Outlaw Triathlon - Part 3 - My Race Performance

This is one of a three part set of posts about my first iron distance triathlon: Outlaw Triathlon 2017. This post contains the analysis of my race performance. You can also read about my training and my review of the event.

In this final post in my series on the Outlaw Triathlon I want to review my performance, look at what I learnt and how to improve if (when) I do another event of this distance in the future.

Context

Prior to this event I'd never done an iron distance triathlon before. In fact, apart from the middle distance event I did in the build up, the longest I'd gone before was an olympic distance tri. I'd also previously run two marathons, including a 2:59:34 at London in 2016.

I've already covered training in another post in this series and felt that I was going into the race in the best possible shape that I could be. No injuries or niggles. Calves felt a fraction tight, but I find that's quite common for me after a taper period.

The Swim

I've been working really hard on my swim in the build up. Made some huge improvements. Prior to starting the training plan the longest I had ever swum in one go was 2.4km. Target pace was 2:00/100m that I'd been practising in training.

The main thing I don't like in a mass start swim is the washing machine that occurs while everyone gets going and jostles for a good position. I hate having my legs pushed down from behind. However, over the last couple of races I've been made a real effort to start in the middle of the pack to help overcome this fear. It worked!

I positioned myself at the front of bay 3 (70-90 minute swim time), figuring that my target time of 75-80 minutes would let me swim at the same speed as those around me. As it turns out this was a great decision. I was able to get away cleanly and by the time we merged with bays 1 and 2 the fast swimmers were already away and I had got into a good rhythm.

I managed to get in with a good bunch who all seemed to be able to swim in a mostly straight line. Got my stroke nice and smooth and my breathing nice and even. Being in a group like this creates a great drafting effect, meaning it's possible to swim quite fast with far less effort. Also the nice straight Outlaw swim course meant I didn't have to spend much time sighting as I have the fortune of generally being able to swim in a straight line in open water.

The swim seemed to fly by and I came out of the water with a swim time of 1:13:52 at a pace of 1:54/100m, so significantly quicker than expected. Got my wetsuit off fine, but a slight touch of cramp in both calf muscles while doing so was a bit worrying. Fortunately it didn't turn into a full cramp and eased off as soon as I started moving into the change tent – but did leave me with calf muscles tighter that I would have liked.

T1

I swam with my tri-suit under my wetsuit, so no need to get changed in T1. Just a quick foot dry and put some socks on. Number belt, gloves, sungalsses and bike hat plus a few essentials into the rear pockets. Transition time of 5:37, which I would have liked to have been at least a minute quicker. Need more practice getting stuff in and out of kit bags!

Bike

I had a brilliant bike leg. During my long training rides I'd been averaging a speed of just over 29kph on a slightly hillier route than the Outlaw. I was therefore hoping that less hills and race day fitness would allow me to push that above 30kph and thus hit the sub-6-hour bike split. It worked!

The bike course is made up of three loops. Over the first two I was averaging around 32kph. By the third lap I was starting to tire a bit but also my calf muscles continued to tighten up. Knowing that I'm prone to tight calves at the end of a marathon I took the decision to back off just a fraction to preserve my legs for the run as much as possible. However, I was able keep the average speed high and come home with a bike time of 5:58:26, so job definitely done.

Given that prior to starting training for the Outlaw I'd only ever done one ride over 100 miles, to achieve such a good bike time was more than I had hoped for. I also feel that I got the bike nutrition pretty much spot on (but that's covered in its own section later).

T2

Nothing particularly special about T2. The marshals rack your bike for you, which is most welcome. Then it's into the change tent to switch to run gear. I decided to run in my Saucony Type A6 racing flats and go with tie up laces. I felt the few seconds spent tying laces was well worth it given the extra comfort and fit over using elastic ones. Time in T2 was 3:15, which was good considering the amount of kit bag faffing involved!

Run

The run was tough: far harder than I was expecting. Given that I did a sub-3-hour marathon in 2016 I was hoping to breeze round a 3:30 with the goal of pushing for a 3:20 if possible. Having never done this distance triathlon before I was slightly caught out at just how hard the run would be directly after such a long swim and bike.

