Lake Murray Sprint Race Report

There are certainly some advantages to going to a race just up the road from where you live.  You can ride the course before the event, no packing, you get to sleep in you own bed the night before, and so on.  I was definitely a big fan of the sleeping in my own bed thing, and I actually woke up at about 4 am feeling ready to go!

I arrived early and set up transition, got body marked, and picked up my timing chip.  I stretched out and followed my normal pre-race routine, which has become a good source of calm for me now.  Dreher Island State Park provided a wonderful venue for the event, and the park rangers did a great job staffing the event along with the local boyscout troops.  A big nod to the boyscouts, who were quite literally lifesavers on the course.  I heard that one of them performed CPR on an athlete during the run, who was reported to be in good condition by the end of the race.  I did not see the ambulance go by, but my dad did and we were both a bit puzzled at first since they were going out on the run course.  I have seen units needed on the bike for crashes, and there were two heart attacks at the Marine Corps Marathon in DC, but I had been so accustomed to my fellow triathletes being just fine unless they wrecked on the bike that it was a shock.  According to Jeromy, the race director, the athlete is doing fine and I am sure everybody will join me in wishing them a full and speedy recovery.

More than an hour before that, however, we all stood on the boat ramp awaiting the starting signal.  The elite wave went, then my wave swam out for the in-water start.  The water was a bit chilly once we stirred it up, and I was grateful for the wetsuit.  “Thirty seconds to race start, have a great race everybody.”  Just floating.  “Fifteen seconds.”  Getting ready now, horizontal in the water.  “Ten seconds, the horn is your start.”  I start my watch.  The horn sounds.  The blender starts.  I hold back a little, seeing no gap in front of me to make a push through, finding a pocket of safety among the flailing limbs.  It is not my best start to the swim, and the first pair of feet I follow are not swimming a line that is to my liking, so again I am forced to pull my own line.  I set myself into a rythm, focusing on body roll and long strokes, feeling the water flow past, comfortable.  The first turn is nearly 180 degrees, bringing us in line with the sun.  I can see other athletes ahead, and swim towards them, following them until I can make out the first sighting bouy.  I have to work from one bouy to the next, I cannot see the turn bouy for the sun, and I am just hoping that they are in line.  My stroke rate rises, as I continue to focus on a long pull and creating a long vessel to cut the water.  I make the turn for the boat ramp, and see a few athletes just ahead.  I pick up the pace a bit and am on their feet, following their line to the finish.

Things go quickly in transition and soon I am on the bike course.  I get into my shoes and start pedaling.  Three miles into the bike, I know it will be a long day.  I try to bring the cadence up, and while my legs respond it is without power.  Four miles in and another competitor from my age group passes me.  “Enough” I say to myself, “you are better than this, give it a good fight.”  So I begin pacing off him, soon realizing that my time in the gym has paid off and I have more power on the few small climbs than he does, as I am holding back to follow his pace.  It is a steady overall pace, however, and I do not feel I can mount an attack.  Once, I feel him slack and pass him, but he responds quickly and I know that while he may have been mentally flagging, he has more potential than I do this day.  It has forced him to pick up the pace, though, and it makes me dig to match.  We quickly come back to transition, after sparring with some of the excellent cyclists from the wave that started after us.

A hundred meters into the run, I really feel the hurt.  My hamstrings are aching, sore.  I realize then that I will never consider a week with two weight lifting sessions a ‘light recovery week’ again.  I pull my race belt on, and begin downing gels to ward off the mental fatigue, trying to push through the pain.  I run on, forcing myself not to stop, and at the first mile marker I check my watch: about seven minutes.  We near the turn off for the out-and-back, and again I have to force myself to work through the desire to walk.  A mile and a half in and I am keeping the pace, amazingly.  Two miles in, and I have actually started to loosen up.  I feel like I can do more, so I push.  No more thoughts of walking, just ’how hard can you go’.  Nearing the finish my legs are getting wobbly but I dig deep and push hard to the end.

