Idlewild 5K run

Race: Idlewild 5K

Date: May 28, 2018

Location: Ligonier, PA

Time: 23:58

Overall Rank: 31 out of 182

Age Group Rank: 5 out of 20

Results: https://runsignup.com/Race/Results/46929/IndividualResult/QJqN?resultSetId=117898#U11570055

 

Dear Donna Banko: I just ran the 5K at Idlewild and guess who came in second place overall? Your son, Dean! Wow, tell him congrats for me, My run was very good, at least for me. It was my second-fastest 5K ever, with a time of 23:57.

April 2018 update

Ironman Maryland is 22 weeks away! I'll be ready. My April workout totals:Swimming 7 miles + Cycling 65 miles + Running 77 miles = 148 miles. What the?! I have never run so many miles in one month.

AMYMSA Championships 2018

I took my swimming league’s championship very seriously this year. Masters swimming is much less about beating other swimmers and teams, but instead, it is about setting personal goals and trying to beat them. My goal this year was to come as close as possible to repeating the performances I had last year when I achieved 6 personal bests out of 7 events. That was huge, so I didn’t think it would be realistic to perform quite as well this time. Instead of 6 personal bests, my goal was one. Good news! I beat that goal and set 2 new personal bests out of 7 events. Here’s a rundown:

 

SATURDAY

Event #3: 100-yard Freestyle

This would be my best opportunity for a personal best because I had not swum this at Spire before. The pool at Spire is state-of-the-art and due to design features, its waters are free of waves and turbulence that in other pools slow swimmers down. All I would have to do is lower my time by more than 1.5%, and I’d get a personal best. That seemed likely, given that in the past two years at Spire, I was able to lower my times by an average of 1.6%. On the starting block I pulled up my hips like Coach Josh had shown me a few days before, and I rocketed into the water at the starting beep. My dive felt fast, I kicked hard, and took no breaths in the first length. I almost missed the wall at the first turn, and that slowed me down a little, but I kept going and had a good turn the second time. Heading into the wall again at the opposite end, I flipped over too soon and only the tips of my toes brushed the wall for the push off. Danise said I came to a complete stop in the water. It’s hard to recover from that, but I tried. I finished the event in 1:03.88, which was 0.31 seconds slower than my personal best. This record could have been easily broken by 2 full seconds had it not been for that bad turn. Knowing this, I was optimistic about the rest of my swims at champs; this swim showed I was in peak condition.

 

Event #7: 50-yard Freestyle

I couldn’t imagine beating my personal best of 27.00 in this event, set at Spire last year. I do this swim every month at swim meets, and throughout 2017-18, I had never swum this faster than 28.50. I didn’t care. I would just go as fast as I could. I plunged into the water and pulled hard with my arms with each stroke. I had planned my breaths ahead of time: no breaths going out, and two breaths on the way back. This is where my personality gets in the way of things. On the way back, I didn’t really feel the need to breathe. But my plan said I should. The debate in my head caused me to take an awkward half-breath that didn’t do me much good. In fact, Shannan said I paused in my stroke when I took that breath. I finished in 27.26 seconds. That’s right; if I had skipped that (unneeded) breath entirely, I would have beaten my personal best!

 

Event #9: 50-yard Breaststroke

My personal best in this event was 37.34, set way back in 2013. My 2017-18 season’s best time was close, so in Spire’s awesome pool, I knew I had a chance to set a new record. The problem with breaststroke is that you can go fast in two different ways: (1) increase your stroke rate, or (2) increase the glide between strokes. I’m never sure which works best for me. For the last few years I have been doing the former. This year I planned to do the latter. I was talking to Gary about this as we lined up at the starting blocks. He gave me some pointers on what might make one’s breaststroke faster, and I appreciated that, but the moment before a race is never the time to experiment with a new technique. I don’t remember my dive or pullout, but what I do remember is the novel sensation of water rushing over my freshly shaven legs. I’ve never shaved my legs before, but for this one swim it was worth it. I concentrated on my kick, making it push as much water behind me as I could. I could feel every water molecule as I did it, and I savored the sensation. I finished in 37.15 seconds, a new personal best.