(Note: actually a 3:46:58 as my watch died 8km from the end!)

My run problems were three-fold: not getting my run plan right; not getting my run nutrition right; and the tight calf muscles carried over from the end of the swim and the bike leg. This resulted in a 1:43:53 first half of the marathon, followed by an abysmal 2:03:05 for the second half. I've certainly learnt some good stuff for the future! I think the main problem was that I approached the run as if it was a standalone marathon (something I was already familiar with) rather than the third element of a long distance tri.

A happy face at the start of the run

I'd done all my long brick sessions with a run at target race pace of 3:37/km, with runs up to 1 hours duration. Throughout the training I always felt comfortable at this pace so set my race plan accordingly to just come off the bike and hit and hold this as a steady pace. I also planned a run nutrition strategy around what I would normally do for a marathon (see the nutrition section below).

What I discovered about 18km into the marathon was that this strategy didn't work. I then had to slow down quite a lot and take more time in the feed stations getting my fuelling correct. However, the constant stopping and starting really aggravated my tight calves, meaning that for the second half of the run my form and efficiency were way below normal. The result being that the run became even harder and my pace slowed down to about 5:30/km, which is way slower than even my typical long run pace of 5:10/km.

Feeling the pain towards the end

The final half of the run just became a case of breaking the distance down into a series of short sections from the current feed station to the next, walk through the feed station taking on fluid and fuel, and then sum up the energy to start running to again towards the next feed station. On the plus side I did still manage to pick up the pace for the last lap of the lake and run faster down the finish funnel!

One further problem on the run was that my watch ran out of battery with 8km to go. Not a major issue as by that time I wasn't using it for pacing as I was just moving the best my legs would allow. However, it would have been a disaster if I was close to target pace and relying on the power data from my Stryd footpod.

Overall, happy to have finished the run in an acceptable time of 3:46:58. I learnt a lot and will definitely be planning a different strategy if (when) I ever do another long distance triathlon.

Nutrition

As already mentioned, my nutrition was a bit of a mixed bag. I think I got it pretty much right until I hit the run, as which point my plan was totally broken.

Pre-race was my standard approach of a huge bowl of porridge and a coffee for breakfast, followed by a banana and sipping a bottle of water about 30 minutes before racing.

On the bike I planned drinking four 750ml bottles of fluid: half water and half High-5 Zero electrolyte drink. Aiming to drink every 15 mins. Food wise I went with a mix of Chia Charge flapjack bars and small bags of pretzels. These were consumed as follows:

• 0:15:00 – Chia Charge bar
• 1:00:00 & 1:30:00 – half Chia Charge bar
• 2:00:00 – 30g pretzels
• 2:30:00 & 3:00:00 - half Chia Charge bar
• 3:30:00 – 30g pretzels
• 4:00:00 & 4:30:00 - half Chia Charge bar
• 5:00:00 – 30g pretzels
• 5:30:00 – Chia Charge bar

The first Chia Charge bar was to refuel after the swim. Then eating every 30 minutes was a great way to break down the ride into smaller segments (useful advice I got from a magazine article). This plan worked out at about 55g of carbs per hour, which I think was pretty much spot on for fuelling on the bike.

The only complaint I have about my bike fuel strategy was that I struggled with the very last Chia Charge bar being way too sweet. I don't normally each a huge amount of sweet carbs so I think five flapjack bars was a bit too much.

I came off the bike feeling well fuelled and hydrated ready for the run. (The fact I made it 18km into the run before problems hit shows I probably got it right). However, my run nutrition plan turned out to be rather lacking!

For a standalone marathon, my nutrition is usually to just take on a couple of mouthfuls of water every 5km and a 33Shake chia gel every 8km. This has always worked well for me, so that's what I went for. However, I didn't take account of the fact that my normal marathon nutrition is based on having reserves of fuel and hydration in my body at the start of the marathon, so my race intake is just top-up rather than replenishment.

