YMCA Indoor Triathlon

500 yd swim -> 12 mile bike -> 3 mile run

Number one of two

This race really started on Tuesday. I had really crushed my bike ride over the weekend, and had been feeling the effects all week. Whether or not I accomplished what needed to be accomplished from a fitness perspective, I succeeded in pummeling myself into hamburger meat, and causing anxiety as to whether I'd be ready for this weekend. For the nosey: I rode 30 miles on the moderately challenging rolling hills of the Natchez trace at about 17 mph, ran 1.5 miles, rode another 25 miles on the Trace a bit harder, then went home and rode the 1.5 hour "Mental Toughness" Spinnerval's DVD. And, like I said, I was gassed.

After taking Monday off, I went out for 4-6 mile repeats at 5k pace, and RPE was just through the roof. I cut my losses after 3 and made the decision to shut the engine down for the rest of the week. I just hope I could recover enough to have a good showing at the unique notion of two triathlons in two days.

I slept well until a bathroom wake up came around at 3:30. I went number one and went back to bed, only to have to get up for number two about 15 seconds later. Apparently this was far too exciting for my body to shut down, and I was up for the rest of the day. So I play video games, of course. The idea of eating sweet potatoes two mornings in a row is disgusting, so I elect for oatmeal with honey and milk. After killing the morning, I come to find out that I've lost my TriSwami race kit. Seriously? I looked at every logical hiding place, but lose faith and slap on the MTSU one. I head towards the Y about 5 to 8 and try my best not to let this ruffle my feathers.

I get there about 5 minutes into the 8:00 wave's swim and park up next to Norton. I'm able to watch just about all of the 8:00 wave before it's time to warm up. I do NMA and running drills and set my spin bike. I find I'm very quickly running out of time (too much commiserating) and am in a bit of a frenzy getting my transition area set up and into the water for a warmup. All I can get in is a 200 yd swim (I would have preferred 500) moments before it's time to go. Stay calm, stay calm. My expectations for the swim fall and I resolve to just have a good day.

Nick and I are sharing a lane and we agree to draft off of each other. We're together for the first 25 yards and hit the wall at the same time. Except when I push off, my goggles open up and water shoots into my right eye. Oh, what the f*ck? At first I don't know what to do and ignore it. I start to slip away from Nick. My depth perception is terrible and I'm not turning at the right time; my push offs are awful. After 125 yards, I stop at the wall and empty the goggle. About 250 yards, the left goggle starts to leak. I stop at 325 to adjust that one, and am starting to get pissed off. There's some more leaking in the left one after 400, but I ignore it and push through to the end. Nick gets a gap of about a body length and a half at his peak, but I shamelessly draft off of him throughout most of the swim, and pull him back in the last 25. We exit the water at the same time, once again. The one emotion I'm most overcome with is guilt. Nick and I agreed to share the work, and I didn't help him at all. Oh well, such is racing I guess.


Swim: 7:29; 1:30/100 yd

Nick grabs his stuff and hustles to the bikes, but I stop and put on my shoes. We're the first ones on in our wave. Again, I'm pretty sure we weren't the first ones out of the water, but were the first on the bikes. This is feeling rather familiar.

T1: :34

I already have it set up and have warmed up on it. I already know what to expect. There were some amazing speeds in the first wave, and I was really intimidated to see how much faster some people are than last year. As soon as I got on my bike and started to warm up, I noticed that they're simply calibrated differently. Everyone is over 30 mph; I was warming up at a cadence of 90 and it read 29.5 mph. Whatever, less time on the bike...

The bikes fill up quickly and I lose touch completely with placement. Distance is clipping away very, very quickly, but I've got nothing to gauge from. What's more, you could see your speed displayed at all times, but the computer cycled from distance to top speed to average speed to elapsed time, so I only had 5 second glances at the distance covered every 20, which was very annoying. I had my Garmin, so I knew my bike time; I wanted to know my distance!

I get on the bike and start to spin before getting my feet in the pedals. That's how you do things on a real bike, and that's what my muscle memory dictated. For those familiar with how a spin bike works, it's obvious that this was not going to work, so I had to stop the bike to get my feet into the pedals. Once I had that completed, my goal was to hold on for dear life as the pedals pedaled themselves at roundabout 120 rpm. I didn't ever really pedal the bike; never really put any power to the pedals. Most of my effort was pulling up on the clips AGAINST the speed of the pedals, trying to SLOW IT DOWN so my feet could catch up. I found a rhythm in a very asymmetrical pedal stroke and did my best to hold it. The computer oscillated between 33 and 35 mph at this rhythm, so that's what I held.

The bike went pretty quickly. I noticed that I was almost half way done at the 10 minute mark, and didn't think there was a lot of strategy to improve my situation. My HR has come down from the swim, and is hovering in the low to mid 160s, so pacing is fine. I'm not experiencing any pain in any alarming locations. Things are going as well as can be expected. I do a bit of talking as I ride; although it's rather technically difficult to do, it's not taxing the aerobic system very much. I whine to everyone that will listen about my swim, but mostly take care of business.

