Los Angeles Marathon

Last fall I figured out that running is the one sport that is easy to train for when you’re constantly on the road leading bike tours. So it wasn’t hard for Andrew Lockton to talk me into signing up for the LA Marathon. I actually had a good base of running fitness, and a few of my training buddies in Seattle were looking for a spring marathon. Fast-forward to March and while I missed a few weeks of training due to illness and work and travel and family stuff, I felt like I was reasonably well prepared for my first marathon.

The best part about this race was the large number of friends and acquaintances who were all targeting a similar pace. I had done most of my training with Ari Schorr and Tahoma Khalsa, and we all planned to start together and run together. Andrew Lockton would be running, too, but at a slower pace after breaking his toe in a motorcycle accident and missing 6-8 weeks way too close to the race. Cyrus from Denver and Justin from Seattle were also likely to be in the mix.

Pre-Race

The big pre-race highlight was our trip to the Goodwill store to buy warm-up clothes. We knew that the air temperature on race morning could be a bit chilly, and thought it would be fun to bring throw-away outfits rather than putting our clothes into our gear-check bags and claiming them post-race. Plus we weren’t sure how early we would have to line up in our assigned A corral, and how cold we might get between lining up and starting the race.

Ari found an excellent Macklemore-style long coat with a fur lining. I found a way-too-small pink puffy coat with a fur lining and some blue jeggings. It was $%#$ing awesome!

My spandex Bacon Suit and handlebar mustache were also awesome, and I got extra crowd support the whole way. Gotta try to find a photo…

Race

I wanted to go out conservatively and we over-achieved. I ran the first mile with Lockton, Tahoma, Cyrus and Jesse Williams’s friend Craig. We knew that Craig & Lockton were targeting a slower time, but figured we were still pretty close to 6:00-6:10 pace while Ari was running like an idiot, nearly 30 seconds ahead of us at the first mile mark. We hit the mile a few seconds after 6:30. Oops. Looks like I was the idiot.

But after that we split up a bit and Tahoma/Cyrus/I strung together 12 miles that were each between 5:55 and 6:10. We took turns leading. We reminded each other to eat and to drink and to relax. We talked about how our legs and stomachs felt. We steadily plugged away, mile after mile, and hit the half-marathon mark together, at a 1:19:xx split. At that point, Tahoma was feeling good and dropped the pace a bit. Cyrus and I stayed at 6:05s. Somewhere between mile 10 and mile 12 we saw Ari come out of a port-a-potty up ahead of us. He had been 2-3 minutes ahead of us, but was now back to 30-45 seconds ahead of us. I was hoping we would catch up and run together for awhile, but Ari was clearly “on a mission” after his pit stop, and took off at sub-6 pace for a few miles before settling in again.

Cyrus helped me open a bag of clif blocks around mile 14.5. My hands were a bit cold/useless so it was great to have some help. All in all, I was pretty good about eating throughout the race. I had 3-4 blocks before the start, then 1-2 in the first mile. I had a gel at mile 4 or 5, then maybe another at 9-ish. I was starting to feel tired at 14-15 and may have waited too long between snacks. Cyrus got a few steps ahead of me at the mile 15 water station and just sort of dangled out in front of me for the next three miles. I could still see Tahoma and Ari up the road, especially on the longer straightaways.

Mile 15 to 18 was probably the biggest “dark period” that I had all day. I’d been through plenty of these in triathlon racing, so even though I felt a bit physically drained I tried not to lose confidence. Sure enough, at mile 18 everything started turning my way. The sugar from those 5 blocks got into my bloodstream. (I had given Cyrus one block.) I decided that it was okay for things to hurt from there on it – I knew/expected the race to get hard eventually, but I had subconsciously been afraid of it feeling too hard too early. At mile 18, I was less than an hour from the finish, or I was a “daily easy run” distance away from the finish, so I could start to dig or press a little. I didn’t have to stay so conservative. The Bon Jovi song “Living on a Prayer” got stuck in my head. I reeled off two miles that felt like 5:40s even if they were really still in that 6-6:15 range. I caught and pulled away from Cyrus, and thought I might catch Tahoma and Ari. I hit mile 20 at 2:01:30 and calculated that I only needed to run a 38:30 split for the final 10K in order to break 2:40. A good bit slower than my average pace so far. Hooray!

But then things turned south again at 20. The route from mile 20 to mile 22 was deceptively uphill, and was a bit desolate crowd-wise as we twisted and turned our way through the VA hospital campus. I felt like I was really struggling, and running 7+ minutes per mile. Seeing my 6:30ish splits at mile 21 and mile 22 didn’t help my confidence much. But I knew that the course would start sloping downward for the final four miles, once we reached mile 22. I took a gel around 20.5 and in retrospect I probably should have taken one at 18 and another at 22.