On the first half of the run I ran through each feed station, taking a mouthful of water as I felt like it and hitting my chia gel intake at 8km and 16km as planned. However, the chia gels only have 11g of carbs each and I probably only drank about 100ml of fluid in the first part of the run. Therefore at about 18km I hit both energy and fluid deficit, which massively curtailed my pace.

Realising what was happening I backed off and make an effort over the next few aid stations to walk through them and take on plenty of electrolyte drink, some flat coke and a goodly number of Jaffa Cakes! It took about another 10km of this strategy before I felt my energy levels starting to restore.

The remaining 14km of the run I switched to a strategy of walking each feed station making sure that I kept fluid and fuel levels topped up. No more energy dips, but by this time my tight calf muscles were the main hindrance to me being able to get back to any measure of a decent running pace.

Learnings

Having never put all three event distances together in one go before there were always going to be lots of things to learn from the experience. This post details my analysis of my race and here are my list of learnings that I will take forward for the future:

• Pre-race massages for tight calves - I know that I generally suffer from tight calves, especially towards the end of a marathon. However at shorter distances it doesn't normally impact on my performance. For long distance events like this I need to spend more time ensuring that there's no tightness carried over from training into race day. A few visits to my sports massage guy in the weeks before race day will definitely be built into my training plan next time!
• More savoury items on the bike - fuelling on the bike was sound but too much sweet stuff, swap at least one flapkjack for something more savoury.
• Different race plan for the run - need to adapt the plan for the fact that it's not a standalone marathon. In particular adjust the target pace to allow for a few seconds of walking through the feed stations to ensure time to fully take on fluid and fuel.
• Better nutrition strategy for the start of the run - plan run nutrition to continue intake of around 55g of carbs per hour plus aiming to consume 1,500ml fluid over the marathon distance. This requires fully utilising the feed stations in the early stages of the run so that fuel reserves never drop too low.
• Different watch configuration - I had my bike watch config set to 'Good' GPS quality (rather than 'Best') but this still consumed too much battery. Reduce the GPS quality to 'Okay' for future long distance events .

Conclusions

It was a tough day with both high and low points. However, I finished my first long distance triathlon and smashed my 11:30:00 target by almost 22 minutes!

Will I do an iron distance triathlon again? Yes, probably

Next year? Definitely not!

I'm planning an easier year next year with some shorter distance triathlons, a few more running events and a bit more focus on athletics. Watch this space for a 2019 event though...

Team Kennet Newbury Triathlon

7th September 2014

This weekend I completed in my first every triathlon. It went great and I'm totally hooked. Looking to do more next year and gradually work up to the longer distances (once my swimming has improved).

Overview

Newbury Triathlon is a super-sprint event based at Northcroft Leisure Centre in Newbury, West Berkshire, UK. It consists of a 300 yard pool swim, 22km bike ride and 5km run. It is organsied by Team Kennet, the local athletics and triathlon club, and has an entry limit of 450 competitors.

Result

Overall position 39th out of 440. In the V40 male age group 13th out of 175.

Swim	6:16
T1	0:43
Cycle	42:23
T2	0:40
Run	19:44
Total	1:09:47

Organisation and Atmosphere

The event was incredibly well organised and ran extremely smoothly from a competitor's point of view. Everything ran nicely to schedule. Registration was very smooth with no queueing.

The transition area was very relaxed but still managed to remain very organised. The staggered nature of the swim starts means that there's a small continual flow of people through transition rather than large groups of people, which keeps things pleasant. Being allow to access transition at any point when you are not racing was also very helpful.

The marshals did a great job and were very friendly and clear with their instructions. Marshals were stationed at all the correct places for bike and run so it was pretty much impossible to go wrong and the signage was good and clear. Particular thanks to the bike marshals on the roundabouts and junctions who did a great job of keeping riders safe and the race flowing.

Possibly the only slight criticism I could raise is the delay in publishing the results. However, I understand they had to change timing suppliers at short notice, so this can be forgiven.

