I raced Maple Valley last year. Lodging was hard for me. Ended up at a hotel after checking into the Airbnb I had as it was very unsatisfactory. Lucky got a refund after filing a complaint through Airbnb. Couldn’t get anything close to the venue around Lake Wilderness so stayed close to SeaTac. About a 20 min drive to the venue.
Its a small venue and parking can be a bit of a pain. Like MikeMckinney said, no parking at the venue. Although, I got lucky being there early in the mornings and was able to drive in and park at the boat launch the 2 days before the race before the police blocked off traffic at the roundabout into the park. Otherwise you’ll have to park at the school and walk/ride in. Race morning you’ll have to park at the school or another lot depending on the parking pass you’ll get at packet pick up.
Overall I liked the race. It is a very small venue compared to other races. Swim is in a small, non traffic lake. Course is pretty much around the border of the lake. The bike is in and around the forest areas of the town. Decent bit of climbing and good bit of fast rolling terrain. Run is completely on a gravel path in the forest. Weather can be a factor being in the Pacific Northwest. Can be sunny and hot or rainy and cold. It rained the night before the race and was fairly cold the morning of last year.
As I’ve recently found things get a little wild for long course athletes at high PLs.
First thing would be to run an AI FTP detection. Tempo at 10.0 is mental. Mental good But still.
If that’s raises your FTP even slightly then all your workouts will likely start to look reasonable again.
It will likely sort out your race day week as well - you only have 1h45 bike planned, a 1h sweet spot should feel okay if the PL drops to reasonable levels but of course be guided by how you feel. I’m more interested in logistics than training in the final week.
I say thats a hard wo… BUT it not unheard of. The usual train of though is keep intensity, lower the time…
I would probably pick something in the same line, but less time at SS. Redondo -4 might be a better fit.
Clearly it will all depends on how you feeling and confidence about doing it.
May recap: A week holiday, some travelling and a couple of B events resulted in a not-perfect training month, but happy to continue to increase the volume and intensity steadily across SBR. Doing more threshold work on bike and run. Need to make it to the pool more regularly (travelling didn’t help).
Total Time: 48:51:00
Total TSS: 3085
Bike: 24:44:00, 710 km
Run: 17:29:00, 202 km
Swim: 6:38:00, 21 km
Importantly avoiding injury, and progress in B events is encouraging (big 1/2 mara PB recently). I’ll be spending most of July in Tokyo with work which will be a bit of a challenge training-wise with the heat and long working hours, but equally a change of scenery will be nice.
B events:
2nd April - Paris Marathon [DONE - easy 3:41 running with my brother[
14th May - Struggle the Dales sportive [DONE - 6:45 NP 239 TSS 336]
28th May - Edinburgh half marathon [DONE - 1:23]
17th June - Highland Cross (20 mile mountain run and 30 mile cycle)
July - look for a half distance Tri
Hello all. I raced Des Moines 70.3 yesterday. It’s a great race in a pleasant town and, while I doubt I’d fly to it, I highly recommend it if you happen to be in the area. Des Moines is easy to navigate and has plenty to offer in terms of restaurants and friendly people. As for the race itself, the run course is the highlight. It’s a mix of running through downtown and a trail through parks. We stayed downtown and I ran past my family four times, which was awesome.
I was very pleased with my performance. I went 4:36:30 and was second in my age group (50-54) and was 25th overall (of ~1,200). My splits were 32:09 (1.31/100 yd), 2:29:48 (22.55 mph), and 1:28:30 (6.44/mile). I was aided by the weather, which was cool and overcast. It would have been perfect if it weren’t for a stronger-than-expected wind that picked up considerably on the second half of the bike. The bike course was rolling and had a lot of turns, including seven U-turns, but it was entirely closed to traffic and felt very safe. I have to say that after what happened in Hamburg I’m taking course safety into greater consideration for future races, and it was a big relief to not have to worry about cars at all.
I’m giving myself a week to recover and then it’s back to training hard for IMWI in September.
Here I am, a bit late for the monthly report, but here i am anyway.
So, my May was :
Swim 9h12 26k
Bike trainer 32h30 504k
Run 14h20 1900K
Total 59h
I raced 70.3 Kraichgau in Germany, with a decent 4h45, and a slot for 70.3 WC in Lahti.
Challenging bike with a lot of up down, 1000+ elevation, 234NP , 2h35
Some GI issues on the run, which gave me a disappointing 1h33
Next one is coming up pretty soon as I will be racing 70.3 Nice in 2 weeks
I’m already thinking of next year and going back to the real stuff with a full IM, and trying to KQ or challenge roth if I manage to register.
Are the full distance plans enough? Especially on the run side?
Guess you’re right, i’m 2 weeks ahead of a 70.3 and today’s run WO was 7x3’ 5k pace.
I did it as i’m “only” racing a half but for a full maybe just a tempo run would have been enough.
