Ironman Florida Race Report -Part 2
Bike- I have been working very hard on my bike and the entire emphasis since KY has been cycling. My coach has been killing me, and it has been all indoor torture for the last few weeks. Getting on, I felt better already than I had at Louisville. My goal was to push 5-10 watts higher than my Lou bike and so I got out at a good clip. I only displayed my 3 second power, average power, and time on my Garmin. I don’t like to be distracted my seeing the mileage and trying to “make up time” on the bike, that is usually a losing scenario. Bad headwind on the first hour and then there were the draft packs.
Awesome photos courtesy of www.DaveMPhotography.com
Slight rant: I try to give the benefit of the doubt to people with drafting. The truth is, if you’re not at the very front or back of the field on the bike, or if you’re not a terrible swimmer/great biker combo who’s moving up in the field the entire bike, there are going to be times when the bike course is crowded, especially on a super flat course. BUT, this was the worst drafting I had seen. When you see people sitting four wide across the road and ten plus deep (and not in the midst of changing position) there is really no other explanation for what’s going on.
These packs were messing with my flow bc I’d come up on them and I knew I couldn’t pass the whole pack, yet I also wanted to go harder than they were going. So my only solution was to spin at a legal distance behind until a draft marshal or aid station came to break them up. I was getting frustrated because I was trying to keep my watts steady and instead it was surge, spin, surge, spin.
So for nutrition this go –round I tried something different. I really just like to have coke so I went with EFS vanilla, coke that I put in my behind the seat bottle, and one double shot caffeinated gel that I was saving for a low point. I hit the low point about mile 80 or whenever the really bumpy road started.
All the sudden, I couldn’t keep my watts up and they were going down in a hurry. My legs were hurting from the constant pedaling with no breaks that a flat terrain requires. I had to take more and more micro-breaks where I would have to shift around and stop pedaling. Also, my right hip was starting to hurt.
My hip is what had really messed with my IM KY bike. I ended up having to sit up to pedal for two hours, and my shot at a KQ time was over with my resulting bike split. I was a little fearful about this happening at FL and I REALLY laid off the bike and upped the PT the last week plus prior. There was no time if not then for the double shot, so I took that along with another coke I left at special needs and immediately started to feel better.
I have to admit that in the back of my mind, I was also thinking about Jared and Joseph catching me on the bike. By this time I was almost at mile 90, and I had avoided being caught by any ATCers thus far. I knew they couldn’t be far behind and I really really didn’t want to let that happen. Turns out that they were within a minute at one point!
I had been keeping rough track of my time versus mile markers, relative to the easily divisible 20mph standard. When we turned to go back into town I started catching back up my projections and feeling better to boot. When we got to the windy section, I realized that I may still be able to bike sub 5:45, which is what I wanted.. with 5:40 as my stretch goal. I knew if I got close to 5:40 on the bike, I could be on the run around 7:00 total time, which is what I needed to be on track.
I saw my parents and John’s dad several times on the bike which was soo awesome every time. I don’t know how my dad got around to so many places, with it being a one loop course, but he did great. Spectators don’t really realize what a HUGE boost it is to see a friendly face when you start to feel bad. Coming back into town I saw Todd Lappi and yelled out his name. I started smiling then because he told me before the race (being encouraging) that he thought I could get 10:55. Of course I couldn’t help but think to myself, “I think I can beat that!” I had a huge grin on my face because I knew h e would be doing the math when he saw me and be surprised.
When we turned back into the very windy part, I felt renewed and really pushed it the last few miles in. I had gotten this far, there was NO WAY I was letting Joseph and Jared catch me now! I saw Jerome and Dave M on a scooter too, which was pretty cool.
Overall, I still felt like I had a better bike than at IM KY. I have improved a lot over the last two years and it won’t get better overnight. The bike will be my other focus over the winter and I gradually hope to keep taking time off.
Getting back into transition, I jumped off the bike and saw that the race clock was under 7 hours. I remembered at WI I came off at over 8 hours and 7:25 at Lou. I was absolutely elated knowing that I was so far “ahead” and just burned through transition and out onto the run course.
