Forty days to Canada. Wow, how a year can fly by in a blink of an eye. It feels like it was four months ago that Teresa and I stood in line to get our slots for Canada up in Penticton. I had big plans for this year’s Ironman Canada. I saw myself doing a pr with a crazy fast time, but to be honest, my winter and spring prep was just spotty enough in consistency that I am now just training to be respectable within my age group. I am not a believer in excuses, only in results. This year was a pretty work-charged year for me and there were weeks where training just could not come first, and it shows in my current fitness. I will go as hard as I can possibly go, but I am also realistic in my expectations. I never count myself out of anything, but I was planning on rolling into this final build with much better form.
T and I raced in the Racine 70.3 over the weekend up in Wisconsin. First, I will talk about the race and then about my effort there. Racine is a first rate race. It deserves to be a major race and was happy to see the big pros show up and go fast. Crowie, Bell, Major and Warriner all were there along with other top pros and didn’t disappoint.
So what makes a race a good race or a bad race? For me, it is all about safety, vibe/good energy, volunteer attitude, and a course that is laid out well for the athletes. Racine 70.3 gets an A+ in all of those categories. With safety always needing to be a priority, I was extremely pleased with the way the course was laid out. The intersections were all perfectly marked, manned and guarded by police, so there was no way traffic was going to impede upon the race. Also, the corners were all swept so clean you could eat off them. I was able to corner at high speeds with no worries with sand, gravel, etc. There were some chip seal breaks in the road that jar you around a little, but hell, that isn’t the race’s fault. Its Wisconsin farm country and that is how they build the roads there.
The vibe of the race is a great one. The expo was fantastic. The attitude of everyone we met from Kenosha to Racine couldn’t do enough for us…and with a smile. As a people guy, I loved this aspect of our time there.
One of the things that can be good and potentially bad in our sport are the kids that are volunteers. Kids are the perfect volunteers if the aid station captains have provided enough instructions so that the kids help the athletes, not impede their progress. I don’t think that I have ever seen a race that had trained the kid volunteers as well as this one. The young folks were all heads up, paying attention, totally in to the race and they could not have done a better job. That is saying a lot when you have to feed and water 2,000 athletes. Also, children give me energy. A nice young person with a smile throwing a coke my way is good for me in my heart and when I am racing with a good heart, I am at my best. I think the aid station captains were magnificent with their crews in Racine. God bless them.
The course itself is laid out beautifully. The swim was a point to point swim. We walked down the beach and swam from one end to the other. I had never done a swim like that before. Also, the buoys were perfectly placed apart so that when you passed one buoy, you could already spot the next one. This made it simple to swim a straight line. I am not known for my navigation, so if I can swim straight as an arrow on a course, you know it is perfect.
The bike course is sweet. It is an honest course in that while relatively flat, had just enough false flats and mild rollers to allow those whose bike is their weapon to get away and use that to their advantage without having a pack hunt them down. I also would have to say that I did not see one single pack or drafting violation on the entire day. The officials were there, but like a good referee in a boxing match, they were not a factor in the outcome of the race. I loved this bike course-fair, but still laid out in a way that if you wanted to motor around at 25 mph, you could do it if you brought the legs.
The run was perfect. Flat with just a couple of soul suckers climbing out of town that made ya work for whatever you got. At the half iron distance, I like the two loop runs. It makes it super simple. Three miles or so out, same back, repeat. No worries.
The fans were terrific in this race. Standard Wisconsin people- friendly, warm, enthusiastic, engaged. What more does an athlete need, eh? So Racine 70.3 is an A+ race in every way. I look forward to doing it again!
As far as my race, I was neither displeased nor elated. It was an opportunity for me to take a look at my fitness before my last four week build to Canada prior to my peak/taper. As I have written in previous blogs, my training and racing has been spotty since 2006. I gauge most of my efforts upon my 2006 logs to compare where I am at based on where I have been in my fitness before. 2006 was a strange year. It was epic from the perspective of what I was able to do with my racing. I plowed through barriers that year that I never thought I would be capable. My cycling really went to another level with both a 53 min 40k in an Olympic and my 4:53 bike in Kona. My swimming was as solid as it had ever been and my running, while not fast, was uber strong. I could muscle the same pace forever- I just didn’t have anything but one gear. But I was ok with that gear! From a personal perspective, 2006 was also the most tragic year of my life. I almost lost one of my best buddies I have ever had when my training partner Paul narrowly dodged death when he was hit by a car on a training ride. 2006 was also the year I got divorced, which is the single greatest tragedy in my life. I doubt I will ever truly recover from that, but I don’t go there in this blog.
So after 2006 I have struggled as an athlete. Last year was super in that I started to build toward a recovery from that layoff. I cannot be happier with my 3:01 in Boston. Many thanks to my good bud Jim Felty for guiding me through my build for Boston. If you are a pure runner and are looking for a wonderful coach and super person, work with Jim Felty. Top shelf guy. Also, as I have written in this blog, my 2009 Kona was my finest race ever. Not because I went my fastest, I did not. It is my greatest achievement because I was able to dig deeper than ever before and when I dug deep into the dark parts, I liked what I found.
