1.2 mi swim -> 56 mi bike -> 13.1 mi run
May 15, 2010
The day started at bit later, and a lot more stressed, than they typically do. I travelled with my buddy Johnathan to Taylorsville, Kentucky for this race, and our combined lack of planning and execution slowed things down a good bit. Having already seen the course and transition, we planned to get be out of our hotel at 6:30 and at race site at 7:00 when it opened. All told, we arrived at Taylorsville Lake around 7:20; 40 minutes before the gun.
I got a pretty decent warm up just frantically rushing through the pre-race necessities. Never getting truly worried I wouldn't have everything ready in time, it was a whirlwind of a half hour getting my race packet, setting up my transition area, putting on sunscreen, using the restroom twice, mixing and taking my energy drink and visualizing the day. Denise was there, of course, snapping pictures and looking more excited about the race than I was. I finished the tasks at hand about 10 minutes before race start, so I slapped on my wetsuit and headed down to the water for a warm up, albeit not much of one.
Having felt the water the day before, it almost felt a tad warmer, but still wonderful. The water was extremely high, flooding two parking spaces, a couple sidewalks and who knows what else that can typically be seen on the water's edge; promising a swim that would be longer than it should be. Over the course of my ~300m warm up, I noticed the sun rising in exactly the direction we would be swimming. Not knowing how much time I had left, I swam back to shore and just did some dynamic stretching to stay warm. The race director had a quick athlete meeting to discuss the course and the flow of transition and to answer the many questions racers had; the event website wasn't very forthcoming with pertinent information. He said the swim would be a mass start from the water's edge and that we would get started in 5 minutes. I continued to stretch, hop around and otherwise psych myself up for the day until I started to hear the countdown. I punched my watch with one minute left so I could have an accurate prediction of my swim time. One extremely long minute later, the siren wailed and I plunged into the water right at the front; where I'm now convinced I belong.
The start of the swim was pretty indicative of a mass start, with nothing but arms, legs and torsoes all around you. Punching, slapping, kicking and tugging abound, we sorted ourselves out in the most primal way we could. It took about 350m to get everything under control, at which point I found some feet to follow. I didn't think I would find anybody until the turnaround at 500m, so that was a good sign for me. With the sun in my eyes and swimmers still flanking me on all sides, it was very difficult to see how much further we had to swim. There wasn't much action on the first out pattern and I found the turnaround buoy in good time. I followed the pack around it, making the turn much tighter than my lead swimmer, and headed back down towards the dock.
The second 500 was the hardest one. I got pretty lazy on sighting and found myself drifting out into the middle of the lake a few times. The last time, on my second or third detour, I lost about 30m on the guy I was following. Wanting to catch him before the turn onto the second loop, I surged back towards the course. I maintained what I'd approximate to by my 100m TT speed (~1:25/100) for what seemed like 5 minutes pulling myself back in, just turning myself inside out to be back in a draft zone. I found myself behind some feet about 20m from the turn and vowed to not let that happen again.
Heading back out, I found myself sighting a lot more often. I leapfrogged my lead swimmer and grabbed onto a faster one; one I knew would I was stuck with for better or worse as the field was quite thin by now. Pulling myself and a swimmer next to me, the three of us took off down the familiar out stretch into the sun for our second and final lap. I had similar problems finding the turnaround buoy from a distance, but this time was able to sight when I was three buoys away. After making the turnaround, I found one last swimmer to carry me. Although this swimmer had a bigger kick that would make him much easier to follow, the guy was a pretty worthless pull because he kept swimming off course to the left. I found myself sticking close to the buoys and doing a lot of the work, waiting for him to find his way back. With about 100m left to the final turn, I dropped him and sprinted home, feeling like I'd had a good swim and interested to see my place overall in the discipline.
I'd seen the swim exit and knew exactly when to start dolphin diving and when to get out and start running, so I executed that well and headed up towards transition. Pulling my wetsuit halfway, I glanced at my watch and saw a very disappointing 41:XX on the display. I knew the swim was long, but how long exactly is just something we'll never know. Still, I felt like I'd had a good swim, that I was in a pretty good spot as far as swim time placement and that I had put myself in a good position to hold off some of the better bikers.
Swim time: 41:18 (2:04 per 100 yd, which is a crock of $#!+; 2/5 in AG, 47 sec back)
Transition was a tad slower than I'm used to, but after Rev 3, I didn't think it was a particularly good idea to roll without socks. Slapping them on and hopping on my bike, I shot out of transition not at all looking forward to the very hilly ride to come.
T1: 1:14
The bike didn't start out very well. In unVelcroing my left shoe, the Velcro strip came out of the hook and I had to stop completely to get that in place. Add to that the second steepest and most difficult climb of the day was at mile 0.1, spiking my heart rate and taking a lot out of what would be my average pace. Glancing at my watch, I was once again let down by the cheap Nike HRM I was loaned after the family dog chew my Garmin to pieces. Somehow water had seeped under the screen and fogged it up from the inside. If I stared at it for a second or two, I could make out my time (total time since the gun), but reading heart rate was impossible. Once again, I managed to find myself in the middle of an important race without access to heart rate data. I'm so f*cking glad I bought a new Garmin; the idea of having to do this for more races makes me want to hurt people.
After cresting the first big hill and catching my breath, I focused mostly on my other borrowed watch; Jonathan lent me his Garmin 301 as he had all the information he needed on his bike computer. It read everything (pace, distance, time) except heart rate, and it was a big help throughout the day. Turning off of Park Rd and onto Brair Ridge, I tried to stay aero and on the higher side of my aerobic threshold effort. Being a weak cyclist, it took about 40 miles to reach a point where people were no longer flying past me. I'd hoped to find some of them later on the run, but for the time being it's best to just race my race and shoot for the best overall time rather than trying to go with any packs. Not that I could if I wanted to...
Having driven the course once and the back half twice, I knew I could expect, for the most part, zero flat road and constant changes in pitch. Nothing in and of itself was particularly difficult, but the sum of the parts would be more than enough to steal a piece of my soul. I could remember the more notable climbs and their various landmarks, but didn't have much of a grasp on when they would arrive. I tried my best to chip away at the miles and wondered how long it would take Jonathan to catch me. I had guess 10 miles, but the pass was made about mile 12. He hanged back for a minute to chat about how long the swim was and share collective frustrations about the start of the bike before he rocketed off out of sight. I knew I had the first water station and the turn onto the out and back hill at mile 20, so I kept going and thought about that.
The turn off came a little later than expected, about mile 22, and I'd hoped that it didn't mean the bike course was going to be long as well. After heading down the 3 miles of steady grade and the one mile climb to the turnaround, I found myself having to pee pretty bad. The descent down the hill I just climbed was far too fast and dangerous to try it, but I gave it my best shot on the climb back up to Brair Ridge. I succeeded for a moment, emptying about half of my bladder before I had to start pedaling again, lest I find myself stopped and falling to the side. I hosed my leg off with water and eagerly plugged away at the next aid station in the same place as the last one, but 8 more miles into the ride; not only that, but the station sat at the halfway point on the bike. Splitting my time, I noticed I'd brought my speed up 1 mph over the last 10 miles. This was a good thing, no doubt, but only the difference between 15 and 16 mph, either way promising a pretty disappointing bike split.
There just wasn't many fun parts of the bike. It was constant up and down, open to traffic and extremely lonely, not to mention parts of it were very rough. There were two glaring exceptions to the following generality: turning right onto 55 in Bloomfield and turning onto 44 after going through Taylorsville. Other that those, the course was just monotonous, beautiful at points, but painfully boring. As far as I'm concerned, that sums up the bike pretty well. I was very ready to finish it around the long climb at mile 40 and had to exude some good ole' fashioned HTFU to slap out the remaining 16 miles.
My speed had increased quite a bit over the second half, but I accidentally split the time again, so I'm not really sure how much faster I ended up, if at all. I took in my second round of Delta-E at mile 45 and finished off my Infinit at mile 50. Looking for the final turn back onto Park Rd after mile 50, I was surprised to see it come a bit earlier than expected at mile 52. As soon as I turned, I saw Jonathan halfway through his first loop on the run and figured he had a pretty good bike. I shot down Park Rd knowing this ride was almost over and that I would finally begin the most anticipated discipline very, very soon. I knew better than to fly down the huge downhill leading into transition and very smoothly dismounted to a wave of self-satisfaction that I had finished the mentally and physically painful bike with a decent time.
Bike time: 3:18:30 (16.9 mph; 4/5)
Transition, again, was a tad slower than it would have been in short course. My shoes, visor and race belt went on well enough, but I stopped at the porto potties to let go of what refused to leave my bladder during the bike. Finishing that, I redressed, slipped my EFS flask into my pocket and crossed the timing mat, taking care to punch the start button on Jonathan's Garmin to give me a very accurate run split time once this all was finished.
T2: 1:20
I knew two horribly unwanted about the run course right out of the gate:
1) the same huge hill at mile 0.1 of the bike also served as the first part of the run
2) the run course was a three-loop out-and-back course along the first, and last, 2.5 miles of the bike course.
If it served as any consolation at the time, I knew two things that would work to my advantage when this was all said and done:
1) the very familiar huge hill would serve as a great springboard for a final kick should I need it. A great thing for me as I typically can out kick the pants off of guys who finish around the same time as me.
2) the boring, exposed and mentally draining run would be an extremely valuable simulation of Ironman Louisville's run course, which is a two loop out-and-back marathon course that gets very dull towards the end.
My heart rate does not spike as much as I thought it would have, nor as much as it did the day before when we checked it out on foot. As soon as I got to the top, I saw the first aid station and took notice of my distance: .5 miles. Good, a nice round number. As it turned out, Denise got wrangled into working the first aid station, so I grabbed a cup and some warm words and I set out on my predetermined pace. My strategy for the run was to hold aerobic threshold (roughly marathon pace) for the first 7 miles, bump it up to lactate threshold (roughly 10k pace) until mile 10 and then sprint just as hard as a damn well could over the last 5k. Hard to say at this point if my legs would hold, my GI tract wouldn't close up shop an hour too early or my mind would feel so inspired to crack the whip. Guess I'll have to wait and see. If you do long course racing long enough you become, at least in some aspects, a very patient person.
The three loop out-and-back course had three aid stations, one on each side of the 2 mile loops and an impromptu one sandwiched pretty close to the midpoint. So over the course of the run, you would encounter an aid station every mile at the half mile marker. Said another way, I could expect to get water at mile .5, 1.5 and 2.5 before I turned around and did that stretch another 5 times. My nutrition plan was to shoot a serving of gel, about 75 calories worth, at every turnaround, taking in my last hit at mile 10.5. So long as I got enough water in, I figured I'd be fine on both calories and salts. However, it was another aspect of my nutrition that seemed to be quite the bother for the first loop: I had popped a pair of Delta-E packets with 10 miles to go on the bike. It's not that it made me feel bad, it was just that it made me really gassy. Over the first loop, I probably stopped and forced a burp about 8 times. Not painful, but frustrating. I'll definitely need to look into that.
I didn't spend much time on the course before Jonathan caught me on his second lap. We talked a bit as he jogged past me, not much faster than I but faster than I wanted to go. I was happy to trot along and take in as many landmarks as I could. I had programmed the Garmin to split every mile, so I would be able to see how much my pace would fall off over the course of the day. My first mile (including the beastly climb) was just off 10:00. My second was 9:15. From there, I saw it slowly slide from the low 9s to the mid 10s over the course of my loops. I was feeling alright, body was responding well enough, but there wasn't a lot to do about it as long as I was holding myself back.
Getting to the turnaround at mile 2.5 was a nice feeling, because it meant I had seen every inch of the course and would be assured no more surprises. There were a few hills on the loops, but nothing that really required any additional effort or a change to my rhythm. I kept plugging along and increasingly noticed that it was getting pretty hot out there. The high for the day wasn't supposed to get past the mid 70s, but I think it got closer to 80. More importantly, the course was in one word: exposed. There wasn't a foot of shade to be seen from the road, not a grandpa with a garden hose nor a kid with a super soaker. I unzipped my tri suit all the way down, which helped considerably. Although it's never particularly reliable, Smyrna weather has forced me to do a handful of runs in very hot conditions, so I figured it would give me an advantage so long as it didn't push me straight over the edge.
I wasn't the only person who was hot. The way the course was laid out made it pretty difficult for runners to hide from each other, and I saw a lot of people with broken spirits. There was carnage everywhere, even on the first loop; people walking, people cramping, people double fisting water onto their head and chest. This weather should be pretty indicative of Louisville's weather, so it's best to try to figure out how best to deal with it. I kept at my pace, slowing though it may be, and kept things under control.
Seeing Denise at the turnaround to start my 2nd lap, I told her that I'd only want water over the course of the day to save me the conversation. Told her I was feeling "good so far," and that if I had to ask for HEED, that it was because I was cramping. We both expressed our hopes that it wouldn't happen and I took off on loop number two. I tried to take notice of the people on course, specifically ones in my age group. I recognized two guys that were probably in my age group, but were both ahead of me considerably; though one of whom was doing more walking than running. I file that information in a folder entitled "things to think about on the 3rd lap" and got back to business. I notice several other runners along the course, but only talk to a few. On that course, people are about the only thing to look at. Reaching the mile 5.5 aid station, I expressed my deep gratitude that the station existed; originally the course only had the two. Drinking my water and leaving the station, I knew that the next time I saw it (mile 7.5), it would be time to kick up the intensity a little; something I didn't know whether I should look forward to.
Seeing Jonathan for the last time as I headed out towards the halfway point was an interesting experience. Not solely because it's always good to see a friendly face on course, but I could see a noticeable change in his demeanor as the sun and the miles slowly ate away at him. Plugging away at the last 2.5 miles he had, he wasn't left with much other than to wave weakly; I would know that feeling soon enough. Turning the corner and heading back, I celebrated being exactly halfway through the course. One mile later, I knew it was time to go. I don't think I picked up my pace all that much. I couldn't read my heart rate, so I had to go by feel, and "feel" is an extremely subjective thing that late in a race. I saw my mile splits pick up slowly, but really just oscillated back towards the 10 min/mi mark. The end of the 2nd loop was the hardest mentally and the time when my mind spent the most of its time out of body.
Approaching Denise's aid station once more, I dropped off some useless equipment. If my watch wasn't going to give me heart rate, there wasn't much sense in wearing the watch or the chest strap. I dropped them off, drank some water and made some offhand remark to the effect of "this is gonna hurt" as I took off at a faster speed than I'd allowed myself to go to that point. Getting closer to being thoroughly overheated, I completely peeled off the top of my tri suit and ran shirtless; which actually helped a lot in my cooling mechanisms (but not much in the way of evening my tan).
