1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike, 3 mile run
Results:
1:19:06 total
15:22 for the 1/2 mile swim (1:45/100m avg, 43/99age group)
2:36 T1 (48/100 age group)
35:46 for the 12 mile ride (20.13 mph avg. 26/99age group)
2:16 T2 (74/100 age group)
23:06 for the 3 mile run (7:26 mile avg, 24/99 age group)
27th out of 99 in 40-44 age group.
Race Prep:
I had spent the last two weeks in Corrales, at roughly 5000 feet. Not 'altitude' per se, but enough altitude for me to feel it, plus it was dry and hot. I got in some good runs with some decent hills, and worked on form. After every hard run I'd hit the TRX for suspended lunges and one leg squats. I also worked on my swim form, which has come a long way since the Issaquah Tri. Unfortunately the pools I had to swim in were pretty short, which made it hard to get into a groove.
I had not ridden my bike at all in the previous 3 weeks, except for yesterday (day before the race), when I spun out 20 miles. This really didn't sweat me much, since I know how to ride a bike and I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to forget at this point in life.
Day of Race:
At 5 AM it was overcast, cloudy, and 54 degrees. In mid July !?! This has truly been a no-summer summer. I was dreading getting into the lake, my Lake Sammamish experience had left some mental scars. But, my ethnic cheapness won out and I trundled down to the race to get my money's worth!
I was very pleasantly surprised when I stuck my toe into the lake and found that it was much warmer than the air temp. My warmup swim was great, mainly because unlike last time I wasn't getting an ice cream headache. I tried to stay warm until the start, but the last 10 minutes were cold just standing around. Everyone around me was shivering too, so I didn't think about it too much.
The gun went off and it was a muthaf*cking scrum, definitely the most aggressive start I've had in my long, sordid history of 3 triathlons. People were pulling on my legs, I was climbing over slower swimmers from earlier waves, and there was plenty of thrashing going on. I settled into somewhat of a groove, but never felt like I was 'flowing'. My arms were working too hard and I immediately started breathing w/every stroke. And I was doing way too much work with my arms, they were getting tired. So I tried to concentrate on driving my stroke from my hips, and that was actually going pretty good when all of a sudden, the swim was over!
I stood up to run out of the lake and my right hamstring started to seize up. wtf ?? I've never had that happen from a swim. Fortunately it didn't go into full spasm, and I hobbled into the transition area.
T1
My transitions are getting better. This time I was wearing my shirt underneath my wetsuit, so it was simply a matter of getting out of the wet suit and getting into biking gear, then heading out to the bike. I'm always amazed at how dead my upper body/arms/fingers are after the swim. Not a good time for fine motor movements, like putting on a helmet :)
Bike
I was spinning up and getting ready to 'turn it to 11' when _both_ hamstrings twinged. Damn. I decided that (a) this worked itself out last time, maybe I should give it another go, and (b) to slow down while my legs were getting to their happy place. I could barely ride 20 mph on the flats for the first mile or so, then picked it up to 22-23 We made a sharp right turn up a narrow path that some guy was trying to grind up in a 53x12. I was able to get around him, and then was out on the I-90 express lane.
I was flying on the express lane. It went way faster than it does on the way back from work, which I usually do on a fixie, on the bike path, with a heavy backpack. There was also a pretty significant side/tailwind coming out of the southwest. Before I could think any more deep thoughts, we were on Mercer Island, in the tunnel, which all of a sudden started to go...uphill? Hey, I never noticed that this part was uphill before! Then again, I had only done this in a car, and the car never complained like my legs started to -- my speed dropped way off and then the tunnel was done, and there was a short downhill followed by the turnaround. That downhill seemed a lot longer when it was ridden as an uphill...then it was back into the depths of the tunnel again, which was now a sweet downhill, out across the bridge, into the head/sidewind, and back onto Lake Washington blvd, where we were a little more sheltered from the wind and I could just _barely_ keep it at 20-21 mph. At mile 10 I started to feel good, really good, and picked my speed up, which was too bad because the bike ride was only 12 miles long. I want to do an olympic distance ride to see if my theories about being a 'slow warmer upper' hold true. Or maybe I don't, that way I could live with the delusion that I'm actually quite fast at longer distances without proving it :)
Only two people passed me on the bike. They were moving fast, one was drafting the other. I didn't try to match their pace, it was on the headwind section. I kept the last one in sight for a while, then he...disappeared. I passed a lot of people, but they were from the other age groups. This was probably because the majority of my age group was down the road due to my slow swim!
T2
back into the transition, once again my fingers moved with the grace of a sleep deprived three year old. But this time that didn't slow me down, because I had bought those yankz shoelaces the day before. Best $8 I've ever spent. I just pulled the shoes on my feet, and I was off and running. In the wrong direction. That cost some time -- oh well :) A nice volunteer grabbed me and turned me around -- thanks, whoever you are!
Run
Same old first mile story: my legs felt like lead and the road felt like molasses. But I had accepted that before the race, and just kept telling myself it would get better. I managed to keep things reasonably fast at 7:19 for the first mile. The second mile was going much better, 7:06 pace, and I caught and passed one of the bikers that had passed me. Then we turned the corner and hit...the Mother of All Hills. OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it felt like the mother of all hills. I slowed to a jog/shuffle kind of jig, I saw a lot of people walking it, my mantra became "don't walk", but walking might have been faster than what I was doing. I'm pretty sure I looked like a very angry, very tired duck. Because this I felt like I was half lurching, half waddling up the hill. One guy I had been running with (a fellow 40-44 age grouper) kept going at a good clip up the hill, which was pretty impressive because he was 6-3 and built like a linebacker. Definitely not a Kenyan, but he just floated away from me! I think mile 2 was about 7:57, I _really_ slowed down on that hill. Soon (not soon enough!) we topped out and turned around, and I was able to catch and drop Linebacker boy. Must be my
After coming down the big hill, we turned right and were about 3/4 mile from the finish. So I picked it up as best I could, and gutted it in at a 7:10 3rd mile.
Conclusions
I was thinking about doing an oly August 1, but I think I'll do one in late August instead, after I've spent some time working on my swim. It hasn't improved much since last year. I'm going to concentrate (again) on form over speed, I have faith that with form, speed will come. I definitely need to get more power on the bike, more intense riding and some bodyweight exercises should help. The run I'm actually happy with, I could always be faster, but these things take time, and at least I'm not waddling (as much as I used to) any more. I think some tempo runs and road intervals will help the speed. Running fast enough to be uncomfortable is the only way I'm going to get faster.
I've decided that my goal with triathlons is to simply go as fast as I can and be happy if I can cross the line completely worked. At 41, with (extremely) limited potential and training time limited to about 7 hours per week, that's about all I can ask from myself. With that goal in mind, this triathlon was definitely a success. I had many moments where I talked myself into going faster, and many opportunities to go slower that I passed by. I'm not sure what's up with the cramping, but I've learned from this and other endurance events that there is always something, the game is to work with it and not worry too much. I would love to have a race where I feel like I've completely crushed the swim, the bike, or the run, or even more than one leg, but hey, this is triathlon #3, I think I've got to pay some more dues before I get day like that.
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