At 22 I started to get my energy back but my legs were starting to get crampy. I tried to ingest a bit of extra water and gatorade at each aid station, but once you start feeling twitchy pre-cramps, you are on borrowed time. My calves seized up a few times in mid-air, leading to a really terrible-looking stride, but somehow I managed to maintain a 6:20ish pace. Tahoma was suffering, too, and I caught him around mile 24.

Tahoma fell back about half a mile later, as cramps & fatigue hobbled his stride. I was really waddling/shuffling at this point, to minimize the strain on my calves, and I must have looked like a wreck when I passed Jesse Williams and Danny Mackey on the sideline at mile 25. They yelled encouragement, and later said something about my “gutsy” performance. “Gutsy” is better than wimpy, but it means that you’re not looking smooth & relaxed & fast!

The last mile was touch-and-go with the leg cramps. A video of my final quarter mile would probably be quite entertaining. I was hobbling. But I crossed the line in 2:42:01, which feels like a respectable-if-not-phenomenal time for a guy with a rather expensive background in endurance sports.

Post-Race

I struggled to step on and off curbs for the rest of the day, and walking down stairs hurt for about a week.

Lockton and his girlfriend and I ate about $75 worth of sushi after the race, and it was a 50%-off happy hour!

Tahoma and Ari and I went out in Hollywood and in Santa Monica after the race, but nothing too crazy happened. It was St Patrick’s Day, but it was also a Sunday night.

I barely ran for 2.5 weeks to give my legs a chance to recover, and didn’t resume regular daily runs until April 19. I attempted my first workout on April 24 and it was downright ugly. But the fitness will come back!

No other races on my calendar yet. Will have to see how the bike tour schedule shapes up, and how much I am able to run during the tours. Another marathon or triathlon next spring could be a lot of fun. Boston has been floated around as an idea. A bunch of our training buddies are running Chicago in October first, which won’t work for me training-wise.

3M half marathon

hey blogosphere! I’ve been a bad blogger, and I won’t insult your intelligence by saying that I’ll change. But here is a small effort.

I went to Austin this weekend to visit my old friend Steve Young, a.k.a. 57-Steve. We worked together at Trilogy right after college. He managed to get a mobile number of (512) 577-8383 or (512) 57-STEVE. Yeah. We’re geeks.

He didn’t run back then, but has picked up the nasty habit in the past two years… so we agreed to meet up here and to run the 3M half marathon. 3M also happens to be the only half marathon I’d ever run outside of a triathlon, back in 2003, when we lived here.

Steve had a goal to break 90 minutes in a half this year, and I had tried to coach him a bit last year, providing workouts from Seattle that he ran in London. But he got hurt. I must be a bad coach. But he’s healthy again now and was on track to break 90 this time. He didn’t believe it himself, but he’d run 92 minutes on a slightly-short but SUPER HILLY course in France a few months ago, so I knew he could do it. And he did. He ran a smart race, staying with the 1:30 pacer the entire way, and ran an official chip time of 1:29:57. Solid.

I was hoping to break 74 at this race, after running 76:04 at the Seattle half in November when Tahoma convinced me to run it as our workout like two days earlier. Seattle is hillier than 3M, and I was actually able to plan this one in advance. But then I got a persistent head cold about a week before the race, and it was a struggle just to be healthy on the starting line. I hoped to run steady 5:40s for the first half of the race and then drop a bit in the second half if I still felt good. I’d run steady 5:42s on the track for 9 miles with Travis Adams two weeks ago, so I knew I had the fitness to do this. But in the fourth mile yesterday I could already feel that I didn’t quite have it. I ate an energy gel and tried to tough it out. I managed to get my splits back down but was clearly a few clicks slower than I would need to be. I did manage a new PR, though, in the upper 1:15s. Maybe 1:15:40ish?

Splits were 5:28 5:44 5:38 5:48 5:46 5:44 5:41 5:47 6:01 5:44 5:55 6:04 5:44. The 6:01 and 6:04 had hills and/or headwind. I swear.

The best part of the day (and the main reason I’m writing this) happened a few hours after the race. I got two texts from Steve:

http://dailymile.com/people/Iristroph/entries/20196919

Hilarious but keep the face that you read this between you and me.

(We’ve since decided that it is OK for me to share these.)

Go read the link if you haven’t done so already. It is really funny.

Did you read it yet? OK. Good. How funny is that?!! Awesome!! I laughed out loud. So did my running buddies in Seattle. So did Steve.

Hopefully that brought a little levity to your day. I know that most of you probably saw the link on my Facebook wall already… but feel free to comment here, too, so that it looks like people still read this blog.