Quick run workout question. I’m now in my training plan for my HIM, and the first base run had 6 rpe9 30’ intervals. Are we still keeping rpe6 (hm marathon pace?) to recover from these accelerations? I probably will do the next run with these a bit slower as I probably ended up actually doing rpe 10 but good-ish form. I see in future workouts there’s more and then it says to do them with 1min recovery between them.
Just did Eagleman 70.3 this weekend and now 93 days out from Ironman Maryland.
I have only been using TR for 8 months. My bike leg was incredibly awesome. I felt I could go for days. On the down side, I was having so much fun passing people that I just began to lay the hammer down.
When it came to the run, I took a lot of time to reevaluate my life choices on having so much fun on the bike earlier that day…
Frankly, I suffered through the run. I knew I would miss my goal, so it ended up just being a need to finish.
I honestly believe if I would have played it a little cooler, I would have had a decent run.
Lesson Learned. I feel like a kid that was told not to put his finger in the electrical socket, but did it anyways.
It is like I typed this post, I was also reevaluting my life choices and goa.ls
7th 60-64, missed the podium by 10 minutes, third by 12
I had a horrible swim, about 10 minutes slower than I am capable of. I had an amazing bike.
The run was HOT and horrible, about 45-60 seconds a mile slower than planned. Immediately after the race I was really down on myself for my run performance. Turns out I had the third fastest run in my age group.
Still a little down on myself, not going to make any decisions about races later this year.
Nice Job! I was out there too. That run was brutal heat. But that’s typical Eagleman lol. I’ve done Eagleman a few times and I’ve always thought that it isnt so much about how hot it is…but about how early it is in the year. It always seems to fall on one of the first hot weeks. So the issue is a lack of heat on training days leading up the race. Its all beautiful/cool winter/spring training…then BAM…90 degree race in Cambridge lol
Good point! I did not have many hot days to train. If anything though, Sunday’s swim gave me some confidence going forward. It really is an awesome location for all of the events.
Last year I PR’d at Eagleman with a 5:05. I raced 2 more times (Ohio and Indian Wells) trying to break 5 hours and couldnt get there. But I finally broke 5 hours for the first time this weekend (4:56:26). So I’m pretty happy with it (although I still have a lot to improve on).
T1 + T2: 2:20 + 3:07 = 5:27.
Last year I messed around way too much in transition (like 8 and a half minutes). So I did have a focus of gaining time here this year. I was satisfied having shaved 3 minutes here.
Swim: 37:41.
Pretty slow for me. Was really disappointed when I saw my watch. Was aiming for 34-35 minutes. I still fall into old habits when I get into a race. Swimming flat with little rotation. I just need some more time to really ingrain my new swim habits and make them second nature. But knowing that I needed to gain 5 minutes from last year, and to already lose 2-3 minutes in the water…it had me questioning if I could get that much time back on the bike/run.
Bike: 2:35:04 This was about a 5 minute PR for me, and 6 minutes faster than last year’s Eagleman (2:41:08). Last year I averaged 173W. This year I averaged 185W. I got pretty negative at the half way mark when I saw I was on pace for like 2:42. But I remembered from the previous year that the last 20-25 miles is basically all tailwind. And just like last year, the wind flipped and you could fly the rest of the way back.
Run: 1:38:15
This was also a PR on a run. Last year I went about 1:40 at both Eagleman and Indian Wells. I was right around 3:18:00 leaving T2. So I knew another 1:40 would break my 5 hour goal. So I was immediately filled with positivity because I know I can run 1:40 under any conditions. If it wasn’t so dang hot I think i could have maybe gone around 1:35ish. I started out around 7:30-7:40 pace and basically just sat there the entire 13 miles. Any time I tried to push, the heat said F-off. So I’d just go back to my pace knowing I would hit my goal as long as I didnt do anything stupid and blow up.
I also extended my trip a couple days and went up to Annapolis to get a new bike fit from Stu Waring at Parvilla Cycle. He was in that February Triathlete Magazine article about top US fitters. I called him back in March and he had an opening 2 days after Eagleman (he gets crazy booked…currently booked through august). His shop was directly on my way home back to Pittsburgh, PA.
It was a phenomenal experience. He is super knowledgeable. The fit took about 4-5 hours. My current fit was an absolute nightmare. He said he was shocked I was even able to train in the position i was in. I was fit years ago by someone in Pittsburgh who had no idea what they were doing. Saddle was super low. Knees jammed in my chest. Developed all kinds of hip and back pains. My glutes NEVER turn on. Very quad dominant on the bike. Just a mess.
So I’m very excited to see how this new fit will pan out for Atlantic City 70.3 in 12.5 weeks. I know Stu is going to promote his own work, but he was very confident that there should be some massive newbie gains. But he also stressed that I need to be very careful to build back up slowly now that my position is SO different and dormant muscles are going to be used for the first time ever lol.
But still.
