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Man, I thought I was going to die on the run…

Well, that’s a slight exaggeration, but I did feel really tired, got the chills (again), and was having a hard time keeping my legs moving.  Time slowed and I felt like each mile took an age. But in actual fact they were only taking about 7 minutes 12 seconds (average… which is a pretty fast time for me).  The bike went as hoped, where I averaged 20.25 mph.  For the swim, I was just hoping to match my Wildflower time, but managed to knock off 4-minutes.

Swim – 0.93 miles in 26:40
T1 – 2:01
Bike – 24.9 miles in 1:13:46
T2 – 1:09
Run – 6.2 miles in 44:34
Which gives me a finishing time of 2:28:11.   Over 10 minutes faster than my time on the–admittedly much hillier–Wildflower course.

The only slight hiccups were the elbow I took to the jaw during the swim and the subsequent mouthful of lake water I swallowed, and then on the bike the aid station was unmanned so I ran out of water at about the 20-mile marker.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the result.   I don’t think I could have done much better.  Position wise, I came 15th in my age-group of 64, and 106th of the 429 finishing men.  But as I said in my other post, at my level that’s not a very meaningful metric.

So now the question for next year is: do I try for a half-Ironman or do I stick at the Olympic distance and try to improve my times?  Or maybe both…

I’ve been reading Joe Friel’s book The Triathlete’s Training Bible recently.  It has a ton of useful information about when to train, how to train, when to rest, what to eat, and how to maximize efficient swimming, biking, and running techniques.  One of the things it suggests to do is write up a race day plan; as a way to help you prepare, but also so you can check back and compare expectations with reality.  So, since I’m doing another race this coming Sunday, I thought I’d write up my plan…

Prep
At 4am the alarm will go off; It’s Your World will be playing on NPR.  Get up.  Have a cold shower.  Get dressed (race shorts under civvies).  Head down to breakfast: blue-bottle coffee, 2-pints of water with electrolyte mix, toast and honey.

I’ll have packed my bag the night before, but just do a last check through.  Pump tires on bike to 120psi.  Get Tessa and Ada ready, head to car by 4:45am.

The drive to Almaden Lake is 55-miles and should take less than an hour.  Tessa will drop me off and go find parking.  I’ll have registered the day before, so head straight to the transition area and set up my spot.  I should have an hour before the race starts, so I’ll familiarize myself with the transition area, the entrances and exists, and the swim course.  If allowed, I’ll do a warm-up swim, nothing hard, just enough to get the blood flowing.  Stretches.  And the requisite trips to the porta-potties.

Swim
I’m in the third wave, starting at 7:08.  I’ll stand one row back from the front, on the inside.  I’ll take the first 100m easy, trying to avoid feet, and picking a path through the carnage.  After that I’ll settle into a comfortable rhythm, avoiding the temptation to race.  A mistake I made last time was going too wide, so try to keep an optimal course.

Transition to bike
My wet suit’s a two piece, so I’ll have the top off by the time I get to my spot.  Take off the bottoms.  Socks on.  Shoes on.  T-shirt on.  Helmet on.  Put 3 gel packs in back pocket.  Grab bike.  Run for the exit.

Bike
The bike course is wide, smooth, and relatively flat.  I’ll be pushing hard.  I’ll have a gel pack at the start, one half way, and one at the end.  I’ll alternate between water and energy drink, sipping regularly.

There’s a 7% climb for 200-vertical-feet between miles 15 and 16.  After riding in Marin, this should be easy.

I want to average above 20 mph.

Transition to run
Simply drop bike off, take off helmet, switch shoes, and grab race belt with my number.

Run
Like the bike it’s a flattish course.  I’ll take the first mile to ease my legs in, then settle into a race pace.  I want to push close to my limit.  I won’t have my heart rate monitor so I’ll pay attention to my breathing and if it gets laboured will ease off.  I’ll take water every mile at each aid station.