In other Austin news, it was great to see and catch up a bit with Tim Sandfort, Don & Missy Ruthven, Corey May and George Schmitz, and to see Tim Terwey and Josh Lee at the race. Go check out the new Austin Tri-Cyclist store on 360 at Davenport Village, opening Feb 9th!!

oh regarding use of the photo – it is pretty well-established across race photo companies that athletes can use the shots on their personal blogs pro bono. I know the image header says otherwise :/

The Southern Double

Any American triathlete who has chased ITU points in the past 5 years has at least considered traveling to Argentina and Chile in January for the mythical “Southern Double.” You race two Pan American Cups on back-to-back weekends, in La Paz (Argentina) and Vina del Mar (Chile). January is the offseason (or often base season) for Northern Hemisphere athletes, so these races are an opportunity to race in a probably-less-competitive field and also to leapfrog a few other Americans in the rankings. I thought about going there in 2008, in 2009 and in 2010, but each year came up with reasons to not go --- generally that I was already racing into November in the US, needed a post-season “break,” and wouldn’t be fit again in time for January.

Last year PATCO started hosting races in Santiago and in Valparaiso, Chile, in March. So even though triathlon isn’t quite as central to my life as it once was, I’ve ramped up my training a bit and booked a flight to Chile! I’m excited to go south of the equator for the first time. I’m excited about the possibility of finally picking up some ITU points, even if I’m not chasing Olympic Trials anymore. I’m excited to be racing again on the international circuit.

I’ll try to post some photos and travel notes once I get down there. It will take 20 hours to get there from Seattle, with connections in San Jose and in Dallas! But I bought the ticket for 40,000 Alaska Airlines frequent flyer miles plus $97 in taxes and fees, so I’m not complaining!

San Francisco Triathlon at Treasure Island

After a fun-but-slow day at Monroe, it didn’t take much effort for Andrew and Lauren to convince me to jump into this past Saturday’s ITU race in San Francisco. I’ve raced there five or six times before and I <3 Tri-California.

I was a bit disappointed to swim in the back group at Monroe, so I actually swam five times in the two weeks between races – two hard swims with Dave in Lake Sammamish and three easy pool swims in three different cities/states – w Rusty & Lauren at the Bellevue Club, alone at Highland Park pool in Pittsburgh, then w Kenny, Andrew and Lauren at the Cal Berkeley pool before the race. Still not a lot of volume, by any means, but more than I’d been doing!

I didn’t get any real biking in as I spent much of the two-week interlude traveling to see my sister in Pittsburgh. I did ride around town a bit on an old road bike that I borrowed, and I went for two easy runs. Mellow training.

So, on to How It Went Down:

Swim: Before the race I told myself that I should still be a mid-pack swimmer. I was correct. I swam relaxed/fluid/strong most of the way and exited the water 31st out of 50, in a group of about 15. There were twenty athletes ahead of our group and 15 behind our group, so it is safe to say I was in the middle. I was happy to see Manny Huerta next to me as we exited the water, as he’s had solid World Cup swims before and I hoped that his presence meant that we were in a decent position.

T1 was uneventful, except for running about 10 meters past my bike and having to double-back for it.

Once onto the bike, Manny and I easily got into a group of 8 or 10 riders that was forming ahead of us. After negotiating the first few corners, I went to put my left shoe on and disaster struck. I got my foot about halfway into the shoe and then accidentally unclipped the shoe from the pedal. Now I had the shoe half-on my foot but not firmly attached to anything. It is hard to fix such an issue while riding! Somehow I managed to get the shoe back onto my foot, but I lost my group. I dug deep and caught up to a smaller group of riders, only to have issues getting my other shoe on, too. The little things… so I lost another group and tried to ride smart/steady/relaxed as I knew there were still plenty of riders behind me.

I rode with a few different groups over the last 5 laps, and found that I didn’t have much margin for error out there – likely a sign of low bike fitness. If a guy ahead of me hit a traffic cone and flipped it up in the air, I lost the group. If we caught a sketchier rider and he disrupted our cornering and rotation, I lost the group. Lame. It was almost like I was looking for excuses out there. Gotta work on that.

T2 was interesting again, as I apparently threw my helmet into the wrong bin. The official tried to help me and yelled after me, but I had a hard time figuring out what I’d done wrong in the heat of the moment.

I was happy to not have debilitating leg cramps on the run (yay! better nutritional prep this week!!) but I was disappointed to have a bit of stomach discomfort for the first 6-7km. I just couldn’t push the pace that I wanted. This was actually a rather familiar feeling, and this tells me that I have something very specific to work on during my preparation for future races. Who cares what kind of open 10K you are capable of running right now if your angry stomach or crampy legs won’t let you run. If I make it out to Myrtle Beach in October or to the mythical South American Double in January (Vina del Mar and La Paz) then I should do a bit more analysis into what drinks, concentrations and timing are causing such issues. I went with a rather straightforward approach at TI, but it looks like I need to tweak that approach.

After the race, we had a fun evening in Berkeley with some of the athletes and friends. I left SFO with a bit more inspiration to increase the priority of triathlon training within my busy life, and to put on a more impressive showing at one of the fall or winter races. We’ll see what life brings!

