Slowing down to go quicker

I had an interesting conversation with an athlete today, which was in turn inspired by a conversation he had had with Tim Reed.

Basically he was surprised to hear that Tim Reed had walked some aid stations in Vietnam 70.3 in order to get in sufficient hydration. My athlete had always figured that pros were all about flat out, go, go, go type stuff.

It had my athlete baffled why a champion athlete like Tim Reed would be walking aid stations. It is an interesting topic to think about.

So a bit of context. I have never done Vietnam 70.3 but I have been told it is a brutally hot race, particularly on the run leg. Death march type stuff. This is important to keep in mind.

In my experience in deadly hot races like Vietnam getting sufficient water into and over yourself on the run leg can be the difference between success and failure. Once you over heat, that is it, game over, day done. Tim Reed has raced in the tropics a lot, he would be well aware of this. Sometimes aid stations can make it easy to get enough water and sometimes it is a bit harder. The most important thing, however, it to make sure you are getting what you need.

This is where the strategy that Tim Reed was applying comes into play. I would presume that he felt that in order to get sufficient cooling he needed to walk through the aid stations. Doing so ensured he got what he needed to be able to race all the way to the finish line. If he had run through the aid stations he might have been quicker in the first part of the run, but he would have been much slower in the second half once he had completely hit the wall. Getting the right cooling at the aid stations meant that he was able to run properly between them, rather than covering the last 5km at a shuffle. Essentially he slowed down in order to go quicker.

It is actually a strategy that pros use more than people might think, from what I understand it is not unusual at Kona, even among the very pointy end. Those athletes know that the small amount of time they lose walking the aid stations is more than made up by being able to run properly between them. I guess having that sort of understanding of their body's might be one of the reasons they are where they are.