Finish
At the end of the day I know I’m not going to place very highly.  I could say I’d like to finish in the top 10%, which would be very cool, but is meaningless; it is a measure of other entrants not myself.  My goal is for everything to go smoothly and to feel like I couldn’t have finished in a quicker time.  But, shit happens and if something does go wrong I’ll just do my best to get to the end.

If you’re not interested in my trip to Wildflower this weekend you can stop reading (or mute) now.
If you are slightly interested by it but in the tl:dr crowd, you can skip to the end to see my times/position.
If you are actually interested in my race report, please continue (hi Mum, hi Marie)…

So… if you read the last post you’ll know I was heading to Wildflower to do the Olympic triathlon this weekend. Now, this is no Iron Man. The Long Course is on Saturday and is a half-Iron Man; the Olympic is an “Intermediate Distance” event and is a mere 1-mile swim, 25-mile bike, and 6-mile run. However, each of the Wildflower courses is known for being particularly grueling.

Tessa, Sani (my fellow racer), his brother, and I drove the 300-miles to Lake San Antonio on Friday afternoon, and set up camp.

On Saturday, we did some swim training, a light bike ride, and watched the Long Course competitors. These guys are seriously hardcore. The winner will finish the 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike, and half-marathon in 3-hours 55-minutes. The last person will take nearly 10-hours, biking and running in the scorching California sun. Seeing the people of all shapes and sizes do this race made me feel really quite lame. The Team-in-Training people were particularly impressive; many of whom certainly don’t look like athletes, but they all support each other and with serious mental willpower finish the course to support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Today, after two cold and uncomfortable nights in a tent, was our race. The start is split into waves, with the collegiate men going first at 9am. Then the male age groups, then female. My wave started at 9:25.

The swim started with the usual carnage; legs and arms flailing everywhere, people almost swimming over you, kicks to the face. By the first buoy it had thinned out only a little, so I decided to go wide to avoid the masses. By the half way point I was now overtaking stragglers from the waves in front; some swimming breaststroke, some lying on their backs staring at the sky. By the final buoy and the last-leg back to the dock I got overtaken by the front guy of the wave behind me. Appropriately wearing a ninja-black swim cap. The swim felt long, when training I think I go into a kind of meditative state, but in the excitement of race day it took forever.

After the first hill, the bike was relatively straight forward. I pushed it quite hard, taking satisfaction from over taking guys on $5000+ tri-bikes, and feeling awe at other guys on $5000+ tri-bikes flying past me. The course was a there-and-back, with 2 biggish hills either way. My “nutrition strategy” was to have an expresso-gel at the start and end of the ride, a honey gel in the middle, and then alternate water/electrolyte drinks throughout. This worked pretty well.

The run was killer. As always it hurt like hell trying to run after biking for over an hour. And the course was tough. There were aid stations at each mile giving out much needed gatorade and water, but even with these I started getting chills about half-way round. At this point the sun was high in the sky and it was getting hot; I feel so bad for the women who didn’t get to start till 11am. The run course was nearly all up hill for the first 5-miles, on road and dirt trails. Then a 1-mile knee crunching decent to the finish line.

I felt pretty rough by the time I crested the final hill, but I kept going and made it to the finish with a time I’m pretty happy with.

My total time was 2-hours 39-minutes, which put me 24th in my age group of 224 guys, 142nd out of all 1200 men, and 166th overall out of over 2000 competitors. For context, the winner came in at 2-hours 2-minutes, median time is 3-hours 19-minutes, and the 90th percentile take longer than 4-hours.

Swim: 00:29:49
Transition 1: 00:03:04
Bike: 01:19:31 (18 mph avg.)
Transition 2: 00:01:09
Run: 00:46:10 (7:43 min/mile avg.)
Total: 02:39:43

Not too shabby, but plenty of room for improvement.

Now, off to finish this 2002 Moon Mountain Syrah and eat some honey sandwiches, oh, and I should probably shower at some stage.