Monroe Pan American Cup

This past Saturday I had the privilege of racing in front of friends and family at the ITU Monroe Pan American Cup. Thanks to everybody who came out to watch the race – dad, mom, Bob, Katie, Andrew, Aaron, Zach, Vaibhav, Dave, Dave, Jen, Tracey, Kalpita, Peter, and anybody else who I’m not thinking of right now!! It was awesome for my friends and family to finally get to see one of these races in person.

I knew going in that my fitness might not be quite what it has been in past years. I’ve intentionally de-prioiritized spending time on triathlon training as I’ve focused more on my work at Microsoft and on getting GeekFit off the ground and on being there a it more for my friends and family. That said, I knew that my combination of high-intensity work at GeekFit, lower stress about training, more recovery time, more sleep, occasional hard efforts in all three disciplines and the “home crowd” could allow me to have one of my best races yet.

So how did it go down?

Swim: I got out well, but then faded rather quickly and settled onto some comfortable feet. I tried to “swim smart” and only made one bridging attempt, when the guy ahead of me lost the guy ahead of him. I was slightly disappointed to have exited the water in the last group, but I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was that there were guys near me to ride with!

Bike: my hamstrings were *immediately* a mess on the bike. I struggled to get my first shoe on and gave up trying to get the second. I bridged to the three guys ahead of me and finally caught them 2-3km into the race. Then I tried to let my legs recover enough to allow me to hold my right leg in the 12 o’clock position and get my shoe on without inducing a hamstring cramp. Our group of four became five and then seven and eventually eleven. We worked well together at times and not-so-well at other times. My legs came back a little and I was able to surge when needed, but I never really felt “strong” on the bike. With a lap to go I started thinking about making my usual “1km to go” move to set up a good T2, but I blew it. Another guy went first and I thought about following but just ended up on the front of the group. Then I slipped to the back as I tried to get out of the wind. So I entered T2 last in my group. Fail.

Run: I knew that my run fitness was very good coming into this race. I PR’ed in the 5k back in March and I’ve had some strong track workouts. I immediately started passing guys from my bike group and was feeling good until about the 1km mark. Then my quads started twitching a bit and I knew that I could be in trouble. I tried to drink as much water as I could at each aid station, but my gait was getting roughed up by the cramps and I lost a bit of speed. I loosened up around 3km and was ecstatic. It was time to show off my running legs! I resumed reeling in the guys ahead of me… for about 500m… then my race might as well have been over. My quads locked up so badly that my “run” was now more of a shuffle. It wasn’t pretty. At one point I even tried to walk. I was almost resigned to DNF-ing… but then I shuffled a bit longer and my legs sort of loosened up. I tried to just cruise the last 5k in order to not lock up again, but I was very disappointed to see how many guys I coulda/woulda/shoulda been able to run down with even a halfway decent run split. In fact, I probably could have snuck into the top twenty and the top half of the race, which would have been very encouraging.

All of this told me that I still have enough fitness to be worth a trip to San Francisco for the San Francisco Triathlon at Treasure Island. It took me awhile to get this entry posted so I’m actually on the porch at my homestay right now. Kenny Rakestraw and his roommates were gracious enough to put up me, Andrew Lockton and Lauren Goss all at the same time. We’re gonna rock it on the island tomorrow! Whoop whoop!!

Fremont 5k & Briefcase Relay

My friend Zach convinced me to join his Fremont Briefcase Relay team this year. For those of you who aren’t from Seattle, the Fremont 5k is a popular Friday evening 5k with a beer garden. But the unique part of the event is the 5-person “briefcase relay,” where you each run 1k while wearing work attire and carrying a briefcase. The briefcase must contain five cans of food that you’ll donate to Solid Ground’s Hunger Action Center after the race.

It didn’t take much convincing to get me to jump in, especially since Zach’s team won last year.

We assembled a solid line-up two weeks ahead of time, but the competitive juices didn’t really start flowing until Zach ran into Carl Winter from Club Northwest at the Wednesday night track workout and Carl started talking smack about his team! For the next 48 hours everybody got psyched!!

The race was very close, with two lead changes and less than five seconds separating the top two teams for nearly the entire race. Zach handed me the briefcase with a decent-but-not-comfortable lead and I dug deep to bring us home.

Our official time was 15:24 and the CNW guys were second in 15:31. Both times were faster than the previous course record of 15:38, set by Zach’s team last year.

Three of us attempted to run the 5k race after the relay. We were all rather thrashed from the relay, but I still managed to find decent enough legs to run a 16:22. I passed two guys in the final 100m. I never thought of myself as much of a sprinter/kicker, so that part was pretty cool!

The winning relay team gets to take home the coveted “Slug Cup.” Click/zoom on the picture below and you can see the ceramic slugs crawling up the base of the trophy. Slug Cup plus Beer Garden equals learning how much beer a Slug Cup can hold!

