March 22, 2009
550 yd swim 300 yd swim -> 15 mi bike -> 3.1 mi run
We're there early, so my early morning ritual is ahead of schedule every step of the way. I set up my area, use the restroom, listen to my race playlist (new songs for a new season), get bodymarked and grab a warm-up run/bike (I have time for both). The transition area is in a valley at the bottom of a fair grade hill about a half mile long. It wasn't all that fun climbing it right at the start of the bike/run and it really wasn't great flying into T2. Blood will be spilt this day. Luckily I saw it enough times to know when to slow down, when to get my feet out of my shoes and how to take advantage on the run. I'm all ready to go sans a warm up swim at 8:30am. Lame.
As I'm setting up my area I notice a kid setting himself up right next to me. I noticed him because of his gear, which I'll get to in a second. He looked young, my age or younger, hard to say. He wore black jogging pants for what seemed like hours so I never could look at his leg and see which age group he was in. I eventually got caught up talking to his parents. They were from Ohio and had come down to kick off the season. He wasn't worried about the cold water (which is a whole other animal), because apparently it gets pretty cold where he's from. His parents must really be supportive of him, I deduced, after sizing up his gear. He was riding a 2007 (or so) Felt B2 with full SRAM Red components. He had Zipp race wheels, 808 front/disk rear, a Rudy Project aero helmet, carbon single-strap tri shoes, Zoot Ultra TT running shoes, some kind of Polar Heart-rate monitor, an Orca full-sleeve wetsuit and a very nice pair of Oakley's. I'm not going to get into how much all this costs, but I put a ballpark around $7,000 for the package. "Oh he's buying his next bike, that's for sure," asserts his mom. "We had to buy him a new one, because he went off to school and grew 6 inches." Man, it must be nice having parents that are supportive, rich and stupid. I finally caught a glimpse of his age: 17. Which means he's probably 16 and will turn 17 some time in the next 9 months. When I was 16 I wanted a car that costs more than $800. Being so young, he's almost certainly not in college, and not member of a triathlon club. I wonder why his parents felt justified. Oh, well, I digress...brat...
9:00 comes and goes and I decide it's time to check out the water. Wetsuits are legal all right. It's cold. Really cold. I felt it the day before at packet pickup and I felt it again today. The kind of water that kills people if they're in it too long (maybe). The race website forecast the water to be between 55 and 62 degrees on race day. I swam Wildflower in 61 without a wetsuit and made it out alive, though that's about all I can say. I eventually slide into my new wetsuit, which I've had since November with no chance to use it, and test out the water. As I'm heading down, a fellow racer says it's 52. I say that the race website claims it "reserves the right to cancel the swim and move all participants to the duathlon" if the water is colder than 55. Guess they chose not to utilize that right. I wander out into it about knees deep. And grit my teeth. It's cold. Daggers stabbing wildly into any exposed skin cold. The kind of cold that you think you can handle contemplating it from a warm living room but will make tough guys turn tail after 5 minutes. I last about that long before I head back up to transition. A race director was giving instructions. "It might be important, we'd better go listen" I tell the guy next to me. He agrees. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I head back several minutes later to give swimming a try. I do a nice, easy 25 yard out-and-back before I felt I was as acclimated and prepared as I cared to be. After 45 seconds in the water my face and hands were beet red. Beautiful.
The race director calls another meeting to discuss the course. He begins the swim by saying "you CAN do this. I swam it yesterday. The problem you'll run into is your face getting really cold, so keep it out of the water as much as possible." "Don't go out so fast early that you hyperventilate, either," added an old and very seasoned age grouper standing next to me. "I've done that before. It's not fun." After the director finished with the usual go-here-then-go-here-don't-go-here schpiel, the duathletes headed to the run out and the triathletes clothed in black neoprene headed to the water. 10:00 rolled around and the horn went off, beginning the 2009 race season!
