Ironman Cozumel Thoughts.

I believe my decision to not finish IM Cozumel was merited. The day had been going well before I decided to quit. I had a good swim, for me. 46 minutes with a current. But of course, that means nothing when the front pack swims 40 minutes! I had a taste of what it was like to be in the front group. I found myself with them at 300 meters but gradually lost feet until 500 meters. They then pulled away at which point I swam on my own for about 1000 yards until a group behind me caught up.

I then had a pretty good bike ride as well. I rode consistently and averaged 274 watts for the entire bike leg and stayed aero for over 95% of the time. I still lost time. I believe because I was solo and fighting the win all on my own while the top racers were for the most part together.

I came off on the run in 14th and tried to make a push for the top ten. This is where the money was and where Kona points were. Everyone else was too fast to be caught on the run. I lost my mental motivation and had no urge to continue the last 8 miles. I simply did not want it. Thus, I quit at mile 18. Ii could come up with many excuses for why I didn’t finish such as a minor sore throat, a long season of racing, the hot conditions, being in Mexico, etc. But it boils down to my mental urge to push through. I wanted to be done and kick the off season into gear. I believe if I was feeling this pushing through would have only drained my mental motivation tank for months to come. I want to have a short but proper off season and then build a correct build for 2018. I hope everyone can understand my decision.
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Despite not finishing IM Cozumel. I learned some valuable lessons about ironman preparation and what it takes to succeed.  
First off, the Europeans brought another level of competition to the race that I was not prepared for. I need to step up and have that as my comparison. I thought I could be in the top ten and believe if the race had been either Wisconsin or Boulder my effort would have had me in the top ten.
How do I get to where I need to be?
A couple things I have thought about that are pertinent to improved performance.

1. I need to keep getting better at swimming. I simply believe I am not putting in the work the other pros are. Most other pros swim 25-30K a week. I am usually about 17-20K. I have had a focus on swimming well (technique emphasis) for all of my yards and been very focused when I have swum. But I need to swim more high-quality yards. You better believe I will start doing this as soon as I take 2 weeks off.
2. This has to do with how I approach a season in general. I have changed how I think I would like to set up my year next year. I believe when you are not going directly into a race the best practice is to work on becoming better at the fundamentals of each sport. E.g. working on your threshold power on the bike, your swim form, mechanics, take out speed, etc. on the swim and using your body like a spring, maintaining form, speed work, etc. on the run. I then believe as you get 4-8 weeks (I will have to experiment) out from your biggest Ironman’s of the year you need to really focus on race specificity. In other words, your workouts need to set you up to combine the efforts of all three sports in similar conditions that you will be racing in. The reason I say this is because I know I was performing very well in both my bike and run workouts leading into Cozumel but don’t believe that the fitness carried over especially on the run. So, a session I would want to do next year if I were to do Cozumel would be a hard swim effort right onto the bike for 3 hours at IM watts (Making sure to stay in the bars the entire time. I was able to do it on the bike without difficulty. However when I got to the run I could not find proper body posture and my neck was quite sore. I also experienced some serious lower glute fatigue from pushing my body in that position on the bike for 4.5 hours straight. This lead to issues on the run) and then 13 miles at IM race pace. This effort would not be done often and would obviously be difficult. However, I believe it would help transfer general fitness over into specific fitness for the race.  The whole idea is that in the block immediately preceding your goal race you prep the system with the closest specificity you can so that there are minimal surprises on race day. Obviously, there is still some focus on getting fundamentally better at all 3 sports during this phase just as you will do some specificity (race pace training during the earlier period.
3. It’s all about the run. The swim and the bike merely set you up to do what needs to be done on the run. The run must come from a point of absolute strength. As is similar to my swim comment, I don’t think I am running enough. My average is probably about 35 miles per week. I think if I get this to 45-50 miles average per week (will depend on how my body responds to this increased mileage) in my next season then my absolute strength on the run will become better.
4. It takes time! You may be reading this going, jeez Sam is going to die if he tries to do all of these things immediately. While I am describing these things as drastic I will do things based on how my body responds. I am 21 and I always need to work on being patient. Patient in races, patient in training, patient in life!
5. It’s all about the mentality. My race ended not because of physical issues but because of mental. I simply was not committed to going into the pain cave on the run and had set myself up with an expectation of top 10. When I realized this was not possible, I gave up. You need to set up each race for how you will deal with certain desired events and undesired events. You must decide how you want to deal with this ahead of time. In the moment is when you will decide but the power of visualization can help jumpstart those decisions.

To be honest, I had seen myself not finishing this race in the week before. No surprise then that I didn’t. In the past, including my first IM when I was 18, I had never even let the thought enter my mind. I was getting across no matter what. I think the taper is about getting your body prepped physiologically but just as importantly allowing you to have time to devote mental energy into visualizing and preparing for your race. A proper taper needs to have you feeling ready to race mentally.
 This is bigger picture than just one race. This applies to your season and your whole life. Our mentality is controlled by our current mental well-being. In relation to IM Cozumel I had some rough relationship things happen one week out. This made me struggle to have the right race mentality leading into the race. Honestly, I was more distracted by this stuff and thus did not devote the mental energy to the race I needed to. To race well and train well I think we generally to be content with where we are in life and feel good about ourselves. I think this is what makes being a professional athlete so hard is we are expected to perform all the time, but of course things come up that affect us. We all know this in relation to performance in our chosen field of expertise. So, going forward I will continue to try to improve my life and be happy, fulfilled, and content. After all, this is the main goal in life. 
 
Thanks for the read! Please share your thoughts.