If you didn’t get to join us in the beer garden or at any of Seattle’s finer bars after the race – keep your eyes peeled, as the Slug Cup will likely be making a few appearances over the course of the next year.

A terrific idea

Sat 23 April: My good friend Andrew Lockton calls me up to reminisce about one of our favorite races – the Avia Wildflower Long Course Triathlon. Over the course of the conversation, we realize that I don’t have any major plans for the upcoming weekend. Uh oh…

Sun 24 April: I email the good folks at Tri-California to verify that I can still register as an Elite this close to race day. I know that it is poor form to do so, as races like to promote the size and awesomeness of their elite field… but they were still gracious.

Mon 25 April: after a rather productive day at work, I check with my boss about taking Thursday and Friday off

Tue 26 April: I register for the race and cash in a free ticket on Southwest

Wed 27 April: I ride my TT bike for 20 minutes in order to make sure that there are no glaring mechanical issues. I’d been on this bike once since the 2009 Scott Tinley’s Adventures race. I had a long email thread with five friends about whether I’d be better off just riding my road bike at Wildflower, in order to be more comfortable. But in the end we decided that racing is racing and I should bring my fastest bike for that race. Possibly a mistake in my case.

Thu 28 April: fly to San Jose. My bicycle makes it there with me but somehow my suitcase does not. I decide that “Plan B” is to race in a Speedo. Luckily Andrew hasn’t left his house yet and is able to bring some extra clothes for me, too.

Fri 29 April: shakeout ride & run, race meeting, and a perennial favorite: the Elite Introductions. Julie Moss and Bob Babbitt ran the show this time

Sat 30 April: Race Day

As soon as I got away from the San Jose airport and into the rolling hills, I knew I’d made a great decision. The beautiful scenery always brings back a lot of memories of good times on the Tri-California circuit.

I had no idea what to expect on the swim or bike, but I hoped that my run would be solid. I’ve been doing my GeekFit workout regularly to build strength and aerobic capacity within my muscles, and I’ve done just enough swimming to maintain some feel for the water… but my volume was *way* down from previous years. I’d done eight or ten hard bike rides so far this year whereas in past years I’d do at least that many each month. Only my run volume is comparable to past years – mostly at a social pace, with a long run and a workout maybe every other week, on average.

Race mornings are pretty much automatic for me at this point – my bag is already packed, I instinctively know how much warm-up I need, I can socialize a bit while still being one of the first athletes into the water for swim warm-up.

Swim: I surprised myself by getting out quickly and sitting near the front of the race as we approached the first turn buoy. Things broke up a bit more over the first 1000m but I swam smart and tucked in behind another guy for the second 1000m rather than continuing to swim side-by-side. I was pleasantly surprised to exit the water in roughly 12th place.

Bike: I tried to build into the ride and to just enjoy myself. I stayed in aero on the flats & downhills but wasn’t shy about sitting on the tops for the many climbs. I didn’t worry about trying to keep up with riders who passed me. I just tried to enjoy the ride. Andrew caught me around mile 37 and we rode side-by-side until Nasty Grade, cracking a few jokes as we rode. We were totally out-of-contention at this point. I’d never rode side-by-side in a race for this long before, and it was a fun change of pace. (BTW- such positioning is completely legal in races that are following the USAT Elite rules.)

 

Run: I really hoped to light up the run after running 16:01 for 5k on the track back in March… but my legs and back felt *terrible* in the first few miles of the Wildflower run. The felt so bad that I thought I might DNF. But I managed to work through the tightness and crampiness and soreness and settled into a good pace, picking off a runner about every half mile for the first 4-6 miles. My quads *hated* any uphills or downhills, but I was smooth and comfortable on the flats. Sadly this course has lots of hills! I was probably running low-1:20s pace through 11 or 12 miles, but Wildflower veterans know that the last mile is steeply downhill, and my legs blew apart on that descent. I had to shuffle backwards at times just to make progress, and I got passed back by an athlete who I’d passed four miles earlier. Argh… But eventually I limped over the finish line and was done!

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my friend Jesse Thomas managed to win the race, with Clayton Fettell taking second! Jesse and I volunteer together on the PROTA board of directors and Clayton and I took part in a memorable after-party for last year’s Ishigaki World Cup.

All in all…

• It was great to be out there racing again.
• It was great to catch up with a bunch of friends.
• It was great to be one of the few Seattlites to get a sunburn on April 30th!
• It was great to find that my swim is still very respectable in spite of focusing a lot of my energy elsewhere lately.

But I did see the difference between focusing most of one’s energy on racing and focusing most of one’s energy on other things. That said, it was very validating to see that I can still have a fantastic time with a race without needing every moment of my home life to be about racing. We’ll see what the next few months and years hold for me, triathlon-wise, but I do expect to be out there at the Monroe and San Francisco ITU races with a giant smile on my face!