Swim time 13:38 for a 100m pace of 1:49; the kind of swim I expect to have.  T1 1:32.  16 Mile bike in 44:16, for an average speed of 21.7 mph; good enough for what I wanted, but not as fast as I was hoping.  T2 0:58.  Then I had to run.  3.1 miles in 21:37 for a PR, triathlon run or otherwise, and an average mile time of 6:58.  The run came back, I was ecstatic!

Chops up! oh, um, I mean pictures are up!

Well, I got some pictures up for the Langley Pond and Clemson races, so that makes it look like something other than just a sludge of words on my site.  I am going to start working on the videos soon, not necessarily even going to worry about sound since this is just a for fun practice with the video editing part.  I will try to learn a little something and have some neat editing tricks in them as I explore what the Windows Media Editor can do.  Thus far it has been really user friendly, which is pretty appealing!

I now have some small amount of free time, since school is out and I have had a week to get caught up on some stuff.  It is very nice to not have to worry constantly about class, and I think I actually do more work when left to my own devices!  Oh yeah, school’s out, I got grades.  Two Bs, two B+s, and two As!  Collectively keeping my “Cum Laude” average up!  Is it really an honor to graduate with honors in two Bachelor’s degrees?  Should the second one be pro-rated to something like “Graduate with two thumbs up.”  Hmm…

Today may have been my last day at PT.  Everything is feeling stronger and stronger as the days go by, and our appointment for next week is a “have it scheduled just in case something goes wrong” appointment which, fingers crossed, I will call and cancel.  Excellent group of folks, and they really make me see why having a personal trainer or coach would make the workouts that much better; knowing someone else is involved to help achieve my goals makes me work harder.

Anyhow, that’s it for now!  Sorta   More coming soon!

Clemson Race Report, AKA Raggin’ on the Tigers

Guess I just have to give it to our collegiate rivals on this one.  They have the Tiger Rag, a huge NORBA sanctioned mountain biking event, the Junior Elite National Qualifier for the state, and the Best of the US national qualifier.  For those of you not familiar, our big in-state rivals are the Clemson Tigers, so I am supposed to be appalled when anybody would choose their facility over ours.  I should put my nose up and scoff, saying things like “They just have more undeveloped land” referencing their roots as an agriculturally oriented school.  Now that’s how I am supposed to be, because of the rivalry and all that, but I really must admit that the venue was perfect for all of the festivities.  Actually, if that’s how the area around an “agricultural” university ends up, we really need more of them around to preserve more natural areas.  The entire university is wonderfully nestled among the rolling hills of the upstate; you round a turn on Hwy 93 and the campus materializes, with it’s accompanying immaculate downtown business district.  You can stroll through the area and enjoy the feeling of a buzzing college campus (eager young minds, and all that) or you can go just a few blocks in any direction and the hills will swallow the entire university, presenting a crisp, uncluttered appearance that allows for a very ‘in touch with nature’ feeling.  Very much fung shue (spelling?) in city planning.

I had no real expectations for the race, having trained right up to the thursday before.  I was actually still a little sore the day before, after a fairly heavy lifting session.  I have a race next weekend as well that is just up the street at Lake Murray, so it is sort of my home turf event.  I was definitely looking at this event as my last hard workout before that race; but it seemed to be looking back at me with something different in mind.  I had no expectations.  Until I rode the bike course.  Guesstimate the swim at thirteen minutes, 22 mph on the bike puts that at 30 minutes, run in 22, then three more for transition and that’s an hour and 8 minute race.  At packet pickup I met Stanley and Paula; Stanley is getting back into triathlon after having raced in Chicago for a while, and his wife Paula was going to be in her first event.  Stanley is a real character, he races in the Master Clydesdale division, which he is proud to announce to anybody is the only division where the aid stations have biscuits!  I got to talk to a lot of first timers who were a little nervous about this or that, problems that I had been through before and could at least calm some fears, and it felt like just yesterday when Anthony was giving me advice at my first event in Cheraw where I competed as a novice. 

I got very little sleep the night before, but woke up energized.  With calm confidence I slowly and deliberately went through my pre-race rituals.  Eat the same things, drink water, stretch the same routine, drink water, travel to the event, set up the TA, drink water, stretch, wetsuit on, warmup swim, drink some sports drink.  Then I am standing in the staging area, laughing, enjoying the moment, taking nothing for granted.