The overall atmosphere for the day was great. The triathlon had a nice mix of serious triathletes, athletes attempting their first triathlon (me for example) and plenty of people participating for a personal challenge or to raise money for charity. The arrangement of the course meant good support at the pool side, at the end of the bike leg and at the run finish – just what was required to keep you pushing hard.

The Swim

The swim leg takes place in Newbury's lovely outdoor heated lido pool, which originally dates from 1870 (redeveloped in 1937). The pool is a very unusual 75 yards long and a maximum depth of 2.8m. It's a high sided pool, so can be quite choppy when full of people.

The swim is four lengths of the pool, with two competitors being started every 30 seconds. This means that it takes nearly two hours to get through the entire field, but that does have the advantage of spreading out the transition, bike and run stages.

There were plenty of competitors swimming breast-stroke and even a couple doing the whole thing backstroke. This meant some overtaking was required, but fortunately the pool and lanes were wide enough that this wasn't a problem.

My swim went pretty well and I was able to complete the four lengths in 6:16, which was slightly better than expected.

T1

Jumping out the pool, a short run out into the car park for transition. Found my bike easily and things went pretty smoothly. I did find that I underestimated just how wobbly I'd be after the swim. I'd elected to wear socks, as I know running without gives me blisters, and trying to balance on one foot to put them on was somewhat tricky!

A quick run out of transition and then on to the bike and away. My numerous practices at mounting the bike with shoes pre-attached and held in place with rubber bands proved well worth the effort.

A T1 time of 0:43 was most acceptable for my first time ever doing this under race conditions.

Bike

The bike leg starts with a short up-hill section, so important to get into the shoes and get them tight as soon as possible. Then it was up to a bigger gear and off. The roads were pretty quiet and I managed to complete the whole bike without needing to give way to any traffic, helped by excellent marshals making sure riders knew the junctions were clear.

The first half of the 22km bike ride is net up-hill, through Boxford, Welford and Wickham, with a steep climb just after half way. Managed to get down on the drops for a large part of this and overtook a few riders. Only one rider (in full streamline kit) came past me.

The second part is a lovely straight and mostly downhill section all the way home. Down on the drops again and cruising along was very pleasant. Felt a slight cramp twinge in my left calf but luckily it didn't come to anything. Picked up a few more riders along the way, polished off a 33shake chia energy gel and entered the final section feeling really strong.

Dropped down to a low gear to get the legs spinning fast ready for the run. I'd also been doing loads of practice at slipping out of shoes while still on the pedals for a quick bike dismount. That worked pretty well, but still room for improvement, and I was off the bike with my family cheering loudly behind me.

Total bike leg time of 42:23, which was significantly better than I had hoped for.

T2

Second transition went as well as I hoped. Jelly legs off the bike is still quite new to me (despite a number of brick training sessions) but it didn't slow me down too much. Run shoes on quickly (elastic laces are a superb invention) and off.

A T2 time of 0:40, which again I was reasonably pleased with considering it was my first ever attempt under race conditions.

Run

The run part is a nice course, mostly on footpath or the canal tow-path. A couple of small slopes, but mostly flat all the way. Initially the run was feeling really tough, but after the bike legs wore off I managed to get into my running flow. Gradually started to pick off other runners, although overtaking was sometimes difficult due to the narrow paths.

At the end of the tow-path you have to cross a canal bridge, which is a bit tough on tired legs. Then it's into the field, which you have to run round once to the finish. Loads of support and cheering family around the field was a welcome boost and despite having to run on grass I was able to pick up speed for the last couple of hundred meters.

A run time of 19:44 for a total time of 1:09:47. A very pleasing result and bit ahead of what I expected my best achievable time might be.

Conclusion

A great event, very well organised and very enjoyable. I'm now hooked on triathlon and will be doing some more events next year. Hope to step up to a full-length sprint with open water next time providing I can continue developing my swimming over the winter.

Another bonus is that the kids (nearly 8 and just turned 9) are now really excited about triathlon as well, so chances are they will want to enter some junior triathlon events next year as well.

