COVID-19: First Virtual Race (of the Season?)

Week 3 of the COVID-19 situation here in the US is wrapping up and there is no immediate end in sight.  Already, one race of mine was cancelled and it is very likely June races are in jeopardy.  As far as Worlds in August, it is anyone's guess.  It is highly questionable as Canada has shut their borders to international travelers until June 30th. 

So... I went ahead and threw my hat in the ring on a virtual race that I learned about through the forums at Slowtwitch.com.  Here is the link to the thread introducing PenguinMan!!  It is by far NOT an official race and is fraught with possibilities of cheating, but who cares... I needed to race!  I chose to race the duathlon because right now all pools nearby are closed.  I also chose to do the entire race in one attempt in my pain cave.  I decided that if I choke, I'll live with the results.  Fortunately, I had a decent effort for the 5k run, 20 mile bike, and 5k run.

To set things up, I needed to make sure I had an accurate method to measure my treadmill speed.  I have a Zwift foot pod, a Garmin Tri Heart Rate Strap, and of course the treadmill itself.  Over the past few years I have figured out that the best option is to just go with my Garmin 735XT and the Tri HR Strap.  However, it does vary and I figured this race would motivate me to finally invest in something more accurate.  I elected to purchase the Runn Smart Treadmill Sensor from the Zwift Store.  Here is a picture of it installed on my treadmill. 

It was so easy to set-up and to get started.  It also quickly connects to Zwift and my Garmin!  Best of both worlds now!  The beauty of this is that it actually captures top end speed on the treadmill.  My foot pod and the HR strap never seemed to really capture my pace above 9 mph on the treadmill accurately.  The Runn Smart sensor actually measures the physical speed of the belt itself so it is very precise and accurate!

Fortunately, that was the only investment needed for this race!  There was no early wake-up to travel to the race, no packet pick-up, no packing everything under the sun in case something went wrong, etc.  All I had to do was roll out of bed, get through my morning routine, warm-up in the comfort of my basement (and not in the rain outside), and get after it!! 

After warming up for ten minutes with several 30 - 40 second pick-ups, I was ready to go.  I have never tried to run a 5k time trial on a treadmill before so this was a first for me.  I knew I would not attempt a PR today, but wanted to go as close to the red line as possible.  The first mistake I made was I started the Zwift run at a dead stop on my treadmill.  So the time it took my old pal to rev up to my opening pace crushed my first mile by nearly 30 seconds per mile. This led me to push it a little harder than I had planned on the second two miles.  It felt a little like cheating that all I had to do was speed up the treadmill to negative split the run.  However, there was a lesson in that in the second run that I'll explain later.

There is a bit more to do in transition during a virtual race than a real one.  First, you have to end your run on Zwift.  I hate opening up Strava afterwards to change the name of the workout so I went ahead and labeled it appropriately, "PenguinMan Run 1".  Then, I had to dismount from the treadmill and set-up Zwift for my trainer set-up.  While I waited for the spinning circle of death to advance to the sensor screen, I woke up my trainer and put my cycling shoes on.  With that, I was connected and was able to mount up and get a course selected and start.  Unlike the treadmill, you can start hammering out of the gate when cycling.  I thought about having things set up with another device but I realized that everything would go to sleep by the time I finished the first run regardless of what I would do.  Therefore, there really would not have been much time saved. 

As I started the ride, I was hurting a little more than anticipated.  I did not taper for this effort at all (except for the fact that I have not been able to swim for nearly two weeks now!).  I was a little worried that this ride would not go well.  After about ten minutes, I was finally feeling reasonable and settled in to a nice upper Z3 effort with some Z4/Z5 pushes up some inclines.  My target power was 3.8 W / kg.  I ended up at 3.61 W / kg... not stellar but I am happy with it.  I did have some nutrition on this ride.  I used one scoop of UCAN Superstartch mixed with one scoop of Advocare Spark and water.  I was very happy that I did because the caffeine boost from the Spark really helped me push through the end of the bike and set-up the run. 

Now, T2 was much like T1 with a lot of negotiating with Zwift to get set-up on the treadmill.  I also started the treadmill at 6 mph while I was getting ready so that I was already jogging by the time I started the run.  This helped cut the time down to full speed and closed the gap with my per mile average early.  I really wanted to push hard and go sub 19 minutes on this run.  While executing it, I thought by watching the paces that I was going to get it.  Alas, it was not there.  What I didn't realize was I did not do as much increasing of the speed as I did in the first run to make up for the losses at the beginning.  Ultimately though, I pushed hard and really benefited from the treadmill pushing me to keep going.  If this was a dry-land race... I am not sure I would have been able to push mentally through the run as I did with this one.  One nice take-away for me here is that I learned mentally I can push through it. 

Overall, I am pretty happy with the results.  Here are the stats:
5k Run 1   19:08    06:09 min / mile
T1 ~3:00
20 mile Bike    50:15     23.8 mph    3.61 W/kg     515' Elevation
T2 ~3:00
5k Run 2   19:23    06:14 min / mile

TOTAL TIME: 01:34:46

After the effort, I posted my results on a website provided at registration.  On April 1st, the race director is uploading all the statistics from each registrants results into an algorithm that will virtually race everyone on a race course that he plotted out in Antarctica!  We also posted our results to Strava for validation of the data.  As a good "Zwifter", I posted pics of my before and after weight so all can know that I did not cheat my effort.  As I noted before, I am going with one complete effort and sticking with it.  There is no limit to the number of times you want to try each of the legs.  You can do them independently or together... they don't care.  However, I care... this is my one true honest race day result and I am sticking with it. 

UPDATE:

The results are in and a whopping sixteen people participated and I finished first.  I'll take it!