Ben’s Mountain Man 70.4 Race Report

On August 19th Ben and Summer raced Mountain Man 70.4. Touted as “The hardest race you’ll ever love”, we raced down a beautiful Flagstaff highway, at 7500′. It hurt. Read about the successes and learning points below! 

Goals

1. Win

2. Work hard on the bike

Splits

| Swim  | 27:31     |
| T1        | 2:12.5    |
| Bike    | 2:17:49 |
| T2       | 1:15        |
| Run    | 1:29:04 |
| Total  | 4:17:52  |

Training

I spent some time on the bike. I spent some hard time on the bike. I did a few easy rides on the bike. I did some interval rides on the bike. If you couldn't tell the emphasis of this block was biking. In Galveston I lost most of the time on my direct competitors in the bike so were trying to chip away at that time. That certainly doesn't mean I abandoned the other disciplines. Our coach had me do some pretty long swims as well, which included a few breakout swims; kind of waking me up to what I'm actually capable of. This included a 3x1200m set on the 17 minutes and a 15x100m set where I held about 1:14 or faster for each. My swim was feeling great, my run was feeling good enough, and there was no way my bike wasn't improving, right? Correct, but that doesn't mean it isn't a longer process than I might have given it credit for.

Pre-race

Race start time was 6:10, which is earlier than most races I've done, likely due to the potential for heat later in the day. We were camping about 5 minutes from transition so we got up, made some instant coffee (pretty much a necessity for me at this point), and headed down. Due to fog the race didn't end up going off until almost 7:00, which meant lots of time standing around in our wet-suits. I had gotten my pre-race jitters out and in general wasn't feeling as nervous as I had before Texas or Worlds. The smaller atmosphere probably contributed towards that but regardless I was happy when they finally sent us off into the fog.

Race

I had no idea of the competition I was toeing up against so I was ready to swim in the lead. It was still very foggy so we were told to follow the paddleboarder. From about 50 meters in I was alone in the lead, which was pretty exciting as I've never had the opportunity to do that in an Ironman race. I worked hard on the swim for the first half or so and then relaxed a bit. Without being able to actually see the buoys it was hard to know how much I had left but I pushed in hard with some extra kicking to warm up the legs and stumbled out of the water, sure that I was in first place.

T1 was sloppy and a bit slow. I knew I had a lead and still exited transition first but it turns out I lost nearly 1 minute to the guy who would claim first place. Just some wetsuit trouble for the most part but something I'll definitely need to work on going forward.

As I mentioned, the bike was where I had put the bulk of work in for the previous training block so I wanted to get out hard to try to extend my lead. Little did I know, Tyler Jordan, a local pro from Arizona, was hunting me down, slowly chipping into my lead until he found his legs and blew by. The course was an out and back with rollers with 3 big climbs on the way out. We started around 7000 feet and turned around at 7600 feet. Even though I train at 5000 feet, there was definitely a noticeable difference in perceived exertion during the bike and run. My race goal wasn't 100% power based but I was shooting for 255 watts or so average, with 300+ during the hill climbs. I was able to hold these numbers almost exactly during the first half of the race with a normalized power out of 258. Tyler passed me at about 15 miles and I lost sight of him by the turn around. With the effort I had already put in my watts dropped a bit, leaving me with a normalized power of 246 for the back half. Even though it had more descending, the climbs that did exist took an extra hard toll. The course was beautiful and there is nothing I love more in triathlons that absolutely bombing hills, so I was thankful for the few opportunities I had here to top 45mph (47.4max). Because it was an out and back, I knew at the halfway point I was about 2 minutes down from 1st and at least 5 or 6 minutes up on 3rd. Safely on the podium, but still in my mind, in range of Tyler.

T2 was basically as quick as it could have been, and as soon as I entered transition my friends who were spectating told me that Tyler had about 3 minutes on me. Being fairly confident in my running abilities, I thought for sure I could catch him. 

The run ended up being 100% sufferfest. Not just due to the altitude, sun, 400ft hill 2 miles in, hard bike before, etc..., but also due to the absolute solitude that existed out on the course. I went out my first couple flat miles in 6:20ish pace, a conservative effort intended to help keep me fresh later. Aside from a side out and back that climbing straight up a hill, the course was out and back on the shoulder of a paved road. At the 8 miles to go sign, I fell into a mental pit of despair. I knew that I had lost an additional 30 seconds in the first 3-4 miles of the run and wasn't feeling good about my chances of gaining any of that back as I had already fallen well behind my goal pace. So I settled into painful steps on the pavement and eventually reached the turnaround. Still 3-4 minutes down. On the crawl back to the finish I saw 3rd place, a solid 9-10 minutes behind me. At this point I knew my 2nd place was all but decided and I steady jogged in around 7 flat pace, taking a shot of beer from a spectator just before the finish. There was no glory in this run, and that's the vibe I got from talking to other racers as well. For such an otherwise great event, the run course was lacking. Lacking of spectators, pizzazz, and motivation in general.

Post-race

I finished with a smile on my face and immediately began talking to Tyler who was waiting at the finish. He's an awesome guy and it was great talking to a relatively seasoned pro. While exhausted, I was easily able to walk and talk, an improvement from some races in the past. I waited with my friends for Summer to finish (who also got 2nd place!), and we rinsed off in the lake with beers in hand. Overall it was a fun event, not too far from home (4.5 hours). 

The biggest takeaway, as discussed with our coach, Brett, was the success of my swim. Even though swimming wasn't the primary focus of my recent training, we knew that I was in a position to be a front of the pack swimmer in any race I enter. It was nice to finally prove that here. I still need to work on my sighting for sure though. This was my first race with a power meter so its hard to compare that to other races but if we think about it from the perspective that I biked the same time here as in Texas with a drastically harder course at altitude, there was clearly some improvement. To be honest I expected more from my bike. But I've always heard building the biking muscles doesn't happen overnight, not even close, and I think I had forgotten that. I looked at my hard workouts and thought, "I could never do these a few months ago, I'm a good biker now". While the first half of that is true, I haven't been training with this focus for long enough to see the gains that I hope to make. Reminding myself that that improvement will probably be a longer term investment than swimming or running for me (both of which I have a background in), is important to my mindset and training mentality for the coming months.