(Thanks to the good folks Brightroom for allowing athletes like me to use their thumbnails on our blogs, free of charge!)

Less is More

I’ve been rather quiet on the ol’ blog lately, for good reason. I have been a lot less focused on training & racing since September and this blog has always been mostly about triathlon. I managed to burn myself out again, despite what I should have learned from the last three months of 2009. So after Tuscaloosa I decided to back off, mentally and physically, until it felt fun again.

I had a few other good reasons for backing off --

1. I agreed to take on a new role at Microsoft, and I really want to see what I can accomplish there. I’ve been rather happy with my racing efforts over the years but I’ve often felt like I could do a bit better at my “day job,” so I am making that a higher priority this year.
2. A friend and I have opened a personal training business called GeekFit. There is enough going on here that I’ll do a more detailed post soon, but let’s just say that GeekFit is giving me a great outlet for my passions for exercise, nutrition, wellness and teaching. If you live or work near Microsoft and you are looking for a smart, efficient workout, let me know!!
3. General health – I’d been slowly driving myself into the ground with my overly ambitious mix of racing & work & life. I thrive on being busy … but apparently I have limits, too. A lot of the GeekFit research told me that my lifestyle isn’t all that good for my long-term health, so I am trying to “slow down” a little and to reduce stress & inflammation.

An intriguing piece of all of this is that this lower-stress, lower-volume approach might actually lead to faster racing for me in 2011 and beyond. I thought that my past approach was very well-researched and meticulous, but I was probably piling on too much work without letting my body recover enough.

After September, I adopted an approach of “Swim/bike/run when you feel like it, if friends are going, if you’re excited about it. Otherwise, sleep in, go out, rest, work, enjoy life.”

As I hit the end of the calendar year, I started thinking about what a GeekFit-inspired training program would look like: lower volume, very focused intensity, lots of recovery… I’ve been doing our GeekFit strength workout once every 10-14 days and I’ve thrown in some very infrequent but focused/hard swims, bikes and runs. I am still trying to figure out exactly what the right structure should be, but for awhile I did a ten-day cycle with the GeekFit workout on day one, a hard swim+bike+run on day six, and everything else easy/social/optional. I really enjoy hard group workouts and my friend have been on the track a lot, so for the past ~3 weeks I’ve done a (running) track workout every Wednesday while keeping spacing to any GeekFit workouts and to one hard swim (3/21) and one hard ride (3/12 in Austin!).

Recall that in 2010 I would do 1-2 hard runs, a long run, 2-3 hard rides and 2-3 hard swims EVERY WEEK, plus a lot of easy/volume.

I raced a 5K on the track today at the Club Northwest Spring Break Open. I surprised myself by running a smooth, easy 16:01 – eleven seconds faster than my previous PR! The first two miles felt super-easy as I sat behind a guy I knew… then I took off with a mile to go, splitting something like 5:04, 5:16, 5:04 for the three 1600s. (Yes, there is an extra 200 in there somewhere.) I could have run a bit faster in that second mile. I went in with no expectations … but next time I’ll be expecting 15:45!

So I’m training less, sleeping more, focusing more on work, and (running) faster than ever! As for the swim and the bike… well… maybe next weekend?

Pacific Grove 2010

About 10 days ago I raced in the Triathlon at Pacific Grove for the fifth time. I took 7th place there in 2009 and I was hoping to have another solid result in 2010 despite a somewhat stronger field.

PG is known for the kelp forest that you have to “swim” through. In fact, that swim leg is commonly referred to as the “kelp crawl.” The kelp can make or break your race, based on a mix of sighting, kelp-specific technique and pure dumb luck.

My swim fitness seemed to be very good in the pool and I hoped to be able to hang onto a fast group of swimmers. As it played out, I couldn’t do that. The kelp can be unforgiving, and I didn’t stay immediately behind the swimmer in front of me. INstead I swam side-by-side with another guy, sharing the draft, and found myself fighting a bit of extra kelp. The margin of error proved to be small with a rather talented group of swimmers, and 500m into the swim I found myself alone.

Things got a bit weird after that. I got tangled in the kelp here and there and took some “interesting” lines to try to avoid it… but I also got a bit demoralized, thinking that any chance of an in-the-money finish had just swam away from me. There is a lesson in there somewhere!

Dan MacKenzie caught up to me during the second lap, as I was swimming laterally across the course in an effort to avoid some kelp. I had made the silly decision to cut a tangent right through a giant kelp patch, then changed my mind. It was a weird swim for me.

Dan & I exited the water in 9th and 10th places but what we saw on the bike course made us believe that we were in 11th and 12th. They pay the top ten, so this is a rather critical difference! Apparently two juniors were riding with two of the elites and we didn’t get a good enough look at them to know the difference.

