- drove to sacramento midst so much drama
- spent the day checking in, driving the bike course and realizing 20mph on weather.com
- ensured I had everything, made my nutrition, washed my bike and made transition bags
- race day
- maneesh pickup to swim
- bfast regular
- bike prep, shuttle to swim
- alone, cold
- start: had to pause and collect myself: happened second time this season (donner)
- easy swim after: really shallow at times, current, against at one point etc.
- t1 really long -- jogged all the way
- bike
- first loop: 21-23 super hard, rest very easy -- didnt feel much sidewind or tailwind.
- way back: 8 miles of misery -- at mile 32 really thinking of dropping out
- managed and just kept going to loop1 end
- second loop much higher winds -- mentally the goal was to just get to the run.
- run
- started off regular 9-9:30 min/mile with legs feeling tired but manageable.
- around mile 7-8 felt pain on the outside of the knee on the right and tad bit on the left too.
- windy and nice weather
- by mile 11-12 it was significant enough to prevent running -- started walking
- peed mile 14 -- dark brown -- scary!
- continued to drag until mile 18-19 for special needs. wore shirt getting cold and lights.
- giving other athletes company and chit chatting a bit until 22.
- two small loops to finish -- felt great instead because hear finish line and mentally I had made it.. it was just a matter of continuing to do what had worked until now.
- finished two loops and then a volunteer flagged me to the right and I followed .. only to realize that its the same loop and the finish line noise has faded away. asked people around and volunteers but didnt get anything useful. decided to go back (take a risk of coming back!) and finally figured where I got off the course
- finished really happy
- saw neha and piku at the finish line :)
My mono-di-tri-adventures
Saturday, December 31, 2022
Ironman California - Race report
Monday, December 12, 2022
2022 season: The real deal
Having not done any races in the past 2-3 years (see The pandemic seasons (2020-2021 post) had definitely kept me hungry and wanting to do some races in 2022. I had a deferral for IM Hawaii 70.3 (June) and signed up for the usual IM Santa Cruz 70.3 (September). With the potential deferral in mind and possibility of Piku's grandparents' visiting us, I signed up for IM Sacramento (Oct) as well.
One-mile-a-day experiment
In late 2021, I got inspired by one of my coworkers who had done Ironmans back in his days and was a Boston finisher multiple times. He used to run/walk at least a km each day and has been doing that for years! I thought of giving that a shot and had started doing at least 1 mi of run each day. I think I lasted until Mar or so (~4 months or probably missing once or twice) before I gave up. The positive side was that when work got real crazy in Jan, Feb and some of Mar, the one mile runs held me together; there were many instances I ran at 11:5x pm in cold just to get the run in. Having no time to possibly get a workout in, sparing 10 mins to get a run in still turned out to be hard but a feasible way to get the body moving.
My legs felt awesome and I have had my best run feels in those days without the need of any massage or foam rolling (which I am really bad at). I have typically had some pain or the other develop after a few months of hard training and this time around even doing speed workouts, legs felt alright!
Hawaii's calling
COVID finally
IM mindset
Execution ... in every sense
Date | Bike | Run | Bike time (hrs) | Actual | |
Sun, Jul 10, 2022 | 60 | 11 | 3:45 | ||
Sun, Jul 17, 2022 | 57 | 7 | 3:33 | Brick | |
Sun, Jul 24, 2022 | 62 | 14 | 3:52 | ||
Sun, Jul 31, 2022 | 70 | 8 | 4:22 | Brick | |
Sun, Aug 7, 2022 | 72 | 15 | 4:30 | Run: 13 | |
Sun, Aug 14, 2022 | 80 | 16 | 5:00 | ||
Sun, Aug 21, 2022 | 80 | 10 | 5:00 | Brick | |
Sun, Aug 28, 2022 | 90 | 17 | 5:37 | ||
Sun, Sep 4, 2022 | 100 | 18 | 6:15 | Bike: 56+28 (trainer) | |
Sun, Sep 11, 2022 | 56 | 13 | 3:30 | Brick | IMSC |
Sun, Sep 18, 2022 | 100 | 19 | 6:15 | ||
Sun, Sep 25, 2022 | 80 | 13 | 5:00 | Bike: 42+28 (trainer) | |
Sun, Oct 2, 2022 | Super Brick | Super Brick | Super Brick | Brick | |
Sun, Oct 9, 2022 | 60 | 13 | 3:45 | Run: 12 | |
Sun, Oct 16, 2022 | 40 | 10 | 2:30 | ||
Sun, Oct 23, 2022 | RACE | RACE | RACE |
IM Santa Cruz 70.3
Testing times
- Neha got her migraine-like headaches (cluster headaches) back with a much higher intensity than usual (probably an after-effect of COVID per the doctor). The doctor prescribed her with strong daily medication which made her drowsy with the feeling of always tired, making her life really miserable. It was only after she got over the medication (~end of Sep) that we both realized that not only her physical health, but her mental health really got affected with all this. She did support me as much as she could, but did take a toll on both of us. I substituted a couple of the longest bike rides with multiple trainer rides over the week.
