Big congrats to my buddy Barry Dmitruk (Konaexpress) who took 3rd overall with an awesome race in 4:29. I really hope he rocks at his 24th Ironman in Hawaii in a few weeks.
My race was nothing to write home about. Had another one of those panic attacks in the swim at the start. Seems like this turning from a once a year thing to once every couple of races as I start hyperventilating in these mass starts beat the crap out of each other events. I was just getting over a cold from earlier in the week which may not have helped…ended with a Murphy’s Law style 35 min swim YIKES. On the bike I held it between 220-250W for the entire time and hit the halfway at 1:12 and finish at 2:25. My watts were dropping off at the end, likely due to overcooking the first part with too many spikes closer to 250 on account of being off the back in the swim. First half average wattage was 235 and by the end I had dropped to 228. The actual race time includes 3 min of pushing bike to and from the dismount line which gives the 2:28 split. At least I had the fastest transitions of the day at 50 and 46 seconds. On the run it was just a steady 1:32. I really tailed off in the final 7K loop and lost 2 minutes on the 1:30 pace. First 2 loops were right at 30 min for 7 K. I just did not have the heart to keep pushing as my day was done and I am racing the Esprit half next weekend. 7th overall, in 4:37.
But Konaexpress and and the other guys were studly, including my man “Cementbottle” Jean Lacroix who ended IMC last weekend in the ambulance at mile 10. Jean was “RETIRED” from the sport last Sunday nite and by this Saturday he puts in an 8th overall with a PB off the bike 1:36 run split…CONGRATS.
Now I have to go fix my swimming problem before Demi Esprit. I really seem to need 15 min of swimming with 10x30 second sprints to deal with the mass start…I have opportunity to do that again next week…I thought my IMLP tourist swim was bad but this really was an over the top bad swim. I was also probably too agrressive on the bike effort in the first half too. The average power for the race was 228 including coasting at the 12 turnarounds (6 loopsx15). At Timberman I did 2:27 with 215W, but more uphills and way more coasting.
Anyway, I guess I will do a lot of swimming to recover between this race and Demi Esprit next week.
Regardless, the amazing thing is that aside from the winner, the fastest age group was 45-49…luckily I am in the slow 40-44.
Nutrition was fine bike first 60K 550 cals of Infinite (1 bottle-large), plus a powerbar (200 cals or so), bike final 30K one bottle gatorade (150 cals). Run 4 cels (90 cals each), plus cups of gatoade at stations …total ~ 1300-1400…it was nice temps around 20C and I don’t sweat much but perhaps less than 1.5 L of total liquid was a bit at the light end. I’ll likely shoot for a bit more at Esprit and maybe I won’t tail off at the end of the run.
Barry was smoking today. I think at 46 this year I am feeling my age group; can’t do what I did last year. After a rock solid 4:28 on a hilly Vermont half IM six days ago I had zero energy today; worst run off the bike in 4-5 yrs for me. Pooh. Will have to get my act together for AmZof. But yeah - not bad to have 3 of us pre-geezers in the top five. Strange how all our times were so much slower than last year (guess it was the wind).
Dev, out of a very personal interest… do you feel you can completely recover from a half in… lets say 5 days?
On the swimming, maybe do a hard 30 - 60 second effort right when you go into the pool? no warm-up, nothing. just sprint for 50 to 75 meters, then settle into your warm-up pace.
Congrats on a solid outing in spite of some swim issues. I’ve encountered a few of those “panic” issues in my swims the past 2 seasons including Peterborough this year. It seems to happen to me when I get “swarmed” and hit in the big crowds at the beginning of some races. I find it interesting that in this sport someone will slow down on their bike and hand you a pump or tube and show all manner of good sportsmanship once you are on land but in the first 500m of the swim they’d rather drown you than give up an inch
I got out on my bike for the first time since IMLou today and was thinking about you guys racing in Ottawa. Good luck next week in Montreal.
Hey Kus, the answer to your question about recovering in 6 days (both races on Saturday) is “no”, but fun to do back to back races anyway. As Peter said, he had zero legs today, but frankly that is not really the case. Peter developed a slow leak in his tire during the bike that he was not aware of and his tire was flat when we came back. Peter, just be aware that Murphy’s Law will be gunning for you at AZ and aparently he is invincible at that race!!!