Still feeling relatively together, adequately hydrated, fueled and mentally ready for more intensity, I started looking for my AG compatriot heading the opposite direction to finish up his 3rd and final loop. I knew the sooner I saw him the less chance I had of catching him. I stared down each figure round each corner in a panic until I was able to rule them out as the wrong person. I knew that once I hit the last turn, I'd pop my last gel shot and turn the heat up all the way for the last 2.5 miles. I managed to make it to the middle aid station without seeing him. My watch beeped at mile 11 and I still did not see him. Winding round and round, seeing dozens of runners too tall, too female or too different a stride, I continued my search. I felt relatively certain I didn't miss him and that he hadn't already finished. As I neared the last bend before the turnaround, I saw and passed him going the other way. I checked my watch to try to gauge how much time I had to put on him. I rounded the turnaround, shot some gel and water, and estimated I had 2.5 miles to make up 3:30 on him. Guess it was time to go. And when I say go, I mean GO!!!
My pace shot down to 8:30 and didn't fluctuate much from that other than on the slight hills I had remaining. I counted 7 or 8 people between him and I, and started counting people as I passed. Most of those still on course were pretty well broken down and I was flying, so the passes were quick and aplenty. 3 people go by. 5 people. I reach the aid station at mile 11.5. Pass 3 more people. Come up on another group. Mile 12. Where is he? Where IS he? And then I see him off in the distance. He's not going very fast. "If you see him, you can catch him." I cut into myself. I see nothing else. I slip my tri suit top back on and zip it up in preparation of the finish. We near the last bend before Denise's aid station. I'm gaining ground very quickly. I am Craig Alexander and he is Chris Lieto. In keeping with that analogy, he stops, walks and hangs his head. Oh, yeah. I've got him. The pass is coming; it's all a matter of whether he's going to try to come with me. I fly past him. I glance back. He's running again. But the gap is opening. It's opening...
I shoot up the road towards Denise. For the first time she doesn't have a cup ready, and for the first time I'm not in a position to wait on her. I fish out my gel flask and drop it at her feet. She smiles and makes some meaningless encouraging comment. I cut her off with a frantic "I think I have have him." "Huh?" I fly past her as fast as my legs will carry me, grab a cup of HEED on the table, and leave behind nothing but the words "THE GUY RIGHT BEHIND ME IS IN MY AGE GROUP!!!"
I hit the final downhill, open up my stride and pound away. I'm glancing back every 5 steps and see my self-declared rival still running, but slipping further and further away. He's passed by another guy trying to reel me in, but not only is he not going to catch me, he's easily identified as too old for me to care how fast he finishes. Rounding the last bend towards the finish stretch, I take one last glance behind me, pound me chest with my fist and head into the chute. I notice my time: 6:13:03. A PR!!! A ten second PR!!!
Run time: 2:10:38 (9:58/mi; 3/5)
Total time: 6:13:01.5 (an 11.5 sec PR; 3rd out of 5 in the male 25-29 age group, and what SHOULD have been an award!)
I give away my chip as Jonathan jogs up to me. I fill him in on the end of my run, my internal struggle to reel in the 23 year old, and my general good attitude towards the day. I get distracted several times, but eventually find myself headed down towards somewhere I wanted to go for the last 13 miles, the lake. I plunge into the cool water and struggle to breath for a little while. I allow my core temperature to drop down, wash my face and hair of all the sweat and enjoy being finished.
We eventually run into the race director and are informed that they are not going to post results anywhere, that they'd "be online soon." Add that to his comment that because "we're all winners" and that we all got "prizes" (a choice between a pull string bag and something even more worthless) they were not going to give away the awards they claimed on their website they would give away. No awards means no awards ceremony, which means I've got no reason to stick around. Changing clothes and packing the car takes a moderate slice of forever, but Jonathan and I eventually get everything ready to go, talk to every racer I cared to talk to, and mount up bound for Louisville. As far as I'm concerned the perfect way to end this day, a day that's little more than the best predictor for Ironman Louisville I could hope for, is to spend it looking at Ironman Louisville's swim, run, transition and first 20 miles of the bike.
I think I had a pretty good showing today. Despite a long swim, a hilly bike and a hot and mentally tough run, I managed to best my showing at last year's flat as an A-cup 70.3 New Orleans. I knew my fitness was better than last year, and find myself very happy that I finished 10 seconds on the negative side of last year's time, as compared to an equally possible finish on the positive. Being finished is a bittersweet feeling. I'm glad to be done with my early season A-race. I'm glad to have 6 months of training in the books, and to have already enjoyed huge fitness gains. I'm glad to be able to relax for a week and eat the foods I've been denying myself. The bitter brings to mind the realization of how much work is yet to come. How much July is going to hurt. How much Louisville is going to hurt. I'm certainly in no mood to want to race for a while. Thinking about the back half of the Louisville Marathon is unsettling me now. Still, it's mostly sweet. In the scheme of this year, this race means nothing. Louisville means everything. And at the end of the day, I think it's essential to realize that, to learn what lessons there are to be learned from this epic predictor race and to put that nose right back into the grindstone come June.
Bittersweet. Mostly sweet.
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep." - Robert Frost
*Editor's Note*
I published this RR in it's entirety before I recieved my split times. My times are now accurate, but I'm not going to edit my entire report to reflect my times as they were, compared to what I thought they were during the race.
One aspect worth mentioning: there was a mix-up during registration. I saw when I picked up my race packet that my age was listed as 24. Because this race was not USAT sanctioned, I assumed the "age up" rule was not in effect, and I'd race in the 20-24 year old bracket. As it turned out, I raced in the 25-29 and the guy I passed at the end was racing as a 24 year old, therefore NOT in my age group. Can you say BUZZKILL?
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Rev 3 Olympic Triathlon
1.5 km swim -> 40 km bike -> 10 km run
May 9, 2010
It's not my style to talk about the trip or the experience of the event outside of the race itself, but I think this race should involve a small but significant exception. The Rev 3 Triathlon series is in its infancy, but they've been busy writing a lot of checks with their mouths; state of the art timing systems, live athlete tracking, family- and children-focused environment. Most importantly of all they put up 5 figures of prize money to tempt the best pros in the world to come compete. And come they did. Over the weekend, I was able to snag pictures with Matty Reed, Chris Lieto, Torenzo Bozzone, Bjorn Andersson, Jordan Rapp, Julie Dibens, Mary Beth Ellis, Pip Taylor and race director Heather Gollnick. Check 'em out on Facebook!
Despite a late and enjoyable evening with old friends, I got a pretty decent night's sleep (~6 hours) and woke up relatively refreshed. Trying to be quiet and not wake up Jenna (my very accommodating friend who has put me up this weekend and every time I come to Knoxville in the last 4 years), I got my breakfast down, everything finished up and headed down to race sight about a half mile away at about 6:15. The pros left at 7:45 and my wave was closer to 8:30. I walked down (bikes racked the night before) to Transition, housed in a parking lot just across Neyland Drive from the Tennessee River.
While I was getting things ready, a guy recognized the tattoo on my leg. In any other triathlon that would have meant my M-dot and the line of questioning would have involved which Ironman I did, how many I've done and which one I plan to do next. This time was about my Pi Alpha tattoo. Turns out the guy and his buddy were Pi Kapps from Virginia Tech who came down to race. Not only that, they were both Pi Alphas. We talked for a bit about our respective trips before I left them to finish getting ready. It was real bummer running into them in transition less than an hour before the gun went off, or I might have been privy to a wonderfully nostalgic conversation. All the same, I wished them well and got back to business.
*If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, google Push America. Pi Alphas are alums of Push America events. If you want to donate to the cause, let me know; I know several guys who could use some help in their fundraising goals.*
I usually don't race the Olympic distance, which provided me with a number of conundrums. First of which was a conflicted feeling of foot care. The race seemed too short to want to put on socks for the bike or the run, and simultaneously too long to attempt to slug it out with no lubrication. This day, I went with Vaseline. I lubed up the walls, heels and toe box of my biking and running shoes with (generic brand) Vaseline and hoped for the best. My warm up run left my toes feeling a little hot and bothered, so I slapped some more in there as the announcer was barking at us stragglers to get out of transition and head up to the swim start. Very similarly to my last point-to-point swim race (70.3 New Orleans) I mosey out of transition confident that everything would be in its place when I finished the swim. I slip my wetsuit on halfway, mix up my energy drink and walk along the path up to the start of the swim. Counting down the minutes to my wave getting in the water, I down my Delta-E energy drink, pop my GU Roctane (which I got several samples of during the expo) and watch the other waves do their thing.
Sooner than expected, I got the call to head down to the water. The official temperature was 69.4 degrees, though I didn't know that at the time. All I did the previous day was dip a toe in to feel the temp and thought it a bit chilly. I was wondering how comfortable the entrance would be. To my excitement the water felt all but ideal not only jumping in, but would feel great the entire swim. Not to mention the water, which had been dammed upstream, was flat as glass. So I swam over to the start corral, did that thing you do to warm your wetsuit up, and waited for the siren. I punched my watch at the 90 second notification so I wouldn't have to fumble with it at the gun. Positioning myself immediately behind the first line of swimmers, I treaded water feeling ready for a great race. At the siren, I got to experience once again the wonderful chaos of a deep water swim start, albeit a bit subdued with only about 100 people in there.
I could tell right away that the swim was going to go well, but I had no idea what to expect time-wise. My PR for a 1.5 km swim was unknown, but I could recall that it was set during my only other fair Olympic distance race. I've done 2 Olys in my 3 previous years, and one of them was literally in a hurricane. My first Olympic went well for the time, but it was only my 4th triathlon and at the end of my first triathlon season in 2007. Whatever my time was, it certainly wasn't indicative of what my time should be for this race. (It was 36:42)
In any case, it was very easy to draft for the first part. The course was a hybrid between and clockwise rectangle and a point-to-point. You swam for ~500 yards into the sun, turned around and swam the remaining yards, past the starting dock and down to a further dock just across from transition. On the first out, there was more jockeying for position that there was actual swimming. So long as I had feet in front of me, I was content to let the first part serve as a warm up, since we weren't allowed one before the race. The swim was directly into the sun, so I scarcely had any idea how much further we had to go. Gradually, the field thinned and we passed the giant boat that served as my only landmark; the turn buoy should be just beyond that. Eventually we turned, my vision returned and it was largely open water from here on in.
Feeling strong in the water, I hunted around for some fast feet to carry me to a decent swim. I've never really tried to draft in a race before and wasn't sure the best way to go about it. Luck was on my side, tho, as there were a handful of stronger swimmers in front of me throughout the last 1,000. My effort resembled a lot less that steady state effort I've been doing in the pool for years and more like the interval work I've been doing recently. I'd see a swimmer up in front of me and sprint to get up to him. Once I was on his feet, I'd relax and catch my breath. Soon after he'd drop me and I'd surge again, catching either his feet or someone else's. This continued until I found myself with nobody left to carry me across the final 300 meters. I could tell the swim exit was close, but didn't really see the dock until I was right up on it. I wished I had gotten in the water the day before so I could have known the course's landmarks better. Still, the swim felt very fast and I was interested to see how my time would end up.
I exit the water and have a bit of trouble getting my suit off. I eventually wrangle it off of me and glance at my watch; it reads 23:xx. I double take. There's no WAY I did the swim that fast! I am floored. I didn't know what to expect, but figured 30 minutes was a nice round number to shoot for. I'm VERY happy with my swim time and already start to look forward to bragging about it. Transition was smooth and I soon mounted my bike to screams of Denise and Marian on the sidelines. My day was already going light years above what I expected and I was interested to see how I'd handle the rest of it.
Swim time: 22:28 (1:33/100 m; 9/31 in AG, though I was 8th out of transition)
T1: 2:01
I knew two things going into the bike: my fitness, time goals and, subsequently, expectations were a lot higher for the swim and the run than the bike. I just didn't feel like my bike fitness was really where it needs to be. Add to that the fact that I'd driven the bike course twice and had seen firsthand just how HILLY it was. So, my goal was to do the fastest bike my body felt like giving me that day, but more focusing on coming in off the bike fueled, hydrated and brimming with enough energy to lay down a smoking 10k PR.
Having seen the course not only in the days prior, but racing much of it over years of TriDeltathon races, the first 4-5 miles around campus were uneventful. Eventually, we exited UT on the opposite side of campus and headed out towards rural south Knox county for the meat and potatoes of the ride. As we crossed the Henley St bridge, one of the coolest parts of the bike course, I got to witness the pro men coming back into town. I saw Bjorn Andersson in the lead, Lieto quite a bit back, and a string of noticeable pro men behind him, namely Torenzzo, Matty Reed and TJ Tollakson (why didn't I get a picture of TJ? Gah, I WANTED to! Never saw him. More on that at the end).
Leaving town and heading out to the hills, I started taking my calories on board. I didn't know what to expect out of the bike, so I didn't know how much fuel to take in. I ended up with 3 scoops of Infinit (~450 calories, ~110g of carbs) mixed heavy and put in a gel flask. I figured I'd nurse on that, possibly not even finish it, but take my last little squirt before I got back into campus. As it turned out I found myself with less than half a flask by mile 8. At that point I switched to mostly water, trying to keep my mouth moist but I suppose not really DRINKING a ton. I managed to overdo it a bit on bike hydration, though. I found myself having to pee really bad in the last 3 miles. I was wondering how it would affect my ability to run, but knew there was no way I was stopping!
I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the idiosyncrasies of the bike. I'd seen it enough the days before to know what to expect. There was a lot of climbing. The terrain was mostly rolling with some flat, and a handful of climbs that never really seemed to come down. There were two climbs of note, each lasting about a mile. They both looked like absolute quad-shredders from the car, but ended up not being so horrible when it came down to it (no Nasty Grades!). The descents on the back end of them were very fast, quite winding/technical and pretty cold. Some of the roads were extremely bumpy and uncomfortable, some were plushly flat and well paved. All in all, the bike was about what I expected, easier than I feared it could have been. It made evident that I need a new bike fit, tho. I experienced a lot of discomfort on the bike.
I noticed the 10 mile marker was placed entirely too early in the ride. Approaching it, I estimated it had been about 50 minutes into the ride. My mind was a blur of images. This was way faster than I thought I was capable of doing (and it was). I didn't see another mileage sign until I was headed back into town, but did watch the numbers on my race watch creep higher and higher and higher, systematically removing any possibility of excessively lofty bike splits.
I noticed I had lost my heart rate about 45 minutes into the bike. Despite my best attempts, I never really did get it back. I was more than comfortable going by feel on the bike, and I suppose I would have been okay doing so on the run, but to have this happen just infuriates me. Why is it asking so much that a HRM measure HR?
Eventually the hills ended, the loop took us back through the familiar roads of the Henley Bridge, through campus and back to Neyland. I halted any more accelerations in lieu of spinning my legs out, trying to prep them for the run. Seeing the runners dot the street gave me a better idea of where the run would take us and I was quite ready to see how my body would handle the unique blend of intensity and endurance that the 10k presented. I hopped off my bike to hear Denise grab the mic from the announcer and (still screaming) cheer me on, which made me smile. I felt an interesting sensation as soon as I dismounted and started to run barefoot; there was excessive pressure and soreness in the balls of my feet from all the churning and burning along the bike course. Hopefully that wouldn't affect my run stride. Though the transition area wasn't well marked, well known or well announced to athletes actually in there, I figured out where the exit was and took off down Neyland, hoping for a fast end of the day.
