on race day. Anyway, neither of us had any hints of illness . . . until Saturday night.

On Saturday, I had an unsettling feeling in my stomach, and indeed, my fears were confirmed while we waited in line for the bus on Sunday morning. This knocked me off my game a bit, but I took some Pepto and hoped for the best. Happily, I can report that this never surfaced again. Whew! That would have SUCKED!

Swim: 1:20:35

YES! My goal for the swim was 1:30:00, so to do ten minutes faster than that was monumental. Leading up to the race, I figured that at best, I could hope for a 1:25 or so. I chided myself for considering anything faster than that. Even so, I never thought that I might swim 1:20 given that I couldn't cross the pool in June. I got out of the water and did two double-takes--one at the clock and the other at my watch.

Kacie and I got in the water fairly late, only about three or four minutes before the start. We ran into our new friend Lesley amongst the 2300 people in the water, and that was reassuring. We parked ourselves near the middle of the pack and waited for the gun, which initially caught us a little bit off guard. The swim began with a very physical 500 meters to the first turn. Our friend Sonja wrote that she started in the front and was hardly touched the entire swim. NOT ME! In fact, I don't see how I even made any progress in the first 500 meters, since it seemed that nearly every stroke was compromised either by having someone right in front of me or by landing on the back, leg, hand, or head of another competitor. The turn itself was nuts, as one person's stopping seemed to cause a chain reaction and a giant bottleneck. Nonetheless, I felt that I drew energy from the masses, and I was charged up by the excitement of it all. Dare I say: I like the chaotic pack swimming?

About halfway through the swim, some guy caught with a Vanessa Gaynor-style punch to the ear* that rang my bell enough to make me stop for a second. He apologized, though, and I quickly went back about my business. Some well-placed clouds kept the sun out of my eyes, and the jellyfish stings--I got about a dozen on my arms, torso, and lip--were not bad. Besides having to stop to drain one goggle of water a few times, the swim could hardly have gone better.

[*Vanessa Gaynor was the girl who dropped me with one punch to the ear in fourth grade. We were fighting over a kickball game. That's all I have to say about that.]

At two points, I found myself drifting a bit away from the pack, swimming in clean water away from the buoys and away from my flailing fellow Iron-wannabes. At those moments, I did something that actually made me very proud of myself: I swam back into the scrum. I knew that getting the overall drafting effect of swimming in the pack was worth the pain and risk of taking a kick to the head or a stroke to the crotch. I believe that these moments are ultimately what got me my fast split.

I dashed out of the water, did my double take, and took off sprinting down the pier. I grabbed my bag, went into the jammed tent, got ready for the bike, and headed out. My bike was right next to the tent, which meant that I had to run through nearly the entire transition area with it. T1 time--6:04.

Bike: 5:12:51

Out of the water, I was in 1348th place in the race and 246th in my age group. Given that I swam faster than I thought I would, I was on a high. Thus, I blasted onto the bike course and immediately started mowing people down.

In retrospect, I started a bit too aggressively, and that set a bad tone for the entire ride. Even though my HR wasn't off the charts, it was higher than it needed to be less than two hours into an Ironman. And even though my power numbers were in the range that I figured they should be, I knew that my cycling training had been off in the past six weeks and I would be better off being conservative. After that swim, though, conservatism be damned. I figured that if I could go ten minutes faster than my swim goal, why not go that much faster than my bike goal, too? Bad, bad, bad thinking. I established a baseline heartrate roughly ten beats higher than it should have been, and I kept it there. It was not smart, but I wouldn't know how not smart it was until I started running.

The bike consisted of an abbreviated first loop of 33 miles, followed by two full loops of 39.5 miles. On the first loop, I averaged right at 22.4 mph, which felt quick but not suicidal. On the second lap, I dropped to 21.9 mph, but I felt like I was still cruising along well. On the third lap, the wind picked up sharply, and it shifted in such a way that a crosswind became a headwind and a straight tailwind became less of a tailwind. That sucked. In addition, I reached my decoupling point, and I had to significantly reduce my power output in order to keep my heartrate at the same level (which as I said before, was already about ten beats over what it should have been). As a consequence, my speed dropped all the way to 20.6 mph, and I started HURTING. When I stood up to stretch, I could feel my quads seizing. In the last ten miles, phrases like "Get me off this infernal machine" kept rolling through my head. Even my ears ached.

