Gary’s Fitness Blog

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Training Anxiety:

I’ve had a lot of anxious days with my training over the last few weeks. Most of the anxiety is not over what I’m doing or how my training is going but with my analysis of what I’m doing and what is “optimal”.

A few weeks ago I got really anxious about my personal workouts as I started thinking about the optimal way to train for an Ironman. Specifically, the most effective way to train for an Ironman to reach the goals I have set out to accomplish this year. The interesting thing for me as a coach is that many of the same anxieties that I have about my own training are shared by the triathletes that I’m coaching.

The truth of the matter is that my anxiety had less to do with my knowledge of how to train for Ironman, then it did with being 100% accountable for all of my personal workouts and training analysis. As I sat down to write this training phase for the Ironman Louisville group I followed the steps that I normally follow:

1. look over the annual training calendar and review what our training goals are for this phase
2. review the benchmarks or fitness tests that were most recently completed by the athletes and see where they are at and if they are ready to move on (I do this for swim, bike, run)
3. review conversations that I’ve had with the triathletes and see if I pick up on training issues that maybe going unnoticed: tired too often, consistently poor nutrition choices, stressed at home or work, etc
4. take the key workouts for the training phase and put them on the training calendar
5. complete the training schedule to fulfill both psychological training needs and to continue improving the triathlete’s fitness and physiological / metabolic profile to meet the Ironman’s requirements

What I found was that while I could sit back and answer these questions for my Ironman triathletes, I was having some difficulty answering them for myself?  It was difficult to be objective and honest.  It was impossible to be unbiased.  As I looked at the answers I was emailing and discussing with those triathletes that I coach, I realized it was sometimes the opposite advice I was incorporating into my own training.

Here are some of the inconsistencies I saw:

• I’d tell my athlete to “be patient” and trust in their developing fitness, but I’d tell myself “you need to start running faster on this run every week”
• I’d tell my athlete to “recover well and eat well” when they felt tired, but I’d tell myself that I “didn’t have time to rest up this week” (really bad the 2 weeks I had a cold)
• I’d tell my athletes to remember what our goal is this year - Ironman Louisville, it is 26 weeks away (at the time) and we have several months to continue to develop fitness before we get into specfic Ironman Louisville prep.  But I told myself, “You’re not in the best shape of your life right now, how are you going to be your best at Ironman Louisville”.

In the end analysis, I had convinced myself that somehow my training needs were different.  I was different.  When in reality what I needed was an objective voice, a voice of reason.  What I needed was the ability to step back and review my own benchmarks and training history and realize that I too needed:

• Pateince
• Humility
• Faith
• Rest, Nutritious Food and Stress Relief

In order to help me get this done, I hired a coach.  It has been a very positive step for my training and I believe that it will be a very positive step for the athletes I coach too.  I ended up using the EnduranceCorner coaching services, primarily because of the respect that I have for Gordo’s approach to the sport and lifestyle.  I used to learn a lot from his triathlon forum back when it was alive at gordoworld and I enjoyed learning from his clinic at the Olympic Training Center back in 2006.  He also has perpective that I would like to draw upon; he went from a working “Joe” doing triathlon to a professional triathlete.  While I have no dilusions of going pro, I think that this experience is worth drawing from.

Data Analysis and Training Anxiety:
Here’s a lesson that we all can learn from

If you are not doing the training, it doesn’t matter what the analysis of the training data says, you are not setting yourself up to succeed.

I have to admit that starting in January of 2008 I began falling for this data “entrapment”.  This began with the greatest gift I’ve received from an athlete I coached in a long time - my Garmin 305.  I love that thing.  But with the Garmin 305 came a new level of data responsibility.

Prior to the G305, I used a basic Polar Heart Rate Monitor that allowed me to get an average heart rate, max heart rate and time (not even laps).  After a workout I would enter that information into my training log (at workoutlog.com which I had used since 2003).  But after the G305 the process got more involved, I had to connect the watch up and download the data.  I started using the Garmin Training Center only for the data download and then would try to manually enter the info into workoutlog.  This became too much so I decided to just use the GTC, until one day in June when I went  to load my data and notice that all the data is gone?

Frustrated I search the data, thinking that my daily auto back up of my computer would have saved it.  It didn’t!  Ironically I felt like all the running and cycling that I had done for the year was erased.  Almost like somehow because I couldn’t produce some chart to post on my blog or share with other friends/athletes my body had lost all that exercise and training benefit.  It was really that ridiculous.

I moved onto using Motionbased and GTC, and then on to a new traininglog website that allowed me to also coach my athletes.  The new site became as much of a job trying to maintain and use as my job of coaching was, so I just recently moved some athletes back to workoutlog.

The anxiety about all of this came back into my own training program when Gordo asked me “what kind of weeks have you been putting in over the last 10 weeks or for all of 2008″?  OMG - Where’s my chart!  So I spent 4 hours Sunday trying to recreate a training log to share what I’ve been doing.

