IM Boulder 2017 Race Report

I typically write up these race reports because my race has been an amazing/disastrous/epic/traumatic experience and I use the process of writing to sort through all the details and get my head around my day. This time, though, I don't have a million race details to revisit or all kinds of ridiculous circumstances to complain about. I hadn't even given a thought to a race report until Joel mentioned it. But once he did, I started thinking about what I would write, and I realized I had some stuff to sort through after all. So Joel, thanks and this one's for you - and my apologies about the (relative) lack of f-bombs.

Let's Start at the End

Usually I save my big picture perspective on my race till the end of the write-up, but this time I'm going to start with that. Part of the reason I wasn't super keen to write up my day is because I walked away disappointed. I didn't have the day I believed I'd trained for - specifically the run I believed I'd trained for - and I didn't have great excuses like gale-force winds or rain and hail or surface-of-the-sun type temperatures to blame it on.

I spent over 48 hours trying to come up with some logical reason to explain why the run differed from my expectations. I'd considered everything from my busy schedule leading into race day (lame excuse) to nutrition issues (maybe a small contributor) to over-cooking the bike (my bike data doesn't support it) to the summer solstice (clearly that one's a major reach because it would take an entire paragraph to explain) to the fact that I don't know how to suck it up (still a possibility).

Finally, lying in bed on Tuesday night, I think I figured out what the fuck went wrong. Here's what happened:

The Morning

My pre-race excitement definitely carried through to race morning. I hopped out of bed when my alarm went off, despite a typically fitful night of on-and-off sleep, checked the forecast - still looked ok! cooler temps! lots of clouds! - and started getting ready. Checked my list, got my nutrition, almost forgot to eat breakfast, and then Chris (husband and TriSherpa extraordinaire) and I headed out.

We parked and went to drop off my bike special needs bag, and I was already running into familiar faces. Took the shuttle to the Rez, went into T1 to put nutrition on my bike, and - because we had our very own D3 section of the bike rack - there were five or so more familiar faces. I was so busy chatting with D3 teammates that I could barely keep track of what I was there to do. Almost forgot to pump up my tires till I saw a bike pump, and almost forgot to fill my Torpedo bottle with water till I'm not even sure what reminded me.

After I chatted a bunch and managed to actually prep my bike, I headed out of T1 to where the D3 team was gathered. There were so many of us! More chatting and taking pictures and I swear it felt more like a party than race day. Before I knew it I was in my wetsuit and saying good-bye to Chris and walking toward the swim start. Erin, one of my athletes, and I swim about the same pace so we wove through the gaggle to our start location and waited for our day to begin.

Finally the line started moving, and somehow they decided to put a gap in the swim start right between Erin and me (they were doing this periodically to spread out the swim start, it wasn't personal). So there I am, front of the line, chatting with DC and Dave and then I'm leading out the next wave like I own the place.

The Swim - 1:12:15 / 4th AG

My plan for the swim was to "swim strong" rather than my usual super casual (a.k.a. totally loafing it) pace, breath to the right (my stronger side) as long as my left shoulder held up, and pay attention to a few form points. Turns out that when I breath only to one side (a recent change in my swim approach) I do not swim straight. Also turns out that my left shoulder does not hold up well in a wetsuit.

So, quick change in plans, I'm now breathing to my left. I'm still not swimming straight but at least I can tell where I am relative to the buoys and other swimmers. I did feel like I was swimming strong, but my shoulders - freakin' both of them - were taking turns being cranky. So every once in a while I would breath to the right, feel stronger, and then switch back to left and realize I'd veered off course again. Annoying.

And I basically spent the rest of the swim balancing the grumpiness in my shoulders, trying to stay on course - a constant battle and one that I'm not used to dealing with - and guesstimating how much longer the swim would be. Ten buoys left? Eight? Six? Any chance it's down to four? Better assume six to be safe. Oh hallelujah that was the last one!

T1 - 6:16

My goal for both transitions was to be as focused and efficient as I was at IMAZ 2016. I think I did pretty well here, thanks in part to my awesome volunteer. I am constantly impressed by how on top of their game the change tent volunteers are!