Bike time: 1:35:38 (17.38 mph; 9/31 in AG)
T2: 1:28
I glanced at my HRM a dozen times over the course of the run, but I never did get HR data again. I was very thankful for the way my training plan was laid out, otherwise I'm sure my pacing would have been off. I do quite a bit of track work repeating miles at 10k pace (or slightly faster), so I got to be pretty proficient at knowing what that pace feels like. Having adequately fueled and hyper-hydrated on the ride, I was glad to fuel pretty minimally during the run. At each aid station, I splashed a cup of water into my mouth, getting between 2-4 ounces in there and the rest on my chest. This kept my mouth moist, gave me enough water without being too much and sufficed as my only cooling mechanism; it was a mild day, but over half of the run was in the sun.
The run course, like the swim course, was a bit of a hybrid between an out and back and a point-to-point. You ran just short of 2 miles on Nayland Drive, hopped on the Greenway for a little bit, turned around at mile 2.8, headed back to transition (to make 5.6), ran past transition and up to the finish. I knew there was a big climb past transition heading up to the finish, but had no idea what the run course was. It was very poorly marked the days before the race, so I wasn't able to see it. I had to just trust that it was as flat as people said it was.
I spent most of the initial out patter measuring my split times. I did my first mile in 8:XX, but was unsure of the precise moment where transition ended and the run began, so I couldn't be sure. The 2nd mile was 8 flat and I'd hoped to make the 3rd mile at least that fast. My pacing plan was to hold LT until the turnaround, pick it up about 10 seconds per mile on the way back, then all out sprint up the final hill and into the finish. At mile 2 was the end of Nayland Drive, so my focus turned to the hidden entrance to the Greenway. As I neared the turn, the volunteers cautioned me to be careful going down the steps. Oh, you've got to be kidding me! There were about 8 steps that began what was about a quarter mile sharp descent into the Greenway. This was going to be a lot of fun going back up...
I took notice of the mile marker signs on the Greenway and was able to give myself smaller checkpoints. I saw James near the end of the out and back section and motioned to him. It was cool to see him there; I knew he was a run course marshal, but thought he was going to be further up in a section only the people doing the half ironman would see. Making the turn at the turnaround, I kicked it up just a tad and tried to focus on my breathing, knowing it would be completely flat until the mammoth climb back to Nayland. When it came, I focused on shortening my stride, increasing my turnover and pushing through my toes, but I could feel my body screeching to a near standstill. On top of the hill, you get a little downhill heading back to Nayland to catch your breath, so that's what I did.
The 2nd stretch down Nayland was just painful. My body was responding extremely well, I wasn't cramping and my energy felt fine. It was just the accumulation of mental and physical pain the day had brought. I zoned out a few times trying to ignore it and just let me mind go blank for a while. I couldn't find the mile 4 marker, but knew I wouldn't hit my quite optimistic goal time of 45 mins, largely because of the unexpected hill and crucial break in my rhythm. Eventually, I passed the one mile marker (going to other way), and knew I'd be in transition in less than 8 minutes, which made me feel a lot better.
Taking in my last shot of water and running alongside transition, I knew my day was almost done. I could hear spectators and volunteers cheering, but my vision was starting to go and all I saw was furry, white and out of focus. Getting to the otherside of transition and approaching the hill I told myself that this is the place where I was "either going to go or not." I decided I could handle a little more suffering, so I kicked it up another notch and went deeper into the redline. Cresting the hill and heading back down it towards the park, I opened up my stride and really plugged away at it. I approached the finish line chute with very real and not often experienced levels of lactic acid coursing through every vein in my body. A good finish line kick got me across the line and gave me a chance to catch my breath and enjoy the end of a pretty good race.
Run: 49:35 (8:00/mi; 9/31 in AG, see below)
I left T2 in 9th place, passed one guy by the turnaround, and was passed again by the finish
Total time: 2:41:11
9th out of 24 finishers in my age group
Post race was pretty uneventful, and a little bit distressing and confusing. After all the bragging they had done about their new advanced timing system, the times were screwed up when I checked them. A mysterious 5 minutes had been added to my swim time, completely negating the breakthrough swim I had and throwing my mood for a loop. I was pretty confident that my watch did not mysteriously read my swim 5 minutes fast and that they had just messed up the timing of the waves (they did and changed it eventually). Additionally, they had only measured my run time to the turnaround, so at first glance it said I had finished sub 2:20. Yeah, I wish...
The food was a huge disappointment and there wasn't really anything to do post-race that wasn't already there for the expo. I checked out the pro's awards ceremony and snagged another picture or two. It seemed as if something was amiss when the ceremony ended. It took a while for me to realize that TJ Tollakson was nowhere to be seen; I would have liked to get a picture with him. He ended up 11th, just off of the leaderboard, and I couldn't find him in the ocean of people stretched out across the lawn. I left without much of a search as I was pretty ready to head back to Jenna's to wash off the sweat and river, get some lunch and knock out this annoying little 3 hour drive back to Smyrna to spend at least a little time with my Mom. Probably not the best thing to do, screwing around all day in Knoxville on Mother's Day.
In all fairness, I'm a little deflated looking at my bike time. I know it isn't as bad as it looks, but it looks like I slowed down a lot. Their splits were at odd times, giving one after 12.4 miles, after another 3.4 miles and at the final marker in transition. At a glance it looked like I slowed down severely at the end, but a lot of that can be accounted for by the towering climb on Neubert Springs, the rough roads just outside of downtown, the 2 steep climbs on Cumberland and Volunteer and the spinning towards the end.
I would have like the run to be 2-3 (or a breakthrough day at 4-4:35) minutes faster, but that was under the assumption that the course was flat. Seeing the plummet into the Greenway, the subsequent climb out of there, and the tenth of a mile of breathlessness thereafter, I knew that was far out of reach. Don't think my split times were lost on me: I averaged 8 min/mis exactly to the turnaround and 7.99 min/mis over the last 3.4. I wished it had been closer to 7:45s, but to see such an even split was a pretty cool sight. Couple that with the knowledge that BOTH climbs on the run course were over the back half.
All in all, I see this race as a crazy breakthrough in the swim, a decent bike and a solid run. I could feel my body was well nourished, well fueled, well trained and just firing on all cylinders even late in the race, which is certainly the best omen of all.
May 9, 2010
It's not my style to talk about the trip or the experience of the event outside of the race itself, but I think this race should involve a small but significant exception. The Rev 3 Triathlon series is in its infancy, but they've been busy writing a lot of checks with their mouths; state of the art timing systems, live athlete tracking, family- and children-focused environment. Most importantly of all they put up 5 figures of prize money to tempt the best pros in the world to come compete. And come they did. Over the weekend, I was able to snag pictures with Matty Reed, Chris Lieto, Torenzo Bozzone, Bjorn Andersson, Jordan Rapp, Julie Dibens, Mary Beth Ellis, Pip Taylor and race director Heather Gollnick. Check 'em out on Facebook!
Despite a late and enjoyable evening with old friends, I got a pretty decent night's sleep (~6 hours) and woke up relatively refreshed. Trying to be quiet and not wake up Jenna (my very accommodating friend who has put me up this weekend and every time I come to Knoxville in the last 4 years), I got my breakfast down, everything finished up and headed down to race sight about a half mile away at about 6:15. The pros left at 7:45 and my wave was closer to 8:30. I walked down (bikes racked the night before) to Transition, housed in a parking lot just across Neyland Drive from the Tennessee River.
While I was getting things ready, a guy recognized the tattoo on my leg. In any other triathlon that would have meant my M-dot and the line of questioning would have involved which Ironman I did, how many I've done and which one I plan to do next. This time was about my Pi Alpha tattoo. Turns out the guy and his buddy were Pi Kapps from Virginia Tech who came down to race. Not only that, they were both Pi Alphas. We talked for a bit about our respective trips before I left them to finish getting ready. It was real bummer running into them in transition less than an hour before the gun went off, or I might have been privy to a wonderfully nostalgic conversation. All the same, I wished them well and got back to business.
*If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, google Push America. Pi Alphas are alums of Push America events. If you want to donate to the cause, let me know; I know several guys who could use some help in their fundraising goals.*
I usually don't race the Olympic distance, which provided me with a number of conundrums. First of which was a conflicted feeling of foot care. The race seemed too short to want to put on socks for the bike or the run, and simultaneously too long to attempt to slug it out with no lubrication. This day, I went with Vaseline. I lubed up the walls, heels and toe box of my biking and running shoes with (generic brand) Vaseline and hoped for the best. My warm up run left my toes feeling a little hot and bothered, so I slapped some more in there as the announcer was barking at us stragglers to get out of transition and head up to the swim start. Very similarly to my last point-to-point swim race (70.3 New Orleans) I mosey out of transition confident that everything would be in its place when I finished the swim. I slip my wetsuit on halfway, mix up my energy drink and walk along the path up to the start of the swim. Counting down the minutes to my wave getting in the water, I down my Delta-E energy drink, pop my GU Roctane (which I got several samples of during the expo) and watch the other waves do their thing.
Sooner than expected, I got the call to head down to the water. The official temperature was 69.4 degrees, though I didn't know that at the time. All I did the previous day was dip a toe in to feel the temp and thought it a bit chilly. I was wondering how comfortable the entrance would be. To my excitement the water felt all but ideal not only jumping in, but would feel great the entire swim. Not to mention the water, which had been dammed upstream, was flat as glass. So I swam over to the start corral, did that thing you do to warm your wetsuit up, and waited for the siren. I punched my watch at the 90 second notification so I wouldn't have to fumble with it at the gun. Positioning myself immediately behind the first line of swimmers, I treaded water feeling ready for a great race. At the siren, I got to experience once again the wonderful chaos of a deep water swim start, albeit a bit subdued with only about 100 people in there.
I could tell right away that the swim was going to go well, but I had no idea what to expect time-wise. My PR for a 1.5 km swim was unknown, but I could recall that it was set during my only other fair Olympic distance race. I've done 2 Olys in my 3 previous years, and one of them was literally in a hurricane. My first Olympic went well for the time, but it was only my 4th triathlon and at the end of my first triathlon season in 2007. Whatever my time was, it certainly wasn't indicative of what my time should be for this race. (It was 36:42)
In any case, it was very easy to draft for the first part. The course was a hybrid between and clockwise rectangle and a point-to-point. You swam for ~500 yards into the sun, turned around and swam the remaining yards, past the starting dock and down to a further dock just across from transition. On the first out, there was more jockeying for position that there was actual swimming. So long as I had feet in front of me, I was content to let the first part serve as a warm up, since we weren't allowed one before the race. The swim was directly into the sun, so I scarcely had any idea how much further we had to go. Gradually, the field thinned and we passed the giant boat that served as my only landmark; the turn buoy should be just beyond that. Eventually we turned, my vision returned and it was largely open water from here on in.
Feeling strong in the water, I hunted around for some fast feet to carry me to a decent swim. I've never really tried to draft in a race before and wasn't sure the best way to go about it. Luck was on my side, tho, as there were a handful of stronger swimmers in front of me throughout the last 1,000. My effort resembled a lot less that steady state effort I've been doing in the pool for years and more like the interval work I've been doing recently. I'd see a swimmer up in front of me and sprint to get up to him. Once I was on his feet, I'd relax and catch my breath. Soon after he'd drop me and I'd surge again, catching either his feet or someone else's. This continued until I found myself with nobody left to carry me across the final 300 meters. I could tell the swim exit was close, but didn't really see the dock until I was right up on it. I wished I had gotten in the water the day before so I could have known the course's landmarks better. Still, the swim felt very fast and I was interested to see how my time would end up.
I exit the water and have a bit of trouble getting my suit off. I eventually wrangle it off of me and glance at my watch; it reads 23:xx. I double take. There's no WAY I did the swim that fast! I am floored. I didn't know what to expect, but figured 30 minutes was a nice round number to shoot for. I'm VERY happy with my swim time and already start to look forward to bragging about it. Transition was smooth and I soon mounted my bike to screams of Denise and Marian on the sidelines. My day was already going light years above what I expected and I was interested to see how I'd handle the rest of it.
Swim time: 22:28 (1:33/100 m; 9/31 in AG, though I was 8th out of transition)
T1: 2:01
I knew two things going into the bike: my fitness, time goals and, subsequently, expectations were a lot higher for the swim and the run than the bike. I just didn't feel like my bike fitness was really where it needs to be. Add to that the fact that I'd driven the bike course twice and had seen firsthand just how HILLY it was. So, my goal was to do the fastest bike my body felt like giving me that day, but more focusing on coming in off the bike fueled, hydrated and brimming with enough energy to lay down a smoking 10k PR.
Having seen the course not only in the days prior, but racing much of it over years of TriDeltathon races, the first 4-5 miles around campus were uneventful. Eventually, we exited UT on the opposite side of campus and headed out towards rural south Knox county for the meat and potatoes of the ride. As we crossed the Henley St bridge, one of the coolest parts of the bike course, I got to witness the pro men coming back into town. I saw Bjorn Andersson in the lead, Lieto quite a bit back, and a string of noticeable pro men behind him, namely Torenzzo, Matty Reed and TJ Tollakson (why didn't I get a picture of TJ? Gah, I WANTED to! Never saw him. More on that at the end).
Leaving town and heading out to the hills, I started taking my calories on board. I didn't know what to expect out of the bike, so I didn't know how much fuel to take in. I ended up with 3 scoops of Infinit (~450 calories, ~110g of carbs) mixed heavy and put in a gel flask. I figured I'd nurse on that, possibly not even finish it, but take my last little squirt before I got back into campus. As it turned out I found myself with less than half a flask by mile 8. At that point I switched to mostly water, trying to keep my mouth moist but I suppose not really DRINKING a ton. I managed to overdo it a bit on bike hydration, though. I found myself having to pee really bad in the last 3 miles. I was wondering how it would affect my ability to run, but knew there was no way I was stopping!
I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the idiosyncrasies of the bike. I'd seen it enough the days before to know what to expect. There was a lot of climbing. The terrain was mostly rolling with some flat, and a handful of climbs that never really seemed to come down. There were two climbs of note, each lasting about a mile. They both looked like absolute quad-shredders from the car, but ended up not being so horrible when it came down to it (no Nasty Grades!). The descents on the back end of them were very fast, quite winding/technical and pretty cold. Some of the roads were extremely bumpy and uncomfortable, some were plushly flat and well paved. All in all, the bike was about what I expected, easier than I feared it could have been. It made evident that I need a new bike fit, tho. I experienced a lot of discomfort on the bike.
I noticed the 10 mile marker was placed entirely too early in the ride. Approaching it, I estimated it had been about 50 minutes into the ride. My mind was a blur of images. This was way faster than I thought I was capable of doing (and it was). I didn't see another mileage sign until I was headed back into town, but did watch the numbers on my race watch creep higher and higher and higher, systematically removing any possibility of excessively lofty bike splits.