 

SUNDAY

Event #12: 500 –yard Freestyle

I felt less energy on Sunday morning than I did on Saturday, so I didn’t know what would happen with this long-distance race. I didn’t expect to lower my personal best set at Spire last year because in my training during the previous month I have been doing a lot of sprints and not practicing my longer distances. Anyway, I had two strategies this year. First, I wanted to quicken my pace after length 14, because that is when I typically slow down due to fatigue. To quicken my pace, I concentrated on reaching farther with my arms and pulling more water. Looking at my results, I see that this had no effect. I still got slower. I admit at this point I was thinking about my future swims and I didn’t want to go too fast. My second strategy was to stay with my nearest competitor in the water because he had a similar seed time. This didn’t work because I went too fast and got well ahead of him during the first half of my swim. He came charging past me midway through, and I didn’t have the energy to keep up at that point. Despite not improving in the ways that I wanted, I finished this swim in 6:50.65, just 0.41 seconds slower than my personal best. If only I had added one extra kick to length 11, or streamlined a little more on turn 6, or shaved the little hairs on my toes!! Missing my record by one tenth of one percent was the hardest thing to endure this weekend. The regret was sour! That’s ok, I can learn from this.

 

Event #16: 50-yard Butterfly

This swim was the longest-shot for obtaining a new personal best. My season’s best time had been 32.18 and my personal best was 30.06 seconds. I’d have to increase my speed by more than 7% to set a new record. Not likely, but I love the 50 Fly and I really wanted this one to be my best swim of the weekend. I’d been practicing it a lot, and doing a lot of weight training to help my upper body strength. I was confident enough that I asked Shannan to record it on video. Dan and I were in adjacent lanes, and that can sometimes cause me some subconscious stress as I try to beat my friend and competitor. Today, though, I paid Dan no attention when we were in the water. As he said, “In a 50-yard race, there is no time to look around.” I’m really happy with my swim. I planned to take 4 breaths but only took one or two. My turnover was fast, and I felt like I was just skimming the surface the whole time. I finished in 30.75 seconds. Percentage-wise, this was my second-worst performance of the weekend, but I don’t feel bad about it at all. I did everything I had trained to do, and I had fun.

 

Event #20: 50-yard Backstroke

This is the one swim I am disappointed with. I had been practicing my backstroke a lot, and I felt I had a decent shot at breaking a personal record. Alas, I couldn’t get my hips up. This is not a problem in practice, but when I go at race pace, I somehow lose my posture and create a lot of drag under the water. I finished in 37.30 seconds, much slower than my personal best of 36.02.

 

Event #21: 200-yard Freestyle

I had little time to rest before this next event, my last of the meet. Since it was my last swim, I didn’t have to save any energy for a later swim. The chance of a personal best was somewhat low, given my season’s best time was 3.2% slower than my record of 2:27.86. I concentrated on a good dive and long stroke length. I felt invigorated and powerful. I punched the wall at 2:27.45 and smiled wide.

March 2018 update

One week from now my competitive swim season will be over. I'm excited. But I'll still swim each week for triathlon season! Here are my March totals: Swimming 12 miles + Cycling 97 miles + Running 38 miles = 148 miles. This total is about 20% less than last month, but that's ok. My bike's been in the shop and my foot's been sore. Gotta take care of those things to make way for a big spring.

February review

My Ironman training has gone well this month. I really lost motivation in 2017 and January of this year, but I've got it back...big time. I've been doing almost daily workouts for four weeks now. My mileage: Swimming = 11 miles, Biking = 137 miles, Running = 38 miles, for a total of 186 miles. This is 49% more miles than in 2016 when I was training for my last Ironman race. Of course, quality of training is better than quantity, so I'm following the advice of my workout plan by staying within certain heart rate zones. I'm also trying to improve run efficiency by increasing my cadence, and my swim efficiency by using more bilateral breathing. There are about 5 weeks left before my swim league's championship, so in March I plan to work on some bad habits I've developed, and do extra weight lifting sessions. I'm having a great time being physical! It's a great stress reliever. You should try it out if you haven't gotten into this habit! That is all.