The bike course was four laps of an out-and-back with a *brutal* headwind on the way out, and a correspondingly rippin’ tailwind on the way back. We didn’t realize quite how strong the wind was and the first 5km were a struggle. I took less than my share of pulls as I felt super-weak whenever I was in front and figured I was doing more harm than good. We cruised during the second 5km and I finally found some legs. About 20km into the bike, we were caught by a group of three. The new bunch of five didn’t work all that well together. Two guys kept skipping pulls and one guy looked like he was about to crash at any moment – either into somebody else or all by himself! So I took a few extra pulls and felt like one of the strongest guys in the group. Coming out of the 25km turnaround, Kenny Rakestraw put in a solid effort and strung out our group. I was sitting second wheel and started feeling like the effort to just stay on his wheel was too much, so I pulled off and tried to go to the back of the group … only to find that there was no more group! The two guys who’d been skipping pulls were maybe 30m behind me and Dan was not even in sight! I sat up for a moment and then tucked in behind the other two … and was surprised to struggle to stay with them. Maybe I stayed with Kenny too long? Maybe I’m just weak? Somehow I got shed off the back and could only watch as the two pull-skippers eventually caught Rakestraw as I pedaled alone. It was amazing how quickly I went from comfortable and in-control to off-the-back. Maybe 3-5 minutes? Very discouraging.

I waited up for Dan and we rode the last lap together. The impetus was gone, however, and our lap split was 60-90 seconds slower than on all of the other laps. Ouch.

I came into this race with a lot of run fitness, too, arguably the best of my career. So I wanted to try for a new PR on the fast (and possibly short) PG run course. I’d run just over 34:00 there two years ago, so 33:30 sounded like an awesome goal. I pushed the pace right out of the gate and got a quick gap on Dan. He clawed his way back to me around 2km and took the lead for 30sec, but I thought he appeared to be struggling a bit (uphill and into the wind) so I made a bit of a countermove and got away again. I ended up holding a lead on him for the rest of the way and never came close to catching the bike threesome. I crossed the line with a 33:31 run split, which is a solid new PR for me. Can’t complain about that! But it would have been awesome to stay with that swim group or to stay with that bike group, as those three guys finished in 8th, 9th and 10th positions ahead of a fading new daddy, Kevin Everett.

So 12th place. Run PR. Moments of brilliance and moments of struggle on the bike.

After the race my host family, the Kintzes, took my friend Andrew Lockton and me to the famous Monterrey Aquarium. I’d never been in there before and was really looking forward to checking it out this year. (I thought it was kind of lame of me to have raced there four times without ever visiting the aquarium. It is practically on the course!)

This giant overhead tank was filled with sardines, mostly swimming in the same direction in a giant shimmering school.

It is hard to capture the cool lighting effects with my camera, but if I turned off the flash then you sort of get a feel for it.

     

Posing in front of the jellyfish:

Lots of jellyfish!

       

This last guy is called a Bat Ray, as in “Nana nana nana nana Nana nana nana nana  BAT RAY!!”

   

Mark Kintz took me surfing on Sunday morning before I headed off to the airport. A few harbor seals weren’t shy about swimming with us – I almost bumped into them a few times.

Next up: USAT Elite Nationals at the ITU Tuscaloosa Pan American Cup. One last chance to try and get some ITU points this year!!

Another Close Call

Here is another overdue post on the Kelowna Premium Pan American Cup two weeks ago. I’ve been on the road a lot since then, and totally slacking off in the blog department.

On August 22nd I raced in Kelowna for the 4th time. I love racing there – great hospitality, beautiful scenery, easy travel from Seattle, relaxed “vacation town” atmosphere, all the awesomeness of Canada…

After a rather rough 6-8 weeks it was great to get out and race again, and to see that my fitness is *much* better than I’d thought. I suppose that the emotional and psychological component to this sport is very significant and it can be easy to get down on yourself when you get sick or injured, or when your performance just isn’t quite what you want it to be.

I was very excited to be back in Kelowna and I was happy to have that “game time” feeling once again.

Somehow I got the very last start number for this race, 72. So I started on the far left end of the start line, as far as possible from Mr Whitfield and with a slightly longer distance to cover than any other athlete. But this outside position let me swim in clean water all the way to the first turn buoy! So I had a solid start and settled into what turned out to be the “C” pack. I didn’t get a clear view of where I stood relative to the field until the run-out, but I saw Felipe Van Wyngard’s kit at 500m and knew I was in at least an okay group. I had to work a bit at times to stay with the group, but was also able to conserve energy by staying on feet. I took a surprising crack on the nose around 1000m in. One moment I was comfortably behind this other guy and then suddenly his foot was in my face. Literally.

I exited the water in 35th position at 20:22. A lead group of 12 was at 19:00-19:13 and a “B” group of 10 was at 19:44-19:54. My group of 14 stretched from 20:12-20:25.

I rocked T1 with the second-fastest time of the day. I split 1:16 while most of the field were in the 1:20s. This left me in good position to settle into the “C” pack. I thought it was the “B” pack at the time, but c’est la vie.

