Yeah, so it has been more than a little while; however, I have been enjoying reading others' blogs and decided it is my time to contribute to society. 'Tis the season- right?
So, what have I been up to? First of all IMFL... I scribbled up a RR on the plane ride home, and haven't edited it yet. Yup, that's correct. Part of my 'official' off season is to think about training and racing stuff as minimally as possible. Not completely effective, but that includes scouring my race to every last detail.
Here is the 'clif notes' completely non grammatically correct version of the race
Lead up/ travel:
bad- flight got cancelled out of Mad-town for no reason, NWA didn't let me know until a 4am phone call the morning of departure. good- got out of Mad-town and to Panama City Beach (only took 12 hours and several cities when it should have taken about 3). bad- TSA thought it would be a good idea to give me the full pat down/bag search after I had spend the whole morning in the airport trying to figure out how to get to PCB, I happened to be carrying about 10 baggies of white powder (all of my race nutrition). good- TSA decided that it actually WAS a fine fruit punch flavored cocktail of maltodextrin, whey protein, sodium, caffeine and whatnot rather than the best drug bust of their career (you should have seen the look on their faces when they opened by bag!!). Bad- I was exhausted in the days before the race.
Swim:
Bad- woke up still exhausted and not really wanting to race, I would have rather slept in (in retrospect- I tried a little shorter taper this IM- it was too little taper, too long of a season, about four-six weeks too burnt out). Good- I swam aggressively in the 'usual' IM washing machine. Bad- very very cold morning! Good- decent swim time for the training that I had put in for the swim!
Bike:
Good- felt great getting on the bike, held perfect wattage goals. Bad- had sharp, stabbing abdominal pains at about mile 35- no known etiology- had to sit up, couldn't keep anything down, watts went way down, took in only a few sips of water, slowly pedaled until mile 50. At mile 50/SN I was feeling better- ramped the w slowly back up. Got back on track with nutrition/ hydration, water, whatnot. No mechanicals!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!! PRd the bike, and met my time goals- way short on W goals but happy with the given circumstances. In retrospect- I am thinking that the ocean water may have had something to do with the meltdown. Got off of the bike mentally prepared to have a pretty full tank for the run because my bike was lower W that what I know that I could do in training.
Run:
Goal for this race was to have a solid run. I held myself back the first 10k hoping to keep a nice constant pace. I felt awesome! Forgot my caffeinated GUs at T2- used on course nutrition without a flaw! At the 10K mark, ramped it up to goal pace for the marathon. Held it until the park where there was some heavily slanted roads- bad news. This sent my IT bands down hill very quickly. I had made it through all of the training and mileage without pain by avoiding this one particular thing- slanted roads. The couple miles really got things pretty jacked up. One sided pain got to be two sided pain by the 13.1 mark. The last 13.1 miles were the most painful 'run' of my life- seriously.
Overall: Overall, I still PRd at the IM distance which is great. Happy with my race execution and how I dealt with things that day. Race plan went flawless on my part- dealt with the day's happenings when they came while being calm and pragmatic.
I finished healthy, and with a smile on my face. I am lucky to be able to race in this sport and realize that!
Epilogue:
I have not been able to run pain free for a long time since the race. I was scared, like, really really scared. I didn't know what to do besides what I have been doing (watch mileage, intensity, shoe wear, fall in love with using a foam roller, stretching, no slanted roads, massage, etc). I have never been in this position before where I have not been able to get over these things with common sense and good training habits. Right now, I have been running with minimal pain for the past couple weeks, and recently got up to 40 min with 3 stretch breaks. That is now what I need to redefine as progress. I don't like that, but it is what it is. Progress.
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