Lake Hartwell provided a wonderful venue, with water temps that would have been comfortable without a wetsuit, but were cool enough that it was certainly justifiable to wear one (especially if you are as skinny as me!).  There were nearly six hundred competitors at this race, making it one of the largest and most popular in the state; and by the end of the day it was obvious that everyone showed up to race hard.  The Junior Elite division was draft legal, but only between competitors in that division, so they had a ten minute head start on the swim just to keep their race clean.  The elite group went next, then the first age group wave.  “Three Minutes”  My wave enters the water, swims out for the in-water start.  “One Minute” Everybody lines up, standing on the line of bouys.  I take my spot, front inside, a poll position.  “Ten Seconds, everybody have a great race, you start on the horn.”  We’re off.

Two hundred meters to the first turn, for four minutes we swim side by side, squeezing around and between each other.  The start of a triathlon has been described as swimming in a blender.  I once read some advice about how to practice for a mass start that went something like “Put your goggles on, get in a full bathtub with a football, then have two NFL linemen fight over ball with you in the middle.”  Strangely, I am now at home.  We work, we are kick and are kicked, we are pressed aside.  Whoever it is beside, in front, or behind me is trying to do the same thing I am.  I smile to myself, as swimmer let their opening sprints subside and fall away, and silently thank them.  I thank them for pushing me, for making me dig deeper to strengthen my will and become a better athlete.  Let them ride my feet, I want them to push me on the bike and the run, too!  Two hundred meters before I allow my opening pace to begin to lessen.  Turn right, sight the turn bouy, ignore the middle sighting bouy, just take the straightest line.  I notice another sky blue cap, and decide that if they are still with me, I can follow their line.  Shortly, I decide that while they may be fast, I cannot trust their line, and begin swimming on my own again, racing my race.  Three hundred more meters to the final turn, I have passed a lot of white caps (the wave before me).  I sight the finish flag, and swim straight for it, other competitors to the left and right.  I realize that I have swam this event almost entirely on my own, not having found a set of feet experienced enough for my liking.  I swim past someone who tries to stand too early, and pull myself, bounding, from the water.

Routine takes over as I clamber up the hill to transition, removing the wetsuit, goggles, and swim cap.  Still, I take my time in transition, but exit at a quick clip.  The bike ride starts with a downhill segment and I fuel up early, knowing the hills that are to come will require I top off my reserves as much as possible.  The first push begins, and with every gradual steepening of the hill I feel momentum building.  I have taken all of the training in, and I am strong for this.  I feel stable on the climbs, solidly transfering energy to the pedals.  I take on a lot of fluid after the first push, as I hold about 27 mph through the flat section.  I am averaging 21.5 mph.  The second push comes and goes, and I feel solid, continuing to drink as I push through to the last climb of the course.  Even the turns felt faster. 

I relax through T2 to keep my focus where it should be, internally.  Quickly I exit transition, gels and race belt in hand, feet moving at a severely quick pace.

I spend the downhill section fueling up again, tricking my body to give me more power, to relinquish our natural desires for rest, to unlock more human potential.  We fly through the first mile, through the aid station, all of us moving in our own rythms, hearing our own music.  A mile goes by and I am passed, the number on the calf tells me that he is in my age group.  I really don’t know where I am in the standings at that point, so I try to keep up.  Over the next half-mile I lose about 75 meters to my competitor, and at the turn-around I begin to question my reserves.  One mile out and the legs feel weak, still 75 meters back.  The final half mile is uphill and as we begin the climb I know that the gap must be closed now.  I push, and in a minute the gap has disappeared, legs full of heavily burning lactic acid.  My competitor never looks back, he knows I am there, and picks the pace up when he hears my footfalls.  So I have to match his push at a half mile out with leaden legs.  At a quarter mile the pace increases again, the flames in my muscles overwhelming my ability to quench their fire. 