I’m not saying that having data isn’t important.  It is a very useful and important tool.  As a coach it is difficult, if not impossible to assist someone or help them without having the data.  But as a coach, If I had to choose between someone who completes their runs regularly and logged occasionally or ran occasionally and logged obsessively, I’ll choose the former.

That being said, to cut down on this anxiety and get the information I need, I’ve chosen to use the following procedure:

1.  upload my G305 data to workoutlog after each workout / swim times just manually enter (workoutlog now has a very clean user experience when the G305 has been downloaded)

2.  weekly upload my G305 data to my WKO+ software to get the deep down analysis it offers

Alan over at EnduranceCorner has had a couple good posts recently discussing some of these topics:

• Benchmarks and Forecasting
• WKO+ for Simpletons

The Positive Side of this data displacement and anxiety:

1.  I don’t have solid records of run/bike/swim from January to mid June 08, but I know this:  I set a personal best at the Iroman distance on Sept 6th (11:00), I then rode over 300 miles commuting from Illinois to Indiana and on Sept 13th ran a fairly decent 3:17 marathon.

2.  I set a personal best at the half marathon just 10 days ago, running 1:21:53.

Racing has a way of showing us “The Truth“…. training logs and charts often lie if we’re not careful or if we don’t have an objective eye to look them over also.  That is one of the best services I can provide as a coach.

Here’s a few links to where and what the EndureChallenge was:

1. How it started - Why guys need to find fitness (and life) milestones
2. When I decided what to do - Celebrating 30 years of living well
3. Great Illini Race Report - iron distance race on Sept 6th, 2008
4. Lake City Marathon Race Report - marathon ran on Sept 13th, 2008

I was able to get some data loaded into motionbased, but not all because the Garmin 305 started deleting the oldest data during the week.  I have the totals of the workouts, but not the gps data (and therefore no maps or motionbased links).  Here’s what I have:

1.  Great Illini Marathon - don’t have gps
2.  Effingham, Illinois to Paris, Illinois - don’t have gps
3.  Paris, Illinois to Attica, Indiana - Sept 9th
4. Attica, Indiana to Logansport, Indiana - Sept 10th
5. Logansport, Indiana to Warsaw, Indiana - Sept 11th
6. Lake City Marathon

It’s too bad that I don’t have the gps map from my first day of bike touring, it would be comical to see how much I was backtracking and moving around the Illinois countryside to get away from small gravel roads.  The other thing about the data during the bike touring is that I started the gps when I left the hotel in the morning and stopped it when I got to the next one at night; therefore the charts are a little odd because I stopped to eat at diners, fast food joints, talk to locals, etc.  That’s what I love about touring!

Thoughts on what this taught me about my athletics:

Lesson One: The biggest lesson that I’m taking away from this event is that I don’t need to fear Ironman.  This was my third Iron Distance race in the past three years and up to this point I think that Ironman was still intimidating me in some ways.  The biggest way that it intimidated me was (as I mentioned in the lake city race report) by making me fear a complete collapse during the run that left me immobile.  That fear caused me to develop a race strategy that was possibly too conservative.

Granted, I did have somewhat of a breakdown during the last 10 of the marathon on the 13th, but the next time I do Ironman (Ironman Louisville in 2009) I will remember that it too 2.4 miles of swimming, 435 miles of cycling and 40.2 miles of running before I finally slowed below a 7:30 pace (and I still managed a 7:22/mile pace overall).

Lesson Two: I can ride a bike faster than “touring” pace.  I have been pretty consistent over the last couple years in telling myself, “back off the bike or you won’t be able to run… back off, back off.”  If you read my Ironman Wisconsin Race Report from 2007, that was a pretty consistent theme during that ride.  I wish that I had my heart rate data from the Great Illini because I guarantee that I rode well above 145 - 150bpm, which is what I used as my ceiling (or mostly) during IMMOO last year.

The one little bit of data that I have from the bike is when I turned my Garmin 305 on during the last couple miles of the bike during the Great Illini (to have it ready for the marathon).  During that period I was sitting in the 157 - 161 bpm, which is a time that I was trying to relax and prepare for the run.  The best thing is that I got off the bike and ran well!

Lesson Three: The third thing that I learned (again) will relate to training over the next year - when you find your behavior and emotions changing, it is a good sign of overtraining.  I noticed this during the touring that occurred between the two races.  I remember sitting down in the hotel room after one of the nights of touring and just felt like crying?  No reason, I felt wasted and wanted to cry as I laid there on the bed.  You can probably see some of this if you watch the youtube video updates that I shared.

As I sit here (Wednesday, 4 days after the last marathon) I have been dealing with small levels of depression each day.  Nikki has noticed that I haven’t been in the “best mood” too.  It might be an exaggeration to say “depression”, but it is really hard to find anything to be happy about - even though I know there is a lot to be happy for.  I believe this is just another way that our mind tries to tell our body what to do and not do?  It’s not easy to get out there and exercise when you have lowered moods; therefore I’m going to listen and be very careful over the next few weeks.  I don’t want to get sick (like I did two years ago a few weeks after Ironman).