I noticed I had lost my heart rate about 45 minutes into the bike. Despite my best attempts, I never really did get it back. I was more than comfortable going by feel on the bike, and I suppose I would have been okay doing so on the run, but to have this happen just infuriates me. Why is it asking so much that a HRM measure HR?
Eventually the hills ended, the loop took us back through the familiar roads of the Henley Bridge, through campus and back to Neyland. I halted any more accelerations in lieu of spinning my legs out, trying to prep them for the run. Seeing the runners dot the street gave me a better idea of where the run would take us and I was quite ready to see how my body would handle the unique blend of intensity and endurance that the 10k presented. I hopped off my bike to hear Denise grab the mic from the announcer and (still screaming) cheer me on, which made me smile. I felt an interesting sensation as soon as I dismounted and started to run barefoot; there was excessive pressure and soreness in the balls of my feet from all the churning and burning along the bike course. Hopefully that wouldn't affect my run stride. Though the transition area wasn't well marked, well known or well announced to athletes actually in there, I figured out where the exit was and took off down Neyland, hoping for a fast end of the day.
Bike time: 1:35:38 (17.38 mph; 9/31 in AG)
T2: 1:28
I glanced at my HRM a dozen times over the course of the run, but I never did get HR data again. I was very thankful for the way my training plan was laid out, otherwise I'm sure my pacing would have been off. I do quite a bit of track work repeating miles at 10k pace (or slightly faster), so I got to be pretty proficient at knowing what that pace feels like. Having adequately fueled and hyper-hydrated on the ride, I was glad to fuel pretty minimally during the run. At each aid station, I splashed a cup of water into my mouth, getting between 2-4 ounces in there and the rest on my chest. This kept my mouth moist, gave me enough water without being too much and sufficed as my only cooling mechanism; it was a mild day, but over half of the run was in the sun.
The run course, like the swim course, was a bit of a hybrid between an out and back and a point-to-point. You ran just short of 2 miles on Nayland Drive, hopped on the Greenway for a little bit, turned around at mile 2.8, headed back to transition (to make 5.6), ran past transition and up to the finish. I knew there was a big climb past transition heading up to the finish, but had no idea what the run course was. It was very poorly marked the days before the race, so I wasn't able to see it. I had to just trust that it was as flat as people said it was.
I spent most of the initial out patter measuring my split times. I did my first mile in 8:XX, but was unsure of the precise moment where transition ended and the run began, so I couldn't be sure. The 2nd mile was 8 flat and I'd hoped to make the 3rd mile at least that fast. My pacing plan was to hold LT until the turnaround, pick it up about 10 seconds per mile on the way back, then all out sprint up the final hill and into the finish. At mile 2 was the end of Nayland Drive, so my focus turned to the hidden entrance to the Greenway. As I neared the turn, the volunteers cautioned me to be careful going down the steps. Oh, you've got to be kidding me! There were about 8 steps that began what was about a quarter mile sharp descent into the Greenway. This was going to be a lot of fun going back up...
I took notice of the mile marker signs on the Greenway and was able to give myself smaller checkpoints. I saw James near the end of the out and back section and motioned to him. It was cool to see him there; I knew he was a run course marshal, but thought he was going to be further up in a section only the people doing the half ironman would see. Making the turn at the turnaround, I kicked it up just a tad and tried to focus on my breathing, knowing it would be completely flat until the mammoth climb back to Nayland. When it came, I focused on shortening my stride, increasing my turnover and pushing through my toes, but I could feel my body screeching to a near standstill. On top of the hill, you get a little downhill heading back to Nayland to catch your breath, so that's what I did.
The 2nd stretch down Nayland was just painful. My body was responding extremely well, I wasn't cramping and my energy felt fine. It was just the accumulation of mental and physical pain the day had brought. I zoned out a few times trying to ignore it and just let me mind go blank for a while. I couldn't find the mile 4 marker, but knew I wouldn't hit my quite optimistic goal time of 45 mins, largely because of the unexpected hill and crucial break in my rhythm. Eventually, I passed the one mile marker (going to other way), and knew I'd be in transition in less than 8 minutes, which made me feel a lot better.
Taking in my last shot of water and running alongside transition, I knew my day was almost done. I could hear spectators and volunteers cheering, but my vision was starting to go and all I saw was furry, white and out of focus. Getting to the otherside of transition and approaching the hill I told myself that this is the place where I was "either going to go or not." I decided I could handle a little more suffering, so I kicked it up another notch and went deeper into the redline. Cresting the hill and heading back down it towards the park, I opened up my stride and really plugged away at it. I approached the finish line chute with very real and not often experienced levels of lactic acid coursing through every vein in my body. A good finish line kick got me across the line and gave me a chance to catch my breath and enjoy the end of a pretty good race.
Run: 49:35 (8:00/mi; 9/31 in AG, see below)
I left T2 in 9th place, passed one guy by the turnaround, and was passed again by the finish
Total time: 2:41:11
9th out of 24 finishers in my age group
Post race was pretty uneventful, and a little bit distressing and confusing. After all the bragging they had done about their new advanced timing system, the times were screwed up when I checked them. A mysterious 5 minutes had been added to my swim time, completely negating the breakthrough swim I had and throwing my mood for a loop. I was pretty confident that my watch did not mysteriously read my swim 5 minutes fast and that they had just messed up the timing of the waves (they did and changed it eventually). Additionally, they had only measured my run time to the turnaround, so at first glance it said I had finished sub 2:20. Yeah, I wish...
The food was a huge disappointment and there wasn't really anything to do post-race that wasn't already there for the expo. I checked out the pro's awards ceremony and snagged another picture or two. It seemed as if something was amiss when the ceremony ended. It took a while for me to realize that TJ Tollakson was nowhere to be seen; I would have liked to get a picture with him. He ended up 11th, just off of the leaderboard, and I couldn't find him in the ocean of people stretched out across the lawn. I left without much of a search as I was pretty ready to head back to Jenna's to wash off the sweat and river, get some lunch and knock out this annoying little 3 hour drive back to Smyrna to spend at least a little time with my Mom. Probably not the best thing to do, screwing around all day in Knoxville on Mother's Day.
In all fairness, I'm a little deflated looking at my bike time. I know it isn't as bad as it looks, but it looks like I slowed down a lot. Their splits were at odd times, giving one after 12.4 miles, after another 3.4 miles and at the final marker in transition. At a glance it looked like I slowed down severely at the end, but a lot of that can be accounted for by the towering climb on Neubert Springs, the rough roads just outside of downtown, the 2 steep climbs on Cumberland and Volunteer and the spinning towards the end.
I would have like the run to be 2-3 (or a breakthrough day at 4-4:35) minutes faster, but that was under the assumption that the course was flat. Seeing the plummet into the Greenway, the subsequent climb out of there, and the tenth of a mile of breathlessness thereafter, I knew that was far out of reach. Don't think my split times were lost on me: I averaged 8 min/mis exactly to the turnaround and 7.99 min/mis over the last 3.4. I wished it had been closer to 7:45s, but to see such an even split was a pretty cool sight. Couple that with the knowledge that BOTH climbs on the run course were over the back half.
All in all, I see this race as a crazy breakthrough in the swim, a decent bike and a solid run. I could feel my body was well nourished, well fueled, well trained and just firing on all cylinders even late in the race, which is certainly the best omen of all.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
YMCA Indoor Triathlon
500 meter swim -> 12 mi bike -> 3 mi run
April 10, 2010
I woke up probably earlier and more excited than I should have for this race, but after a horrifically cold winter I was excited as could be to race another triathlon. Time could not pass fast enough as I ate breakfast and got everything ready to go. It seemed anticlimactic to head out for a triathlon without a bike and to only go as far as the local YMCA: the site of 40% of my training. Still, I arrived about 7:50, just in time to watch the first wave go at 8:00.
Norton and Kellie were both racing; Norton at 8:00, Kellie at 8:45, so it was cool to watch them. I cheered them on for a while, learned what I could about the “course” and the dynamics of the event and otherwise kill time. Eventually time clicked to within an hour of my wave start at 9:30, so I pounded a 5-hour energy, dropped all my casual clothes off at my locker and started my warmup. I feel like I got in a great warmup on the spin bike. Managed to grab the closest bike to the stairs, get it adjusted to fit my body, found my gearing and did my cardio warmup by 9:15. I didn’t get as much of a swim as I would have liked, but felt it sufficient to get my arms ready to go.
Before the race started, I couldn’t help but ask around to figure out who the competition was. There were a lot of dark horses on the participant’s list, but one guy that got vouched for was a guy named Nicholas. He was a lean, middle aged runner friend of Kellie’s. Evidently, he’s got a relatively healthy resume of marathons in the low 3:00s and has been racing for years. I don’t know anything about his bike or his swim, but I mark him and hope he doesn’t run away from me. He’s in a late wave, but manages to get it switched to mine, which I don’t think was wholly coincidental. :-)
As soon as the cue was given I lock into my pace. I feel my form is solid and know based off recent training that my pace is true to the distance. There are three lanes with two swimmers apiece, with Nicholas and me on opposite sides of adjoined lanes (two swimmers between us). Right off the gun, he starts to slowly pull away from me. His pace is only seconds per 100 faster than mine and the swim simply isn’t long enough for him to gain much ground. I lost touch with him after about 200 meters, but managed to find him again at about 400. Don’t know if he slowed down, I sped up or if he just never made the distance I gave him credit for. I felt great about my pace, which happened to almost uniformly match a female swimmer right next to me on my side of the opposite lane. My flip turns made a noticeable difference, with me gaining a half a body length on her with every one. I dropped her into my drafting zone on the last turn and caught sight of Nicholas about 1.5 body lengths up on the last 25. I managed to pull within a half a body length by the wall and we exited the water with essentially the exact same time. Having nothing more to do than to slip on my running shoes, I pounded him in transition, beating him to the spin bikes just up the stairs by the better part of a full minute.
Swim: 7:56 (1:35/100m)
Transition: 0:45
I’m the first one to the bikes, so I assume I’m the first out of the water; I find out later this isn’t the case. Nicholas trickles in right as I get locked into place and begin to spin, but I don’t know how much ground I’m able to make on him. Swimmers slide in one after another, but I don’t pay them much mind. This is, by far, the strangest triathlon I’ve ever done. The spin bikes are hooked up to bike computers that tell you your speed. Speed is based upon how fast the wheel moves, and wheel speed is based upon cadence. A glaring omission: gearing. Essentially: race strategy is to put on as little gearing as you can safely spin, rev your legs up to 100+ rpm, and hold it as long as you can. Nothing like outdoor cycling, to which I and just about every triathlete on the planet is accustomed. It doesn’t take me long to find my pace, which ends up being a laughably inaccurately fast 22 mph. It’s extremely difficult to gauge my speed relative to anyone else’s as everyone’s legs are churning at blurring speeds.
I’m pretty convinced Nicholas is in front of me and is pulling away. If it were as easy as dropping a gear and chasing him it would have been one thing, but my legs just don’t spin much faster than that. He continued to “pull away” from me for about 20 minutes before he started to cramp. I kept up my whirring while I watched him slow to a stop, dismount and stretch for two or three rounds before he gets back on and starts again. I KNOW I’ve put a significant amount of time on him, but how much? I have to wait until T2 to find out. Other than occasionally flashing my mile marker to my timer and cheering section, there just wasn’t much to do other than struggle to control my breathing. With about a mile and a half left, the unthinkable happens: some heavyset, older guy in a cotton t-shirt and cheap basketball shorts slides off his bike and makes his way towards the treadmills. I’m flabbergasted, but am left with nothing to do other than pound out the last mile and change and hope to find him on the run. Finishing up, I make a flying dismount off the spin bike and bee-line it to the treadmill a volunteer has set up for me.
It’s all calibrated, save for me to hit the little green start button. In the time it takes me to press it, the black screensaver flashes on and I start wildly pushing on it to get it moving. It does, but is no longer set up to automatically turn off at the end of 2.9 miles. Nicholas joins me, literally the treadmill next to mine, and locks into his pace. I look at his vitals and he looks at mine: I’m at 8mph with .35 miles done; he’s at 8.5 and starting at zero. Thus, the cat-and-mouse stage is set; flanked on either side of me by a strong and proven runner and a come-from-nowhere cycling king running at 6.5 mph with over 2 minutes under his belt.
Bike: 32:39 (22.1 mph)
Transition: 0:30
My heart rate is already over lactate threshold, so I match my pace to the treadmill and focus on my breathing. Admittedly, 8 mph (7:30/mi) is pretty ambitious when my predicted sprint pace is about 8:05/mi, but I’m lulled into the far too familiar feeling that my body can click along forever at my chosen pace; this feeling is typically followed by a very painful back half of the race. I’m glancing at Nicholas’s screen at bit too often and eventually find his time, pace and distance minimized. Well, rats; I minimize mine as well and try to go off my watch. At some point, I catch a glimpse of the cyclist on my left side, and he’s sped up to 7.5 mph. I don’t think I can catch him and start to race for 2nd.
The run was a blur of burning lungs, dry mouths and slow stopwatches. I tried to shoot water into my mouth every so often and towel off my face for little more effect than to give me some sort of additional sensory stimulation. The time clipped by slowly, I descended into exhaustion at roughly the same speed as Nicholas, but I continued to hold my lead. He turned his information back on, as did I for the most part, and slowly gained on me.
After about 1.8 miles I began to reach the threshold of what my body had to offer that day. I could feel the lactate building and knew that I was on the cusp of blowing up completely. Had I been closer to 2.5 I might have pushed through, but I didn’t think I could hold out that long. I tried shortening my stride, tried lengthening it, tried heel striking to mimic a lazier stride, but eventually peeled off. I lowered it down to 7 mph. Then to 6. I held it at 6 for about 15 seconds, caught my breath and kicked it back up to 8 again. By this time Nicholas and I were surrounded with spectators cheering us on. Kellie, ever the helpful one, kept yelling at us to pick it up, that we only had one mile to go, to quit “bird dogging” (evidently she meant looking at his screen) and in general voicing her expert opinion that we weren’t going hard enough.
“The Duel” as I like to call it, started at about mile 2.5; perhaps a bit before and a small slice behind me for Nicholas. Still, it was towards the end of the run. The cyclist who’d beaten us both to the run hopped off and was finishing up his last lap around the track. It was Nicholas and I left to fight for the scraps. Glancing at his screen, he was keeping up his 8.5 pace and I was holding with my 8. He had closed the gap quite a bit and was within a tenth of a mile to me. He kicked his pace up to 9 mph. Feeling like I had it in me with a half mile left, I kicked it up to match his 9. Seeing my move, he clicks his speed up one to 9.1. I follow. He goes to 9.2. I follow. 9.3. 9.5. He holds at 9.5 and I go to 10 (10 mph or 6 min/miles). I hold the 10 mph pace until my heart starts to explode and kick it back to 8.5 with .25 miles to go. Nicholas holds his 9.5 pace for a pregnant few seconds before he blows and lowers it back to 8ish. We are LITERALLY neck and neck as I hit 2.9 and hop off.