Out of all of my assorted discomforts on the bike, by far the worst were my feet. They were on fire. Several times after the halfway point, I had to unclip each foot and wiggle my toes just to get rid of the hot spots. At one point, it was so severe that my left plantar fascia actually began to cramp. I'm not sure if this is a bike fit issue or something else. Regardless, that is one of the first things I am going to try to fix before my next Ironman.

When I finally passed off my bike, I was excited to start running, but I felt very spent by what I had endured in the last ten miles. Further, when I lifted my leg in the transition tent to change my shoes, my leg muscles kept seizing. I didn't think that that was a good sign, but I tried to forget about it and go on with the business of running. T2 time--3:01.

Run: 3:33:25

This was painful.

It started well enough. I rolled out of transition having passed 1021 people on the bike, nearly all of whom were in the first half. I was now in 327th place and 68th place in my age group. I told myself to relax in the first mile and that it was bound to feel slow after getting off the bike. I hit the mile mark in 6:41, and I felt great. I was poised for a 3:00:00 marathon, which would bring me home around 9:40:00 for the entire Ironman. Then, the second mile, which felt about the same as the first, was 7:24. [Uh, oh.] Then the third was 7:37. [I might be in trouble.] Then the bottom fell out, my stomach started to cramp, and I hit the four-mile mark in 8:43. I haven't run a mile that slow since I went running with Bill Clinton in 1994. I quit looking at my splits, but my next two miles (5 and 6) were in 18:39. Around that time, I saw Kacie, and told her that I was spent. In addition to being disappointed that my visions of having a great run would not be realized, I was actually a bit nervous. I didn't want to spend the next several hours struggling to finish.

Soon after, though, it began to rain, and my spirits began to lift. I turned mile seven in 8:22, and I passed through the next two miles (8 and 9) in 15:00. I saw Kacie coming in the other direction and yelled out, "I've come out of it! I'm back!" Mile 10 was 7:30, mile 11 was 7:39, and mile twelve was 7:26. I was still walking the aid stations, but I was feeling much better, both physically and mentally. Mile 13 was 7:31, and I hit halfway right at 8:25:00 in the overall race time. I figured that if I kept running about the same, I could do the last half-marathon in about 1:35:00, and that would put me right at 10:00:00 for the Ironman. That didn't happen.

While miles 14 and 15 were 15:28, miles 16 and 17 were 16:09. Mile 18 was 7:54, mile 19 was 8:10, and then I once again fell apart completely. Mile 20 was 8:52. Mile 21 was 8:38. Mile 22 was 9:01. Mile 23 was 9:06. Mile 24 was 9:38. Mile 25 was 9:00. I rallied a bit to run 7:19 for the Mile 26, but it was too little, too late. I crossed the finish line in 10:15:56.

In the last several miles, the bottoms of my feet felt terrible. After enduring severe hot spots on the bike, having to run in wet shoes was almost too much. The course was so thoroughly flooded that we actually had to cross a shin-deep puddle at one point on the course. And given that the course was an out-and-back loop, that meant four puddle fordings for me. In my blue tri suit, I felt quite sunk.

Nonetheless, I managed to pass 184 people on the run, mostly by summoning the will not to walk anywhere besides the aid stations. I moved up to 143rd in the race and 30th in my age group. It was not what I originally had in mind, but I am happy with it given that it's my first Ironman.

If I sound disappointed, I have to admit that when I crossed the finish line, I was. Even though my first goal (once starting the race) was to finish, I did not envision such a significant collapse on the run. My training and racing suggested that I would run brilliantly. I blew that chance, though, by riding beyond my limits on the bike. In other words, my falling short of my 10:00:00 goal was a failure of execution--something under my control. That's frustrating. As a result, I didn't get the rush of jubilation I was hoping for when I crossed the finish line. Rather than feeling the most pleasant exhaustion, I simply felt exhaustion.

My overall goal when I first signed up for Cozumel was to gain experience at the Iron level, and I certainly did that. As such, I count the race as a success. And certainly, I can't sneeze at a 10:15:56! I'm looking forward to lowering that PR soon, though.

In the ensuing four days, I've had plenty of time to reflect on the race, and I've drawn a great deal of lessons from it that I think will help me both in my preparation for and my racing of my next Ironman: Coeur d'Alene in 2012. I'll explain those lessons in Part Three!