Up close with the fast Scott Bowe
Scott Bowe was the top age grouper at Ironman Arizona in a time of 8:49:04. He swam 51:58, biked 4:39:40 and ran 3:12:02. But it was not always like this for the former swimmer who resides in Wisconsin. After college he devoted time to computer games and his weight ballooned, much to the chagrin of his active wife. And early on in his triathlon career the man known in our forum as Sentania was humbled after he started this thread.
Slowtwitch: Thanks for the time Scott.
Scott Bowe: Absolutely, it is kind of exciting to be asked to do an interview. I am prone to talking a lot and rambling, so I apologize in advance for all the editing that will be required to make this interview a manageable length for publishing.
ST: I think we will manage.
Scott: Alright, I won’t feel bad for rambling then!
ST: You have come a long way from that time of 225 pounds and man boobs.
Scott: Yeah, it is always interesting to see pictures from my wedding and shortly after, I really needed to get on the move more, eat less program. At the time my idea of a good time was spending 20 hours a week playing Dark Age of Camelot and drinking lots of Code Red to stay awake for late night raids. I’m not quite sure how my wife put up with me at the time.
ST: I believe you also give your wife full credit for getting you off the couch.
Scott: Definitely. That is one argument I’m happy to have lost. Shortly after we got married Mary came home from dinner with her friend Alison, and proclaimed that she and Alison had decided that they were going to do a triathlon in 5 weeks or so, and that Mark (Alison’s husband) and I were going to join them. I said “No way, that involves running and I hate running – you can do it, but if you think that I’m going to join in on this, you had too many margaritas tonight.”
12 years later and in retrospect that was a big turning point in my life and likely a key reason Mary and I are still married. There was a fair bit of tension caused by my exercise aversion and my desire to invest so much time and energy into a video game. It took a lot of the commonality that brought Mary and I together in college away since we met on the swim team.
ST: You swam in high school and college.
Scott: I started swimming when I was in sixth grade, and swam through college at UW-Stevens Point. I loved swimming and it was a large part of my identity growing up. I think that after college, with no more swimming, I searched out something to fill that void, and video games filled in quite nicely.
ST: Is that what your buddies at the time were doing?
Scott: Yeah, I played with a pretty large group of people, kind of a slowtwitch-like situation where you know some in person and others were purely online only.
ST: What kind of sports did you do prior?
Scott: Growing up I did the typical American sports – baseball, basketball, and football. I was terrible at basketball, absolutely terrible. I really enjoyed baseball and football and was reasonably good at them. I stopped playing both around 8th grade. Baseball, because the politics and expectations of it in my hometown were pretty intense and did not gel well with the family business of running a concession stand business at county fairs around the Midwest. Stopping football was me making the choice of not wanting to get hurt and missing out on swimming.
I also did some cross country and track and field – where I learned that I really, really hated to run; much more fun to throw heavy things around and see how far they go.
ST: The 2005 Ironman Wisconsin was your first full distance race. What do you remember from that day?
Scott: Pain. There are a lot of things from that race literally seared into my memory. Calf cramps, whole body cramps, heat, humidity. Before the race, I thought it was going to be a quick and easy 10 hour day, and I was going to register for Kona the next day. As the day unfolded I realized that my expectations were completely out of whack with reality and I had a lot to learn before I would be making a trip to Kona.
ST: What was your time?
Scott: 12:05! A 51-something swim, 5:50-ish on the bike and a 5:12 or so to close it out.
ST: Did you think then that you still might do this sport 10 years later?
Scott: It was a very humbling experience, and I think that had I qualified for Hawaii that day, I wouldn’t be where I am today with triathlon. That day taught me a lot about triathlon, Ironman, and myself. I think the embarrassment of having to tuck my tail between my legs because of a thread [link above] built a lot of the internal fire that has pushed me to improve and see what I can accomplish. I think what it really boils down to is that it didn’t come easy and just happen, so I actually had to sit down and figure it out and make it happen, which is something that never happened in swimming. I always managed to be good enough, but I never was much above average in the larger scope of swimming and I think that was mostly due to never really falling on my face and having to figure how to not suck.
I’m not sure where I truly fall in the awesomeness, or lack thereof, scale for triathlon and how that compares to where I was in swimming, but the sense of personal satisfaction and achievement is a lot greater now than it ever was with swimming, and I think that’s pretty damn cool.
ST: When you now see someone new post along those lines in the forum, what goes through you mind and how do you respond?
Scott: I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s a bit hard sometimes, particularly with the recent downward trend of the number of slots per race, but I try remember being naive, and remind myself that haters gonna hate. I figure they will either make it happen and hopefully learn a lot along the way, or they won’t make it and hopefully still learn a lot.
ST: You now have kids: a 5-year old and a 7-month old. How does training and racing now compare to the time before kids?
Scott: The primary change that I’ve made in my training due to the addition of kids to my family is that the majority of my training happens before work or at lunchtime. Previously, I did the majority of training after work. I would also say that my training has become a lot more consistent with kids because I have a mindset along the lines of “If it doesn’t happen, now, it’s not happening,” so that I not only have the time after work to spend with my family, but to make sure that Mary gets a chance to do the training and other things she wants to do.
Racing has gotten a bit tougher because it’s much tougher for Mary and I to both do the same race because we can only call in so many favors, not to mention two kids are quite a bit more logistically challenging than one!
ST: How active is you wife these days?
