Race Report: Tupper Lake Half IM

Joseph Vinciquerra | June 25th, 2006 | Posted in Reports | 12 Comments »

Bring it on

Finally. The big build up to my first A-race of the season came to a head Saturday, June 24, in Tupper Lake, NY. The Tupper Lake “Tinman” served as my first of two Half-Ironman races this year, and was chosen as a practice event to not only gauge my fitness, but to assess my weaknesses on the long-course, so that I could prepare accordingly for the Timberman 70.3 this August. After a number of short-course races over the past several years, and a strong spring racing campaign this season thus far, the Tupper Lake Tinman was my first attempt at racing on the long-course.

Pre-Race
Thursday afternoon my mother, Maureen, and mother-in-law, Sandy, came to town to join Liz and I on our north-bound Adirondack trip. With three enthusiastic voices to help cheer me on while racing on Saturday, I had few excuses for not being extremely motivated to meet my racing goals! After 3 weeks of gradually tapering towards this event, I was climbing up the walls leading into Friday, having reduced my final week of training volume down to 6 hours. My final workout was on Friday morning – I was up early, stretched, and out the door to do a quick 30 minutes on the bike, followed by 15 minutes of running; both light and easy, with two 30-second efforts on the bike, and one on the run. After going through the physical and emotional rigors of tapering, I felt sharp and strong during my efforts, and I finally knew that I had reached my peak, and was completely ready to race.

We drove up to Tupper Lake under perfectly blue skies, and thoroughly enjoyed taking in the familiar scenery of the various lakes and mountains that comprise our beloved Adirondacks. Race registration was well-organized and easy to maneuver in the town of Tupper Lake, and after a quick drive through of some of the key portions of the bike and run routes, we were all off to Lake Placid for dinner, and Saranac Lake to lodge.

Race morning came sooner than desired, but we were fortunate to get out of Saranac Lake and into the town of Tupper Lake before the heavy race-traffic started. After unpacking and getting body-marked, I set up my transition area and made my way to the water for a few hundred meters of strong swimming warmup. While in the water, the heavy mountain fog slowly lifted off the lake as the sun made it’s appearance, signaling the true start of race morning.

The Swim
One thing’s for sure – when you swim 2000m in the pool, your course is still only 25m long. When you’re standing on the shore of a half-ironman, your 2000m course is long. Looking out at the line of buoys, I realized that 1.2 miles really is a long distance to swim. The race had over 600 competitors confirmed for the long-course option, and so the race was set off in waves of around about 100 competitors each. Mine happened to be the first wave to go off at 8:05 am; five minutes after the short-course competitors went off.

My goal for the swim was to go sub-40 minutes, which basically equates to 2:00min/100m pace. I purposely set this conservatively, hoping to force myself to pace, pace, pace. At the sound of the gun, I made my way to the middle of my pack, kept the buoys in-sight, and just focused on a steady, aerobic effort all the way through the 1.2 miles. After the turnaround buoy, the sun was high and directly in front of us – making sighting almost an impossibility. As such, swimmers really spread out a bit wide here before funneling back down together towards the shore as it approached. I myself swam a bit wide on the way back, but I don’t think it hindered my time at all.

Touching my hand to bottom of the shore, I stood up, began to pull my wetsuit leash, and confidently looked at my monitor to see a time of 39 minutes. Ecstatic to be on pace and feeling good, I ran towards T1 where I heard the chirp of the timing mats registering my official swim time of 40:10.

Swim Target / Actual / Rank :: 00:40:00 / 00:40:10 / 319th fastest

The Bike
Out of T1 in around about two minutes, I was happy to be on the bike and working my magic straight from the get go. One of the big question marks going into this race was just how I was going to manage with my nutritional plan. I’ve tried a number of options as I’ve been training, but digestion on race day is always different. My plan was to take in a bit of water right out of the swim, and then start feeding after 30 minutes on the bike. Every 30 minutes I would take in one Gel, and over the course of each one hour, I would take in one bottle of Accelerade. I would also take in a few gulps of pure water at each aide station – of which there were 5 over the course of 56 miles. Along with my nutritional intake goal, my pace goal for the bike was to average 21 mph, which would yield a time of approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes.