The Bike - 6:15:26 / 11th AG

My plan for the bike was as follows: "Lap 1: Be Smart; Lap 2: Be Consistent; Lap 3: Be Brave." My expectations based on prior IM experience was that the course would be a little crowded for 20-ish miles followed by a lonely 94 miles (yes, the course was long, 113.5 according to my Garmin), and that by the end my legs wouldn't feel great. My expectations based on my prior 6 weeks of training were ... unclear. I wasn't totally sure what my power targets should be because my training rides had been progressively declining in power output and had felt like crap for weeks. My plan was to shoot for 125-130W but not to push anything that didn't feel comfortable, and not freak out or be surprised if my power dropped the final lap.

The bike ended up being nothing like I expected. For starters, it wasn't lonely at all. In fact, it took probably 40-45 miles for the field to spread out enough so that I was able to stop burning matches passing folks. That did stress me out a bit, cuz I know enough to know that burning matches doesn't bode well for the run. 'Course, I did still end up passing people even through loop 3 - or more specifically, leap-frogging dudes that were driving me crazy because they would power uphill and then coast downhill. You know something's wrong when I'm passing guys downhill who outweigh me by 40 pounds. I mean, honestly.

By the third lap I was feeling like a rock star. The miles had, with only a few exceptions, flown by incredibly quickly (mentally, not actually in terms of time - but that's sometimes more important). My legs didn't feel fresh, but they didn't feel trashed and I had been able to hold my power targets for the entire ride without issue. I honestly think my lap splits for all three loops were within 60 seconds of each other. CRAZY. I knew I was crushing the bike, was going to beat my goal split by about 15 minutes, and shockingly had not dropped a single f-bomb the entire bike ride. That's how good I felt. And that was supposed to be the hard part!

T2 - 8:56

This course has a long stretch between the dismount line and bike hand-off (my favorite part of an IM aside from the finish line). I had only put a foot down for maybe 30 seconds over the entire 113.5 miles and I was a little worried about what my legs might think when it was time to run. But I alternated walking and jogging with my bike, and even in those damn bike shoes my legs felt ok. Awesome! Run was gonna be fine.

T2 was a lot like T1 - focused and efficient, with not one but this time two awesome volunteers who knew what I needed without being asked. And I was off on the run.

The Run - 5:18:09 (Fuck. Me.) / 13th AG

My expectations for the run were that I was going to finally have fellow athletes to hang out with, see people I knew cheering for me EVERYWHERE I LOOKED and that I would run slow-ish but steady and PR the run. My plan was ... to say hi to everyone I saw. So, yeah, this is where my race went sideways. Took me two solid days to figure it out, but then I went back and looked at my race plan: apparently all I'd put down for the run was a pace target and a nutrition schedule. Why? Because for two months I'd had crappy, I-think-I-must-be-losing-fitness, how-much-longer-do-I-have-to-be-on-my-bike long rides - followed the next day by shockingly solid runs. So I assumed that race day would follow the same pattern. I had a rock solid plan for the bike, but had no strategy for how to segment the run, no mantras, no specific mental tools to pull out at specific points or under specific circumstances. I had forgotten that at some point I'd have to fight for it, and so I had absolutely nothing in the way of a battle plan.

On top of the not-having-a-plan problem, my mental toolkit was pretty rusty. I'd had one bad run three months before the race where I turned to the run-a-mile-walk-a-minute trick, but since then my runs had been pretty solid. Sure, I'd had some tough interval workouts and some miles at the end of long runs that hadn't been easy, but nothing that had become such a total shit show that I'd had to really dig deep and fight hard. I was really, really out of practice on that front.

So, when my quads started screaming all of 100 yards into the run, on a downhill section to boot, I panicked. If my legs hurt now, what the fuck are they going to feel like at mile 13? How the fuck am I going to run TWENTY-SIX MILES? And by the way, where are all the rest of the runners and WHERE THE FUCK IS EVERYONE I KNOW?!?!? If I'd had a plan, something to fall back on, the panic might not have taken over. I could've just focused on whatever I was supposed to do for the first few miles and not worried about the rest till I got there. Instead, I got overwhelmed and decided that I'd over-cooked the bike (probably not the case) and that I hadn't had enough salt (maybe) and that I was screwed (who knows). And in the face of that, the only thing I could come up with was to run aid station to aid station and hope I didn't fall apart.