WRT to “sprinting” immediately at swimming, I will have to do that. Funny you mention that. Years go, that is exactly what I would do, timing my first 400m as fast as I could go. Usually I am warmed up when I arrive at swimming cause I bike there and for yesterday’s race, I parked my car around 10K away and rode in to: check out the gears and that my bike was working well, avoid traffic and be warmed up just like a regular training day. But too much standing around between my “commute warmup” and the sprint swim start…
The other point that I thought about is that in the past few years as I got more serious about XC ski racing, I put on more upper body muscle around the shoulders and deltoid (does not help my swim, but my skiing is faster) and all my wetsuits feel much tighter around the neck. Allen, I fully agree the lack of civility in swim starts. But you know what…in non wetsuit swims, when competitors are “identifiable” people behave a lot nicer. Just like pedestrians behave more nicely to each other than people in cars. All that rubber or metal around us seems to remove the human element.
I think next time I am out on the run course, if I see someone that banged me in the swim, I’m going to throw my body into a full out cornerback tackle and take the guy out at the knees. This would be the running equivalent. Anyway, gotta get things back to the 30ish range (like Timberman) or if not, why even bother spending money going to Clearwater.
I have had one panic attack before, it happened last year. Like everyone else said I got boxed in and clobbered, and swam over. I don’t think it was the contact that freaked me out so much as the being boxed in and feeling like I had no where to go. This year has been panic attack free, I try and line up on the outside and swim (within reason) as far left of the crowds as possible. Yesterday, after the first turn/buoy I did get swallowed up by a big group, but I just tried to work my way to the outside and some clear water.
As for the rest of my race, I was pretty happy overall, I executed my plan pretty well for the swim and bike but got away from my plan on the run. I took the run out to fast for the first loop and that put my stomach a little off for the second lap. After that the damage was done, I tired to pull it back together for the third loop, but I had slowed considerably.
I ended up with a 5min PB(over 2006 when the course was short), but felt like I had executed the run better, the result could have been better.
Dev,
Sorry to hear about your swim issue. I was surprised to see your bike in T1 when I got there as you seem to outsplit me in the water at every race. I spent the entire bike watching the time difference between us slowly diminish on each lap. Maybe if I paid less attention to what other people were doing and more attention to who was in front of me, I would not have come 3rd in the aquabike. The time difference between first and third was 15 seconds - piss me off. I don’t know how you guys are able to do half irons on back to back weekends. I am racing Muskoka next weekend which is why I did the aquabike yesterday.
Cheers
I was just looking at the results for the full, and it looks like the winner took 37min for T2?!?!? still went on to run a 3:11, he won by just over 1min! talk about cutting it close.
Scott, if I was doing Muskoka 70.3 no way I would do the Canadian Half. Esprit is like 30 minutes or more shorter than Muskoka, so that makes a big diff on the back end with no hills on the bike or run. So you really don’t need your top end like Muskoka to run over those hills. Just steady foot speed. My goal for Esprit is 1:29 run and a proper swim.
Kus, just came back from an open water swim and did like you said and no issues. I will practice that all week. Like EH said the feeling of being boxed in while being clobbered does not help the situation on race day. You figure after 25 years of racing, I’d have it figured out, but this stuff has only really started in the last 4 years or so. Never really before.
There are definitively a lot of not just fast but consistently fast guys in Ottawa…
I knew I should have done the sprint instead of the half but wanted to battle with the fast fuys (bike & run that is) instead of being smart… Ended up doing my slowest ever 1/2 marathon (including 1/2 marathons during marathons or IMLP (maybe 2 1/2 marathon @ IMLP was a bit slower but not sure) or even Zofingen 15 mile-run)…
Now I know I will skip Zofingen and probably do Cumberland…
Well since there were only 130 people in the race and about 30/130 were in that age group 40-49 so they make up the largest proportion of racers, hence of course they would figure into the majority of spots at the top of the results. Also shorter distance races tend to be favored by younger people.
Why don’t you list a statistic on how many in the top 10 are white middle-upper class? From that we would conclude that 90% of participants have a higher socio-economic status and that triathlon is not the sport of visible minorities and/or low income. Dev, you are likely the only visible minority in the entire race (although you do have a higher than average income). Should I also infer that triathlon in Ottawa is ruled by guys in the 40-49 age bracket and that since 90% of the top 10 are white guys that white guys are better at triathlon in Ottawa?