Lesson Four: I have talked about this a little bit in the race reports from both races (Great Illini and Lake City Marathon) - but when racing in endurance events, getting the mind out of the way is a major part of the race.  The body must be trained and fine tuned, but the mind must also get out of the way and allow the body to work.

Chris McDonald just did an interview over on Endurance Corner Radio where he talks about his 2nd Place finish at Ironman Louisville and 1st Place finish (and course record) at Ironman Wisconsin a week later.  It’s a great interview and he does talk about the mental challenge during Ironman Wisconsin and how it played a role in his race.  They spend a couple moments talking about the mental aspect of fatigue.

The last thing that I’m excited about is that I’ve learned about barriers that I’ve built over the years and how those barriers are abstract constraints that I’ve placed on myself more than they are real physical and physiological limiters.  That is a lesson worth its weight in gold.

If you follow my twitter page (twitter.com/ditschfitness) then you’ll know the basics as Nikki sent some out during the race. This report will fill in my emotions and feelings for the race, but first the basic stats:

Great Illini Results -

swim: 1:17:48
t1: 2:00
bike: 6:00:40 (18.6mph)
t2: 1:14
run: 3:38:51 (8:21/mile)

total: 11:00:34

Swim - as the horn sounded things were a little rough in the beginning. I’m not sure if I was not anxious enough; therefore unprepared to get moving or if I just needed a little time to get into a rhythm? It didn’t take long though as I felt incredibly efficient in the water. I had zero kicking going on and felt like every pull was really getting some work done. I kept thinking to myself, “pull yourself through the tube.” Which is a visualization that my coach/professor at UNL shared with me when I was learning to swim.

My time ended up being around 5 minutes slower than last year at IMMOO, but that is what I expected. I didn’t swim one time from Sept 9, 2007 to June 9, 2008. And once I started swimming in June I made it to the pool only a couple times a week (a few weeks I got three swims in). The one thing I did do this year that gave me a little confidence that I could get out there was the Cave Run 1.5 mile swim that the YMCA put on at Cave Run Lake.

Bike - the bike training this past year was also not specific to Ironman. If you have been following my blog for awhile, then you’ll know that I just wanted to take a different approach this year. I didn’t want to train for any specific event, but try some races out, if I felt they were possible. (And you’ve seen what kind of brainstorming occurs when I don’t have events picked out!). That philosophy of training for this year left me with few specific race rides. In fact, I did zero race simulation rides this past year and only had one brick (bike/run) workout this year at all (last weekend with Jeff).

All that being said, you can imagine how pleased I felt to see that I rode 13 minutes faster this year than I did at IMMOO. I realize that you can’t compare different races and courses, but that is a positive that I’m going to take away from this race.

I actually felt really good most of the bike. There were periods that the wind had me moving at what felt like a turtle’s pace, but I just tried to push on. The biggest issue I had on the bike was my back. I did most of my rides on my road bike this year, in fact, I think the longest ride I did on my triathlon bike was 50 miles (again last weekend with Jeff). My gluts and lower back were in pain pretty much the whole time, but with the wind I didn’t want to stand too much. Occasionally I would stand and just spend a couple minutes in my big chain ring and ride hard standing up to relieve some tension.

The other positive that I’m taking away from this ride is that I even split the 2 loops. I rode 3:00 on the first loop and 3:00 on the second loop. Can’t be bummed about that.

The one lesson that I’ll take away from this is that I need to learn to ride the bike faster. I was the only athlete in the top 10 that rode under 19mph. (The top two rode 22mph or over!) Training to ride faster and learning how to race that way would leave a lot less work to do on the run for me.

Run - The run training was very similar to my bike training. I did nothing specific, but I also never stopped running through out the year. The one thing that I always feel is true, if I run consistently, is that my run will not abandon me.

When I got to the run, I felt really good and started out pretty quick. My leg turnover was good and my pace was too fast but at a comfortable effort (6:40ish). As I approached the first aid station I asked for coke or gatorade. They said they had, “water and ecaps”. SH*T. That was my first thought. I had some egel’s with me, but my stomach was not willing to take any more of those. So I took some water and used a couple of my Succeed Salt Tabs.

As my usual plan of action, I walked 30 seconds at every mile.

As I approached the second aid station, I asked the same question. Again they had nothing but water and ecaps. I saw a pattern here and was getting nervous. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to run the marathon if all I had to use for aid was ice water and salt tabs.

On the return section of the first lap (we ran 4 laps) they finally had some coke available at mile 5. I took a can of coke and was able to drink a couple drinks. My stomach was pretty messed up at this point, but even more scary was that I was starting to feel really dizzy, my fingers tingled and I felt light-headed. If you listened to my last podcast (hydration and the role of sodium) then you’ll understand where my thoughts were going. I started to say some multiplication tables to myself, hoping that the answers wouldn’t allude me: “1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 2 = 4, 4 + 4 = 8″ … ok, you’re not there yet.