Before I saw the photographer

Basically the rest of my run went like this: I walked the aid stations, but also walked those stupid little hills when you come up from underpasses - because, even though my legs stopped screaming by mile 2, I was convinced they were not going to last 26 miles if hills were involved (total cop out, I shoulda at least tried). There were obviously plenty of other runners on the course, and I did see family and friends and neighbors who'd come out specifically to cheer me on, and swim buddies and tri buddies and D3 teammates were also all over the course. And having all those familiar faces all over the course was truly awesome and I got a little boost each time I saw them, but somehow I never really got the wind back in my sails. I had decided by mile 2 that I was miserable, and miserable was where I stayed.

On top of that, by mile 10ish I could tell my stomach was off a little. I'd thought a few times over the first 10 miles that my stomach was sloshy, so I'd popped some salt pills and had focused on getting Gatorade instead of water. But at mile 10 my stomach was feeling crampy and I didn't know what that was about. I hit the port-o-potty but: nothing. So I kept plugging along, my stomach getting increasingly displeased with the entire situation. At the Flux Capacitor aid station near mile 15 I opened my 4th gel, got 3/4 of it down, and realized that was the end of nutrition for me. (In hindsight, this probably shouldn't be overlooked. My stomach is typically pretty solid, so for me to be done with nutrition really does mean that either hydration or electrolytes was distinctly off somewhere. 12% humidity on race day could've been to blame?)

After I saw the photographer

Then, at about 16.5, the wheels came off. I suddenly couldn't even make it to the next aid station. I do actually have some good mental tricks that I've used routinely in training to squeeze out a few tenths of a mile to the end of an interval or the top of a hill, but for some reason it didn't even occur to me to look for tricks, let alone use them. At the aid station at 17 I hit the Coke hoping that might help (that actually was in my plan), and when I saw my family at 18 I told them the only goal left was to try to hold my shit together till the finish.

I really, really just wanted to walk the final 8 miles but I was unwilling to let that be the story of my day. I think I walked a lot more than I realized, but I also remember telling myself that when I looked back on those miles, to know that I worked as hard as I could. I definitely believed that at the time - it's so easy to look back on it a few days later, though, when you can't feel the pain, and wonder if that was really true.

I hit mile 20 and really wanted to run strong(er) for the final 10k, but I just couldn't find the energy or the will to do it. By mile 22 I realized that I was totally out of gas from lack of calories but at that point there was nothing that I could conceive of eating. Finally at 23.5 I hit the final turnaround, and then it's basically downhill to a final set of turns to the finish. I actually did run all but two little uphills in those final miles, and my pace even picked up quite a bit. I honestly don't remember those final 6 miles all that well even just a few days later - but I do remember at the finish simultaneously being so glad that I was going to be done, and so totally dismayed by how fucking slow my run had been. But you know what? No matter what kind of race you've had, the finisher's chute is still the greatest thing ever - total rock star status. No one cares if your run sucked. They just love that you did it.

Overall - 13:00:52 / 10th AG / 84th Female / 414th Overall

 

I've never placed in the top ten in my age group at an Ironman or IM 70.3 event before. This should be something that I feel really proud of - but because I'm having a hard time being proud of my race (and because I know it was a really small field) I just can't get there.

What I can do, though, is learn from this. Aside from learning that I'm an idiot, I've learned that you can never - never - forget that it's going to hurt, and that you're going to have to fight for it. I've learned that even when I think I'm writing tough training schedules for myself, I'm clearly not going outside my comfort zone. I've learned that having someone else read your race plan is pretty fucking important.

I tell people that the reason you hire coach is less for the training plan and more for the feedback, the accountability, and the outside perspective. So, yeah, I can write my own training plan, but I'm done pretending that I can be my own coach.