Hey, I just wanted to pop by to say thanks for all the discussion and support! I just read through the entire thread.
I'm currently taking a much-needed vacation in rural Quebec and doing my best to unplug and focus on recovery. I really enjoyed my AMA after IMMT last year, but I can't commit to one now. All the excitement, screen time and navel-gazing isn't exactly conducive to recovery! With less than 8 weeks to Kona, I need complete focus. I wanted to share some thoughts here before truly unplugging for the week.
I really surprised myself at IMMT! My season before this had been a grind. A nasty illness in March followed by a string of related injuries (basically the first of my career) led to a DNF at 70.3 Taiwan, lackluster performances at Challenge Cancun, 70.3 Victoria and Eagleman, and a DNS at Roth. Not surprisingly, my level of passion and enjoyment for the sport took a hit.
Lead-up & Changes Leading into IMMT, I made some important changes. I took my training philosophy of "minimum effective dose", shared by my coach/mentor David Tilbury-Davis, to the extreme. A lot of pros and coaches are "maximalists" in that they consider optimal training load to be one hair below the level that leads to overtraining, burnout and injury. I take a different view. I consider long course training and racing to be unhealthy in many ways, practically toxic. So I aim to train as little as possible while still progressing as an athlete and achieving my goals. I could elaborate more, but this is the essence of the "minimalist" training philosophy I've been increasingly committed to.
In the 12 weeks before IMMT, I only averaged 17 hours per week of training. Given an achilles injury, there was a bias towards cycling and swimming and I only averaged about 52/km of running with a some weeks closer to zero.
Another important change was returning to training mostly alone. I enjoy the social aspect of training with the many awesome athletes in Guelph, but I realized that I was often compromising on workouts or pushing too hard. Training alone is dull (especially since I train mostly indoors) but I accomplish precisely and specifically what I need to do. I also reaffirmed my long held belief that I never need to push sessions past 90% effort in training. Truly all-out efforts are very finite resource that I have to safeguard.
I also changed my practices around recovery. I still take a more reactionary than proactive approach to recovery, rarely planning days off/easy in advance. But I embraced taking far more days off/easy on an as needed basis without the guilt or anxiety this used to trigger. If I woke up and felt like taking the day off, I just did. As a result of cutting out most of the truly miserable training, I felt a lot fresher and sharper throughout this block.
Another related change was prioritizing sleep above all else. I consider sleep the single best use of my time. I've struggled with insomnia for a decade and always viewed sleep as my greatest limiter. In this block, I stopped trying to fit my day around other people's schedules. I slept and woke whenever I felt like. I deliberately cleared morning commitments from my schedule when possible and stopped trying to make the early swim squad. This led to some weird days where I'd wake at 10-11am and sometimes finish training as late as 11pm! The bottom line was that I was averaging more sleep than ever before (~9 hours/day).
Come race week, I had a strong sense that I was either on the brink of a personal best performance or complete blowout. I felt extremely anxious until I arrived in Tremblant, then oddly calm. I was confident that my swimming and cycling were stronger than ever, but my running was a huge question mark. I was prepared to limp across the finish line like my last two races or even be forced to walk. I popped a naproxen on race morning and hoped for the best, which is a terrible strategy!
Execution It was a great day for me, though no race is ever perfect!
I was second out of the water again, swimming very comfortably in the chase pack. I two beat kick most of the swim, other than a painful opening 400 metres. I marked Andrew Yoder and Antony Costes on the start line and didn't even try to hang with Antoine Jolicoeur-Desroches.
I separated myself from the pack early in the bike. Lionel caught up very quickly, which didn't surprise me given his swim-bike focus. His ride was extremely impressive! To put it in perspective, I had to average 10-15 W more than my bike course record last year and I still lost 5 minutes! I hung with him until 130 km before making a strategic decision to let him go, otherwise I'd be walking the marathon! I was so paranoid about the slightest insinuation of drafting that I was usually 15-30 meters behind him, which is stupid and not a good idea in Kona!
I was so relieved that the injuries I'd been working through (Achilles tendinosis, ITB friction syndrome) didn't really bother me on the run. I actually had a feeling of fluidity that had been missing from my running for months.
To be honest, I'd all but conceded the win when I barely made up any time on the first lap. My attention started to wander and km 21-31 were probably my slowest. I started to convince myself that a conservative finish for 2nd was smarter with Kona on the horizon. That's when I spotted the 1st place pace biker up ahead. It's as if my legs picked it up without any input from my already defeated brain! After a decisive pass, I made a point of enjoying the closing section a lot more than last year, having not a clue that I was on pace for sub-8 hours or a run course record.
I was confident that I was capable of this run after controlled and unpressured sub-2:50 runs at IMMT and IMChoo last year. I just didn't expect it to happen now after such inconsistent run training. I'm still analyzing all this with David as there are obviously some lessons here to guide my approach going forward.
Other Thoughts A few other comments in response to points in this thread:
-Lionel is a class act. He was so gracious. I've always looked up to Lionel. We're strikingly different in some ways but I can relate to him quite a bit. I admire that he was so combative when he could have raced much more conservatively for his Kona slot. I'm kind of terrified every time I race Lionel, but he's undoubtedly elevated my game more than any other athlete.
-No, I didn't deliberately win by 7 minutes. Yes, it would have been smarter to win by 7 seconds instead. But people act as if athletes have accurate real-time position data and situational awareness every second of the race! My brain isn't firing on all cylinders after 8 hours and I'm not taking any chances! The last few km were controlled.
-Related to the above, I don't believe that racing a hard IM this close to Kona is a liability. I probably performed better at IMChoo 6 weeks after IMMT last year. I didn't go all-in with training during this block, saving something for the next two months.
-Yes, I could do a better job with self-marketing and social media. I could undoubtedly make more money or grow my following if I hussled harder. But that's absolutely not why I'm in this. As I've discussed in my annual budget posts, I strive for minimalism and simple living. Making more money or having more followers wouldn't enrich my life or my level of happiness, perhaps even the opposite.
I also have a love-hate relationship with social media. As much as I love all the meaningful and positive interaction, making myself transparent and vulnerable takes a toll, especially as a very sensitive and introverted person. I'm happy with the balance I'm striking now. I put a lot of myself out there. Other stuff, I keep to myself for the sake of my mental health, relationship, personal life, etc. I'd love to find more time to blog and vlog, but triathlon already takes up too much of my life!
907Tri wrote:
This guy is now 3-0 in Ironman races in the past year (got 2nd in a challenge full distance earlier this year).
Not quite. 3-0 at the full distance, period. Challenge Cancun was a half.
Anyways, hope you found something insightful or entertaining in this rambling post. Thanks for the platform. I'm off on vacation now. :)
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