Around mile 7, I thought it was over. I stopped at the aid station and began to sweat heavily. I started to dry heave pretty heavily but couldn’t get anything to come up. My head was spinning and my legs felt like jello. To be honest, it felt like I had been at the bar a little to long on a Nebraska Football Game day. The aid station workers were standing there not sure what to do, they asked if I as alright, when I said “no”. He turned around and walked away like “oh boy… that isn’t good”. They offered me some bananas, but that wasn’t going to happen, so I asked for some coke again. At this point all I really wanted was a ride back to the start. Without different aid on the course I was worried that I couldn’t get what I needed to recover at any point. I also wasn’t excited about putting myself in a place to risk my health and ruin my chance of riding my bike this week and doing the marathon next weekend.  I guess the one positive about the several minutes that I stood there (I’m guess 5 to 6 minutes), was that despite the violent dry heaving, I didn’t actually puke fluids up.  Had I began to lose fluids with every attempt (which I saw happen to one guy), I’m not sure I would have been able to get moving again.

After I took the coke I started walking again. In the end, I think my ego and anger pushed me forward. Looking back, I am happy that I didn’t DNF at that point, but I’m not sure that being propelled by ego and anger is the place I want to be in life, even during a race.

After I got my mind settled down, I began running again. I’m not sure how it happened, but I actually ran ok once I was running. My body was still chilled (in the sun). I craved water, but everytime I tried to drink any I felt like I would throw it up.

Around mile 18, I finally got a bottle of Gatorade Endurance. Magic. While my pace was decreasing to 8:30/mile pace, my thoughts finally cleared up. I didn’t have the “lost in space” feeling as bad and that gave me confidence to try and push home and at least try and break the 11 hour mark.

It didn’t happen. As you can see above, I missed it by 34 seconds. 34 seconds is a tough pill to swallow after 11 hours.

Final Thougts:

I feel pretty darn happy as I come away from this race. It is 12 minutes faster than I went at IMMOO last year and while it’s difficult to compare courses, I’m happy with the way things turned out. While I am a little bummed about how my run ended up, it was still the 2nd or 3rd fastest of the day (I think the 2nd fastest on the results page is a relay team?). And I guess when I am at the point that running 3:38:51 for the marathon in a Iron-distance race is a bummer, I have more to be thankful for than I have reason to complain.

Now — learn how to swim and bike!

I also learned that you need to be very aware of the race course nutrition. The Great Illini website said this:

“The 26.2 mile run course will be divided into 4 6.55 mile loops. Competitors will have the opportunity to access their run course special needs bags every 6.55 miles. There will be aide stations and porta-johns every mile of the run course. The aide stations will be stocked with fruit, Hammer Gels, E-Caps, water, Heed energy drink and much more.”

I knew that I would need Gatorade Endurance and Coke to get me through the run.  I should have had Nikki’s Fuel Belt full of Endurance and used it, with some extra bottles for the fuel belt at the special needs bag.

That is why we do races like this, to practice and learn.  The great thing about this race is that usually I have a year to sit around and think about what happened before I get another shot.  This time I get to ride my bike around Illinois and Indiana for a week and then give the marathon another go around at the Lake City Marathon!

I can’t wait for Ironman Louisville next year though!

Last year I went back and reviewed all the race results from Ironman Wisconsin (IMMOO). I then took those results and put them into the context of the weather for the day of the race. Why? IMMOO has had some extreme variation in temperatures the last few years: 2005 - really hot, 2006 - cold, with very chilly rain.

You can read that original post from last year here: Ironman Wisconsin Historical Results and Weather

Last year at Ironman Wisconsin (2007), we had excellent weather. You can read my race report here, Gary’s 2007 IMMOO Race Report. No mention of weather, because it wasn’t a major factor in race outcomes.

Here’s the Chart of race results and weather, updated with last year’s information:

year / 10th place finisher / last HI Qualifier / # AG
(male 25 to 29 age group)

2007 / 10:21 / 9:58 / 156
2006 / 10:25 / 10:18 / 201
2005 / 10:50 / 11:10 / 186
2004 / 10:37 / 10:22 / 162
2003 / 10:32 / 10:18 / 173
2002 / 10:21 / 10:20 / 184

Here’s the weather charts, from wunderground.com:

year / mean / max / min

9.9.07 / 63F / 73F / 52F
9.10.06 / 56F / 59F / 53F
9.11.05 / 80F / 91F / 69F
9.12.04 / 71F / 85F / 57F
9.7.03 / 74F / 89F / 59F
9.15.02 / 59F / 71F / 48F

Interesting, if nothing else! I hope those of you heading to Wisconsin in a few weeks have great weather and a great race.

I just found a gps route at motionbased.com that was done of the loop section at Ironman Wisconsin.