I sprint over towards the stairs and climb up to the track: one lap around is the last tenth of a mile and the end of the day. Nicholas finishes within seconds of me, but is unable to give any kind of chase. By the time we had both surfaced on the track, I had a gap of about 30 feet. By the completion of the first bend it had swelled to 50. Seeing that, I no longer felt the threat and sprinted it home, snapping the invisible tape moments before asphyxiation. I look down at Kellie and Norton smiling and giving congratulations in an utterly incomprehensible way. I just laugh, knowing we had put on quite a show; a race that close in a setting where people could literally watch every second of the race unfold.
Run: 22:26 (7:28/mi)
Total time: 1:04:16
Nicholas and I catch our collective breaths and become instant buddies. We walk a lap to cool down and talk about the day and its idiosyncrasies. I eventually find out that the guy who beat us both by over 2 minutes is in the beginner category, this being his first triathlon, and that I’m currently in first place of the advanced category; I don’t know if I should take it as good news or bad. I get further information that he is a former competitive swimmer since he was a kid. Evidently, he beat Nicholas and I considerably out of the pool, but had a pretty lax transition time, still allowing me to beat him to the bikes.
I proceed to hang out for the rest of the race. My time is beaten twice over the day, leaving me with 3rd in the Male Advanced category and 5th overall. Still good for a $10 gift card to Toot’s and a great story to tell. This is the start of my 4th season of triathlon, I’ve raced approaching 20 races to date, but I can honestly say this is the first one I’ve actually RACED. It’s an odd feeling, a good feeling. It does a good job at teasing me of successes later to come.
April 10, 2010
I woke up probably earlier and more excited than I should have for this race, but after a horrifically cold winter I was excited as could be to race another triathlon. Time could not pass fast enough as I ate breakfast and got everything ready to go. It seemed anticlimactic to head out for a triathlon without a bike and to only go as far as the local YMCA: the site of 40% of my training. Still, I arrived about 7:50, just in time to watch the first wave go at 8:00.
Norton and Kellie were both racing; Norton at 8:00, Kellie at 8:45, so it was cool to watch them. I cheered them on for a while, learned what I could about the “course” and the dynamics of the event and otherwise kill time. Eventually time clicked to within an hour of my wave start at 9:30, so I pounded a 5-hour energy, dropped all my casual clothes off at my locker and started my warmup. I feel like I got in a great warmup on the spin bike. Managed to grab the closest bike to the stairs, get it adjusted to fit my body, found my gearing and did my cardio warmup by 9:15. I didn’t get as much of a swim as I would have liked, but felt it sufficient to get my arms ready to go.
Before the race started, I couldn’t help but ask around to figure out who the competition was. There were a lot of dark horses on the participant’s list, but one guy that got vouched for was a guy named Nicholas. He was a lean, middle aged runner friend of Kellie’s. Evidently, he’s got a relatively healthy resume of marathons in the low 3:00s and has been racing for years. I don’t know anything about his bike or his swim, but I mark him and hope he doesn’t run away from me. He’s in a late wave, but manages to get it switched to mine, which I don’t think was wholly coincidental. :-)
As soon as the cue was given I lock into my pace. I feel my form is solid and know based off recent training that my pace is true to the distance. There are three lanes with two swimmers apiece, with Nicholas and me on opposite sides of adjoined lanes (two swimmers between us). Right off the gun, he starts to slowly pull away from me. His pace is only seconds per 100 faster than mine and the swim simply isn’t long enough for him to gain much ground. I lost touch with him after about 200 meters, but managed to find him again at about 400. Don’t know if he slowed down, I sped up or if he just never made the distance I gave him credit for. I felt great about my pace, which happened to almost uniformly match a female swimmer right next to me on my side of the opposite lane. My flip turns made a noticeable difference, with me gaining a half a body length on her with every one. I dropped her into my drafting zone on the last turn and caught sight of Nicholas about 1.5 body lengths up on the last 25. I managed to pull within a half a body length by the wall and we exited the water with essentially the exact same time. Having nothing more to do than to slip on my running shoes, I pounded him in transition, beating him to the spin bikes just up the stairs by the better part of a full minute.
Swim: 7:56 (1:35/100m)
Transition: 0:45
I’m the first one to the bikes, so I assume I’m the first out of the water; I find out later this isn’t the case. Nicholas trickles in right as I get locked into place and begin to spin, but I don’t know how much ground I’m able to make on him. Swimmers slide in one after another, but I don’t pay them much mind. This is, by far, the strangest triathlon I’ve ever done. The spin bikes are hooked up to bike computers that tell you your speed. Speed is based upon how fast the wheel moves, and wheel speed is based upon cadence. A glaring omission: gearing. Essentially: race strategy is to put on as little gearing as you can safely spin, rev your legs up to 100+ rpm, and hold it as long as you can. Nothing like outdoor cycling, to which I and just about every triathlete on the planet is accustomed. It doesn’t take me long to find my pace, which ends up being a laughably inaccurately fast 22 mph. It’s extremely difficult to gauge my speed relative to anyone else’s as everyone’s legs are churning at blurring speeds.
I’m pretty convinced Nicholas is in front of me and is pulling away. If it were as easy as dropping a gear and chasing him it would have been one thing, but my legs just don’t spin much faster than that. He continued to “pull away” from me for about 20 minutes before he started to cramp. I kept up my whirring while I watched him slow to a stop, dismount and stretch for two or three rounds before he gets back on and starts again. I KNOW I’ve put a significant amount of time on him, but how much? I have to wait until T2 to find out. Other than occasionally flashing my mile marker to my timer and cheering section, there just wasn’t much to do other than struggle to control my breathing. With about a mile and a half left, the unthinkable happens: some heavyset, older guy in a cotton t-shirt and cheap basketball shorts slides off his bike and makes his way towards the treadmills. I’m flabbergasted, but am left with nothing to do other than pound out the last mile and change and hope to find him on the run. Finishing up, I make a flying dismount off the spin bike and bee-line it to the treadmill a volunteer has set up for me.
It’s all calibrated, save for me to hit the little green start button. In the time it takes me to press it, the black screensaver flashes on and I start wildly pushing on it to get it moving. It does, but is no longer set up to automatically turn off at the end of 2.9 miles. Nicholas joins me, literally the treadmill next to mine, and locks into his pace. I look at his vitals and he looks at mine: I’m at 8mph with .35 miles done; he’s at 8.5 and starting at zero. Thus, the cat-and-mouse stage is set; flanked on either side of me by a strong and proven runner and a come-from-nowhere cycling king running at 6.5 mph with over 2 minutes under his belt.
Bike: 32:39 (22.1 mph)
Transition: 0:30
My heart rate is already over lactate threshold, so I match my pace to the treadmill and focus on my breathing. Admittedly, 8 mph (7:30/mi) is pretty ambitious when my predicted sprint pace is about 8:05/mi, but I’m lulled into the far too familiar feeling that my body can click along forever at my chosen pace; this feeling is typically followed by a very painful back half of the race. I’m glancing at Nicholas’s screen at bit too often and eventually find his time, pace and distance minimized. Well, rats; I minimize mine as well and try to go off my watch. At some point, I catch a glimpse of the cyclist on my left side, and he’s sped up to 7.5 mph. I don’t think I can catch him and start to race for 2nd.
The run was a blur of burning lungs, dry mouths and slow stopwatches. I tried to shoot water into my mouth every so often and towel off my face for little more effect than to give me some sort of additional sensory stimulation. The time clipped by slowly, I descended into exhaustion at roughly the same speed as Nicholas, but I continued to hold my lead. He turned his information back on, as did I for the most part, and slowly gained on me.
After about 1.8 miles I began to reach the threshold of what my body had to offer that day. I could feel the lactate building and knew that I was on the cusp of blowing up completely. Had I been closer to 2.5 I might have pushed through, but I didn’t think I could hold out that long. I tried shortening my stride, tried lengthening it, tried heel striking to mimic a lazier stride, but eventually peeled off. I lowered it down to 7 mph. Then to 6. I held it at 6 for about 15 seconds, caught my breath and kicked it back up to 8 again. By this time Nicholas and I were surrounded with spectators cheering us on. Kellie, ever the helpful one, kept yelling at us to pick it up, that we only had one mile to go, to quit “bird dogging” (evidently she meant looking at his screen) and in general voicing her expert opinion that we weren’t going hard enough.
“The Duel” as I like to call it, started at about mile 2.5; perhaps a bit before and a small slice behind me for Nicholas. Still, it was towards the end of the run. The cyclist who’d beaten us both to the run hopped off and was finishing up his last lap around the track. It was Nicholas and I left to fight for the scraps. Glancing at his screen, he was keeping up his 8.5 pace and I was holding with my 8. He had closed the gap quite a bit and was within a tenth of a mile to me. He kicked his pace up to 9 mph. Feeling like I had it in me with a half mile left, I kicked it up to match his 9. Seeing my move, he clicks his speed up one to 9.1. I follow. He goes to 9.2. I follow. 9.3. 9.5. He holds at 9.5 and I go to 10 (10 mph or 6 min/miles). I hold the 10 mph pace until my heart starts to explode and kick it back to 8.5 with .25 miles to go. Nicholas holds his 9.5 pace for a pregnant few seconds before he blows and lowers it back to 8ish. We are LITERALLY neck and neck as I hit 2.9 and hop off.
I sprint over towards the stairs and climb up to the track: one lap around is the last tenth of a mile and the end of the day. Nicholas finishes within seconds of me, but is unable to give any kind of chase. By the time we had both surfaced on the track, I had a gap of about 30 feet. By the completion of the first bend it had swelled to 50. Seeing that, I no longer felt the threat and sprinted it home, snapping the invisible tape moments before asphyxiation. I look down at Kellie and Norton smiling and giving congratulations in an utterly incomprehensible way. I just laugh, knowing we had put on quite a show; a race that close in a setting where people could literally watch every second of the race unfold.
Run: 22:26 (7:28/mi)
Total time: 1:04:16
Nicholas and I catch our collective breaths and become instant buddies. We walk a lap to cool down and talk about the day and its idiosyncrasies. I eventually find out that the guy who beat us both by over 2 minutes is in the beginner category, this being his first triathlon, and that I’m currently in first place of the advanced category; I don’t know if I should take it as good news or bad. I get further information that he is a former competitive swimmer since he was a kid. Evidently, he beat Nicholas and I considerably out of the pool, but had a pretty lax transition time, still allowing me to beat him to the bikes.
I proceed to hang out for the rest of the race. My time is beaten twice over the day, leaving me with 3rd in the Male Advanced category and 5th overall. Still good for a $10 gift card to Toot’s and a great story to tell. This is the start of my 4th season of triathlon, I’ve raced approaching 20 races to date, but I can honestly say this is the first one I’ve actually RACED. It’s an odd feeling, a good feeling. It does a good job at teasing me of successes later to come.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Tom King 1/2 Marathon
Tom King Half Marathon
March 13, 2010
It hasn’t been that long since Wisconsin, but it certainly feels as if it has. A Middle Tennessee spring is in the air, with a threat of rain all week and the severe likelihood of it on race day. After the worst, whitest, coldest winters I can ever remember in my conscious life, I was extremely happy to see the mercury creep over 50 degrees and be in some semblance of shape.
Scratch that, I’m always too hard on myself. Tom King is the first race of the year; the first via point on a carefully crafted Ironman training plan, culminating in Ironman Louisville at the end of August. It was my first chance to put 3 months of training to the test, and I was extremely eager to find out what fruit I would sow.
I felt confident on race morning in both my training and my nutrition. I followed Ben Greenfield’s Holistic Fueling for Ironman Triathletes almost completely to a T (one “approved dessert” on Thursday night ruined my perfect record), and I was interested in how my body would respond to the stress when properly fueled. Even more than that, I couldn’t wait until this experiment was over and I could go back to using Mr. Greenfield’s advice as guidelines more so than actual rules.
Pre-race entertainment was watching Marian finish her 2nd 5k and snapping her time by over 2 minutes. Shortly thereafter, I went to do some strides and warm-up before my race got started. Not without monkey wrenches in my plan’s gear work, I tried to put my mind at ease; tried to convince myself that it would be okay, that it wasn’t going to slow me down any. But my mind couldn’t stop going back to the day before, when I woke up from a mid-morning nap to discover my sister’s dog had turned my Garmin 305 into a chew toy. After over a year of having my pace, distance and heart rate at but a glance, I’d have to do this one by feel. A fraternity brother let me borrow his HRM, but the thing could not be counted on, as it was reading my heart rate during warm-ups in the upper 220s. After sipping my energy drink, finishing my stride work and stopping for one last bathroom stop, I headed towards the start line wanting nothing more than today to be indicative of my fitness, so as to plan my future training accordingly.
The first 3 miles flew by way too fast. I found myself, surrounded by a thousand of my closest friends, chewing up what was left of Davidson Rd. and entering Shelby Bottom’s park. Grabbing some water, taking a generous shot of my EFS Liquid Energy shot and waving at Tiago, I hopped on the greenway and continued to plod along at what was my best estimate of my Lactate Threshold; 183, according to my late Garmin. My current monitor kept registering me in the mid to upper 180s, which may or may not be accurate. I was experiencing the tempest that is typical of endurance races: feeling way too good for the first half or so and protesting your mind that you can and should pick it up some. I fought it off, inviting those thoughts back into my head at mile 10, and concentrated on my breathing; keeping it rhythmic and powerful.
I was hoping to extend myself a little bit before I saw the frontrunners this time around. The course is out and back, so it’s a necessity that 90% of runners will be privy to a few seconds of the race at the front unfolding. I made it to a bit past mile 5 before I saw the lead cyclist coercing everyone to the right hand side so the leaders might have room. Seeing my buddies Tim, John and Jonathan motoring past 2 miles ahead was enjoyable, but short lived. As if it wasn’t hard enough to keep things in check, it was around mile 5.5 that a familiar little short-haired blur whizzed past me. To my equal parts dismay and excitement, I called out to my friend Peppy who’s preparing for the Country Music Marathon. We exchange words for a while before she continues on her personal pace, unfortunately a tad faster than what I’m comfortable with before the halfway point. I can’t help but feel like $#!+ after getting chicked by a friend of mine, whom I’ve never even seen in the “runner” frame of mind. The turnaround point is less than a mile up, so I just tell myself that she’ll come back to me on the back end.
I reach the turnaround roughly at the 10k mark and see the clock reads 52:30. After some fumbling computations, I notice that that’s halfway through a 1:45 half marathon. 1:45 is my goal and I hope to negative split the race, but I know that this point is not the halfway mark. I know deep down that there’s about no way I’m going to be able to pick it up that much on the way home, but I can’t help but hope. I can more or less ignore my heart rate and go by feel now, so we’ll have to just see how many pennies of my energy I have left to spend.