The swim was a counter-clockwise rectangle and the start was staggered every 5 seconds. They didn't ask for your estimated time and they didn't let you move in line, which stunk for me as I was number 161. A big draw to the race was that it had a collegiate division. So there were about 150 collegiate racers from universities all over the Southeast: UGA, Georgia Tech, UT, Bama, Vanderbilt, Clemson and Union all had representation (did I miss anyone?). So they played guinea pig for the swim and kicked the race off. A familiar face from Alabama's team was the first out of the water. I don't know his name, but I saw him at the Monster Tri and again at the Music City tri last season; good for him. It was soon evident that the water was pretty cold. Swimmers emerged with red faces and red arms, gasping for breath, visibly dizzy. Some happy it was over, some agitated it was so uncomfortable, some near tears at a lost opportunity to realize the fruit of a strength or a difficult winter training program. It really didn't seem like all that much time had past until I was at the water's edge. I double check the security of my two swim caps and my goggles and get into a runner's position. And in an instant, my triathlon season started with "Number 161...beeeeeeep!"
I dove into the water and was greeted by the familiar constriction of the suit. I was breathing every stroke and was fighting to get air in. We've done a lot of anaerobic work in Master's swimming this winter, so I'm used to the idea of making every breath worth its weight. I'm sucking the air in and doing a lot better than most. I instantly begin passing people swimming freestyle, breast stroking, doggie paddling, treading water and otherwise being in the way. I should have moved up... I'm struggling to stay warm and to keep my focus for the first 100 yd jaunt to the first turnaround buoy. It sucks, plain and simple. At the first buoy I turn and start to head back in the sorta-direction of the swim finish and I start to feel pretty warm. Probably just mind-over-matter, power-of-positive-thinking, but I felt quite a bit better after that. All in all, I pass probably 40 people and get out of the water ready to try out my new bike.
Swim time: 4:45 (2nd in AG; 1:35/100 yd)
I run up to transition and force myself out of my goggles, caps and top half of my suit. I'm worried that I won't have the dexterity to put on my Garmin and arm warmers. My arm warmers were on under my suit and are a little damp, but my Garmin goes on relatively easily. What gave me problems was the suit. I hope it's not too small, but it is quite tight, and my lack of balance didn't help getting it off my ankles. It came off in time and I grabbed my bike, snapped on my helmet and hustled to the mount line. I go to swing my right leg over the seat and don't quite make it far enough; my leg slams into my rear-mounted water bottle cage, cutting it open pretty bad and leaving me with something of a battle scar. I get it over on the second try and cross the timing mat. The beep hits home that the season has started. Let's see if my legs remember how to do this.
T1: 1:15
The initial climb out of transition coupled nicely with the no-dexterity cold hands make it a real challenge getting my feet in my shoes. It takes me a quarter mile or so, but I eventually get them on and fastened. The course is one big loop that takes you on open but empty roads. The hills were rolling and endless, but the bike wasn't horribly difficult. I dropped into my lower cog for almost every hill and spun up them rather than try to grind anything out, which I figured would help me on the run. After getting up the first big hill, I managed to settle into my aero position and get "comfortable" for the 15 miles ahead. It was after 10:30 now, and the sun was out in full force, making the body quite warm and comfortable; I ended up taking off my arm warmers in the first half of the ride and putting them on my aerobars. I was hoping as hard as I could that I wouldn't flat over the course of the ride, as I didn't bring any CO2 or a pump. If I had a flat, I'd DNF.
The bike portion was pretty much the same from start to finish; I'd pass weak cyclists on mountain bikes and road bikes and get passed by stronger cyclists, almost always on top of full carbon rigs and sporting aero helmets. Everyone I passed had a number less than 150 and everyone that passed me had a number over 200. I guess the swim start had some advantages. The 17 year old from Ohio eventually motored past me and I knew I wouldn't see him again. I actually managed to pass a few people in my age group, but I knew that anyone with a number lower than 150 was racing collegiate, so I paid them no mind. Nobody passed me that was any threat.