- At work, on Sep 4 (week before IMSC 70.3), I was handed over a team and responsibility of a critical component rewrite with a deadline of Oct 21 (2 days before my IM). This immediately consumed all the time I had and more. I decided to take it one week at a time and trying to keep up with a reduced workout load and desperately trying to keep up with the weekend workouts.
Taper -> Cliff
Sickness
Last minute drama
Summary
Friday, December 31, 2021
The pandemic seasons (2020-2021)
My last real race was in 2019 and since then, becoming a new dad in 2020 and the pandemic made sure it remained the last race until at least 2022. Somehow at the end of 2019, I convinced myself to buy tri bike (Cervelo P2), even though I knew I wouldn't be putting it to good use for the next year or so ;)
2020
All this while I did try to keep myself moving by either hopping on the bike trainer or running outdoors. There were really hard months especially after Piku (aka Samaira) was born. Running felt very hard and I think that was primarily due to lack of sleep and good sleep quality; something I had never experienced before for such sustained periods of time. Now, when I say hard, it was really small compared to Neha who struggled a lot post-partum (C-section, painful and slow but good recovery over weeks).
Just had fun with a lot of stroller walks and runs, went outdoors a few times on OLH and such, rode on the bike trainer and just kept it going whenever I could. (off-note: a smart trainer has been one of the best triathlon related stuff I have bought. Paired with apps like Rouvy has made riding indoors not too far off from outdoors, or least way better than riding on a dumb trainer).
To motivate myself, planned to run a half marathon on Jan 1, 2021 and trained hard for it to target the best time I could; something I had never focused in the prior years due to chasing other goals, mostly triathlons. I trained hard in winters (my fav training months for running) and finished a 13.1 with the fastest time ever: 01:48 hrs or 8:10 min/mile.
2021
Came 2021 and overall the body started feeling better. I was able to run with a feel closer to what it was like before, though much lesser volume. I had gained and sustained a few more pounds than my typical weight over this time making it a new normal for me. My goal was to just keep moving and having fun while keeping mental and physical health in check.
The way I target my off and on seasons is to just focus on a subset of things and/or try new stuff to keep things interesting. For 2021, I started off targeting Everest worth of climbing in a month, riding mostly on the trainer. I was lucky enough to realize that the Venki-led TA biking group (that had gone rogue during the pandemic doing crazy climbs) were doing the Mt. Umunhum climb, which had remained an elusive climb for me over the last few years. I joined them and had an awesome climb with the awesome and strong riders. Finished 29k+ feet of climbing in Jan over 12 rides.
Months of Feb, Mar, Apr were really stressful. Some org/leadership mess forced me to look for a new job and I spent the remaining part of my paternity leave preparing and doing a lot of interviews and landing a job at this startup where I had some of my ex-colleagues from Google whom I had fun working with in the past. So in the meantime, I had shifted my focus off of running to have fun on the new Tri bike that I had not ridden much on flat terrains or outdoors in general. The pandemic gave me a really good place to ride flat traffic free loops -- Oracle parking lot in Santa Clara, just a quarter mile from home. It was a mostly rideable-without-brakes 2 km loop. Rode a few times targeting 30 mins or 60 mins ride with consistent effort and was able to get to riding 60 mins at 20 mph pace. It was a good learning experience and honestly riding fast on a flat terrain felt a bit harder mentally compared to climbing because there is always an option of slowing down :)
Neha also worked hard on losing weight and gaining fitness over the last few months and I supported her as much as I could to have her run a half marathon before the Piku turned 1!
