Patience Pays Dividends With Podium

 

After last month’s sprint distance triathlon, I set my training towards one of my A races of the season in August which is an Olympic distance triathlon in Park City, UT.  The training would be a twelve-week plan with the Jax Tri Olympic distance race sandwiched in there.

 

Since I began the training plan, I have been pretty consistent with getting the workouts in and hitting the prescribed power, distance, etc… Compared to the lead-up of last month’s race which was chaotic due to a bike replacement, I felt really good and excited to race.  Looking at the race venue and where my fitness was, I planned to up my bike average bike power from the last Olympic distance triathlon back in October of 180 watts to around 200 watts.  My hope was that improvements in aerodynamics and the course would allow me to get around 23 mph or about 1 mph faster on average over the last October race and still have legs to run the same pace of 7:55 min/mile.  With the swim being in the river with a current, I wasn’t too fixated on trying for any set time.

 

The weather for an early summer June day in Florida was what you would expect, humid. With a temperature at the start of the race at 77 degrees with 94% humidity, we were set loose.  By the end of the race, we were running through rain showers.

 

Swim

I felt like I swam pretty well, for me, but the numbers say otherwise with a ranking of 10/13, 44/70, 58/111 (division, sex, overall).  While ranking in the midpack overall is pretty common for me, I typically don’t rank near the back of my division.  This was certainly the first race of the last few races (if not every race) where I was below average.  While I am not completely sure if this is the explanation, a comparison of my Strava data vs. a few athlete shows:

 

Jay Total Yards 2121

Athlete 1 Total Yards 1744

Athlete 2 Total Yards 1824

 

That’s a pretty significant amount of additional yards if indeed that is the case. I will say that the swimmers I did see that started in my wave were way more to the right of me which may mean that they swam more directly towards the exit than I did.  In any event, after the swim and T1, I would find myself 2:34 behind the division leader.  At a pace of 1:22 min/100 yards, even if I went only 100 yards more than the others, the time lost of 1:22 makes big difference.

 

Bike

I was really looking forward to the bike segment after what was a disappointing bike split in the last race.  Between the races, I worked on getting the bike set up better and more comfortable to ride. My hope was that I could keep the speed gap to the overall leaders somewhere around 1.25 to 1.50 mph.  One thing that surprised me was that the bike course was faster than I anticipated. I thought that the average of the top five would be around 24.5 to 24.75 mph and it ended up being 25.36 mph with the quickest time at 26.16 mph (impressive).  My hope with keeping the power around 200 watts and my heart rate around 82% of max heart rate, I could achieve 23 mph.  By the halfway point, I was averaging 23.5 mph, 197 watts (207 Normalized Power), and an average heart rate of 163 or 84% of max heart rate.  At this point, I decided to stick with my plan to keep the heart to that 82% to be ready for the run.  Not knowing at the time the course was faster than I thought, in my mind, I was already going quicker than I had planned and was right where I wanted to be in relation to the fastest guys.  In the second half of the bike segment, I would average 23.2 mph with a drop in power to 186 watts (196 Normalized Power). My heart rate average for the entire segment would stay right at 163 bpm or 84% and my average speed for the entire segment was 23.39 mph.  I was happy with the speed and was able to get down about 50 grams of carbs during the ride.  Taking in more hydration and carbs has been something I have been working on.

 

After the bike and T2, I was in third place behind the leader by 1 minute and 53 seconds and only 11 seconds behind second place.

 

Run

The run like every other triathlon I have competed in was tough, but this one in particular with the increasing temps, high humidity, and non-traditional run course.  I would end up running the 5.9 miles in a time of 47:40 or a pace of 8:05 min/mile.  In hindsight, I wish I would have taken the second gel I had with me.  For my first two miles, I was running at a 7:49 min/mile pace, but I would get passed by the eventual 2nd place finisher before the 1.5-mile turnaround. The next two miles the pace would drop to 8:24 min/mile as the course would include a corkscrew that takes you up to the pass over the train tracks.  The remaining approximate 2 miles would see the pace increase to 8:03 and I would pass by the athlete who was in the lead after T2.  He was the winner of the division in the last race.  I was pretty spent and didn’t want to take my heart rate above 90% of max except right at the end with the sprint to the finish.  The cost for doing so is high for me in terms of the time it takes to recover.

 

Total race time 2:16:29 seconds.  It would be good enough for third place in my division.  I was 7:05 behind the winner of the age group and 52 seconds behind second place. So it was a pretty good day, but that run left me feeling just a bit disappointed that it was not quicker knowing what I had achieved last year.

 

At a quick glance, a comparison to the 2020 Olympic distance race at Camp Blanding, my pace was 7:56 or 9 seconds per mile quicker.  However, every race is different and some days the course can be quicker or slower depending on the venue and/or weather. So I decided to look into the running times of some of the athletes who also participated in this race and the 2020 race to see if their pace also dropped off.  A small sample of three athletes of similar age shows that they each dropped pace in today's race as well. It was a good reminder to me of the importance of keeping track of race results to be able to make objective comparisons relating to performance race over race.

 

Jay           2020 Pace 7:56 2021 Pace 8:05 delta 9 seconds slower (1.89%)

Athlete 1 2020 Pace 6:56 2021 Pace 7:19 delta 23 seconds slower (5.22%)

Athlete 2 2020 Pace 7:15 2021 Pace 7:28 delta 13 seconds slower (2.99%)

Athlete 3 2020 Pace 7:15 2021 Pace 7:46 delta 31 seconds slower (7.13%)

 

Final Thoughts

In all it was hard, but a really good race for me.  I missed two goals which were a) to set the quickest bike segment in my division as that is my strength of the three segments and b) run the same pace as I did in the October 2020 race.  However, I only missed the bike goal by 19 seconds and based on a quick review of the 2020 race, I would guess with a fair amount of certainty that most everyone who raced in both were slower due to the course configuration and weather (.  One positive I didn’t expect was to set the quickest T1 time.

 

With this race done, I turned my focus to the next race in August in Park City, UT. I feel I am set on a good foundation of base fitness that should enable me to do well there.  There is still more aero efficiency to find on the bike and improvement in both swimming and running economy.

 

A big #ThankU to my wife for all her support despite some pretty hefty challenges.  Thank you, Dear, I love you.  Also, thanks to the crew at both Mosaic Salon Studios and Enjoy Fitness for their support.

 

Jay Gardner

 

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