Here’s the link: Ironman Wisconsin Loop Route - gps is of 1 loop

Last year I did 2 complete race simulation rides as I prepared for Ironman Wisconsin and chose a route around Lexington that I felt was comparable to the IMMOO route. The significant part of the IMMOO bike course is a loop that you do twice (link above).

Here’s the link to our route: Race Simulation Loop Route - gps is of 2 loops.

Here are the links to the two race sim rides I did: Race Sim Ride 1 - Race Sim Ride 2

Comparison Thoughts

The IMMOO loop is 39.69 miles with 2,695 feet of elevation gain and loss. The race simulation loop is 36.2 miles with 2,926 feet of elevation gain and loss. That is about as good as it can get in a practice situation. When we created this route we thought is was close, but we didn’t use a gps to map it out. Sometimes it pays to get lucky.

I’m not doing Ironman Wisconsin this year, but I know a few local triathletes that are, so this might boost their preparations. Who knows, maybe it will be a testing ground for future Ironman preparations too.

The Stats:

Division - M25-29
Overall Place - 284
Division Place - 38/156
Total Time - 11:12:37
Swim Time - 01:12:00, Swim Overall Place - 704
Bike Time - 06:13:30, Bike Overall Place - 769
Run Time - 03:35:14, Run Overall Place - 107

Stats taken from my IMMOO results at TriResults.com

Swim Analysis: I was very pleased when I got out of the water and saw that I swam in the 1:12 range. I had anticipated a time between 1:10 and 1:15, but my intuition had me closer to 1:15 than to 1:10. The frustrating part about the swim is that it took a lot time during the swim before I felt like I was actually swimming and making progress. The major issue was sighting efficiently. I ended up using small breast strokes in order to sight, because either I was swimming zig-zags or those around me were - or we all were to start.

This can be improved upon by doing more open water swims during the summer, but it will help to just become an overall better swimmer too. This is the first year in my entire life that I have swam the entire year (not a lot a couple months, but still swam some). That consistency for 2008 will be essential again. I would love to be a sub 1:05 swimmer, since Nikki swam 1:05 at her first Ironman…. maybe she’ll motivate me to actually swim some workouts with her this year?

I will also seek swim technique analysis.

Bike Analysis: I wrote a lot of information prior to the race about my race simulation rides. (Tags and links to articles) The interesting thing about my expectations for Ironman Wisconsin and those rides are that the two didn’t quite run parallel. What do I mean by that? Well - During the simulation rides my common riding time for riding 36.2 miles was between 2:01 and 2:15. If you take that distance and time and derive an estimated Ironman bike split it would be around 6:15 to 6:30.

My expectation going into Wisconsin was that I could ride at or just under 6:00. Why did I think that? Because I wanted to be able to ride 6 hours. That expectation was based upon a hope and dream, not on the reality of my current riding fitness.

There are a couple things that saved my bike leg from completely blowing me up:

1. I understood that riding too hard would blow me up and I knew what type of effort I could comfortably maintain for 112 miles. While I didn’t get a logical bike split expectation from the race simulation rides, they did teach me about my effort levels. Luckily I had spent a lot of time mentally preparing for the race and was able to ride at my proper effort levels and didn’t chase the 6 hour idea… luckily.

2. A period of contemplating reality and pain. I’ve been asked before, “What do you think about all that time.” During the bike, I had a long period of time (around an hour) where I thought about two people, John Reier and my aunt Connie. Both of those individuals have meant a lot to me and both are currently dealing with cancer. I spent a lot of time talking to John and it allowed me to quit feeling sorry for myself and the bloating I couldn’t get rid of. I thought a lot about how it was difficult for John to eat after his chemo treatments. It made me realize the joy that I was experiencing by completing an Ironman. Praise God for the day he granted me!

3. Ale8 and a Honey Bun. The bloating that I had and all the peeing I needed to do made it very difficult to take in Gatorade or eGel’s. (I wasn’t trying both at the same time!) Even taking all the salt tablets didn’t help. What did help was the honey bun in my special needs bag and the bike bottle I had that contained Ale8. If it wasn’t for the approx 700kcals I took in by eating and drinking those two items, I would have headed directly for bonksville. The Ale8 also calmed my stomach down quite a bit (it might have been the ginger?) and I was able to resume taking in my gels.

So coming in 13 minutes slower on the bike was a little bit of a bummer, but I knew I had ridden smart (besides the two times up Devil’s Hill) which meant I was ready to run.

Run Analysis: I made it through the transition pretty quick and tried to get into a “quick feet” running pattern right away. My legs actually felt sluggish to begin, but in the first mile I felt like I passed a hundred people. It also was nice to hear some of the encouragement from the spectators:

“Gary, you’ve got a nice cadence!” “Gary, you’re making it look easy” “Gary, your pace is excellent!”

I didn’t necessarily feel that way, but it was nice to get that feedback. When I hit the first aid station I contemplated to run through it and not walk through. But true to my training strategy since last November, I hit the split button on my watch and walked through the aid station grabbing water and gatorade. At 20 seconds, I took off again. “Quick feet, light feet,” I kept telling myself.