10 Day Training Cycle Update

In this post I talked about my experiment to switch from a 7-day weekly cycle to a 10-day version. This is the follow-up post describing the results.

Background

So, I've now been on a 10-day cycle training plan for just over two months. I started with an initial plan of four cycles, covering a period of just under six weeks. I'm now about half way through a second four cycle block leading to a 10K running race at the end of May.

In September I'm competing in my first triathlong, so my plan as been about laying down the groundwork in swimming and cycling while building up to peak 10K running fitness.

In my previous post I described how I went about building the plan. In the remainder of this post I want to talk about how the plan actually worked out for me and changes that might be needed.

Sticking to the Plan

I actually found keeping to the plan was very easy in the most part. This was probably because I built the sessions around the periods that I knew I would have time to train. That made building the plan more challenging, but following it much easier. Had I built the perfect plan then tried to arrange my life around the training then I suspect it would have been much more challenging.

However, towards the end of the first block of cycles I picked up a small running niggle and at around the same time my work situation changed. This threw the plan into some chaos and required I make some fairly significant changes to the sessions.

Flexibility of the Plan

Given the challenges I faced building a 10-day plan in the first place, I expected that making session adjustments would be difficult. However, I was pleasently surprised how easy it was to change. Some running sessions had to switch to slow recovery runs and I had to dump some runs and put a bit more swimming in to replace them.

Adding swimming was the most challenging part of building the plan as there is a double constraint involved: the need to match both the time I can train and the times my local pool has lane sessions. However, the fact that a 10-day cycle is much more spread out than a 7-day one means moving slots around is much more achievable. I think this was a big win for the 10-day cycle approach and not something that I was expecting.

Frequency of Sessions

When I built the plan my goal was to include one swim session, one long bike session and one running interval session in each 10-day block. The rest would be filled with slower runs and strength sessions. Some blocks had an extra bike session if space was available.

What I discovered when executing the plan, however, was that only one swim session and one interval run session every 10+ days wasn't enough. The longer gap between the sessions was hampering my ability to improve consistently. I found that to get the improvement that I was expecting I had to swim at least once each week and interval sessions needed no more than 7 days gap between them.

In practice this means having 2 swims and 2 interval sessions in each 10-day cycle block, which then tends to crowd out other sessions. Or, having interdependencies between cycles, which makes planning way more difficult. I haven't managed to solve this challenge yet and if I stick with a 10-day cycle I will be trying to address this in my next planning block.

Fitting into My Work/Life Schedule

The other challenge that I found with a 10-day cycle is that my life is inherently structured around a weekly schedule: the swimming pool lane sessions that are compatible with my work schedule only happen on two days each week; various activities with the children happen at the same time each week; work follows a stict Monday to Friday schedule and so on.

What I therefore found as I adapted the first plan and started building the second plan is that certain sessions ending up having to be placed in exactly the same slot each week and then the remaining sessions positioned around them. The result is that I would often end up with two quite intense sessions very close together or two important sessions (like the long run) a wide distance apart. I found this very challenging for building consistency in my training.

Conclusion

I found the 10-day cycle training plan to work quite well and I was surprised that it was much more flexible than I was expecting. The less crowded plan was certainly welcome on busy weeks. However, the problem with getting the correct frequency of certain key sessions and fitting the plan around a life that is structured weekly are particular challenges for this approach.

For my next block of training I will be planning both 7-day and 10-day cycles and I will see which works out best with my new job. Given the need to swim more frequently, I think the 7-day approach may win purely down to the very restricted lane swimming times at my local pool.

10-Day Training Cycles

This week on the Kinetic Revolution Podcast there was an excellent interview with Gary Reynolds of Runners Paradise. The subject was on training cycle length and how we tend to focus on a 7-day cycle (because that's how long a week is), when in fact other lengths, such as a 10-day cycle might be more appropriate.