Scott: Pretty active! She did two triathlons this summer and had hoped to do a fall marathon, but had to back out due to some GI issues that were causing problems with running. If that stays under control, she’s looking to do a spring marathon. Beyond that I’m not sure, but I would assume a couple of triathlons.
ST: You had a stellar race in Arizona. Where does that rank in terms of big days for you?
Scott: It was hands down my best day yet in triathlon. I broke 9 hours for the first time – I didn’t even have to poop myself, I won my age group, I got my Kona spot for 2016, and I closed the gap to the race winner time-wise from when I did IMAZ in 2011.
This performance was a long time coming, after a solid 2011 and 2012, I had a lot of inconsistent results in 2013 and 2014, with it coming to a head this past spring at Ironman Texas. In the aftermath of that, I took a lot of time to figure out the root cause of the inconsistent results. After some reflection, I realized that I was spending too much time thinking and analyzing, and I just need to shut my brain off and stop thinking and worrying so much about making things perfect.
ST: Talk about the race.
Scott: It was pretty close to the perfect race one could ask for, the cold and rainy weather even made it feel like being back home in Milwaukee! Anyway, the swim was pretty typical for me. I was pretty happy with the split I saw on the clock, so it was a great way to start the day. On the bike things were ok, but right away my legs told me that while it wasn’t going to be a bad day, it wasn’t going to be one of those easy days where the watts seem to flow without effort. Keeping to my realization earlier this year to keep my brain turned off I just stuck to my plan by riding the watts and eating and drinking. The second loop went much better, with the third loop kind of going back to not bad, but not good.
The bike ended with one of those moments where your first thought was “Oh my God, I hope not many people saw that” as I wiped out on the ramp coming back into transition. For a possibility that I foresaw, and was warned about by a volunteer, it was ironic to go down like that. I’m pretty fortunate that the only thing hurt was my ego, but it is what it is, I’m sure lots of other people had a lot more severe issues they had to overcome to finish.
Heading out onto the run, I felt pretty confident that unless I made some dumb choices I was going to have a very solid day and tick off most, if not all, of my desired outcomes for the day, but I kept telling myself that it all hinged on me being able to run well the last 10k. I focused on ticking off the miles one at a time. I did start to sag a bit physically and mentally around the halfway point, fortunately that only lasted for a couple of miles.
Once I got to 20 miles, I kept myself motivated by doing the math over and over in my head on what was needed to get in under 8:50. It’s funny, during the race you’re thinking man, 6 more miles – all you need to do is keep it under 7:40, this is feeling really hard, that seems doable. 5 miles, all you need is 7:42, still feeling hard, I can’t run any faster, but I can manage that. 4 miles…. Afterwards though, those “evil” thoughts creep in and wonder – was I just giving myself permission to settle and not dig super deep and push or was I really at my limit?
ST: Did any of your friends see you go down?
Scott: No, thankfully. My family was waiting for me around mile one, and my wife thought I was just telling her that I slipped in the mud or something. If she knew what actually happened, she probably would have spent three hours worrying about if I was ok or not.
ST: What about that tendency to overthink?
Scott: It's probably the primary thing that holds me back in achieving consistent results that are at the level I think I am capable of. It's a hard thing to describe. But maybe a quick story will help illustrate it. Back in the winter of 2010/2011 I put in a very solid block of work on the bike. This block of work was book ended by a fun 30k time trial with some friends – in other words they were the most important races of the year! Anyway, at the second race, after a full winter of hard work, I averaged exactly 1 watt more than I had 5 months earlier. I slayed myself for an entire winter for 1 watt. I completely lost it. I spent a good several weeks freaking out, reading books, reading blogs, trying to figure out what I had missed, how could I have not improved, and during those weeks I lost all consistency in training – in terms of following a logical progression of quality work – until I finally slowed down and just said F- it, it doesn't matter. Then I went on to have a solid block of training and have some really solid races at Kona and IMAZ in 2011.
So maybe it's not so much an overthinking, but not managing expectations and the emotional reactions that can occur when things don't seem to be moving along as planned!
ST: In our forum AZ thread you said “In general my training is pretty boring, manageable and repeatable.” Are you self-coached?
Scott: Yes, self-coached. I've had two stints where I worked with a coach, one was pretty short, and the other was about 8 months. I went into both of those relationships due to feeling afraid of not being able to continue improving or reaching my goals, and I think that fear played a very strong role in both of the relationships not being a long term productive experience.
ST: What bike do you ride and how is it set up?
Scott: I have a Gen1 Speed Concept. The most important part about the bike is that it’s black. I mean, is there anything else that matters? It’s set up with a SRAM Force 22 group, Tri-rig extensions – long and low. For races I ride 808 Firecrest wheels, typically with a disc cover.
ST: So what is next?
Scott: The obvious answer is Kona next fall, but in the short term I really need to finish putting my bike back together and get back to my normal training routine. Between those two items though will be the Triple T, a couple HIMs and a family vacation to Glacier National Park.
ST: Do you mostly ride your triathlon bike when you train?
Scott: Yes, I do. I have an older road bike and a mountain bike that see some use from time to time, but the triathlon bike is just more fun to ride for me, so it gets the most use.
ST: Anything else we should know?
Scott: I think it's really important that we all remember to keep triathlon fun, and to always ask ourselves "Why not me?"
ST: Is it still fun for you?
Scott: For the most part. I look at it a bit like having kids. There are moments where you think “What am I thinking?” or “What was I thinking?” but I wouldn’t trade it for the world, and I really hope that my body continues to put up with the demands I place on it, so that I can do the Triple T with my son in 13 years, and even beyond.