TA was starting with their Tri season in the spring after a 2020 pandemic washout, so I entertained the idea to join them in the open water swims assuming I could maintain my distance socially without risking covid. I knew I wouldn't be going to the pool just to keep it safe. Started doing swims once a week with the group and inadvertently started training with folks who were signed up for Alcatraz swim or Ironman. I realized that I was able to ramp up fairly easily in a month or so in doing distances over a mile/mile-and-a-half in cold waters, by swimming just once a week. Of course the form and pace was not very close to my best, but not too far off either. So I continued with this experiment and signed up for Alcatraz and convinced coach Char to give me company for an Alcatraz crossing in June.
I started going to a pool once a week or so and continue with the OWS. Decided to make a trip to Donner Lake (an annual TA tri group tradition) and swam the 2.4 miler in July. Continue with the swims, runs and rides on and off and then did another Alcatraz crossing in Oct to give Nakul some company for his first crossing!
Now winters were approaching, so I decided to bookend the year by target another half marathon on Dec 31. Again trained hard and was able to get yet another PR: 1:42 hrs, or 7:50! (first ever sub-8 pace long run).
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Ironman 70.3 Santa Rosa - Race Report
Training
Last year I experimented with training for half ironman distance without disrupting my day-to-day life including vacations and other time pass stuff. The year went well with two strong 70.3 finishes and an Olympic with PRs.This year, the goal was to improve the PRs a bit and tried to train better compared to the previous year. Lot of hyper-enthu newbies training hard gave me enough motivation to train. I tried to improve my swim and took some early lessons in the season. Got pretty good insights and worked on it but didn't see much improvement in my times. Closer to the race, I was talking to Chaitanya and got a good tip about improving my stroke rate and reducing dead spots in my stroke. I
tried to consciously and gradually increase the stroke rate from avg of 27 spm to 30-32 spm. Overall it felt great as I felt more balanced in pool and the times got better (with potentially more inefficiencies but sustainable). Bike and run training went as usual and I was reasonably happy with that.
Race
Swim
T1
Bike
T2
Run
What didn't work
- Swim did not go as expected. Sighting was off (extra ~100 yards) for sure but other than that pace was also slower by at least 5 sec/100 yd. Adding them up, a loss of 3+ mins which lines up with my prior estimate.
- T2 was slow which cost me another 2-3 extra mins. I had no motivation of making it fast after I had to turn back to get my watch. Should try to carry bib etc in the hand and put in on the way to save some time.
What worked
- Good balanced training in all three disciplines without overreaching in either.
- Pickle juice! Possibly prevented cramps and also change of taste was welcome.
- Carrying my fuel belt in the run. Initially I thought of ditching it but in the hot weather, the water bottles came in handy.
- Nutrition was bang on!
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Ironman Canada - Race report
I earned my bragging rights on July 30, 2017 :-).
How it all started
Training
Goals
- Make it to the race without an injury.
- Finish the race.
- Finish the race strong!
Pre-race days
Green Lake next to Hwy 99 |
Alta Lake - Swim course location |
Just chilled for the rest couple of days and finally met Neha with the other Team Asha friends (Mittal, Prakash, Raghu, Ravali, Shrushti) who flew to Calgary and then did a short road trip from to Whistler to come cheer us on the race day.
The athletes |
The Team Asha cheerleaders |
The Race Day
Eagerly waiting for the race start |
Swim (1:20:36)
At the end of first loop, I looked at my watch and time was ~37 mins, approx. 2-3 mins faster than I imagined. So I made sure I slowed down in the second loop but found a swimmer whom I could draft for a while and worked out perfectly. I was swimming with ease and still ended up finishing my swim in 1:20!
T1
Went by reasonably fast. Got the bag, sat down in the changing tent and had half a bottle of EFS (~90 cals). Came out and started walking to the bike before I realized that I had to give the bag to someone. Turned back and asked an athlete who pointed me to the area right outside the tent that I missed. Handed over the bag and got to my bike. Couple of bikes were entangled, so got rid of them and removed my bike. Saw our cheerleaders right there :)Bike (7:09:28)
- Descent to Callaghan: First ~13.5 miles were mostly nice low grade descent. Didn't have to fire up the legs at all and still cruised at pretty good speed. Reached the start of the first climb up Callaghan in 45 minutes. There was some headwind going down, so aero and hood positions helped quite a bit.