I used this pattern for the entire marathon, but around mile 16 I decided to walk for 30 seconds instead of 20. That may seem like a “break down,” but I was happy to be increasing the walk by 10 seconds and not several minutes or miles!

There were a few things during the run that motivated me and helped me push on: I was passing lots of other runners, I saw all the others with me several times and got encouragement (Eric, Beth, Jeff and Nikki), I ran with a guy (Jonathan Cross) that I met on the run and he was encouraging and during the last four miles I thought I was on pace to go under 3:30.

It turns out that I wasn’t on pace for a sub 3:30, but did run a 3:35. That was the 107th best run of the day. That made me happy.

Final Analysis: The one thing that makes me happy about the Ironman Wisconsin race is that I had a race plan and executed it almost to perfection. The times are a little bit off (re:bike analysis) but that was due to improper expectations not poor execution. As a first Ironman attempt, I’m not sure I could have been happier with that level of committment to a goal. I beleive all the years of reading others’ race reports talking about going too hard too early has really driven home the message that execution is a major factor in Ironman events.

Feeling very happy about the experience and what I was able to accomplish I have to admit that I was a little down yesterday. Looking at a time of 11:12 and then looking at where the front of pack guys race, I realized that it is going to take a lot to make it up there. “How can I get my bike that much faster?” I have asked myself that question several times the past few days.

It could have been that I turned 29 years old yesterday, which made me think about the “what next” question a lot, but I walked around the early part of my birthday thinking that maybe Ironman should become a thing of my past. Even though I enjoyed the event, I thought maybe I need to move on. Return to “the checklist”. The list that says I have to accomplish “x,y,z” in order to feel successful and happy. A list that would be difficult to fulfill if even more of my time was dedicated to “going faster.”

Sitting at my computer I turned on - The Samples. It kind of brought me back to a place in my life where I once lived. A place where “conquering the world” wasn’t so high on my list. A time where the romance of spending a year learning to surf or running away with a loved one seemed pretty important.

Then I came full circle. Ironman is about a lifestyle I want to embrace. I want to be active, I want to enjoy the outdoors. I want to share the joy of movement. So what if I drive a wrecked ‘95 Saturn SL2…. I may or may not “conquer” Ironman, but I’m going to embrace it! So I’m signing up for IMMOO ‘08, maybe another full-distance race too if I can find one in May or June.

[Sidenote: Interesting that Nikki gave me the book Stumbling on Happiness for my birthday!]

It is now a few days post Ironman Wisconsin and it is time to sit down and write my race thoughts down. I am going to break the race into a few different reports and reviews in order to keep them shorter and topic centered. The reviews I am going to write for now are:

1. Ironman Wisconsin - The Experience
2. Ironman Wisconsin - My race results and analysis
3. Ironman - What Next? (2008 thoughts on training and racing)

Links will be provided once the reports are complete.

Ironman Wisconsin - The Experience

Thursday - 9/6/07
Nikki and I finished our early morning training sessions and jumped into the car to drive to Wisconsin. The trip was pretty uneventful other than the terrible rains that forced us to drive 35 mph for way too long.

After getting into Madison, we went straight to our hotel to see Jeff, Eric and Beth who drove up on Wednesday. Soon after arriving, Eric looked at me with a concerned look and said, “Let’s take a walk.” Right away I thought that my bike had been destroyed because we all transported our bikes in a U-Haul that they pulled. The initial anxiety was an over reaction to what actually happened. The short story is that Nikki’s bike wasn’t secured well enough and her cassette ended up scratching my rims all up and destroying my tire. The solution was that I used Beth’s wheels that she normally rides because she was going to use a set of race wheels anyway. Problem solved.

Friday - 9/7/07
We woke up early enough to make our way down to the Gatorade swim. The water was really choppy and made me a little nervous. Even though I had improved my swimming a lot over the last year, it was still my first Ironman experience and the idea of 2,300 athletes swimming together made me nervous. The choppy water didn’t help.

The rest of the morning was spent at the convention center getting massages (I didn’t but the others did), buying items at the store and getting my registration packet. One major lesson I learned was to not let your USAT membership expire. My number expired on 8/31 so I had to stand in line forever while Nikki by-passed at least 45 minutes of standing in line.

Upon returning to the hotel Eric spent time changing out wheels and cassettes for us. Thank goodness for his bike mechanic knowledge. I should learn a few more of the basics too. We went on a little ride from our hotel that afternoon to make sure the bikes worked properly. They did, but I still felt a little uneasy on new / different wheels. Looking back it was just something for my mind to grab ahold of and stress about.

The Ironman Hospitality
The rest of the weekend was really governed by the Ironman timeline. We went to the athlete dinner and meeting, we raced, we woke up Monday morning and went to the Ironman store, attended the awards banquet and then left. One thing is for certain, Ironman does fully support the athlete and they do a tremendous job building up the experience to be a one-of-a-kind event. I’ve always been a little anti-MDot because of the associated attitude. (The one that says your not “xx” if you haven’t done Ironman or Kona, etc.) I can see the addiction to these events and I appreciate the place that these events have in triathlon. But I also appreciate the place that events like the Lake Barkley Race has too.

