Kind of a pacing question, as I rode hard but not *too* hard over Yellow Lake, but the last 10k so from Hwy 97 on kicked my ass. I assume that was pretty much it across the board, and overall still improved my time over the previous year substantially, but was it that much harder than normal, or would you think/suggest that final 20k from the top of Yellow is always harder and pacing wise one should account for it more? (I didn't lose time to others, just felt hammered for the first 2 miles off the bike more than normal, then felt better)

After freezing to 97 last year - I flew into Penticton - low level flying this year for sure. Also, thanks for the GF ideas for pre race dinner & breakfast at Whole Foods - while "new" for race day, it worked as I expected it would. And, unlike you - no GI distress, although I DID stop for number 2 on the run...

Brent

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

that section on the highway is hard. Really hard. Though by hard I mean difficult to pace, not necessarily difficult to ride. I think if you feel good there, you've probably left too much in the tank. It's mostly downhill, but sometimes flat, and a few spots of even a very slight incline. So it's hard to really grab any sort of representative snapshot of power. Even if you were taking laps ever 2min, I still think there are enough fast sections where you'd really have to spin fast (at the point in the race where you least want to spin fast). It's the sort of terrain that you really have to be sharp in order to nail, and I just don't think anyone is sharp at that point in the race. Especially when it's a North wind, because you get hit harder up on the highway that you would on the ground.

That's the one section of the course where I really don't worry about any sort of quantitative pacing. I just ride "hard" and basically don't worry about power. If you are pedaling with some reasonably solid effort, I think that's fine. If you feel like you want (or, worse, NEED) to coast there, then you went to hard. But if you feel like you just could never really get on top of your gearing, I think that's normal. That's how I feel pretty much every time I ride that bit.

You just need to be so snappy in the legs to ride that sort of terrain well. And if you were snappy there, I'd wager you went too easy. If you can ride up through the twin lakes gas station feeling strong, you've paced it fine. Don't worry if the descent seems like you keep chasing gears, can't stay on top of it, etc. I think that's very normal.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Hey Jordan,

I can't believe this hasn't been asked, but did you take an ice bath afterwards? ;)

No way man. I was done with suffering for a while! I took a nice, hot epsom salt bath.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Sounds about right then. Second IM so it was definitely a ton of learning going on. But pushed hard the last bit and really happy with Richter thru Twin Lakes, just hard the last 10k. And like you said - it is supposed to be hard. So I got my money's worth.

Next year - same feelings but much faster pace. Improvement is out there...thanks again!

Brent

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

What's up next or near future.....

When you coming back down here to TO? I need my swim coach (aka Jill) back!

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BTW are you going to be putting the Whole Foods nutrition talk online? Some real good stuff there, just sorry I missed the first 25 minutes.

Brent

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

So from your speech I take it that when you train on the entire course you Big Ring Richter and Yellow Lake? Or do you just take it up a notch and only Big Ring it during the race?

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Like T says, "Remember it is all about the Bike because it is all about the Run!"

This is why I avoid training questions - in order to answer them specifically enough to be relevant, I have to provide more details than I think is appropriate. And if I don't provide that detail, it's largely irrelevant.

That is a good answer. I know that it's vague and it's not what the poster was specifically looking for. With all due respect, to the poster of the question, once you have been in the sport and training for a number of years, you can't put this stuff in a silo or multiple silos - everything you do affects everything else. It's all part of the same thing. People want specifics and silver bullets, but it does not work that way!

Say you said your longest ride was 100 miles - what does that mean exactly? That having one longer ride of 100 miles is optimal?

I think you guys are overthinking the original question.

I think you guys are overthinking the original question.

With all due respect, I suggest not.

What many athletes do and strangely many coaches as well is pull snippets of training out of what others are doing, or they take a snap-shot of what an athlete has done or is doing, will, say things like " Well, Jack's been really benefiting from a much higher level of high intensity training this year - his race results have been amazing". Jack may be scoring some impressive PB's, this year, but is it just because of the higher volume of higher intensity training his doing just this year? What about all the training he's done over the last 5 years? Was the slate wiped clean on Jan 1 and we just forget about all that stuff? Maybe the big volume LSD stuff that Jack was doing was too much for him, but it did lay down a massive base for him. My point is that it's all cumulative and it's all interconnected.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I'll be at Interbike, and also at Kona doing media stuff for Specialized. Jill (and I) will be back after Kona. See you then!

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

The audio isn't great. And I only got the first hour or so. Having never let it run that long before, I didn't know battery life. It's supposed to be 2.5hrs, but I realized that using the LCD backpack SUCKS the battery big time (if you leave it on).