So here we are in 2010, I am 45. So now what do I do in the sport? I had laid out huge plans for the season with some pretty high benchmarks. The reality is a guy has to work. Often, that work has to come first. I spent a lot of this year sneaking in training around the seams and you just don’t get better doing that. If you really want to get better in this sport, you can disregard most of the hyped BS methodologies out there. Put away your powermeters, heart rate monitors, and all the other fancy stuff that people buy solely because it is embossed with an Mdot. If you want to go faster in this sport than you ever have, you just need to embrace Gordo Byrn and Scott Molina’s mantra of JFT (just f*ckin’ train) 40 out of 52 weeks a year. If you do that, everything else falls in place. Once you are living that protocol, THEN you can start to worry about power and your FT, whiz bang gadgetry and the like. Not until you are consistent and frequent in all three disciplines can you even entertain the idea of looking at adding other aspects to your daily training regimen. That is the short and the long of it with me. If I want to get faster as I get older, I have to live the training I prescribe to my athletes. If I am not laying down consistent and purposeful weeks of training, than I will not go any faster. If that is the case then I will have to settle for 2006 being the highlight year of my ironman journey. Hope is not a strategy, but I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen. The prescription for this kid for the future is as simple as this- JFT, Jonser…and dig it while you do it!
So the report card on this race for me was a B+. The last 5-6 weeks I have been laying it down proper and I can see that I am making genuine strides in building form for both Canada and then Kona. My swim in Racine was 31 minutes. I lead my wave from start to finish of the swim, so I had no gauge as to how fast I was going. I felt strong and smooth in the water, so was surprised with the longer time; I am more of a high 26/low 27 kind of guy. I rarely freak out when I see a slower swim split. Swims are hard to mark perfectly for distance and with currents and things, it is even harder. I am not unhappy with the swim. I have struggled all year with my swim. Bottom line, I am one of those guys that doesn’t improve unless I am hitting 15-20k of swimming a week. If I swim less than that I basically maintain what I have in swimming fitness. I have been able to get in some bigger weeks as of late and I can see my swim splits gradually sneaking down a touch.
My bike was very solid. I rode 2:19. The winner of the race (my ag) rode a 2:11. He was a stud on the bike. We spoke after the race. He was a super nice guy. His name was Chris. He shared with me he is a former elite cyclist. It showed! He came by me at about 35 miles and I asked him if he brought anyone with him. He was incredulous. He said hell no, he was averaging 27 mph! Well there you go. If you don’t want guys on your wheel in a half ironman, truck around the course at 27 mph. You don’t have to worry about a wheel sucker at those speeds! I kept him in view for about 10 miles, but I just couldn’t hang with him any longer and I had to ride my effort, not his.
I got off the bike feeling good. I ran the first loop at a 7:02 pace and the second at a 7:09 pace. I was secretly hoping that I would run a touch better than 7 min miles, but again, races are a report card and my true running fitness off the bike for a half is not sub seven stuff yet. I ran as hard as I could with no cramps or issues, and felt strong enough to run at max effort the whole way, so that is where my fitness really is- 1:33 stuff. A fella can hope to be a 1:25 kind of guy all he wants, but if you run as hard as you possibly can from start to finish and you go 1:33, well, you are a 1:33 guy and you need to decide what you need to do in your training to get that run time to improve. For me, I am working that over in my grape as we speak. I’ll get back to ya and let you know what I did if I get it right.
Overall, I was happy to race from start to finish and go as hard as I could the whole way to hit the tape at 4:28:32. It really helps me and my coach Kristian put together the pieces as to where to focus for the time remaining before taper. If I were to have to factor in a flat or cramps, etc it would be much more difficult. I have no excuses. 4:28 was all I had in me. B+.
One area I need to dramatically improve is racing. I am rusty big time. T felt the same way. In years past, it would take me about 15 min to break down and pack my bike and tri gear to travel and I would need about that amount of time to rebuild and set up in transition. I was lost like a toddler in Wal-Mart in the transition area trying to remember what I need to have in there and where to put everything. Layoffs are really detrimental to racing, in my opinion. One of the huge takeaways from this weekend is as I plan next year, I am going to put at least 8-10 races on the calendar. This racing 1-3 times a year just isn’t enough. We felt the same way in St Croix. I think surgeons remove gall bladders faster than I set up in transition this weekend. I give myself a D there. The good news is I know how to fix it-race more.
Lastly, the one area where I give myself a very high A, if not A+, is my mental focus for this race. I just wrote a Monday minder about this on my website. Check it out if you feel the urge. I am finally getting my brain around the race nerves thing after 10 years of seriously racing. I think I raced the entire race in a positive mental state, with a very quiet mind all day. That makes all the difference in the world when you can just relax and feel your body do what it knows how to do. No hr monitor, no power, just max effort with a flat mind. It works for me and I am going to keep going with that.
That is all I got. Thanks for reading. As always, train with joy or not at all!
Jonser