What's the point of a second Ironman?

I am reading a book on the Science of Triathlon Speed. Maybe I'll grab the book and give it a proper citation later. Anyway, it gives lots of advice on what techniques in swimming, biking, running will make you measurably faster, and what equipment will help, and what equipment will not. The biggest, most important piece of equipment the book recommended for improving bike performance was a power meter. Power meters are really expensive, at least relative to my bike. If I bought one, it would be like buying 60% of a new bike. I don't really want to spend that kind of money on a hobby, especially since it doesn't matter that much to me how fast I can do an Ironman.

This brings me to why I am doing an Ironman this year in the first place. It will be my second full-distance triathlon. My first was the Rev3 Cedar Point, an amazing, awesome, rewarding experience in 2016. I signed up for Ironman Maryland (IMMD) in 2018 because I had so much fun during Rev3 Cedar Point. So what should be my goal at IMMD? Obviously, I want to finish the race safely, and do it before the time cutoff. I also want to have as much fun as I can. What about my speed? Since the two courses are completely different, it doesn't make sense to try to "beat my time" from 2016 (13:37:57). I have never raced to beat others; I am simply not fast enough to be competitive for a podium spot.

Is it worth training to increase my speed? What would that do for me, since I don't expect to be competitive anyway, and I have no personal best to beat? In this context, buying a power meter just seems to be too much of a luxury. Still, I do desire to be fast. Fast is fun. Faster is better, and I want to be better. I had a motto in 2016 for my first iron-distance race: I don't need to prove myself, I just want to improve myself. I will take that idea on this year as well. So in 2018, I want to improve my result from 2016. That means that maybe I should look up my 2016 age group ranking and try to beat it. That means I should look up my bike and run times from 2016 and try to beat those. The two courses are completely different, but neither route features many hills. If anything, the Ohio race had some elevation change, while Maryland will not. Meanwhile, I hear there is a lot of wind in Maryland, so maybe that will cancel out any gains I might get from a flatter route. Yes, so I will come up with some times to beat:

2016 Results
Swim: 1:27:54
Bike: 6:41:43
Run: 5:00:40
Total 13:37:57
Age Group Rank = 9 out of 11 = top 82%

2017 IMMD
I scanned the 2017 results of IMMD to determine what times would give me a top 82% finish. I found Bart Mehring. He was at the 82nd percentile, and amazingly, his swim and bike times almost exactly matched mine. He swam in 1:26:33, biked in 6:41:44, and ran in 6:11:35. He clearly walked more of his marathon than I did, so I'm not sure he's the guy I want to beat. I can do better. Scrolling up exactly one page, I find Yossy Pinhas. His swim was 1:27:40, bike 6:34:22, and run 5:27:36. I still assume I can beat that. Going up one more page, I find Michael Lanzisera. He swam in 1:27:06, biked 5:59:48, and ran 5:00:36 for a finish time of 12:59:04. So that's what my goal is going to be: finish in under 13 hours. If I do that in 2018, my age group rank will be 62 out of 160 athletes, or top 39%. So let's make my goal to be in the top 40% just to use a round number. Given my previous triathlon results, that is very reasonable. I am a middle-of-the-pack athlete, and this won't change. However, my goal is to cut 42 minutes from my bike time.

What if I cut 60 min off my bike and/or run time? That would take me to the top 35% in my age group. What's the difference between 35 and 40? I don't think I care.

I think I might have more time this year to train. I will take the book's (less expensive) suggestions on how to improve my speed. This will help me achieve my "improve" goal, and if I can finish my race earlier, I'll probably enjoy it a little more...but only if my gains come from improved efficiency more than speed. I don't want to work so hard that I don't enjoy it. I'll still have to think about this some more.

January mileage

It's an Ironman year, so I'll start posting my monthly mileages. You might not care, but posting them publicly keeps me motivated. So, I start with what I did in January: 6 miles of swimming + 63 miles cycling + 23 miles running + 4 miles walking = 96 miles. This is 4% of my goal for the year!