The strong feelings of the first 5 miles began an easy descent over the next 3. I could really feel the wheels start to fall off around mile 8. As my effort kicked up a couple notches, my heart rate and (probably) pace plateaued; there was an uneasy equilibrium for the next few miles, but there was just no speeding up. Continuing my breathing and popping my 3rd gel shot at mile 7.5, I thought of nothing other than getting to the aid station at mile 10. Numerous rewards to be had at mile 10: my last gel (which I always celebrate), the last uphill of the day, a change of scenery and an opportunity to start headhunting all the hammerheads that have gradually trickled by. Low levels of pain and high levels of motivation to continue accelerating gradually changed hands and I tried to keep everything in control as “things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Other than a runner 5 feet from me taking a hard fall on a wet bridge, there weren’t too many distractions from the burn in my lungs over the next 2.5 miles. I like the race, but hate the course. It’s a very mental run.
Eventually, as all things both evil and altruistic, the road ended and spilled out into the mile 10 aid station. I finished off my nutrition and handed my empty flask to Paula. Luckily, she was willing to take it and save me the increasingly difficult task of holding it. Having seen the last 5k enough times the day before to be sure there were no surprises, I started to pick it up a tad and look hungrily for Peppy and several other marked men. The effort was there but the legs, just as the economy, became wise to my previous frugal spending and started to demand more for its work. While it didn’t really dawn on me until well after the race, I’m as dehydrated as I’ve been in a calendar year. With only 4 aid stations, I probably took in between 8-12 oz of water over the course of two really intense hours. You never think about these things when it’s in the high 40s and misting, but my cells are beginning to see a lack of symmetry between water coming in and water going out; unfortunately, with only one way to tell me.
The cramps came in isolated bouts and did little more than freak me out. Mostly located in the right calf, there was nothing to be done about them with no aid stations and less than two miles left in the race. Just keep running and give up any hopes of a finish line kick. As I near the stadium, within a mile from the finish line, I can see enough of the Titan Tron that I’m not going to make my goal time anyway, so I’m content to just trot it in. No faster, no slower. Trying to keep my legs from locking up as they tend to do, I entered the stadium with a fair amount of cumulative pain and ready to finish up. A spasm seizes me just yards in front of the finish line and draws out a grimace just in time for my finish line photo.
After the finish, I take a moment to catch my breath and stretch my calf. I can’t really say that I’m bummed with my time; it’s squarely within what I should have expected going into the race. More importantly, I have a wonderful testament to my current fitness upon which I have the next 5 months to build. And it seems like these days, any race where I don’t cry at the end is a good thing. I’m such a girly man.
Primary Goal: 1:45
Secondary Goal: 1:49:23
Actual Time: 1:53:23
March 13, 2010
It hasn’t been that long since Wisconsin, but it certainly feels as if it has. A Middle Tennessee spring is in the air, with a threat of rain all week and the severe likelihood of it on race day. After the worst, whitest, coldest winters I can ever remember in my conscious life, I was extremely happy to see the mercury creep over 50 degrees and be in some semblance of shape.
Scratch that, I’m always too hard on myself. Tom King is the first race of the year; the first via point on a carefully crafted Ironman training plan, culminating in Ironman Louisville at the end of August. It was my first chance to put 3 months of training to the test, and I was extremely eager to find out what fruit I would sow.
I felt confident on race morning in both my training and my nutrition. I followed Ben Greenfield’s Holistic Fueling for Ironman Triathletes almost completely to a T (one “approved dessert” on Thursday night ruined my perfect record), and I was interested in how my body would respond to the stress when properly fueled. Even more than that, I couldn’t wait until this experiment was over and I could go back to using Mr. Greenfield’s advice as guidelines more so than actual rules.
Pre-race entertainment was watching Marian finish her 2nd 5k and snapping her time by over 2 minutes. Shortly thereafter, I went to do some strides and warm-up before my race got started. Not without monkey wrenches in my plan’s gear work, I tried to put my mind at ease; tried to convince myself that it would be okay, that it wasn’t going to slow me down any. But my mind couldn’t stop going back to the day before, when I woke up from a mid-morning nap to discover my sister’s dog had turned my Garmin 305 into a chew toy. After over a year of having my pace, distance and heart rate at but a glance, I’d have to do this one by feel. A fraternity brother let me borrow his HRM, but the thing could not be counted on, as it was reading my heart rate during warm-ups in the upper 220s. After sipping my energy drink, finishing my stride work and stopping for one last bathroom stop, I headed towards the start line wanting nothing more than today to be indicative of my fitness, so as to plan my future training accordingly.
The first 3 miles flew by way too fast. I found myself, surrounded by a thousand of my closest friends, chewing up what was left of Davidson Rd. and entering Shelby Bottom’s park. Grabbing some water, taking a generous shot of my EFS Liquid Energy shot and waving at Tiago, I hopped on the greenway and continued to plod along at what was my best estimate of my Lactate Threshold; 183, according to my late Garmin. My current monitor kept registering me in the mid to upper 180s, which may or may not be accurate. I was experiencing the tempest that is typical of endurance races: feeling way too good for the first half or so and protesting your mind that you can and should pick it up some. I fought it off, inviting those thoughts back into my head at mile 10, and concentrated on my breathing; keeping it rhythmic and powerful.
I was hoping to extend myself a little bit before I saw the frontrunners this time around. The course is out and back, so it’s a necessity that 90% of runners will be privy to a few seconds of the race at the front unfolding. I made it to a bit past mile 5 before I saw the lead cyclist coercing everyone to the right hand side so the leaders might have room. Seeing my buddies Tim, John and Jonathan motoring past 2 miles ahead was enjoyable, but short lived. As if it wasn’t hard enough to keep things in check, it was around mile 5.5 that a familiar little short-haired blur whizzed past me. To my equal parts dismay and excitement, I called out to my friend Peppy who’s preparing for the Country Music Marathon. We exchange words for a while before she continues on her personal pace, unfortunately a tad faster than what I’m comfortable with before the halfway point. I can’t help but feel like $#!+ after getting chicked by a friend of mine, whom I’ve never even seen in the “runner” frame of mind. The turnaround point is less than a mile up, so I just tell myself that she’ll come back to me on the back end.
I reach the turnaround roughly at the 10k mark and see the clock reads 52:30. After some fumbling computations, I notice that that’s halfway through a 1:45 half marathon. 1:45 is my goal and I hope to negative split the race, but I know that this point is not the halfway mark. I know deep down that there’s about no way I’m going to be able to pick it up that much on the way home, but I can’t help but hope. I can more or less ignore my heart rate and go by feel now, so we’ll have to just see how many pennies of my energy I have left to spend.
The strong feelings of the first 5 miles began an easy descent over the next 3. I could really feel the wheels start to fall off around mile 8. As my effort kicked up a couple notches, my heart rate and (probably) pace plateaued; there was an uneasy equilibrium for the next few miles, but there was just no speeding up. Continuing my breathing and popping my 3rd gel shot at mile 7.5, I thought of nothing other than getting to the aid station at mile 10. Numerous rewards to be had at mile 10: my last gel (which I always celebrate), the last uphill of the day, a change of scenery and an opportunity to start headhunting all the hammerheads that have gradually trickled by. Low levels of pain and high levels of motivation to continue accelerating gradually changed hands and I tried to keep everything in control as “things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Other than a runner 5 feet from me taking a hard fall on a wet bridge, there weren’t too many distractions from the burn in my lungs over the next 2.5 miles. I like the race, but hate the course. It’s a very mental run.
Eventually, as all things both evil and altruistic, the road ended and spilled out into the mile 10 aid station. I finished off my nutrition and handed my empty flask to Paula. Luckily, she was willing to take it and save me the increasingly difficult task of holding it. Having seen the last 5k enough times the day before to be sure there were no surprises, I started to pick it up a tad and look hungrily for Peppy and several other marked men. The effort was there but the legs, just as the economy, became wise to my previous frugal spending and started to demand more for its work. While it didn’t really dawn on me until well after the race, I’m as dehydrated as I’ve been in a calendar year. With only 4 aid stations, I probably took in between 8-12 oz of water over the course of two really intense hours. You never think about these things when it’s in the high 40s and misting, but my cells are beginning to see a lack of symmetry between water coming in and water going out; unfortunately, with only one way to tell me.
The cramps came in isolated bouts and did little more than freak me out. Mostly located in the right calf, there was nothing to be done about them with no aid stations and less than two miles left in the race. Just keep running and give up any hopes of a finish line kick. As I near the stadium, within a mile from the finish line, I can see enough of the Titan Tron that I’m not going to make my goal time anyway, so I’m content to just trot it in. No faster, no slower. Trying to keep my legs from locking up as they tend to do, I entered the stadium with a fair amount of cumulative pain and ready to finish up. A spasm seizes me just yards in front of the finish line and draws out a grimace just in time for my finish line photo.
After the finish, I take a moment to catch my breath and stretch my calf. I can’t really say that I’m bummed with my time; it’s squarely within what I should have expected going into the race. More importantly, I have a wonderful testament to my current fitness upon which I have the next 5 months to build. And it seems like these days, any race where I don’t cry at the end is a good thing. I’m such a girly man.
Primary Goal: 1:45
Secondary Goal: 1:49:23
Actual Time: 1:53:23
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Ironman Wisconsin - Pre Race
After over three years of training and anticipation, I awoke in my hotel room somewhere just within what could be called Sunday morning in nervous excitement. Waking up over an hour before I expected to, the 1:50am wake-up would work in my favor I was sure; there is no such thing as too much preparation time. Just because I was too excited to go back to sleep doesn’t mean I wasn’t tired, however. I threw on my long sleeve shirt, blue jeans and sandals and headed out to try to find some breakfast.
The IHOP was about a half mile from my hotel and, as I was accustomed on this trip, I had no car. I walked all the way until I got into the parking lot before I saw the sign read “Open Daily 6am-12am.” Well, horseshit. I had to turn around and backtrack to the hotel and hope either the Denny’s or Perkin’s were open. East Washington Avenue was still bustling with activity at the 2:30 hour; with last call behind them, one of the largest party schools in America were heading home or grabbing some late night grub after what was certainly a long night. I find myself tearing up twice thinking about the finish line. Miles 140.5-140.6 are going to make all this worth it. I’ve thought of nothing else for so long.
Denny’s is open and brimming with energy. I look around at the restaurant, of which is well over half full of customers with plenty of loiterers as well, and don’t see a single person with an Ironman wrist band. Being that I sat by myself, the service was quite quick. I order my breakfast, a “create your own Grand Slam” and listen to my iPod to pass the time. I’m not visualizing the day; I’m just waiting and trying to not let all the adrenaline in my body make me sick. And people-watching. Breakfast comes and I do my best to eat all I can. I ate oatmeal (1/4), yogurt (all), hash browns (1/2), eggs (all) and toast (1/2), washing it all down with a large orange juice, some water and a half glass of milk for my oatmeal. I’m bloated, but my watch reads 3:15am; I’ve got plenty of time to digest.
Upon getting back to my hotel, I have little to do in a large amount of time. I sit and watch 300 and try to make as many “natural stops” as possible before leaving the hotel. After wasting away over an hour, I put my tri suit on under my clothes, make one final check that everything is in my special needs bags, and head out of my room towards my parents’ car right at 5:00. There’s a girl wearing an Ironman bracelet in the lobby of our hotel room who needs a ride. She’s a pro from Brazil and would go on to become the 4th overall female finisher, though I did not know this at the time. It’s clear her first language isn’t English during the exchange, but we eventually convince her that we have room in Denise’s car and we all exit together, bound for Downtown Madison.
I stumble out of my parents’ rental car a couple blocks from the Monona Terrace (the coolest transition area in all of triathlon) and start the playlist on my iPod I created specifically for this day. I drop off my special needs bags and head down to check out my bike, which I had racked yesterday afternoon. Still carrying my finish line drop bag, I head over to body marking. After I was marked, I asked a volunteer where I could find some Gatoraid, as I had not a drop of liquids on my bike at the time. She radioed race management and we both found out that there is not one bottle of Gatoraid anywhere in the Monona Terrace; she recommended I walk back to the Capitol building and get some at the local Walgreen’s. Seeing Ben for this first time of the morning, I head back to my bike and grab the emergency $5.00 I always keep in there and head back Downtown. After the quarter mile or so, I find out that Walgreen’s is only open from 7:00am-10:00pm. Asking another volunteer, I was advised to go BACK to the Terrace, walk up to the roof and ask someone in the VIP tent for some of theirs. During this commute, I stop by the volunteer tent (which already has food out for the 3,000+ volunteers) and ask them. The race director is standing there at the time and tells me that there is water in transition already. Water will do at this point, so I head back to my bike to fill my bottle.
Now it’s come time to pump up my tires. I borrow a bike pump from the guy next to me, but quickly give it back as I’ve forgotten something important. I rented a Zipp 404 and a disk wheel combination from Race Day Wheels, and both of them have valve extenders; I need a special adapter to get air in my tires. This means a walk back into the Terrace was in order so I could dig the valve out of my T1 bag. I grab the stickers for my wheel while I’m in there and head back to my bike. By the time I get back there, my playlist is winding down and people are heading out to this swim; I’m running out of time. I get back to my bike and find out there are volunteers with compressed air tubes filling bike tires for athletes; what’s more, they have the valve extender I needed and immediately go to work on my tires. The stickers meant to go over the holes on my valve were wet and wouldn’t remove, so I just racked my bike and got ready to head down to the swim start.
Ben is there, as we agreed, and we head towards the helix together. As soon as I pick up my drop bag, I notice something else: my wetsuit is not in it. Mother Fucker! I guess I took it out of the bag when I got bodymarked and left it on the ground. Sure enough, at the end of transition I see it sitting there folded up in such a way as to fit best in my bag. I put the bottom half on and walk down the helix with Ben, talking about the day and giving what advice I can give. We get to the bottom and are adequately distracting each other from the fear and the promise of pain the day will hold. I spot William Jenks from the forum on the way to the water; I hadn’t been formally introduced to him, but I recognized him and his wetsuit from Facebook pictures. I shake his hand and talk for a minute, but I have business to attend to. Ben and I are following the sea of people down to the swim and looking for the drop bag location. We make it all the way to the water’s edge before finding out that we had passed it several hundred feet ago. We have to backtrack through the ocean of athletes until we find the location. Dropping off our bags and heading back to the water, I forget my last thing: I’m still wearing sandals. Drop them at my bag really quickly, and Ben and I are ready to enter the water. Even after all the chaos, we’re still walking in at 6:45.
