Thursday, June 23, 2011

Race analysis

I won't go into my detailed blow by blow analysis as I generally do. Suffice it to say that I am very happy with the swim - this is my best time for what felt like a "true" distance. I initially felt that the swim was long and heard other athletes say the same thing after the race, but based on my time and the time of others, I would say it that the distance was probably accurate. No HR information on this, but I swam at what I would call a TEMPO pace. I felt good in the water and went with it. Swam a little wide, but not as bad as I have in the past.

The bike - I thought it took me a long time to get my HR under control on the bike. That is the adreneline distorting reality during the race. I actually got my HR under control fairly quick and ended up averaging somewhere around 138 bpm on the bike. Avg speed was 20.4 vs. 21 last year. Last year my HR monitor crapped out on me during the bike so I very well may have overcooked it. This year I would say I rode it perfectly.

Run - I tried to keep my HR around 145 for the first two miles, but it kept creeping up on me. After two miles I just ran at a relaxed pace which was somewhere around 150bpm. I did not push, but did not hold back either. I got to mile eight and still felt o.k. so I started to stretch it out a little. I wonder if I pushed a little too hard at this point - may have wanted to wait another mile or two as the last mile was very painful (or maybe that is how it is supposed to feel). Finished in 2:05 which is a good half marathon for me. My best training comparison is about 2:03for 13 miles even, So I was really close to my pace. I was shooting for 2:00 even, but I knew that was an aggressive goal.

So I finished the whole thing in about 5:33. My goal was 5:30 and my obnoxious goal was 5:20. It is hard to complain about this.

Other notes - last year I had a fueling issue on the run at this race. This year I raced with my fuel belt and fueled with Ironman Perform in a concentrated form. Just had water at the aid stations. I did not take any salt as between the gels and IM Perform there was plenty of sodium. I believe that I did well on my nutrition at this race, but need to concentrate a little more on run fueling for the IM distance.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Patriot race results

Overall time 5:33:36. Swim was about 37 minutes, bike was 2:44:38 and run was 2:05. Very happy with these results - have not analyzed the splits and HR data yet, but I believe I could have done even better if I paced it differently (or perhaps not - need to analyze data). The big news is that I cut 18 minutes off my run from last year. My overall and age group placings improved dramatically. It feels good to be 46 years old and still improving.