The course was quintessential Adirondack rolling, with plenty of good hills thrown into the mix to keep things busy. Only a few miles or so were actually flat and straight, and so it was a bit hard to gauge the efforts. I saw speeds as high as 40 mph and as low as 12 mph. But I stuck to my pacing by heart rate and RPE as best as I could, and every 30 minutes I methodically took in a serving of Gel. It paid off, and my day just kept getting better as I rolled through Main Street Tupper Lake on my way into T2 feeling strong and under control, with an official pace of 21.3 mph, and time on the bike of 2 hours and 38 minutes

Bike Target / Actual / Rank :: 2:40:00 / 2:38:06 / 69th fastest

The Run
It’s not easy getting Satan himself to design your run course for you, but apparently the good people behind the Tupper Lake race have some sort of a deal worked out. The half-marathon was a tough one – perhaps not as bad as it could have been, but it sure threw some challenging terrain at the competitors at the most inopportune times. Straight out of T2, the course began a steady climb for the first three miles or so. If the roads weren’t climbing directly in front of me, they were false-flat uphill, making me feel like I was running backwards. Things flattened out a bit and then turned downhill as we completed the first “lollipop” of the course, but then continued to roll up and down from around about mile 7 through to the finish. My goal going into the run was to run solid 8:00s (min/mile) for each and every of the 13.1 miles. Running 8:00s would yield a decently competitive time of around 1 hour and 45 minutes, and would roughly match the pace I ran the first half of the Mohawk Hudson River Marathon last Fall.

Though I was tracking my mile splits, I refused to look at them in fear that I’d see 9s or 10s. For some reason, I just felt like I was running incredibly slow on the course; the run just seemed like it was taking forever. And because of the layout of the course (2 lollipop routes tacked into one course) there was plenty of “two-way traffic”, and so I had ample time to see both the race leaders, and the race followers – those in front and behind me – at various stages of the run. I continued my nutritional plan which, for the run differed from my on-the-bike nutritional plan, taking in one Gel at the 1 hour mark and sipping Gatorade Endurance every time I had the slightest bit of thirst. After mile 6, I also took in pure water at each aide station to keep my stomach as balanced as possible.

There was a clever little section of the run course that wound through some pretty rural streets and onto some trails which really made things fun. Little bits of singletrack which provided some excitement and some relief from the sun – which had been shining full-strength all day. I caught a second-wind at mile 10, knowing I only had a 5k left to run. I dug deep and just focused on getting one leg in front of the other – happy to have met my swim and bike targets, and now only concerned with finishing the race.

After I took in my final Gel at around the 1-hour mark, I hadn’t looked at my monitor again until I was in the finishing straight. To the sound of the crowd, with the strongest cheers coming from my fan club of Liz, Maureen, and Sandy, I strode through completely elated (and surprised!) to have clocked a 1:48:33 half-marathon!

Run Target / Actual / Rank :: 1:45:00 / 1:48:33 / 143rd fastest

Overall
By far, this has been one of my most successful races ever. My training plan has really helped me develop my skills for long-course racing, and despite the torture of going through such a structured and drawn-out taper, I completely feel as though I reached my first peak of the season for this race. During moments of this race where I thought I had to back off a little bit, all it took was a little self-talk to keep myself going. I stuck to my nutritional plan, and I stuck to my goals – and it paid off. I hit my target paces virtually to the minute, and I finished the race feeling like I couldn’t possibly have wrung out any extra bit of effort, anywhere on the course. Adding up my goal paces and assuming roughly 2 minutes per transition, I had a total finishing time target of 5:09:00 at best, and I assured myself I’d be happy going sub-5:30:00. In the end, I crossed the line with an official time of 5:11:05 which was good enough for 7th place in the M25-29 Age-Group, and 117th overall of 612 long-course competitors.

Overall Target / Actual / Rank :: 5:09:00 / 5:11:05 / 117th fastest

Official Age Group & Overall Results

Photos here

Lastly, I just wanted to extend a HUGE thanks to all of those who have been there for me during the ups and downs of training and racing, and for everyone’s unending support for my athletic pursuits. And of course, thanks for reading.