This was my first triathlon using my Garmin 305, and I was interested to try using the pacing and heart rate data that I'd trained with. I had my LTHR tested for both bike and run, and my plan was to keep my heart rate under my LTHR at all times, though it did not really matter to me how far under it chose to stay. The first 2 miles of the run would be just under and I'd slowly build to anaerobic capacity over the last mile. Anyway, I look at my watch about 2 miles into the bike and I notice that I was receiving HR data and my timer was ticking, but I had no pacing or distance data; my GPS was turned off for some reason. I guess letting it sit in T1 for an hour or so turned it off to save battery power. So I had to flick it off and flick it back on so it could link up. When it was on and working to capacity, I had lost 7 minutes of the start of the bike and something like 2 miles, or at least that's what I guessed. Apart from that, I didn't have any more issues with it, and I was able to use the elapsed distance feature to determine pacing, which was a very nice feature to have! My HR jumped over my LT near the top of some of the longer climbs, but I noticed it stayed 10-15 beats under it for much of the flats.
Having seen the end of the course, I knew that once you had turned onto the last road, you had a half mile of flat, a sharp corkscrew descent, a moderate climb and then a screeching half mile descent into transition. I slip out of my shoes after the last climb and bullet into the park. There were a couple dozen crashes with people approaching the dismount line too fast over the course of the day, but I was out of my shoes and had slowed down enough to seamlessly dismount before the line and run to my area, ready for a lightening fast transition.
Bike Time: 48:57 (2nd in AG; 18.4 mph)
My shoes were still in my pedals, my arm warmers were already on my aerobars and my helmet was off by the time I got to my transition area. All I had to do was rack my bike, slip on my shoes and grab my hat-race belt pile on my way out. My shoes didn't go on perfectly, but I got them on quickly enough. I went sockless for this one as I had slathered my feet up with body glide really well before race start. Crossing the timing mat and punching the lap button on my Garmin, I was greeted by the "begin running" icon. So that, in a nutshell, is what I did.
T2: :46
I had heard something about a "trail run" on my way out of transition. Not something I'd trained for, but ehh, whatever. The run portion took us out the same street as the bike, but it quickly turned off to a trail. Large tree roots spray painted orange protruded out of the ground and provided extra motivation to watch where you step. The start of the trail run was gently rolling but not very difficult. My plan was to hold my heart rate to within 5 bpm of my LT until the last mile. About a quarter mile into the trail, I checked my Garmin to see it was turned off. Ummmmmmm? I turned it back on, losing some data and again leaving me with no idea how far I've gone. A few minutes later, I noticed it had turned off again. Clicked it back on, and it turned off a third time. After turning it on a third time, I did not press the start button, hoping it would stay on and at least provide me heart rate data. That worked well enough, but the watch would not alert me when my heart rate crept above my LT. After resetting the thing and starting a new run setting, it worked perfectly for the rest of the run; by that point I was out of the woods and running on the road again. I didn't turn it off; my arm was nowhere near the power button. Nate, Reid, any ideas???
The rolling hills got longer and much sharper as the trail went along. My HR shot up to 5 beats over my LT several times scaling various hills, and proved very tough to get back down. The downhills were not all that much of a break either; they were incredibly sharp and technical. In addition, and what I consider the 2nd worst part of the course after the swim, there were a handful of bends in the trail that brought you to a muddy trench 6-10 feet across. Some had tree roots and stones for the sure-footed runner, others had no way across. There was only one option and that was to cut straight through. Not that I particularly care about keeping my shoes clean, but I've only had my shoes for 3 weeks. This is the 2nd race they've seen (they raced the very rainy Tom King Half Marathon last weekend) and I found myself sticking towels in them both times because of how wet they got. I was quite thankful I wasn't wearing socks for the run, or I would have probably ended up with some pretty nasty blisters.