I'll go through and edit what I can and see if I can pump the audio. But it didn't come out great. You can' really see what I wrote clearly. I should have set it up directly facing me. And closer.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

If I feel good, I big ring it the whole way. I've big ringed the entire yellow lake climb more times than I can count. I would say, typically, I big ring the whole thing in training. If I'm feeling okay, I don't need the big ring until about 2/3 of the way in, once it sort of really kicks up. I've big ringed the entire Ironman course before. It wasn't that much fun, but I *can* do it reasonably well (meaning my cadence isn't crazy low for too much of it). In '09, I *think* I big ringed it the whole way, but I really can't remember. In general, it takes just over 4.5w/kg to ride the whole thing in the big ring "well." Yellow Lake really isn't that steep or hard a climb. It's just that steep or that hard when it comes at 150km into Ironman Canada, especially if you rode those 150km too hard (or even just hard). I rode the early part of the course a BIT harder than I would have liked, but race tactics necessitated that.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

I think you guys are overthinking the original question.

With all due respect, I suggest not.

I don't want to sidetrack Rappstar's very cool thread but I think the question was just a curiosity thing-"I wonder what an IM winner's longest training run in the 6-10 weeks leading up to the race was". I doubt he was going to base his entire training philosophy on the answer. I think most STers know better than to overlook the fact that months on top of years of training go into accomplishing what athletes like Rappstar have accomplished.

Congratulations Jordan! Inspirational story!

This was my first IM, in what I thought were difficult conditions. We had a crappy cool summer in Alberta, and it was difficult to prepare for that kind of heat.

Given the heat, and the number of bodies on the course, I was wondering how you would rate this years race in terms of difficulty on a scale from 1 to 10? I realize there are many variables that might make it a difficult question to answer. Thanks, and great job! I was just starting the run as you were getting close to the finish!

I added this to the post on the front page, so I thought I'd add it here as well, since it was this reply by you that prompted me to write it.

[Addendum: the entity "WTC" that I refer to above is the Providence Equity Partners-owned entity. The history of WTC and the Ironman brand, from a business standpoint, is as rich as any history of the races themselves. So for those who point to the long history of growing the sport that WTC has to it's credit, I agree, but that is not the WTC that exists right now. This current "iteration" is the entity that I believe has not necessarily been making interests that are in the good interest of stewardship, but it's also this new entity that I believe has the most potential to do so because of the size and power they have achieved.]

I agree that WTC has helped to grow the sport. But I don't think you can credit the WTC of today with keeping the lights on in the 90s. Just too much has changed with the corporate structure. I.e., WTC doesn't mean now what it meant then... It's the WTC of right now (or as of the acquisition by Providence) that I'm referring to. While there is obviously some overlap and some of the stuff that I wrote would be true even of the "old" WTC, I believe that they are sufficiently different entities that it's justifiable to treat them separately. Once Ironman North America ceased to exist, I think that was a substantial enough change that you can't talk about WTC in the same now as you could have then. The WTC of then owned one race - and only one race - IM Hawaii.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Shoot, I'd be hard pressed to answer that. I'm not an expert on IMC. I do, however, think I'm pretty well versed in Penticton weather. And I'd say that the conditions on race day were quite typical for late August. I'd say it was a few degrees hotter than "normal." And that was a strong wind, although certainly not outlier strong. The wind did start earlier than normal - that was an atypically rough swim. If 2010 was ~2min "fast" (the course is always the same, but wind can make the course faster if you get a light NW wind that pushes you back into shore; a NW wind also brings cold, wet weather, though, as you saw last year. That same wind that made the swim fast last year also brought the hail to Yellow Lake, so be careful what you wish for), then I'd say this year was ~2min slow. A "typical" day will see the leaders out in 48min. 2010 was 46min. This year was 50min.

As a VERY rough guideline, I'd GUESS that I was about 10min slower vs. 2009. 2min swim, 6min bike, 2min run. In other words, had I had my same performance yesterday in 2009, I would have gone 8:18. Scary to think what Mary Beth would have done! I think she could certainly, with good conditions, have gone under 9hrs, which is remarkable.

Put another way, I think the course was about 2% slower than it was in 2009. I can't even remember what it was like in 2007 (I remember it was quite cool, but that's it; that's what I get for deciding to do an Ironman on Friday before the race. I can't remember anything from that race at all...). So I'm probably the wrong person to ask. The swim, at least for the pros, was clearly slow. 2min off "average" and 4min off 2010. But I'd say both the bike and run were "typical." Maybe on the hot side of typical and the windy side of typical, but still pretty typical.

if you look at the total DNF rate, it was about 10%, which is higher than "normal" for Ironman (I think 6-7% is typical), but I think that - had they not run out of water - that number would have been lower. Maybe 8%, on the high side of normal, but still "normal."

