Agreed, I probably walk max 10s, but ensures I get ice and fluid and nutrition into my mouth
My point, which I think is similar to @stenard is that it is much better to run at a sustainable pace, rather than start fast and end up blowing up. 5:20-5:40 may appear to be be easy stand alone, but after the bike leg it may be too fast to be sustainable. Would be much better to run 6:15 pace and keep running / walking aid stations, even if pace drops to 7:00/km later on, it will still be faster than walking large chunks.
Your pace will literally be whatever you feel at the time. I don’t use HR but maybe use that. You might just not be feeling 100% or have gone too hard on the bike or whatever etc. It really is WHAT YOU FEEL. If the feedback from your feet is ‘feck me this is hard’ or ‘feels uphill’ etc then just walk earlier. Otherwise you’ll be pushing too much and will likely pay for it. Ditto you could feel like going faster is still easy etc.
Except obviously nearer to the end when you can just gamble and go for it and really get in the hurt box (with the euphoria of being about to finish.
Agree. If 5:30 is easy pace you’ll break 4hrs. If you can’t break 4hrs, 5:30 ain’t easy. Set off slower and avoid the slow down later on.
FWIW in training I did 9:1 run:walk having read it on TT1 and Gordo Bryn. In race I set off like that from the start, but might be slightly more flexible to fit aid stations especially in the second half. Have only done it in IM and not standalone races though.
But this is the downfall of so many people in the opening kms of the Ironman run, myself included! That’s why modern GPS/HR watches are useful. That said, all my good IM runs were before I got a GPS watch (maybe age too!)
This one of the problems with Ironman, until you get it “right” or close to being right, it’s an annual experiment. I’ll try a 4.5h-target-paced brick run/walk this week. Then a 4h-target-paced run/walk stand-alone run at the weekend.
Exactly, or even once every 2-3 years thing. So it’s very hard to get dialled-in for most people. The most ‘prolific’ spell I had was one in 2015, 16 & 17!
You obviously don’t follow @Toyota_Crown ‘s exploits
But yes, it’s so annoying.
I don’t think there’s anything I’d have done much differently for Outlaw (bar using Velcro to secure the aero bottle and remembering my inhaler leaving T2) but it went so wrong.
I age up next year, but really CBA to do another one as a milestone event.
Feels like I’ve spent two years training to not get the result I want, so what’s the point
Fair, didn’t realise you were looking at walking for 30% of the time right from the start. I thought the idea was the short walks was a little reset to keep you running longer with general idea of roughly 10:1. Does walking every 2-3 min give time to find any rhythm?
Yeah I found 9/1 worked great. Enough time to feel like I was running, but more importantly that minute was enough to eat, stretch, get my HR down.
When I tried a 4:30/30 it just didnt work at all for me - there was no recovery, just a rush and you’re starting as soon as you stopped.
No idea yet, this is the Galloway method I linked up thread
Ive tried 9:1 aiming for 6:00/km and hard to say but I dont think it worked for me. 6 quickly becomes 6:30 and I think the weak form causes the strains about 2hrs in.
So, 2h36 for 25km doesn’t sounds great to me. Maybe not far off 3h for 30km, but I’m not sure I could do another 17km of that.
Not the confidence builder I’d hoped for, so probably the sensible thing to do would be cancel the Brighton marathon and aim for a 5-5.5h marathon at Barcelona.
Following this I didn’t set pace guides or check my pace on the intervals - I did have a look at about 1h45 and was surprised to see 5:33/km as I thought I was going much slower. Hard to be sure but Inthink I averaged 5:40/km on the intervals.
My breathing was very easy, and it was fairly cool although I am always soaked in sweat.
I skipped lunch in favour of rest as I had a bad night last night, a large cookie before, 700ml of water during and a gel at 1h45 and at 2h05.
I found it to be fine, although I wasn’t breathing hard anyway, it did let my HR drop significantly and restarting was a chance to improve form, so on the whole I’m happy with the protocol.
This hardly sounds optimal?! You did roughly 2/3 of the run on water, and a cookie beforehand! I can see that would be OK if you were just running for maybe up to 90mins easy, but you really need to be setting yourself up in a strong nutritional position from the outset if you still want to be feeling strong later on. Those gels are not going to achieve much based on that timing.
Is that reflective of your normal long run strategy? Have you tried any of the more recently developed nutritional products? I’ve said this many times on here before, but I’d run various marathons and never felt good on any race or training run approaching 20 miles (so significantly beyond 2hrs). I drank a bottle of Maurten as an experiment before one long run and it was like I was a new person. Every run on that stuff was like I’d been given an extra fuel tank. The fatigue just didn’t hit in anywhere near the same way. Worth experimenting with some of the various products out there, but you need to start fully topped up and try and keep topped up as much as possible from the start of the run if it’s going to work.
As for such a short segment run walk strategy, it does feel like any kind of rhythm would be hard to find during that, but you know you
No, I included everything I thought relevant for context in case those thing affected my conclusions but - and this is just feeling, I didn’t feel I was running out of fuel, it’s hard to describe. Things like my hips feeling tight.
Normally I would gel up every 30mins, because every 20 doesn’t feel so good, that’s what I did for 2020 long runs. But I only had two gels left, and I was in a hurry to get running.
My training plan has a long brick this weekend, only a 75min run so I don’t really have a chance for more testing. I already did a 4+1 brick a week or so ago and I know that feels fine.
I haven’t got much experience, just 1 IM way back in 2007, but maybe of interest how it panned out.
Bike was a 3 lap course and took 6 hours. I didn’t have a power meter back then, so I rode to heart rate. I was terrified about going too fast, so kept it really steady. Can no longer remember the zones, but the first lap felt easy, the second lap felt quite easy, it only began to feel challenging on the 3rd lap and I think that was mainly to do with holding aero position. Drank every 15 minutes and ate every 30 minutes, by the clock. (For comparison Ttowel from TT1 rode something like 5 hours including changing a punctured tub)
Run was interesting. I had run a 3h05 marathon and a 1h22 half marathon in training. But starting the run after 6 hours in the aero position, my back did not like one little bit. So the first few miles were really slow with lots of gurning and stopping/stretching, and little patter feet small strides. It probably took 6 or 8 miles until I felt like I could run comfortably. After that I settled into a steady pace and ran 3h40. Ran the whole way from 8 miles and recall still feeling unexpectedly fresh at the end.
Swim was just under the hour, and overall time 10 hours 40 something.
Looking back I think I probably ran as well as I realistically could, due to:
Conservative bike (planned)
Very conservative 1st third of the run (unplanned/forced due to muscular issue in low back)
Effective nutrition strategy
This meant the actual “effort” of the race didn’t start until mile 8 of the run, and I reached that point adequately fueled.
So, beginners luck basically haven’t been back to do a second, in case get less lucky
:MrT:
.
haven’t been back to do a second, in case get less lucky