I was pretty excited for the DiamondMan 70.3 triathlon. I really wanted to see where my fitness was in regards to Ironman Florida in 9 weeks. I had a little phantom pain where I had some hamstring tendonitis earlier in the year, but other than that I was hydrated, fueled and ready to go. I also wanted to get closer to dialing in my nutrition for Florida.
Breakfast: All eaten as soon as I woke up at 3:00am.
Banana Nut Muffin = 540 calories
Chocolate Chip Cliff Bar = 240 calories
Breakfast total = 780 calories
I also sipped on a 32 oz Gatorade which contained 320 calories and ate a banana before the swim start which added another 100 calories.
All in all - before the race - I consumed 1200 calories which I was pretty happy with. My goal was 800 for breakfast so I was right on track.
Pre Race – After emptying the stomach I went for a short 2-3 min jog to try to raise my heart rate and to warm up as it was a pretty chilly morning in Bear, Delaware. Fran and I walked the ½ mile trek down to the water and walked in the muddy ponds edge. The air temperature was around 63 degrees at the time, the water temperature was an awesome 77.5 degrees so it was nice to warm before the race. I did my customary pee in the water and I was ready to go. (yes for some reason I always have to pee as soon as my toes hit the water. Never stand next to me at the start of a triathlon)
Swim – The swim was a little bumpy in the beginning. I got tagged by a wicked right hand to the head. It put a smile on my face as I was excited to be back racing. I concentrated on finding some feet to draft off of for the first half as I was one of around 5 people not wearing a wet suit. The warm water temperatures scare me from wearing a wet suit. Especially after the carnage I witnessed at EagleMan. (Glad I didn’t wear one there. DNF’s were abundant because of the dehydrating effect of wearing a wetsuit in warm water) After making the swim turn around the sun was rising up directly in our faces. I picked a group to draft off of and sailed on my way to the beach. Swim time = 38:07 (Goal was 37:XX) I’ll take it! 85th swim. About normal for me, in around the 50% tile.
Transition 1 – I ran the ½ mile from the swim exit to T1 fairly quickly but slow enough to lower my heart rate. Nothing excited happened in T1. I saw Fran coming in to T1 so I waited for him so I could say hi and wish him luck the rest of the way.
Bike – I was excited for the bike mainly to test out my bike nutrition. I also have a horrible pedal stroke that I’ve really been working on making better so I was interested to see how the race would go with concentrating on a more powerful pedal stroke. I went out and right away hit speeds of over 21 mph without pushing at all. I was a little scared to keep that speed as I wanted to save room for the run. I decided to hold it as long as there was a tail wind. The bike was like any normal triathlon for me. The huge guys would pass by me and in my mind I would think about how I would catch them on the run. I passed by the slower cyclists that were better than me in the water while trying to keep my speeds at a reasonable rate. I tried to drink as much as I did at EagleMan, but it was hard. The temperatures were cooler so I decided to go by feel. I ate my nutrition according to my new feeding strategy and tried to keep things smooth. Nothing exciting happened on the bike besides the top of my aero drink falling into the aero bottle when we hit some road that was carved up and ready to be paved. I put my hand on top of my aero drink to keep my nutrition from flying out until I got to freshly paved road again. I decided my new plan of attack would be to fill up my bottle halfway so I wouldn’t be bathing in sticky HEED or Gatorade for the next couple of hours on the bike. There were some tiny climbs where it felt nice to get out of the saddle, but the course was mainly flat with a few spots of tailwinds and headwinds. The bike ended up being short at around 52 miles or so.
Bike split = 2:34:45 Avg Speed = 20.4 mph. 51st bike split in the field. I was happy with my bike split as my legs felt ok and my goal was to average 20 mph and keep the HR between 135-150 beats per minute.
Bike Nutrition consisted of:
2 bottles of HEED double scooped = 400 calories
1 bottle of water
1 Chocolate Chip Cliff Bar = 240 calories
1 Honey Stinger Waffle = 160 calories
2 shots of Banana Hammer Gel = 200 calories
Total of 1000 calories. I was shooting for 400 calories an hour So I was right on!
Transition 2- I attacked transition 2 as fast as I could and was able to get out in 58 seconds. By far my fastest T2. 19th fastest T2 in the field. Doesn’t mean much, but it does mean my mind was with me which was good, I guess.
Run – I looked at my watch and saw 3:40 and new if I ran a PR half marathon I could go sub 5 hours. I knew I had a PR half in my legs because I only ran 1 half marathon race before and that was a 1:41 back in 2010. I went at the run to push it and try to find the pain cave late in the run. Not to toot my own horn as I’m not a fast runner by any means, but I passed by a lot of the larger cyclists that passed me on the bike. It must be hard to be a 6 foot tall triathlete at 190 lbs or so. I was racing at 5 foot 10 and 157 lbs (my Ironman Florida goal race weight). I imagine lugging around 23 extra lbs is tough. After I got to mile 2 I realized this run course was on trails. I didn’t know that coming in, if I did I would have brought my trail shoes. Being that I was wearing my Newton Gravity’s I was sliding all around in the mud. Some spots of the run course even had up to 6 inches of water and mud you had to navigate through. I pushed on the run taking in Gels every 3 miles or so, and Gatorade and Water to taste. I had a nice side stitch cramp in my right side brewing so I pulled a salt stick out and starting sucking on it. I read to do this in a Mark Allen article so figured I’d give it a try. As soon as the salt capsule broke I spit it out as it was disgusting. It worked because the side stitch went away but then a new one formed almost immediately on the left side of my rib cage. I poked my fingers underneath my ribs and tried to massage out the cramp. During this time I just focused on holding on to my pace for dear life. The side stitch eventually went away and after navigating through mud slick after mud slick I found myself with a chance at running a 1:37 half which would have been a PR and gotten me under 5 hours for the race. At mile 10 I got a new cramp right in the middle of my gut. This one was a nasty one. I lowered my race belt and unzipped my jersey which alleviated a little of the pressure but it was still hampering my stride. I was literally gritting my teeth trying to bear through it. After a few miles of fighting the cramp I was nervous the run course was going to be long. I was on mile 12 and knew the finish was more than 1.1 miles away. I decided to not even look at my watch as there was nothing I could do and just hold my pace as my legs didn’t have any kick left in them. I pulled off the main course towards the finishing stretch and ran under the finishers banner in a time of 5:02:53. I ran the 13.7 mile course in 1:41:06 at a 7:25 per mile pace. Good for the 8th fastest run split of the day! My actual 13.1 mile time was 1:37:24 so I would have had a half marathon PR, however, you have to play by the rules of the course, and I guess a longer run made up for the shorter bike. That and the long ½ T1 run in bare feet.
Run Nutrition:
4 Hammer Gel’s = 400 calories total on run.
Total race calories = 1400 calories
I ended up finishing 2nd in my Age Group and 19th overall. The best part about the race was they had a box of Hammer Gel’s out at the post race feed area. Nobody was taking any for the next hour or so, so I ended up coming home with over 20 Hammer Gel’s!!! Awesome. That will fuel me for the next few weeks while training for Ironman Florida. Nine weeks till race day and this was just the race to get my confidence up for IMFL. Of course a full Ironman is completely different than a half ironman. It’s kind of like the difference between running a 5K and running a half marathon. Except nutrition pays a pivotal role. There is no way to tell what your stomach will allow you to do after 9 hours of racing. Anyway, bring on November and bring on Ironman Florida! I’m excited to re-enter the Pain Cave!