After a mile and change (who knows, my Garmin decided to take a nap), the trail broke and we were back on the road. Still wondering how far we've gone, the course brought us to the one and only aid station set up on course, and all they had was water. As I'm drinking and running, I get passed by a tall guy in my age group that I remember passing on the bike. I notice his number: 56. I know he had around a 5 minute head start on the swim, so if I can concede less than that time I'd still beat him. In retrospect, with a number that low he was obviously racing collegiate; whatever, I had a rabbit to chase. I did everything I could to keep up with him, but his pace was just too fast for me. He slowly crept further and further away from me and it became all I could do to keep him in sight. If I could do that, he'd only get a minute or so on me. That would be enough for me to hold on, right? Funny how your mind plays tricks on you during races.
After running for a time, I passed a spray painted symbol in the road. It was a U-turn sign facing the opposite direction with a number 1 in the middle. The first duathlon run! Duathletes ran up this way on a 2-mile out-and-back course before jumping on their bike. At the sight of this, I was reasonably confident that I was in the last mile of the race. After about a quarter mile, we turned onto what I knew was the home stretch. That tall guy gained more and more time on me until he eventually disappeared around a corner in the road. I didn't really care all that much, because I figured I could run a little out of him in the last half mile because I was reasonably familiar with it.
Although my HR was over my LT coming in on the first (corkscrew) descent, I knew I had enough to really push it home. I made it over the last hill and started running down towards the line. I couldn't see it yet, but I knew it had to have been close. As I started down, I could feel my stride opening up. The distance of my stride increased with each step. My knees came higher, my back kick became higher and I soon was moving at what was less running and more flailing. My arms were pumping at my sides wildly trying to keep up with my body. The bottom of my foot felt like it was going to burn right through the soles of the forefoot of my shoe with the friction. I looked at my Garmin: 5:30/mi pace and it's still coming down quick. I was out of breath when the descent started. It was the usual deep inhales and powerful exhales I learned in a semester of Pilates, but it was still through the nose. Towards the end of the run, my mouth was WIDE open and I was sucking the air in to the maximum my respiratory system could possibly cater to. So, the picture is set as I enter the finish line chute. I could feel my legs almost reaching my ears on the back kick as I finished. But I crossed the line with the clock reading 1:30:xx. I was excited to see it: I made a pre-race goal of finishing in 1:30, and I was a handful of seconds off of going sub 1:30 despite waiting in line for 8 minutes before my race started. It took all I could to stop myself before running over a race volunteer, but I pulled it off. The only thing I could think about while they were removing my chip is "I can't wait to see my time; I think I have a shot at winning."
Run Time: 26:08 (3rd in AG; 8:43/mi)
Total time: 1:21:38 (2nd in AG)
As it turns out, there was a guy who absolutely smoked me. He finished 6th overall and beat me by 14 minutes. Third place edged me out on the run, but finished 6 minutes slower. It's too bad there were only 4 guys in my AG; it diminishes the accomplishment. Everyone else race collegiate, and most of them blew my time out of the water. I did notice on the race results that my race age this year is 24. This will be my last chance to race in the 20-24 age group. Next year, I have to rank up; I would have finished 5th in the 25-29 age group had I given the same performance. 2nd was enough to get a prize, though, and I came home with a neat looking tile with the race logo and my designation as 2nd in the 20-24 age group. Guess I'll put it with the rest of 'em, maybe use it as a coaster or something.
There were a few trays of knock-off Oreos and a couple jugs each of Gatorade and water at the finish. I scoffed at what was the most pathetic excuse of a post-race food showing I'd ever seen; I had woofed down 10 cookies and was on my way to the car to change clothes before the announcer reminded us to "check out the free buffet inside. All you need is your race number!" Yeah, I checked that out as well. J
After the award's ceremony it was about that time to get out of town. After gathering all of my stuff out of transition and carting it up that big steep hill one last time, my time at the Natchez Trace State Park had ended. The day will be remembered as the coldest I've ever been in water, my first time using my wetsuit, my bike or my shoes in a bona-fide race, the muddy trail run and the exciting kick-off to the 2009 season. My last triathlon experience of this year will be crossing the line in Madison to become an Ironman. I'll raise my glass to that...and place it on my tile after a much needed drink.
Happy racing everyone!