The funny thing about stats is you can make them say whatever you want and you can still tell the truth
Another solid result, in spite of the swim issues. Sorry to hear about that.
I’ve got a buddy, another long-time tri-dork lifer like you, who also had a major swim panic attack earlier this season. Told me he stopped several times, was thinking about swimming straight for shore, but finally managed to get it back together and complete the swim (and went on to crush the bike and run pretty well, so he finished decently - you wouldn’t have known what happened to him if he didn’t tell you).
This is a guy who has been on the OA podium at SOS numerous times, probably the most swim-centric multisport event there is.
(but zero scrum in the swim, which seems to be the major contributing factor to these episodes, along with wearing a wetsuit).
I guess it can happen to almost anybody, at almost any time.
Good luck at Demi Esprit. I can’t believe you are already onto your 3rd HIM in what, 4 weeks?
Maybe I’ll make it back up to MTL next Sept. I’d love to try for a(n even more) ridiculous bike split there!!! : )
PS - MEGA props to Jean for literally getting back in the saddle, and putting down a great result just a WEEK after IMC.
Amazing. Glad to hear he’s OK!
Yeah, Jean was awesome going from IMC Ambulance to sub 4:40 half IM in 6 days. Seriously, he was “DONE” with the sport, even when we took him out to dinner on Wed nite. Thu he says he might do some training on the weekend, by Friday he calls and says that he might do the half IM as a training race.
To XCsnail, while you might think the stats are all about upper middle class white guys, the same guys have been on top of the local leaderboard going as far back asa 25 years ago. Rick Hellard has been winning races since 1985. Rob McCulloch was age group National Champion in 1994. James Young went 9:15 at IMC in 1995. Barry Dmitruck has been racing and qualifying for Kona since 1991…its not like any of these guys were wealthy 40 somethings back then. We just have a solid group of local masters studs to fuel off. If you let your guard down for a moment, there are 5-10 guys who will blow by, be it in training or racing…slackers be warned.
In response to the question about recovery on back-to-back half IM wknds, the answer is: depends -
on your fitness level
on the course and temp for the first one
how much you have raced thus far in the season
Last year I did the hilly Vermont half IM on a sun. and then the Cdn six days later (a flat course but tough in its own way), and both went well - 4:31 at Vt and 4:23 at Cdn. This yr I did the same thing and while Vermont was very solid (4:28), I had my worst race in 4-5 yrs at the Cdn (4:32 - 9 min slower than last yr’s time, although windier this yr and the run course last yr was 1-2 minutes short); am still feeling crappy two days later, which suggests it really took its toll this time
Reasons:
I pushed harder in Vermont this yr on the run (and it was hillier than last yr’s version) and ran a 1:27 split as opposed to 1:30 last yr (also drove home 5 hrs this yr directly, as opposed to staying in Vt overnight after race last yr)
did a more “active recovery” this yr - perhaps too much?
biggest reason: the Cdn last yr was my 6th half IM race in 8 wknds, so my body was used to the racing tempo; this yr I’ve only done 4 so far and no back2back until the Vermont/Cdn stretch
I used to have similar panic attacks. I am not sure how you do warm up but what solved it for me was to do the swimming equivalent of running strides as part of a 5-10 minute swim warm up. Those 10-15 seconds pickups seem to acclimatize me to the upcoming frenzy.
In case it does occur: polo swimming for 20-30 seconds while breathing deep and slow (head above the water) often takes care of it.
Thanks Alex…you are correct, when I have a hard swim warmup, the issues do not surface in the swim.
Kus, today in my swim I road my bike to the river, put on the suit and immediately started hammering for 5 minutes and 2 minutes in, I could feel a similar effect (but no one swimming over my back) and tried not to slow down to “get oxygen” but pushed through as I would have to do in a race…by the end of the 5 min, my body felt like rubber as it can in a race swim start. Then I swam 5 min easy and got into my main set of 20x90 seconds with 75 second on, 15 second cruise and everything was fine.
So when I arrive at Esprit, I am doing the “crazy sprint” solo, when I arrive, then take 5 min to cruise easy, do a few more 20 second sprints and go to the line and hopefully have a good swim.
Yeah, that pretty well sums it up. Our wives have a good laugh over all of it and figure better than than other women :-)…at least when we go out to play, the tightest butt we get to chase is the one on the seat in front of the wheel we’re hanging off…
