monty wrote:
Knowing that very early in the run you had the race in the bag, and the fact that Hawaii is coming up so soon, why did you push the run? Seems to me that running an easy 3;10 or so would have been just a tick over a long and hard training day. It is not the swim and bike in an ironman that tots you, but having to run the marathon hard that puts you in a hole, one that often is hard to get out of. At the very least, I believe those 15 minutes will cost you weeks of training, replaced by recovery ones.
Im guessing you were living in the moment and just wanted to put something down for your mental state. But that is why we have big brains, to override those instincts. But I said that about Chrissy her entire career, and of course it was not a very long one, and i feel for this very reason. I was hoping you would win the race by two minutes.
Great job out there at any rate, you have 8 weeks which should be plenty of time to hold that form. Don't expect you can do more than a couple wells of real training, but this form should be enough on the start line in hawaii to be competitive.
And great swim, I would say the best of your career. Probably helped you that no big groups formed, and just a couple lead pack guys, but did you do anything different that could account for being just a little over 2 minutes off the leader? And do you think it can transfer to the polar opposite swim you are going to encounter in kona?
I didn't push the run. You need to think of it like Dan's calorie balance for swimming. Slower swimmers are punished doubly because they not only work harder, but they do it for longer.
For me to run say, 5min/km, and to run 3:10, that would have been an extra 15min of running, of impact, etc. Plus I think my form is worse at slower speeds. My goal was to strike a balance between running as slow as possible but not spending even more time on my feet. My goal was to run just under 3hrs - 2:58/59. So I was off by only about 3 minutes or so. I think it would have been harder on my body to run 3:05 or 3:10. If I compare runs where I run long and slow, I think the recovery is longer than when I run "kind of fast." I'm MUCH happier - and my body seems to be happier - running 4:30/km than it is running 5:00/km.
You have to balance it. Every minute you run faster is also a minute sooner that you are off your feet. There's no formula to balance this, but I think you run the pace that your body "wants" to. I think it would have been harder - and harder on my body - to run that much slower. This is unquestionably the best I've ever felt the day after an Ironman. I could go for a run today (but obviously won't). Never could have done that before. Likewise, just based on swelling in the lower leg, I'm a LOT less beat up than I ever have been post Ironman.
I do start better on beach starts because I think I'm pretty good at run ins and dolphins. But the one thing that is totally clear is that I start best in clean water. It's best for me to slide into the pack after a few minutes. I don't want to be in the pack at the start. Being in clean water makes a HUGE difference for me. So I need to figure out how to do that in Kona - find clean water.
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