As I near closer to mile 12 I start to look for others sliding off their bikes. Doesn't happen at 10.5, not at 11, not at 11.5. Doesn't seem like anyone is putting time into me; maybe I have a good bike. It's really about bike selection at this race, and I got a fast one. Lucky me. I'm very near 12 and preparing to hop off when the computer cycles away from distance. I'm getting pretty antsy that I may end up riding 12.03 miles instead of the necessary 12 (perish the thought!), but luck is on my side and distance is in view when I roll it over. I slide off the bike in first place and sprint to the treadmills. I wonder how far back everyone is?

Bike: 21:37; 33.3 mph (oh yeah, all me...)

T2: :12

Nick is the next off his bike and he grabs the treadmill next to me. Wouldn't ya freaking know it, I'm .35 miles ahead of him; exactly what it was last year. Like last year, he's running a tad faster than me. I'm at 8.5 and he sets up at 9. Here we are again, I said to him, and we both smile.

My plan for the run wasn't particularly based off of training. I don't really run on treadmills, and never do steady state efforts on them. I don't really know what to expect. So my plan is to set it on 8.5 mph (almost exactly 7:00/mi) and just see how things go. The pace feels great when I start running and resolve to hold it for the first 15 minutes. Then we'll reassess.

Nick doesn't hold 9 mph very long and I soon see him back at 8.5. At this moment I have the win, so long as I don't blow up. I'm always worried about pacing, but have few reasons to think that I'm overdoing it. I'm feeling really, really good for a while. I kick it up a couple clicks, just to see how it feels, for a few minutes and back it back down. It's pushing me over LT, and it's a bit too early for that. My 8.5 mph leaves me right at LT. In theory, I should be able to maintain LT+5 beats for a 5k, but I don't want to risk it. All the chips are in my favor at the moment and, more importantly, this is just a fun race. I really want to do well tomorrow.

My first mile is in 7:05 or so, which includes the initial process of speeding up the belt. I decide that things are still feeling okay at the 10 minute mark, and pick it up to 8.7mph. I'm constantly keeping tabs on Nick, and fairly regularly glancing at a TV monitor in front of me during the middle section; an elliptical user has Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist on, and I zone out a bit watching that. On my pseudo-regular snaps back to reality I find myself right at LT, but handling the speed fairly well. I'm ready to back it down at any sign of difficulty, but things are going well. Mile two passes, and I'm starting to get tired; right on cue. I bump it up to 9.0. I'm still okay, and accelerate again to 9.5 at mile 2.4, a half mile away from the dismount. I realize very quickly that maintaining this speed for very long is going to be too much for me, but this is offset by the fact that the distance is clicking over much faster now than it was earlier.

After a rough calculation has me getting off the treadmill around the 20 minute mark, I find that counting down the seconds to the dismount is much more agreeable than counting up as distance covered increases. I count down the seconds; 90 seconds; 60 seconds; I turn it up to 10mph for the last minute. I mean, why not? Counting down, counting down, counting down. I hit mile 2.88 and get ready to fly off. Nobody's anywhere near me. I hit 2.9 and hop off. I sprint towards the stairs as the sounds of a YMCA working shoot past me: "Runner coming up! Get out of his way!"

I have to do quite a bit of clearing myself once I'm up on the track. I'm kicking it in as quickly as I can and soon snap the bit of ribbon they hold out for most racers. I get there a bit quicker than they had anticipated, and barely get it stretched out in time, but it was a nice touch. I'm tired and out of breathe, but I recover within a couple minutes. For the first time all day, I'm convinced that I HAVE ARRIVED physically. I'm first in my wave and am relatively certain I have first overall.

Run: 20:22; 6:47/mi

Total time: 50:14.56, 1st Overall (there were about 25 racers)

Nick finishes his lap as I'm finishing my cool down lap, and about 4 minutes behind me. I hang around to watch some other friends finish and, as sportsmanly as I could, look around to make sure my win is sewn up. It's a pretty cool feeling; winning a race was definitely on my bucket list and it was awesome to pull it out. A little unexpected, but I knew I'd never go into a race as the overall favorite; not in my book at least.

It's all smiles and handshakes as everyone finishes one by one. I'd really like to see this race earlier in the Spring, before the race season kicks off in earnest, but by and large everyone is happy with their times and happy to be racing again. Quite a few people are doing the double and racing tomorrow, so I look forward to seeing how that goes.

My prize is a $50 gift card to Walmart, which presents another first: the first time I've profited off of a race. I really need to get on that paperwork to race as a professional; they're bound to start disqualifying me if I keep racing age group...

In all seriousness it was cool to have such a great race, despite several early setbacks. It's a great omen and an incredible feeling, but this race hardly counts as one. I'm exponentially more concerned with how tomorrow goes, and exponentially more concerned with New Orleans than ADPi. Still, I'll be the grinning jackass tomorrow morning mentioning in small talk how he won his triathlon yesterday.

:-)