- Out and back on Callaghan: Next up was the 8 mile climb with 1300-1400 feet of elevation gain, which was one of the three long climbs in the entire course and the hardest one in terms of elevation gain with few short 10%+ grade climbs. I took the climb easy and went to easy gears wherever there were steep descents and mostly remained on the smaller chain ring in the front. Took around 41 minutes to climb and 21 minutes to descend it. Amazing snow capped mountain views on the way back :)
- Climb back to Whistler: Now back to climbing the descent in #1 above. Climbed ~9.5 miles and 600 feet in another 35 minutes including a pee break. A little tail wind on the way back was helpful.
- Descent to Pemberton: This was a long and pretty 19 mile descent (with few rollers) to the Pemberton town. Covered this entire patch in just 55 minutes! Often went upto 30+ mph topping off to around 41mph! It was scary to descend in aerobars and I had to go down on the drops and table top back position. Interesting with that position and just cruising, I overtook a few folks pedaling while on aero or hoods position :P. Total time: 3:17 for 57 miles.
- Flat out and back in Pemberton: This was the 16+16 miles out and back flat section of the race (i.e. miles 57-90). After hearing a lot of people earlier who had done the race, there was a common theme in their advice: DO NOT burn yourself out in the flat section since the long 20 mile climb to the finish starts right after this. From the beginning, I kept telling myself, that the race starts at mile 90.
BUT, there was a slight problem already: When I got to the special needs bag at mile 57, I got down the bike when I didn't really have to. I did that to give myself a small break because my legs were feeling a 'bit' weak. I was surprised since I did not had to push until this stage and I had never felt this in the training rides even when I pushed hard. I decided to take the flat section cautiously and made sure my HR never increased 150 and remained in Z1. I finished the flat section of 32 miles in 1:56. Coming back was a bit harder due to more head winds. Total time: 5:13 for 90 miles.
I decided to take a pee break right before getting back on Hwy 99 and climbing back 20 miles to the finish. I stopped for another couple of minutes and realized that my legs were indeed feeling weaker. I did not want to change anything with my nutrition. Did take it an extra salt tablet. This reminded me of first couple of hours in the Auburn Half Ride. I got a bit concerned but decided to carry on and take it really easy on the climb up next. - 10 mile climb: Mile 90-100 was a bit steeper overall compared to the remaining miles with totl elevation gain of ~1400 feet. My legs continually felt weak/numb as I was climbing extremely easy and had to stop once or twice even on low grades. After crossing 100, I had to take a 2-3 min break at an aid station where Stan caught up with me (apparently he was consistently 4-5 mins behind me the entire time). I told me how I felt and he offered his electrolyte drink, but again I was already taking my stream of calories so that wouldn't have helped. I concluded that I had entered the calorie deficit some time back and am bonking. There was no muscle fatigue and HR was well in 150s even in the climbs, but the legs refused to work. Negative thoughts started colluding my mind and thats when I recalled #DSDQDG (Don't Stop, Don't Quit, Don't Give up). I walked for a few seconds before getting back on the bike. I tried to stand up quite a bit to make sure blood flow is good in legs; it was just marginally better. Took 1:07 for these 10 miles.
- Last 10 miles: In theory much easier that the previous 10 miles and gained only 500-600 feet in total with low grades. However, with my weak legs, they felt long. I was just counting a km at a time making sure I reach T2. This is the part that we all biked couple of days ago when we arrived at Whistler. I knew these are fairly easy rollers so just have to spin through them patiently. Managed to reach T2. Took 49 mins for these 10 miles.
T2
Run (4:45:53)
Struggling a bit |
With some smiles :) |
Summary
What worked
- Attempt at drafting in the second loop. Definitely could see a time improvement without more effort.
- Using the butt cream. No chafing at all.
- Trisuit: helped with no-chafing around the nipples area.
- Nutrition: No stomach upset with gels + water and 30 min gel schedule.
- Peed 3 times during the bike and 2 times on the run.
- Aero torpedo bottle: Super stuff! Did not have to stop at all during the race for water refilling.
- Aerobars + forward seatpost gave a good aero position.
- HR based pacing on the run.
- Coke during the run.
What DID NOT work
- Swim to bike nutrition: Bonked on the bike. Sort of happened in the Auburn Tri as well. Though, never had a problem during the training. My guess is that too much calorie deficit after the swim. TODO: Figure out nutrition strategy for swim-to-bike portion especially when swim gets longer.