This talk about training cycles couldn't have come at a better time. I was right in the middle of building a rather full-to-bursting weekly plan which I have now adapted into a much better spaced 10-day alternative. I thought I'd share my experience as evidence that this approach really can work.

The Plan Contents

As background: I'm just coming off a 12 week plan that I built myself in preparation for Reading Half Marathon this weekend. The plan was a 7-day one, consisting of 5 run sessions, 2 strength/flexibility sessions and 1 rest day. It has gone very well and all that remains now is seeing how well I perform on Sunday.

I've now got 12 weeks until my next race, which is my local 10K. This is really a 'B' race for me, so I thought it a good point to introduce a 6 week core aerobic, strength and flexibility cycle while still keeping my eye on a good 10k performance. In addition to this I'm doing my first ever triathlon in September (just a short sprint one) so I though this would also be a good point to start introducing some swimming and bike work as well.

In each cycle I'm therefore aiming to fit in the following sessions:

• A long run of around 10 miles
• An easy 10K run
• A run speed session (tempo, hills or intervals) just to maintain form for the 10K
• A long(ish) bike ride of around 1hr 30mins - 2 hours
• A shorter bike ride
• A swimming session of about an hour
• Two strength and flexibility sessions
• A weekly game of five-a-side football (as this helps break up my movement patterns)

A 7-Day Cycle Plan

My initial attempt was to squeeze this into my normal weekly template, but it ended up being VERY crowded, to the point where a Thursday would end up being a long bike ride in the morning and then a 5K easy run at lunchtime; Tuesday would have two big workout sessions; and Wednesday swimming would be a late 9pm-10pm session (local pool lane time), followed by a 6am start on Thursday morning to fit in the bike session before work - not ideal! This initial draft is shown below. The colour code is: Red - running, Green - bike, Blue - swim, Yellow - gym work. Five-a-side football is always on a Sunday evening.

I really wasn't happy with this plan as it felt almost like overtraining in what should actually be a more relaxed period between two heavy, race focused ones. The idea of a 10-day cycle was therefore very appealing.

I was initially somewhat sceptical as to how my sessions would fit into a 10-day plan. My training times have LOTS of restrictions on them, including:

• I try to avoid training in the evenings where possible (other than strength and flexibility work which I do at home) due to child care, charity work and making sure my wife has time for her workouts and events.
• Weekends are family time, so have no training booked against them until the kids are in bed at the end of the day.
• Sunday evening is five-a-side football.
• Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I have a 5:15am start in order to get to work so I normally restrict myself to getting up at 4:30am on only one of these days in order to get a session in first. Any more would be too tiring.
• Thursday and Friday I work from home so these are the only days I can really fit in any long sessions (usually by getting up early and doing them before starting work).
• Evening adult lane sessions at my local pool are 9pm-10pm, which is a bit too late for me given my early morning starts.

A 10-Day Cycle Plan

So, what I did is allowed a couple of days recovery from Reading Half Marathon and then broke my six weeks down into four 10-day blocks (instead of six 1-week ones). I then fitted in the sessions that were immovable, such as five-a-side football on a Sunday (which I will cycle to and from) and the long sessions that have to take place on a Thursday or Friday morning. I then fitted the rest of the sessions around this starting point, particularly trying to avoid late evening swimming if possible (which I managed on all but one day).

The net result is that over the six weeks I'm getting less of each type of session in (4 of each instead of 6 of each) but it feels much more relaxed. There are virtually no doubling up days and the number of rest days is the same as the 7-day plan. The training commitment fits better with family life and, being less exhausting, means I will be able to focus more intently on session quality rather than quantity.

So, here’s the plan adjusted to a 10-day cycle. Colour scheme is still: Red - running, Green - bike, Blue - swim, Yellow - gym work and black blocks just mark out the 10-day windows.

All-in-all, it looks and feels like a much more sustainable plan, which will be less exhausting and thus (hopefully) less chance of injury. The big open question I do have is to how amenable it will be to last minute schedule changes, such as a late meeting, which might result in having to move a few sessions around. I’ll report back in six weeks as to how well it worked out.