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

I am not sure if this counts as training plan intel, but in the specific race prep for Canada (let's say the last ten weeks) what % of your runs were ran on road versus trails?

Or for the 4W per kg guys, get a 46 tooth big ring...that would cover it....in effect the 46 tooth big ring is pretty well the same as the 54 tooth big ring for the 4.5 W per kilo guys (if you look at it with milliW per kg/tooth) :-)

In the 4 weeks before the race, I tried to do at least two runs (the faster ones) with at least the majority on pavement. How I run from my house, I can't really do a run 100% on pavement (there's always at least 1km out and 1km back on dirt), but I'd say I tried to make sure i ran about 90min-2hrs per week on pavement. But my long run was mostly on trails (on my long run, my first and last 10min are on the road). Before those four weeks, I basically totally avoided pavement for the previous 3mos. Though the one of the "trails" is really just a dirt path next to a paved path, so it's not "trails," it's just "not pavement."

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Congrats on your win and amazing comeback!
Just curious as you are/were a rower, did you row lightweight or heavyweight?
Do you ever get on the erg?

Lightweight. Last time I was on the erg was 2004.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

So a lot of this thread is about the bike, however I have a couple questions about the run.

Question 1: In terms of the hills that start on eastside past McLean Creek Road to OK Falls how do you approach these in terms of effort? (i.e. do you look to maintain pace going up then recover going down or look to try to keep PE constant throughout and just look at the rolling 5km pace)

Question 2: One of the comment's you made re the ironman run is that almost no-one negative splits. Looking at results I understand that this is the case, however would you say that if negative splitting the IMC Run course is sub-optimal or just not that something that is done often?


Congrats on the win and all you do for the sport.


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http://opensourcetriathlon.blogspot.com/

1. I try to keep RPE relatively constant, though I acknowledge that running up a hill is always harder, just like running down a hill is always easier. I ran a lot more long, steady hills (like the ones on the course) in preparation for this race. So I just tried to make it "feel" like my long runs on those hilly courses in training. Wish I had a better answer for you. I do try to keep my rolling 5km pace from drifting too high (say >4:20).

2. I'm not sure that it's possible to do it if you pace correctly. In other words, if you can run faster at the end of what is, at least, an 8ish hour race, that means you left too much in the tank. I think sometimes it happens in races, but that's usually the result of one of two things: terrain/wind (the course is slightly up hill outbound, and slightly downhill on the way back, or a tailwind on the way back) _OR_ you've had a crappy first part of the run (stomach issues, whatever), and you "come right" for the second half. But a race where the whole thing is well executed, failing terrain/wind, I just think it would require leaving a lot of time on the table in order to negative split. No one has done the math like they have for the 800m, where, I believe a 2second or so positive split is optimal, but I think when you look at the great Ironman performances, you just don't see negative splits, so that's the best "data" I think we have. (In 2009, I "negative split" the IMC run; but I didn't. I positive split it by about 1min. The reason it appears I negative split it is that the turnaround occurs more than halfway into the run.)

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Favorite ride is just to ride the course. It's just got such a nice rhythm to it.


Penticton as a cycling destination is truly awesome if anyone is interested. A great place to go and ride followed by a gentle swims in the lake!! Green Mountain road up to Apex ski station is an incredible ride. Come back down and hang a right and take it to base of Yellow lake to head up home adds some length and more climbing. But Apex is the real deal. 14km at 7-9% with lots of switchbacks. Bring your 27 cog! If you go up it anytime before May you're going to need clothes! Last year in August I needed vest and arm warmers because of the odd weather in Penticton for IMC but that is rare.


Here is the power file from last year's ride up to Apex. I was doing intervals in prep for Green Mountain Stage race. not posting to show my power, posting to show the profile.


http://www.trainingpeaks.com/...ZFESU2IDJBQRWE4MRC4E


Another great climb is left at Osoyoos vs. right over Richter. I think it is called Anikus pass (spelling???) That climb again is at least 14km's and if you go up, over and back down there is store to refuel. Turn around back to Penticton which means back up and over and that is about 230km's of riding. EPIC day in saddle.


Sorry, just selling Penticton and the area. It is really one of my favorite places to visit, ride, and sip wine!


Rappstar, continued success. You & SQW really lead the way on being "pro". A sponsors dream really. What's the next goal?

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@rhyspencer