Million Dollar Bike ride I signed up for the Million Dollar ride as a supported training ride and to take a different route than I have been used to riding with some elevation (3,700 ft gain). I felt they did a good job with directions marking the course and the rest stops were located at great places along the course. We had some elevation to tackle to get out of Philadelphia. The ride headed up to the Plymouth Meeting area and around Evanburg State Park in Montgomery County. I was able to complete the 76.4 mile course in 4:49:34. The ride had some great swag as I got a new bike jersey, t-shirt and the post-ride refreshments included pizza, hoagies, noodles and free Dock Street beer. I stuck with carbs since I was doing Broad Street the following morning but had a couple of beers to get me nice and sleepy for an early bed time that night.  Broad Street Run A lot of people told me that I was crazy to run Broad Street after doing the Million Dollar bike ride the day before. I tend to agree with the sentiment, but my rational was treat Broad Street as a hard training run and if I PR'ed fine, but I wasn't going to worry about it if I didn't because I was sure that I would still run a solid race. Plus it seemed to relax me more not having to worry too much about actually racing. I got up to the Start very early this year, maybe a little too early. With the crowds and everything, I felt it was better to be able to get into my corral this year than to be stuck in the track like I had been the year before. The race was cool and cloudy with a cross-wind from the west, which would have been ideal without the wind.  I got off to a good start, sub 6:30 for the first two miles. I knew that if I wanted to break 70 minutes that I would need to bank as much time in the first five miles with the biggest elevation loss. Mile three I started to feel like I had ridden a 75 mile bike ride the day before and my legs were getting heavy. I worked through it and kept my form up to get a second wind about a mile later when I took my gel. That lasted until Mile 8 when I felt really rough again. The race had been going so fast for me that I knew I just had to gut it out. I was tempted a couple times to walk through the aid stations but decided against it as I found those precious seconds had always worked against me in other races. Luckily, I did skip walking because as I crossed the Finish line, I looked at my watch and it was 1:08:02 but the official time was exactly 1:08:00. My original goal was to break 70 and I thought that I might have 68 in me on a good day so it was great to set a new PR and beat my goal time. Afterwards, I met up with some of the other West Philly Runners to share stories of our Broad Street successes and the West Philly Runners Broad Street after-party was at my house.  Black Bear Half Ironman The triathlon gods smiled upon us as we were blessed with perfect weather for the Black Bear Half Ironman. I got up to Jim Thorpe on Friday night and we stayed in the cabins where the Philly Triathlon Club had the training weekend in April. Saturday afternoon, Chris and I went over to the Beltzville State Park to get our stuff and do some pre-race workouts. Chris did 20 minutes each of a swim, bike and run. I took advantage of having open water to practice and swam for just under an hour. The lake was very choppy from the wind and boats. Going in the one direction, it felt like an ocean swim as it was rough but going the other direction was really fast. The water temperature was absolutely perfect for open water swimming in my wetsuit and was quite refreshing.  The weather held up for race day and at the Start the lake was calm, there was no noticeable wind, and it was sunny. I was put into the first of two swim waves for the half iron distance which went off after the Sprint and Olympic distances. I just wanted to have a smooth swim with no issues or cramps. I positioned myself on the far side of the buoys and in the back of the pack. That really enabled me to get up to speed quickly with little bumping and splashing. My heart raced a little at the beginning but I quickly settled down and got into a nice groove. The swim was pretty much uneventful outside of some guy drafting me and hitting my foot every 3-4 strokes. I completed the swim in 35:48 which was solid, but I thought I could have done it a little quicker based on my previous half swim when I did 37:30. Overall, the goal was to make the swim irrelevant and conserve energy for biking and running which was accomplished. I had a slow T1 which I need to work on a little bit. Granted the timing mats were pretty far apart and I basically ran through the whole bike area with my bike because our bikes were close to the swim exit. The bike course is a two-loop course with quite a few of hills, some are pretty steep. The elevation gain on the Black Bear is almost the same as the total elevation gain on the full Lake Placid course so it's a great workout for the full Ironman. I also used the bike course to work on my nutrition plan which consisted on a bologna sandwich on white bread, Gatorade and two Clif bars. I was able to take in about 250+ calories per hour and I ate every half hour on the bike course. I felt fine without being hungry or feeling bloated during the ride. I completed the bike course in 3:16:32 (17.1 mph) but again had a slow T2. The run course was more of a trail run as we ran on trails in the woods and rock filled roads in the park. It was definitely challenging to find flat spots to run on. My legs basically felt numb for the entire run but I was never in any trouble and I only walked on two of the hills and through some of the water stations. I just took it one mile at a time. The course goes through some woods and behind the Beltsville Dam into a steep decent and then an equally steep incline to get back out and it felt like we were climbing through a lava field. We got to run on top of the dam and then back through the trails to the turnaround point and Finish. This was probably the point were some clouds and a breeze would have been nice as it was getting pretty warm and when we weren't in the woods, we had the sun beating on us. The only issue that I slacked on was not taking any calories in during the run. I had two Gu's with me but just didn't feel like eating them. Luckily, I had eaten enough on the bike that I didn't bonk during the run, but I do need to be aware of this as my volume continues to increase. My final run time was 1:51:44. That was also an improvement over my previous half but I had hoped to be under 1:50. My final time was 5:55:31 which was under my goal time of 6 hours. It was slightly slower than the previous Pocono Half-Ironman which was expected because this was a tougher course. I placed 40th overall out of 194 finishers and 7th in my Age group. I consider this race to be a good gauge of my Lake Placid Ironman training and I accomplished everything that I wanted to during this race.  June Goals The next five weeks will be the biggest volume of training for me. My goals are to continue increasing my long runs and bike rides while continue to progress with my bike-run brick workouts. I think my swimming is where it needs to be and I'm just in maintenance mode at this point. I don't want to chance cramping during a swim by trying to push my pace faster since it won't lower my time much. My training program calls for me to cycle down the strength training over the next few weeks to completely stopping all together for the final three taper weeks. All things said, I'm right where I want to be and am getting excited as my training program winds down and the actual race takes place soon.
Race schedule
Phillies 5K - 3/22 Finished 24th place out of over 4,700 runners. Time 19:32, Pace 6:18 min/mile
Bucks County Half-Marathon - 4/12 Finished 21st Overall, 2nd Age Group, Time: 1:36:34, Pace 7:24 The Fleche Buffoon 75 Miles Bike Ride - 4/19 Completed in 5:10:37 Million Dollar 73 Miles Bike Ride - 5/3 Finished in 4:49:34 Broad Street Run - 5/4 Finished in 1:08:00, Pace 6:47 min/mile WPR 26x1 Relay - 5/17 Black Bear Half-Ironman - 6/1 Finished 40th Overall, 7th Age Group, Time: 5:55:31 ODDyssey Half-Marathon - 6/8 Lake Placid Training Camp - 6/19 - 6/22 Lake Placid Ironman - 7/27 |
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Less than Two Months to go!
May continued to be a busy training month for me. I increased my training volume in all three sports. I was able to get five open water swims in before the Black Bear triathlon and three of them were longer than the full Ironman distance. I also did my first century ride and a few long bike-run brick workouts. Here are my monthly distance numbers for the current year compared to last year:
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