We turn into the YMCA grounds, legs moving, forcing a lean into the turn the stresses already worn muscles even more.  We hug the next turn tight and the crowds are there, I hear our names called, I feel the crowd, I feel a change in my competitor, I have been waiting.  I go.  The last kick is on, we close on someone else as well, not in our age group.  He hears us and of course does not look back, he just goes, so we are all racing!  We three charge through the finish, surging right through the end, the third racer and I end up in the spectators before we get stopped.  I turn to him and thank him, again I have been pushed, this time right to the end, and the well of perseverance has been dug a little deeper.

I had swam 14:04, biked 31:22, ran 22:30, and spent 2:49 in transitions for a total time of 1:10:43.  My final push was enough to open a few seconds lead, in a battle for fifth place.  I hung around to watch the other finishers cross and have their own sprint finishes, happy to live life.  I got to see a 71 year old cross the finish line just seven minutes behind me, and to see my new friends Stanley and Paula, to congratulate Paula on her first triathlon and welcome Stanley “Biscuit” back.  I watched the awards given out to the top three in each group, quite pleased with my results for the day.

Good things!

Good things seem to come in threes. 

Physically I am finally feeling well again.  I did my weekly speed work yesterday with my training partner without pain, and was actually quite comfortable at my old paces for the three miles of intervals.  Got rained on, but that just makes you feel like you are really tough stuff when everybody else is running to get off the track and you just keep on going.  Actually, I did an extra 400 meter work set, so things are definitely getting better.

Mentally I am quite relieved.  Not just from having so much less worry about my phsical condition, but because three of my exams are over!  Just have the TAP testing that I absolutely must pass now, the rest of my grades are good enough that I would have a very hard time not meeting the grade.  Can you guess which thing I will be studying for?

I won’t go into the third, seeing as how that is still in the works, but things are definitely looking up!

Have a great one everybody!

The Desparately Needed Update, and a Race Report!

Okay, I know I have been a little bit out of the loop.  With the hip injury I could only swim and cycle, so one of my major workouts (and the one I had focused on and made the most progress) was gone.  For six weeks I sat around, looking for time to get out and ride, or go to the pool and swim.  I am generally somewhat paranoid about riding right near my place, since it is kind of right in the middle of downtown, so going out for a bike ride takes a little bit more effort.  Sitting on the trainer for three hours is not much fun (unless you have some Carlos Mencia to watch!) and the pool is not the most social setting in the world.  Funny, back when I could run these were not real problems.  Basically, what I am saying here, is that I was feeling a bit down since I could not run.  It was, after all, what I had worked on all winter long; making my weakness a strength.  The first race of the season had proven that the work had all paid off, since I ran a sub-7 minute pace, but it felt like all of that was being taken away from me as I sat around (and swam and cycled) and waited for it to get better. 

That was pretty much how I felt for the last six weeks.  Kinda lame, I know.  I got into physical therapy two weeks ago and started working on rehab exercises, Breck (the Physical Therapist) isolated which muscles were involved and we started some targeted strengthening exercises.  It has actually been a really neat learning process (in hindsight) and most of my PT exercises are just modifications of things I would normally do, so they will fit very well into my workout routine. 

Well, on Thursday I had my last PT appointment before the race, and Breck and I sat down and talked a bit about goals and expectations for the race.  He asked me what my goals had been for the race before the injury, and I told him that I intended to race the Olympic distance in 2:30, with a 30 minute swim, 1:15 bike, and a 45 minute run.  These had been my goals from before I was injured, and I was very much on my way to achieving them before the injury.  I had also thought a lot about how I would approach the race at that point, with a really big question mark for my running ability.  I thought that I would go out and push one the swim, hammer on the bike, then take it easy on the run just to let things recover.  Breck really surprised me, though, saying “Go race, I want to see how it does in competition.  If you normally race for first, then race for first.”  Well, I always have the mindset of racing for first, I just have not achieved it yet!

So the Olympic distance race was held in Aiken, at Langley Pond.  An Olympic distance, for those not familiar, is a 1500 meter swim (1600 meters=1 mile), 25 mile bike ride, and a 6.2 mile run.  The swim was a two loop course, with an in-water turnaround (no run between laps).  The bike was a fairly flat, two loop course with a few moderate, sustained uphills early and about halfway through the course, otherwise roads were flat and in good condition, although there was a possiblity of being held up at any of the six railroad crossings on the course.  The run was again flat, through a residential area, with well-spaced aid stations and only two railroad crossings.

