What do you do and think about post-race?

What do you do after your most important race of the season or the year is done? Do you write a race report? Do you focus on recovery? Do you make plans next year or sign up for something that will get you excited? Do you wallow in your post-race depression? Do you reluctantly dive into that "to do" list that kept growing during your peak training phase when you spent little time on anything that wasn't race related?

I am doing a little bit of most of those things. Race report, recovery, thinking about what to race next season, and especially trying to get to some of those non-tri "to do" list items. While doing those things I'm also evaluating the race with more clarity than in the euphoric afterglow that inevitably occurred in the few short days after the race. I'm looking at the details and asking myself questions. What were the successes? Where did I fall short? How could I improve next time? How was my pacing? Effort? Nutrition? Race strategy/plan? Mental game? Where were my weaknesses? What goals would be appropriate for next time?

I can focus on all of those different questions because, for me, crossing the finish line at Ironman has never been a question that runs through my head during the race. I have always gone in knowing I have done sufficient training to finish and, just as important, sufficient self-belief that I can do it. That doesn't mean I take finishing for granted because you never have control over all circumstances and, over a 12 hour period and with so many moving parts, something is not going to go as planned.

What I'm looking for at this point is how I can race faster, place higher in my age group, push myself harder, and perhaps qualify for Kona. In answering the questions I hope to come up with ways to achieve these things. In order for those answers to be useful they must lead to specific actions. Simply telling myself I'm going to train harder or train more isn't going to work. That can simply lead to magical thinking, that my improvement will just sort of happen come race day. That isn't likely.

Pace/effort/pushing harder - I've dwelled on this more than any other piece of the puzzle. The harder you push early in the race, i.e. during part or all of the swim or the bike, or during the first part of the bike, the more likely you are to be reduced to a walk for the marathon. The trick is to burn your energy wisely so that you still have enough for the run and are able to finish strong. This is such a challenge and is why so few people negative split the marathon. It's simply hard to know what paces to hold that you can sustain for 140.6 miles.

Trying to measure effort by pace (e.g. mph on the bike or mile pace on the run) is not a good way to go. This does not take into account course conditions, weather, or how much effort you are putting out to do a particular pace. Many people use a power meter on the bike if they have one, which is an excellent way to precisely measure output. I use heart rate and perceived effort.

For this race my average heart rate on the bike was 122, with a max of 138 and a min of 109. Nearly all the time was spent in a solid zone 2. There were only 4 brief spikes that went above 132, which were done to pass a line or a group of riders. For me, that's solidly in my zone 3, but definitely not in Z4. If I was looking at this independently of the run I would say I could and should have ridden harder. Certainly my goal was to maintain a higher HR. However my perceived effort, my perception of how hard I was going, was telling me that I was going as hard as I should and maybe too hard. My inner quads hurt for much of the ride, although not sure when it started. I'm trying to understand what that means. Did I go too hard even though HR was good? Was I insufficiently trained to do a consistent mid- to high-zone2 for 5 1/2 hours? It's something I need answered as I look forward to Ironman Chattanooga and how I prepare for it.

As always you need to measure your bike effort by what you could do on the run. A good bike split does you no good if it reduces you to walking when you expected to run. I averaged a 12:14/mile pace, which is about what I thought I could do if I did half running and half walking. This is mostly how I trained, though I varied the ratio. The run was significantly more difficult due to the leg cramp from the swim. I believe that this, more than anything else, kept me from upping my ratio of running to walking. I did well controlling my HR, keeping it in zones 2 and 3. It did dip lower (zone1) during some walk segments, bathroom visits, and it happened mostly during mile 13-22 when I gave in to the pain a bit more and focus was not very sharp. Overall the numbers looked better than I perceived them at the time.

What these things point to are areas I need to sharpen up on. My training will need to include things that will address these perceived deficiencies. As I look towards the training for Chattanooga next year:

• Do most long distance swims as open water swims during the final 3 months to better simulate the race.
• Improve on stroke efficiency to gain back some of the speed I feel I've lost = 1h02m or faster.
• Do additional kick and swim sets using fins to overload the muscles.
• Get in as many long rides as I did in 2013.
• Add some longer high Z2/low Z3 bike training.
• Work at moving the run/walk ratio towards 10min/1min.
• Aim for a running race pace of 10:18/mile = 4h30m marathon. This will require brick workouts at that pace or faster.
• Train on hills as the run course will be a hilly one and challenging.
• Heat acclimate but not as much as I did for Texas. Past 10 years the average low = 59*f., high = 80*, most often in the low 80's. Could be fairly humid feeling.
• Be prepared to focus on mentally pushing through the pain on the run, maintaining focus on the goal, and using the mental techniques necessary to have a breakthrough run. Prepare to suffer. Practice and rehearse and visualize.
• I didn't even mention race nutrition but I was not happy with how it went. That will have to be worked on as well.

These are some of the things I'll need to do if I have any hope of qualifying for Kona.