At the direction of the race officials, we swim out a good ways to make room for the people still entering the water. We make it over to the boat ramp in plenty of time to see the pros make their start at 6:50. After that, it was time for Ben and I to make our departure as we headed back into the mass of athletes and seed ourselves as best we can before the start of our race. I’m treading water with 8 minutes to go and just trying to take it all in. Over the intercom I hear Mike Reilly’s all too familiar voice barking orders and giving encouragement. “Who’s ready to be an Ironman today?” We all cheer. Oh, I’m ready Mike, I’m ready. The remaining minutes tick away quickly and the national anthem plays. Taking one last look at the time clock, it reads 6:58:30; 90 seconds to go. Then, out of nowhere, the very familiar sounds play out. The airhorn blasts, I hear shouting, people in front of me begin to swim, the water is churned white, I see arms begin to flail and, just as last year, I hear the opening riff of “Sugar, We’re Going Down” by Fall Out Boy blast out of the loudspeaker. And then, nothing. All I hear is the water. Oh my God, here we go. Ironman Wisconsin is officially underway!
Ironman Wisconsin - The Swim
I knew I could expect something I’d never experienced before on the 2.4 mile, 2-loop Ironman swim: the pandemonium of a mass swim start. The course is rectangular; the swimmers head north past 7 yellow buoys and turn west at the corner for a couple hundred yards before heading back south towards the start and finish area along 7 orange buoys; red buoys marked all 7 turns. The swim got progressively less crowded as it went along, but I did not find open water until the second lap. The first few hundred yards seemed to inch along as I found myself doing as much lateral movement as forward motion just trying to get around people. Every few strokes left me slapping someone’s feet, having someone slap my feet, running into the side of someone, someone swimming over top of me, getting hit in the torso or arms, even once being kicked in the throat. It was never horribly cramped and I never felt unsafe, but the entirety of the experience was a lot to try to take in.
I went as easy as I could stand and then some on the half mile trip north. I was concerned with my time slipping off my goal of 1:30, but it never really got me down. For one thing, I could do nothing to change my predicament; for another, everyone was being slowed. It was a traffic jam in the water. I even did a little breast stroking in the water, which I’ve never done in a race before. The quagmire of black bodies and red and white heads remained the only story to tell through the first turn. As warned by another athlete, there was a slight hold up at the first turn. Too many athletes who didn’t know the course took just the smallest of moments to tread water and figure out which direction to go, slowing everyone else up. Upon turning back south and heading towards the Terrace I, somehow, recognized William on my right. I tried to swim with him for a little while, as his pace was just the smallest little bit ahead of mine, but lost him after about 150 yards in the sea of Ironmen-to-be. The proximity was becoming less of an issue with each yard passed, but it was still very much a problem; 30 minutes was simply not enough time for the race to seed itself out. I passed the time by sticking to my incredibly easy pace and counting the buoys as they passed. Knowing there were seven of them, I had checkpoints to get to; none of which were very far away at all. Rounding the turn buoy and heading east towards my second lap I struggled to see the time clock. I even, at one point, treaded water for a few seconds trying to catch a glimpse of how much time I’d spent on my first lap. It wasn’t to be, however, and I made my turn with no knowledge of whether I was on pace.
The big story of my final trip away from the Terrace was my bladder. It was obvious I had to use the restroom, but I couldn’t seem to go. It’s a very difficult thing, peeing while swimming. You’re body is completely horizontal, both your feet are engaged and your core is contracting and flexing with each stroke. I kept slowing down and getting closer and closer to actually going, then getting sick of the effort and speeding up. I hoped to hold it all the way until the final turn before going, but I soon lost the ambition and pulled off a little over halfway down the stretch to relieve myself. As far as I was concerned, you should pee in the water as much as possible because that will be the quickest bathroom stop you will make all day.
The field had spread out considerably by this point, and it became more of a swim than a jockey as I neared the red buoy out so far from the swim exit. Turning south, I was really gliding in the water. I took the opportunity to really extend my arms and try to make up some ground. I wouldn’t call it swimming hard, as I had already logged over 3,000 yards, but it was my first chance to really give some effort into it. It worked out very well, too. Just as I saw the northernmost part of the Terrace, I started to feel real fatigue in my arms and shoulders. I kept pushing at that Ironman race-pace extremely happy that I had found the balance between pushing too hard and “dogging it” in fear of pushing too hard. Making the final turn and heading towards the swim exit was a really cool feeling. I didn’t quite get the feeling of accomplishment I thought I may have, I was more concerned with simply being finished with the swim. I was completely intoxicated by the race and wanted to be out of that water and headed up to transition.
Every stroke and every sight got me closer and closer to the finish. Slowly but surely, things began to come into focus. First, it was the big inflatable “Swim Finish” sign. Then, the thousands of spectators began to resemble more of that than the blur of white they appeared to be in the previous hour and a half. 200 yards up, I could see volunteers ripping people out of the water. With patience and mental discipline, I eventually felt the discomfort of fine gravel on my tender feet and found it incredibly hard to find my balance. Clasping a volunteer’s outstretched hand, I was lifted out of Lake Monona and was upright once again. I heard the crowd for the first time as an official Ironman athlete… and it was beautiful…
I take off my goggles and cap and have my immaculate vision once more. Doing the preliminary work of removing my wetsuit as I ran up to the wetsuit strippers, I motion at one of them and he motions back. He instructs me to lay down as he and another volunteer grab the torso of my suit and rip it off my legs. Handing it back to me, I take a few moments to make sure I still have my goggles and cap in the suit’s arm before jogging up towards the helix. The crowd was incredible! All I heard was incoherent screaming. It was a cinderblock wall of families and friends from all corners of the globe craning for a glimpse of their loved ones. Heading up the helix towards T1 seemed to take a really long time, but I really didn’t mind it due to all the excitement.
The flow of transition, which only seemed hazy in the days leading up to it, made complete sense as I was directed into the room with our swim-to-bike bags. Calling out my number down the line, a volunteer handed me my bag before I could even run down there and I headed to the “get naked room” to prepare for the next leg of the race. Athletes swarmed the changing area, and volunteers were all around helping everyone out. Finding a place in the corner near the exit, I began to put my bike equipment on. It was a difficult and slow task as my body was still soaking wet from the swim. A volunteer helped me put on all my clothes and talked with me throughout the process, making me feel so great and so appreciative of them. I knew they were going to help me out so immensely throughout the day. By the time I exited, I had removed the top half of my tri suit and put on bike shorts, a bike jersey with food in the pockets, socks, sunglasses, my helmet, arm coolers, my Garmin (which I then powered on), a disposable camera for taking pictures on the bike, and a bottle of salt capsules. That done, the volunteer put all my swim gear in my bag, tossed it in a receptacle with the rest of the bags and wished me the best of luck on my journey. The exit proved a little confusing, but once I left the changing area it was all quite clear.
It was the better part of a quarter mile from the changing area to the mount line, so I left my shoes off and ran in my socks. Exiting the Terrace onto the parking structure where all the bikes were, I was once again greeted by thousands of screaming spectators. A volunteer quickly slathered my neck in sunscreen and I jogged towards my bike. Having a very low number, my bike was all the way on the opposite side of the deck, near the helix. I could hear Denise and my mom screaming at me as I neared the opposite side of the deck and prepared myself to receive my bike. I pumped my arms and pointed towards them as I jogged past, but only caught the slightest glimpse of them. I got to my bike and a volunteer held it while I put on my shoes. Taking it and thanking him, I clip-clopped towards the mount line. I heard a girl scream “Go Patrick” in front of me and smiled. It took a good amount of time for me to notice that the girl was Ben’s fiancé Meg, but I eventually recognized her as I ran past. Running past that wonderful tape line, I hopped on my bike, punched the start button on my watch and proceeded down the helix.
One down, two to go!
Swim Time: 1:25:07
T1: 10:16
I went as easy as I could stand and then some on the half mile trip north. I was concerned with my time slipping off my goal of 1:30, but it never really got me down. For one thing, I could do nothing to change my predicament; for another, everyone was being slowed. It was a traffic jam in the water. I even did a little breast stroking in the water, which I’ve never done in a race before. The quagmire of black bodies and red and white heads remained the only story to tell through the first turn. As warned by another athlete, there was a slight hold up at the first turn. Too many athletes who didn’t know the course took just the smallest of moments to tread water and figure out which direction to go, slowing everyone else up. Upon turning back south and heading towards the Terrace I, somehow, recognized William on my right. I tried to swim with him for a little while, as his pace was just the smallest little bit ahead of mine, but lost him after about 150 yards in the sea of Ironmen-to-be. The proximity was becoming less of an issue with each yard passed, but it was still very much a problem; 30 minutes was simply not enough time for the race to seed itself out. I passed the time by sticking to my incredibly easy pace and counting the buoys as they passed. Knowing there were seven of them, I had checkpoints to get to; none of which were very far away at all. Rounding the turn buoy and heading east towards my second lap I struggled to see the time clock. I even, at one point, treaded water for a few seconds trying to catch a glimpse of how much time I’d spent on my first lap. It wasn’t to be, however, and I made my turn with no knowledge of whether I was on pace.
The big story of my final trip away from the Terrace was my bladder. It was obvious I had to use the restroom, but I couldn’t seem to go. It’s a very difficult thing, peeing while swimming. You’re body is completely horizontal, both your feet are engaged and your core is contracting and flexing with each stroke. I kept slowing down and getting closer and closer to actually going, then getting sick of the effort and speeding up. I hoped to hold it all the way until the final turn before going, but I soon lost the ambition and pulled off a little over halfway down the stretch to relieve myself. As far as I was concerned, you should pee in the water as much as possible because that will be the quickest bathroom stop you will make all day.
The field had spread out considerably by this point, and it became more of a swim than a jockey as I neared the red buoy out so far from the swim exit. Turning south, I was really gliding in the water. I took the opportunity to really extend my arms and try to make up some ground. I wouldn’t call it swimming hard, as I had already logged over 3,000 yards, but it was my first chance to really give some effort into it. It worked out very well, too. Just as I saw the northernmost part of the Terrace, I started to feel real fatigue in my arms and shoulders. I kept pushing at that Ironman race-pace extremely happy that I had found the balance between pushing too hard and “dogging it” in fear of pushing too hard. Making the final turn and heading towards the swim exit was a really cool feeling. I didn’t quite get the feeling of accomplishment I thought I may have, I was more concerned with simply being finished with the swim. I was completely intoxicated by the race and wanted to be out of that water and headed up to transition.
Every stroke and every sight got me closer and closer to the finish. Slowly but surely, things began to come into focus. First, it was the big inflatable “Swim Finish” sign. Then, the thousands of spectators began to resemble more of that than the blur of white they appeared to be in the previous hour and a half. 200 yards up, I could see volunteers ripping people out of the water. With patience and mental discipline, I eventually felt the discomfort of fine gravel on my tender feet and found it incredibly hard to find my balance. Clasping a volunteer’s outstretched hand, I was lifted out of Lake Monona and was upright once again. I heard the crowd for the first time as an official Ironman athlete… and it was beautiful…
I take off my goggles and cap and have my immaculate vision once more. Doing the preliminary work of removing my wetsuit as I ran up to the wetsuit strippers, I motion at one of them and he motions back. He instructs me to lay down as he and another volunteer grab the torso of my suit and rip it off my legs. Handing it back to me, I take a few moments to make sure I still have my goggles and cap in the suit’s arm before jogging up towards the helix. The crowd was incredible! All I heard was incoherent screaming. It was a cinderblock wall of families and friends from all corners of the globe craning for a glimpse of their loved ones. Heading up the helix towards T1 seemed to take a really long time, but I really didn’t mind it due to all the excitement.
The flow of transition, which only seemed hazy in the days leading up to it, made complete sense as I was directed into the room with our swim-to-bike bags. Calling out my number down the line, a volunteer handed me my bag before I could even run down there and I headed to the “get naked room” to prepare for the next leg of the race. Athletes swarmed the changing area, and volunteers were all around helping everyone out. Finding a place in the corner near the exit, I began to put my bike equipment on. It was a difficult and slow task as my body was still soaking wet from the swim. A volunteer helped me put on all my clothes and talked with me throughout the process, making me feel so great and so appreciative of them. I knew they were going to help me out so immensely throughout the day. By the time I exited, I had removed the top half of my tri suit and put on bike shorts, a bike jersey with food in the pockets, socks, sunglasses, my helmet, arm coolers, my Garmin (which I then powered on), a disposable camera for taking pictures on the bike, and a bottle of salt capsules. That done, the volunteer put all my swim gear in my bag, tossed it in a receptacle with the rest of the bags and wished me the best of luck on my journey. The exit proved a little confusing, but once I left the changing area it was all quite clear.
It was the better part of a quarter mile from the changing area to the mount line, so I left my shoes off and ran in my socks. Exiting the Terrace onto the parking structure where all the bikes were, I was once again greeted by thousands of screaming spectators. A volunteer quickly slathered my neck in sunscreen and I jogged towards my bike. Having a very low number, my bike was all the way on the opposite side of the deck, near the helix. I could hear Denise and my mom screaming at me as I neared the opposite side of the deck and prepared myself to receive my bike. I pumped my arms and pointed towards them as I jogged past, but only caught the slightest glimpse of them. I got to my bike and a volunteer held it while I put on my shoes. Taking it and thanking him, I clip-clopped towards the mount line. I heard a girl scream “Go Patrick” in front of me and smiled. It took a good amount of time for me to notice that the girl was Ben’s fiancé Meg, but I eventually recognized her as I ran past. Running past that wonderful tape line, I hopped on my bike, punched the start button on my watch and proceeded down the helix.
One down, two to go!
Swim Time: 1:25:07
T1: 10:16
Ironman Wisconsin - The Bike, Part I
The descent down the helix was fast and exciting, but it was a no-passing zone, so I couldn’t shoot down it as quickly as I may have liked to. The Wisconsin bike course is often and best described as a lollipop. You begin with the stick, a 14 mile trip to Verona, and proceed to make the candy, two 42 mile loops from Verona to Mt. Horeb to Cross Plains and back to Verona. After the second loop, you ride the inverse of the first 14 mile ride and head back towards Downtown. Easy enough, huh?
Immediately coming off the helix and departing north out of town, you spend a fair amount of the first 3 miles on paved bike trails and side streets until you get to the Alliant Energy Center, a premier Expo center for the city of Madison. I suppose you could compare it to the Sommet Center of Nashville. As I approached the center, I recognized a familiar cyclist. I doubt anyone out there will catch this reference, but just a few cyclists ahead of me, I saw Dave from “The Distance,” an amateur movie made about 3 people training for the 2008 IM-MOO. I pulled up next to him and talked to him for a little while. He told me that Josh had injured himself and didn’t train enough and that Tammy had made the opposite mistake and found herself overtrained for the event. He said he was feeling great, that his swim was better than last year and that he thought he would have a great day. Didn’t take long for him to ride away from me, but it was cool to talk to him all the same.