Why Triathlon is different than many sports.
One thing that continues to come up again and again for me is the line between the professional athletes and the age-group athletes. This maybe due to the fact that professional triathletes don’t make big money or because they commonly come into the sport from positions that rarely include the limelight, I don’t really know. Maybe triathletes are just level headed by nature (although I’ve seen some very unlevel headed age-groupers….).

After volunteering at the finish line of the Ironman Louisville race and talking to people that were also there, several people mentioned how nice Chris McDonald (the overall winner) was. At Ironman Wisconsin we sat down at the athletes’ dinner and Jeff began talking to a kid sitting next to him. While in line, I realized that it might be Zach Ruble a younger professional. Jeff, Eric and Beth ended up talking to him throughout the dinner and I had a brief opportunity to also talk to him after the race. Once again an example of a professional that was generous with his time and not big-headed. How many sports can an average fan/athlete get that close to the professionals?

The Spectators and Volunteers at IMMOO
This is definately the best part of the Ironman race experience in Wisconsin. There were over 3,500 volunteers at the race! It is pretty amazing to have volunteers strip your wetsuit, find your transition bags, unrack your bike, chase you down with bottles of water, etc, etc.

The fan support for this race is also like no other event I’ve done, outside of the Chicago marathon. A few things that really stood out to me:

- Swim to Bike transition: heading up the helix and into the parking garage was amazing. Spectators stood two or three deep all the way up the helix, which made it hard not to run by-the-way. A very nice pick-me-up after swimming 2.4 miles.

- Verona: Beth and Eric had told me about the people in Verona, but it had to be experienced. Riding through town made me feel like a professional cyclist riding through a small town in France. The street was baracaded off, spectators were lining the street on both side cheering.

- Devil’s Hill: If Verona made you feel like a professional cyclist, then this climb definately did. The spectators were line up on both sides again, but this time there were no baracades. It reminded me of some Tour de France climbs when you wonder if fans are going to get out of the way… in this case, out of my way. As we hit that hill, both times the cheering got me a little juiced and I killed the hill. I spun fast and past a lot of riders both times. (And noticed my heart rate in the 170’s!)

Final Thought
The experience of doing an Ironman is worth the time, effort and money that it took. I always anticipated I would race Wisconsin in 2008, now I am certain I will be there again. While I was a little too dazed to hear my name called out “Gary Ditsch. You are an Ironman” I was told by several people that they saw it online.

Another amazing thought. People actually cared and were able to see me become an Ironman. The only thing that was able to make the day better, was that Nikki became an Ironman on the same day! The training and the race will be an experience we will be able to share together for a long time.

After spending time watching Iroman Wisconsin last year and seeing so many people struggle with the cold temperatures, I thought that I’d take a little journey through the historical weather records on race day in Madison.

I also wanted to see how the race may have been impacted by the type of weather they had. The best place that I have found to review race results and the historical results is, www.triresults.com

The TriResults site actually just put up an Ironman Wisconsin Events page that has a great listing of the historical data, including: the results listing, divisional top ten by year and Hawaii qualifiers by year.

Weather Data: taken from wunderground.com

Sept 10, 2006: Mean - 56F, Max - 59F, Min - 53F
Sept 11, 2005: Mean - 80F, Max - 91F, Min - 69F
Sept 12, 2004: Mean - 71F, Max - 85F, Min - 57F
Sept 7, 2003: Mean - 74F, Max - 89F, Min - 59F
Sept 15, 2002: Mean - 59F, Max - 71F, Min - 48F

Results Analysis:

Taking some data from the TriResults site, I wanted to see how the times changed year to year. To make things easy, primarily because the data was already put together, I took the 10th place finishing time (male 25-29) and the last Hawaii Qualifying time for each year.

I realize that those times are not a good snapshot of the field of triathletes racing on those days, not even a good snapshot of the male 25-29 year old age group, because to finish that high you are definately on the long tail of things. But the data was accessible and there may be a day I’ll have the desire to search through and find the median number in the age group so that we can see where the exact middle finisher would finish…. maybe later. Here’s what I do have:

Final Thoughts:

So are there correlations that we can draw from this data? I think the one thing that becomes obvious is that the 2005 race was an outlier in terms of race performance (among the top 10 and Hawaii Qualifiers). When looking at the weather data, we also see that 2005 was the hottest year the race has been held. In 2005, the average temperature was 80F with a high of 91F. The high’s in 2004 and 2003 were both in the 80’s (2003 being 89F) but the averages were both down into the lower 70’s.