The morning of the race came, and I was feeling very good.  I picked up my chip, got body marked, stretched out, pulled on my wetsuit, and headed down to the water.  By now this has all seemed like routine, and I not really focused on any one thing.  The sand is cold between my toes, and it feels very coarse.  The elite athletes begin their race, three minutes before my wave.  We line up at the water’s edge, by now I feel at home on the leading edge of the swim start.  I don’t even think about the mass start, or the other athletes around me ready to dart into the water.  One minute warning.  I am not afraid of being kicked, or having my goggles tugged off by someone’s flailing arm.  Thirty seconds.  Those thoughts do not enter my mind; there is no need for them because, if I want, I can leave most of my competitors behind me on the swim.  Ten seconds.  Only one thought in my mind: I want to.

Into the water we go, two strides, stepping high, water sloshing around me.  Vaguely it registers that to both sides of me my competitors have dove into the water and begun swimming, I take one more stride and dive myself.  It will not occur to me during this entire race that I am in open water, I will not have that anxiety to fight.  Stroke rate high, I feel my forearm and hand taking bites of water, about four feet per stroke I move.  I sight the first bouy and adjust slightly to the right, breathing to my left I have not seen anyone.  I breathe to my right, and do not see anyone.  For a brief moment, a hundred meters perhaps, I am leading the race.  I relax, settling into a pace that is closer to my sustainable rythm, and find a set of feet.  Eventually I move to a faster set of feet.  Then we begin the second lap, and I move to the feet of one of the freshly started sprint-distance racers, where I remain until he begins to flag with just three hundred meters left.  The next two hundred meters I swim steadily in another competitor’s wake.  The dock we exit on is low, and I do not want to follow someone off cours, so I pull hard and come alongside the other swimmer.  I have worked on sighting while swimming a lot, and although I have become quite proficient at it the dock is very low and it takes a few glances before I am certain.  In minutes I am pulling myself onto the dock and running for T1 after 26 minutes.

Thirty minutes later I have completed the first steady climb and have entered the flat section of the course.  Somewhere along this section, I begin to tell myself, “Okay, take it easy, save something for that hill on the next lap” but then something happens.  My racing conscience raises it’s hand and queries “Why?”  Good question, why save anything?  I have done three hour rides already, I have raced twice this distance, why save anything?  So I go.  I hammer the downhill, crank hard on the long uphill, hit the flats and just let the quads burn.  They finally clear the lactic acid when I return to the downhill.  I pull into transition feeling pretty good about my effort, what would turn out to be a 1:12:30 bike ride, an average pace of 20 mph.

I really was not worried about my hip coming out of T2, I guess I was just so caught up in the thoughts of the moment (steady, quick feet, fuel up) that it just couldn’t fit in my mindset.  It felt like I had microwaved jelly for quads, it has been so long since I really got to do run training, but I just pushed on, knowing that I have finished races with less prep than this before.  I checked my watch at the two mile marker, and it had only been about fifteen minutes!  I was feeling pretty good, excited that I could keep up a pace that was respectable despite everything.  About this time a friend of mine, Anthony, comes running up beside me.  We exchange greetings, a quick “how’s it going?” (he is also dealing with a hip injury, I discovered) and he gives me some advice: “Just stay within yourself” he says.  Very true.  I do just that for the rest of the race, not really thinking but just doing.  I check my watch at four miles and see it has been about 30 minutes on the run course.  Two miles later I am crossing the dam, and I begin my final kick to the finish.  I cross the line, and look at the race clock:  2:34:13.  The clock started three minutes before my wave entered the water.

Things were very good on Saturday.  No hip pain, an effort I am certainly proud of, and a top-3 finish.  It was quite an enjoyable event, just like every event put on by Setup Events I have been to.  Also, I really learned something over the last four miles of the run.  I don’t have to worry about motivation.  If I am training, racing, and living within myself I will be just fine, I have the drive to succeed.

Now, back to business.  Who wants to go for a little 10k run?

Pictures and video coming soon!