The first 14 miles were, in a word, uneventful. I was very excited to be on the bike and to be in the middle of the race I’ve had my sights on for 3 years. The roads connecting Verona and Madison were horribly paved and were very physically jarring to ride over. It appeared as if the whole road was paved with 12 foot squares of concrete, sealed together by asphalt, except that each square was set at a slightly different height. It was a rough ride. It went by soon enough, though, and I soon found myself in Verona embarking on my first of two loops. It had been obvious to me for some time that I had hyperhydrated the night before as I had peed a dozen times since my wake-up. I had to do so yet again ending “the stick,” so I stopped at the porto-potties at mile 15 to relieve myself; a volunteer actually held my bike up the entire time I was in there and handed it to me afterwards, which was awesome. Grabbing my first bottle of Gatoraid Endurance at the aid station, I knew I was once again racing a WTC race!
It’s unfortunate for me to say this, but the next 15 mile trip to Mt. Horeb was very uneventful as well. I got the first taste of Wisconsin’s rolling farmland and was able to familiarize myself with the idea of being on an Ironman bike course, but there wasn’t much to see or do. I concentrated on staying aero and pushing as hard as my legs would allow me on its rationed energy. I had packed two Larabars and a Powerbar Triple Threat, which I hoped would last me until the Special Needs bag pickup at mile 56. I started eating, kept drinking and took in all the countryside.
After the first true climb on the day, a very easy grade, gradual climb over a mile or so, we made it to the city limits of Mt. Horeb for some much needed excitement. I saw groups of spectators for the first time since leaving Verona and it was a chance to actually go through a town with houses, people, music and cheering. I scanned the roads for anybody I knew, but didn’t see anybody as I motored past. Exiting Mt. Horeb, we made our way to mile 30 and the first part of the course worth discussing in pre-race: Witte and Garfoot Rds. I’ve seen a YouTube video of the “roller coaster” that was this road. It was a stretch of 3 or 4 miles of peaks and valleys as high as hills, but in close proximity as rollers. The road went up and down and up and down again as you transverse the most BEAUTIFUL countryside. I truly, truly enjoyed this part of the course. Each hill I descended carried me up the next one, and the view was more than enough to get me through it. I think the Zipp wheels and the aero helmet helped a lot; I was noticeably faster on the downhills than anyone else around me. I didn’t pedal on a single downhill the entire ride. At the end of Garfoot, I saw another climb I’d seen before in last year’s pro-race recap, which was enough motivation for the nerd in me to get myself up it. Shortly thereafter, just before mile 39, we got to the part of the course I most looked forward to: a one mile descent on the other side of Garfoot Rd. It was much more technical that I expected, and everyone in front of me was braking, so I had to as well. You really needed to, though, unless you had the course memorized and are an incredible bike handler.
With that stretch behind us, we had another ten miles of boring before we saw anyone. This, in my opinion, was the toughest part of the course. This is after the first stretch before Mt. Horeb, so it’s not a new phenomenon. You were low before Mt. Horeb, than got on a high again going through it, only to have it drop you off in another low. Not only that, everyone knew what was coming next: the two hills on Old Sauk Pass Rd and Timber Ln. Watching the miles tick away on my watch and continuing my pace, nutrition and hydration plans, I prepared myself for what was to come. After what seemed like forever, we turned onto the very start of Old Sauk Pass and passed a tent with some people camped out around it. Not very many people and not much excitement, but the first sign of life we’ve seen in a while and the front bookend to the incredible challenge to come. Old Sauk Pass winds around and around as flat as can be for a while, building tension, before it starts to kick up. I don’t know how steep it was, but I’d have to estimate it’s between an 8 and 10 grade for about ¾ of a mile. After it begins to climb, you wind left and start to see spectators. Cowbells rang and people shouted. I broke out my camera to take some pictures as I climbed the hill. Every time I did this, either in the middle of nowhere country or in the midst of the most challenging climbs, EVERYBODY loved it. I got more encouragement than any other part of the course. Being a good climber relative to people of like pacing in most races I do, I ground up the hill in the smallest gear I had and flew past many people. At the top, you got a mile or so to catch your breath before you turned off onto Timber Ln. Not far from the turn was the steepest, toughest hill on the course, referred to by some as “the Rockstar” because of the number of people on it. It was, as promised, reminiscent of the great climbs of the Tour de France, with a 4 person deep wall spanning the entire climb. Talk about a sight; I took a quick picture and was greeted by the roar of drunk college guys in banana suits and drag. “Yeah, Patrick! That’s awesome!” I jumped out of the saddle and hammered up the hill, passing more of my like-pace brethren. The top of the climb came in good time and I relished the excitement, but more so the completion and a chance to catch my breath and pull down my racing heart. It’s going to be really nice finishing this section the second time.
A number of dull miles ensued as we left Cross Plains, bound for Verona. They passed quickly enough the first time, but I could feel the effects of the day thus far; I knew the second loop was going to be hellacious. As my watch ticked closer to 56, it became more and more apparent that we were headed back into town, as we saw more and more spectators and heard more and more noise. I had made a goal for myself to not get lapped on the bike by the pros. I had made it to mile 53 without this happening. If I could make it to the turnoff point where you finish your “stick” as you head back into Madison, then I would have accomplished it. Mile 53.5, a mile and a half from the turnoff, I saw a Ford Fusion with the official Ironman race time, right at 5:00:00. “Cool” I thought, nothing thinking of it. Moments later, the men’s leader comes rocketing past me. Not far behind him were the top 6 men, one of whom was defending champion Chris McDonald. I yelled encouragement at him as he passed, but was a little upset at not making my goal. Oh, well, it was kind of a random, stupid one.
Entering Verona (a bit before the previous excitement) was really a cool experience. The crowd walls got thicker, and they had blocked off the course from traffic with barricades and sponsor’s signs. Going through the Timex bike bonus was breathtakingly awesome. It was just a surreal experience; in that moment, I was experiencing the awesome power of Ironman. Going through the aid station in Verona, a couple miles from the turnoff, I was refilling my Gatoraid when I passed my cheering section. Half of them had missed me going through, and I had a full Gatoraid bottle in my mouth as I passed, so I couldn’t say anything or even acknowledge that I saw them. Worst spot possible to try to catch my attention, but I kept a mental note of where they were to make sure I’d get to see them the next time around.
Passing the turnoff point, I celebrated not getting passed by any of the women at least, and began to scan ahead for the special needs bags. Eventually, we got to them (around mile 59, actually) and I got another awesome experience, tearing through the entirety of it while people pulled off to get their bags. It was like a Tour de France feeding zone; it was mass chaos and confusion as people pulled off to get their bags and pulled back into the lane of travel. Everyone was shouting to get out of the way, or that they were passing on the left. My bag was all the way at the end, so I got through the commotion and picked up my bag. I stopped to use the closest porto potty for the second time on the bike and realized that it was the same one I had stopped at on the first loop. There was a line this time, so I took a second to stretch my back, which I wanted to do anyway. I didn’t really mind the rest all that much! After a quick break, I pulled out the additional Larabar and Powerbar Triple Threat, shoved them in my jersey pocket and shoved my Mom’s homemade chocolate chip oatmeal cookies in my Bento Box before heading out on loop two. I was already tired. I looked forward to enjoying the sweet vacation from energy bars, but I knew, as everyone else on that course, that the second loop was going to hurt like crap.
Immediately coming off the helix and departing north out of town, you spend a fair amount of the first 3 miles on paved bike trails and side streets until you get to the Alliant Energy Center, a premier Expo center for the city of Madison. I suppose you could compare it to the Sommet Center of Nashville. As I approached the center, I recognized a familiar cyclist. I doubt anyone out there will catch this reference, but just a few cyclists ahead of me, I saw Dave from “The Distance,” an amateur movie made about 3 people training for the 2008 IM-MOO. I pulled up next to him and talked to him for a little while. He told me that Josh had injured himself and didn’t train enough and that Tammy had made the opposite mistake and found herself overtrained for the event. He said he was feeling great, that his swim was better than last year and that he thought he would have a great day. Didn’t take long for him to ride away from me, but it was cool to talk to him all the same.
The first 14 miles were, in a word, uneventful. I was very excited to be on the bike and to be in the middle of the race I’ve had my sights on for 3 years. The roads connecting Verona and Madison were horribly paved and were very physically jarring to ride over. It appeared as if the whole road was paved with 12 foot squares of concrete, sealed together by asphalt, except that each square was set at a slightly different height. It was a rough ride. It went by soon enough, though, and I soon found myself in Verona embarking on my first of two loops. It had been obvious to me for some time that I had hyperhydrated the night before as I had peed a dozen times since my wake-up. I had to do so yet again ending “the stick,” so I stopped at the porto-potties at mile 15 to relieve myself; a volunteer actually held my bike up the entire time I was in there and handed it to me afterwards, which was awesome. Grabbing my first bottle of Gatoraid Endurance at the aid station, I knew I was once again racing a WTC race!
It’s unfortunate for me to say this, but the next 15 mile trip to Mt. Horeb was very uneventful as well. I got the first taste of Wisconsin’s rolling farmland and was able to familiarize myself with the idea of being on an Ironman bike course, but there wasn’t much to see or do. I concentrated on staying aero and pushing as hard as my legs would allow me on its rationed energy. I had packed two Larabars and a Powerbar Triple Threat, which I hoped would last me until the Special Needs bag pickup at mile 56. I started eating, kept drinking and took in all the countryside.
After the first true climb on the day, a very easy grade, gradual climb over a mile or so, we made it to the city limits of Mt. Horeb for some much needed excitement. I saw groups of spectators for the first time since leaving Verona and it was a chance to actually go through a town with houses, people, music and cheering. I scanned the roads for anybody I knew, but didn’t see anybody as I motored past. Exiting Mt. Horeb, we made our way to mile 30 and the first part of the course worth discussing in pre-race: Witte and Garfoot Rds. I’ve seen a YouTube video of the “roller coaster” that was this road. It was a stretch of 3 or 4 miles of peaks and valleys as high as hills, but in close proximity as rollers. The road went up and down and up and down again as you transverse the most BEAUTIFUL countryside. I truly, truly enjoyed this part of the course. Each hill I descended carried me up the next one, and the view was more than enough to get me through it. I think the Zipp wheels and the aero helmet helped a lot; I was noticeably faster on the downhills than anyone else around me. I didn’t pedal on a single downhill the entire ride. At the end of Garfoot, I saw another climb I’d seen before in last year’s pro-race recap, which was enough motivation for the nerd in me to get myself up it. Shortly thereafter, just before mile 39, we got to the part of the course I most looked forward to: a one mile descent on the other side of Garfoot Rd. It was much more technical that I expected, and everyone in front of me was braking, so I had to as well. You really needed to, though, unless you had the course memorized and are an incredible bike handler.
With that stretch behind us, we had another ten miles of boring before we saw anyone. This, in my opinion, was the toughest part of the course. This is after the first stretch before Mt. Horeb, so it’s not a new phenomenon. You were low before Mt. Horeb, than got on a high again going through it, only to have it drop you off in another low. Not only that, everyone knew what was coming next: the two hills on Old Sauk Pass Rd and Timber Ln. Watching the miles tick away on my watch and continuing my pace, nutrition and hydration plans, I prepared myself for what was to come. After what seemed like forever, we turned onto the very start of Old Sauk Pass and passed a tent with some people camped out around it. Not very many people and not much excitement, but the first sign of life we’ve seen in a while and the front bookend to the incredible challenge to come. Old Sauk Pass winds around and around as flat as can be for a while, building tension, before it starts to kick up. I don’t know how steep it was, but I’d have to estimate it’s between an 8 and 10 grade for about ¾ of a mile. After it begins to climb, you wind left and start to see spectators. Cowbells rang and people shouted. I broke out my camera to take some pictures as I climbed the hill. Every time I did this, either in the middle of nowhere country or in the midst of the most challenging climbs, EVERYBODY loved it. I got more encouragement than any other part of the course. Being a good climber relative to people of like pacing in most races I do, I ground up the hill in the smallest gear I had and flew past many people. At the top, you got a mile or so to catch your breath before you turned off onto Timber Ln. Not far from the turn was the steepest, toughest hill on the course, referred to by some as “the Rockstar” because of the number of people on it. It was, as promised, reminiscent of the great climbs of the Tour de France, with a 4 person deep wall spanning the entire climb. Talk about a sight; I took a quick picture and was greeted by the roar of drunk college guys in banana suits and drag. “Yeah, Patrick! That’s awesome!” I jumped out of the saddle and hammered up the hill, passing more of my like-pace brethren. The top of the climb came in good time and I relished the excitement, but more so the completion and a chance to catch my breath and pull down my racing heart. It’s going to be really nice finishing this section the second time.
A number of dull miles ensued as we left Cross Plains, bound for Verona. They passed quickly enough the first time, but I could feel the effects of the day thus far; I knew the second loop was going to be hellacious. As my watch ticked closer to 56, it became more and more apparent that we were headed back into town, as we saw more and more spectators and heard more and more noise. I had made a goal for myself to not get lapped on the bike by the pros. I had made it to mile 53 without this happening. If I could make it to the turnoff point where you finish your “stick” as you head back into Madison, then I would have accomplished it. Mile 53.5, a mile and a half from the turnoff, I saw a Ford Fusion with the official Ironman race time, right at 5:00:00. “Cool” I thought, nothing thinking of it. Moments later, the men’s leader comes rocketing past me. Not far behind him were the top 6 men, one of whom was defending champion Chris McDonald. I yelled encouragement at him as he passed, but was a little upset at not making my goal. Oh, well, it was kind of a random, stupid one.
Entering Verona (a bit before the previous excitement) was really a cool experience. The crowd walls got thicker, and they had blocked off the course from traffic with barricades and sponsor’s signs. Going through the Timex bike bonus was breathtakingly awesome. It was just a surreal experience; in that moment, I was experiencing the awesome power of Ironman. Going through the aid station in Verona, a couple miles from the turnoff, I was refilling my Gatoraid when I passed my cheering section. Half of them had missed me going through, and I had a full Gatoraid bottle in my mouth as I passed, so I couldn’t say anything or even acknowledge that I saw them. Worst spot possible to try to catch my attention, but I kept a mental note of where they were to make sure I’d get to see them the next time around.
Passing the turnoff point, I celebrated not getting passed by any of the women at least, and began to scan ahead for the special needs bags. Eventually, we got to them (around mile 59, actually) and I got another awesome experience, tearing through the entirety of it while people pulled off to get their bags. It was like a Tour de France feeding zone; it was mass chaos and confusion as people pulled off to get their bags and pulled back into the lane of travel. Everyone was shouting to get out of the way, or that they were passing on the left. My bag was all the way at the end, so I got through the commotion and picked up my bag. I stopped to use the closest porto potty for the second time on the bike and realized that it was the same one I had stopped at on the first loop. There was a line this time, so I took a second to stretch my back, which I wanted to do anyway. I didn’t really mind the rest all that much! After a quick break, I pulled out the additional Larabar and Powerbar Triple Threat, shoved them in my jersey pocket and shoved my Mom’s homemade chocolate chip oatmeal cookies in my Bento Box before heading out on loop two. I was already tired. I looked forward to enjoying the sweet vacation from energy bars, but I knew, as everyone else on that course, that the second loop was going to hurt like crap.
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