The one fact that I find interesting was that in 2006 the times were not significantly different than the times in 2004, 2003 and 2002. I guess I expected them to be primarily because we saw so many people appearing to struggle with the cold. The best explanation that I have for this is that the results that we are looking at are people that are on the course for 10 to 10.5 hours. If we were able to look at the middle of the pack (mop) and back of the pack (bop) results, we might see something different. My hypothesis is that the weather becomes more of a factor the longer your day is, but it is just a hypothesis.

The last thought that I have is that the weather will impact the way I approach the event, especially if it is going to be a very hot day. But in the end, it is a variable that is out of my control and therefore something I should be prepared for, but should not be anxious about. It appears that most years athletes do a pretty good job of adapting to the conditions.

To view some Ironman Wisconsin 2006 Race Reports that I tagged on del.icio.us go here: Ironman Wisconsin Tags

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” - Albert Einstein

I recently began reading the new biography on Einstein written by Walter Isaacson called, Einstein: His Life and Universe. I wanted to read the book to learn some basic facts about the man, but I have also gained some insight into the world of triathlon too. (Of course I had to be looking for it, but hopefully it’s entertaining / insightful none-the-less.)

The first theory of relativity that Einstein provided was called “special relativity.” (He later came up with his general relativity theory.) The take home idea from special relativity is that if there are two objects, determining who is at rest and who is in motion is relative to the “observer” and is not an absolute. The scenario used to best describe this idea was a man sitting in an armchair versus a women in an airplane flying above. In both scenarios the same laws of physics apply, therefore each person (man and women) could consider themself at rest, while the other is in motion. Neither is right or wrong. (Isaacson, pg 107-108).

In triathlon training and racing, I believe a similar understanding of relativity can be valuable. Follow my thought process for a couple steps:

- When training with a group it can be hard to do the training appropriate for you. We ride too fast to keep up or we want the group atmosphere, so we swim a masters workout that does not address an Ironman triathletes’or an individual’s needs.

- When developing a race strategy we make decisions and goals based upon what we would like (hope) to achieve. These decisions are not grounded in the honest assessment of our current fitness levels. (It would be ideal if specific workouts have been completed to assess those fitness levels… check out my last two race simulation posts as my examples: race sim #1, race sim #2). An even more frieghtening scenario is when we start setting race goals based upon our training partners’ race goals, keeping in mind their race goals may not be based upon an honest assessment either.

Even worse…. basing them on ideas, reports and race strategies you see posted at online forums or blogs (even mine)!

The relativity link..

The connection between special relativity and triathlon is that there rarely is a right or wrong when it comes to training programs or race strategies, there is only an appropriate program based upon the athlete (the observer).

When we complete workouts and follow our training partners’ lead we may be involving ourselves in a scenario that leaves us sitting “at rest” while our partner is reaping the benefits of the workout and maintaining momentum. The program has to be based upon the individual athlete to know for sure that progress is occurring. After all - it’s all relative.

Special Ironman Wisconsin 2007 Note:

I wrote this blog entry last week, but last night (8/10/07) found myself in the middle of a conversation that made me understand this idea a little better. A group of us doing Ironman races in September were sitting around eating at a local resturant, naturally the conversation lead to: How much training we were currently doing, How much training we would do ‘x’ weeks out, etc. I almost began to have an internal anxiety attack, because I came to the “realization” that I wasn’t doing enough.

It took a few minutes before I remembered this topic and understood that I was getting caught up in someone else’s experience. Their experience was robbing me of my own. I took on the attitude that what they were doing was right and therefore my experience was less-than-positive.

I pulled myself out of that place quickly and thought back to the positives that I personally have had lately. I also realized that if I was doing the training they were talking about (25 hour specific prep weeks) I would be left to heaps of dust come September 9th. Perfect for them, not reasonable for me.

How do we know if we are “at rest” or “in motion.”

There are ways that we can set up a program that encourages us to learn about ourselves enough to make those “honest assessments.” Here are several that I’ll share now:

- Races: A race is not only exciting, but a great testing ground to see if we have improved our fitness. Use shorter races strategically placed to enable yourself to make several observations throughout the year. Alan Couzens wrote a recent piece that includes an analysis of Jack Daniels’ Formula and using racing as test. (Use the link and check it out.)

- Fitness Tests / Test Sets: Set up your own fitness test and test regularly. Gordo has talked a lot over the past year about his 3 mile aerobic run test. Some things that I use are:

• –> 3 Mile Aerobic Run w/heart rate
• –> Thursday 6.3 mile group run w/heart rate
• –> 10 x 200 yard main set
• –> 4000 meter time
• –> North Middletown Bike Ride w/out and back, heart rate/time
• –> Valley View Ferry Climb time

- Meditation: I realize this may appear to be non-physical. It may or may not be, but one thing that regularly practicing a mindful state does is open up your awareness so that you can become more aware when you are training. Instead of looking at your training partners’ performance for validation of yourself, you maybe more comfortable looking within your own ability. (I do this well in training, not so well in the day-to-day).

Final Question:

Are you “in motion” or “at rest”? Remember, don’t confuse movement and progress!