We get our shoes on a bit earlier than I expected and then quickly got to work. Our first trip up Knox Mountain brought a bit of carnage. Alexandre Day (CAN) crossed wheels and almost crashed right in front of me. As I tried to get around him, he fell into me and pushed both of us off of the pavement and into the gravel shoulder. Somehow we both stayed upright and chased back on. I had to turn myself inside out on the climb in order to do so, but I was psyched to make it back into the group, and without any road rash. Then the double whammy: Jorden Bryden’s shoe became unclipped and he started swerving wildly right in front of me, almost forcing me off the pavement again and forcing me to cut speed. He managed to chase back on but I was *cooked.* I kept the group close for about a lap but couldn’t get close enough to catch. Eventually I started catching stragglers from the group and we worked together reasonably well at times.

I was glad to feel rather strong on the bike, and more importantly my biomechanics felt good. I wasn’t limited by back pain or hip tightness, so my riding power was actually a fair reflection of my strength and fitness. If only I could have avoided the crash & the mechanical issue. Grrr.

(thanks again to Chuck Perreault for taking and sharing pictures at the race)

Towards the end of the bike I failed to make my usual pre-T2 attack after being on the front with 2k to go. Four guys slipped away and I had to be content enter transition with five guys ahead of me. Getting into T2 ahead of a big group can really help your run performance.

Starting the run, the race looked something like this:

• A group of eight at 1:24:40 – 1:24:28
• A group of fifteen at 1:26:40 – 1:27:09
• My group of twelve at 1:28:41 – 1:28:52
• A group of three at 1:30:53 – 1:30:56
• A group of seven at 1:31:21 – 1:31:30
• A group of six at 1:33:03 – 1:33:11

I exited T2 in 30th position. Three of those five guys managed to stay ahead of me, one very speedy runner caught me from behind and I finished the race in 29th place.

I was pretty happy with my run. I threw up a bit during the first mile but buckled down and ran pretty hard the whole way. I felt like I had good legs most of the time and I did a good job of racing the guys around me. I ran with Matos (BRA) and Chernikoff (ARG) for about the first 5k and then made a solid move at the start of the third lap to get away. I could see Bryden (CAN) and Day (CAN) up the road and I tried hard to catch them, especially after their shenanigans on the bike! But I faded a bit towards the end of the third lap and Matos & Chernikoff caught me again with 2k to go. This was my biggest “dark moment” of the day, with the body feeling ready to give out and the confidence sagging… but I ticked in behind the South Americans and realized that I could maintain their pace. With about 1k to go we passed a hotel where people on balconies were cheering for us. I spontaneously made a rather fierce move there to drop Chernicoff, then 400m later I made another surprising move to drop Matos. I don’t know whether they were surprised, but I sure was! I was so beat up at that point that I expected my “move” to be minimal, but I had a surprising amount of snap left in the legs and I was able to shake both of them and sneak over the line in 29th place.

If I had avoided the bike carnage and stayed with that “C” pack, I would have had to run maybe 20-30 seconds faster in order to get into a sprint finish for 19th/20th and a chance at ITU points. So once again, I was right on that bubble.

Here’s hoping that I can find improved fitness and better luck at Tuscaloosa in three weeks. Woohoo, racing!!

As I wrap up this rather verbose race report, a quick shout-out to our awesome homestay host in Kelowna, Liz Borrett! Liz has hosted me and/or other athletes I know for at least four years and has always made us feel very welcome. We sort of feel like part of the family at this point. Liz is exactly the kind of lady that I’d like to be when I’m in my 70s – racing half marathons, climbing mountains and always socializing with friends and family! She learned to swim a month before last year’s Apple Triathlon in order to race the Tri-It length.

Back in Action!

(pardon the delay in getting this July summary posted… I wrote it in mid-August and now am finally posting it in early September… I’ll try to back-date it appropriately)

July has been a rough month for my triathlon aspirations. On the flip side, it’s been a very fun month socially. I attended my brother’s bachelor party at Dewey Beach and I hosted a real barn burner of a multi-person birthday party for my 30th.

I came down with a bit of a head cold three days before Coteau-du-Lac and it just didn’t get better. I made it through that race with a decent result (23rd, inside the time cut-off, no points) and then tried to rest up and heal for San Francisco. For two weeks, I would wake up every day with a mild sore throat, it would go away during the day and then come back with a vengeance at night. I loaded up on zinc and vitamin c … but no luck. The San Francisco race was a bit of a disaster for me, as the body just wasn’t there.

Luckily I’d built a two-week break into my 2010 plan, and it arrived at the perfect time. I hoped that two weeks of light-to-zero training would be just what the doctor ordered. But the doctor didn’t order up cross-country travel and college frat house style partying during that break! So I finished my “break” with the illness still lingering.

The day after my birthday party, I felt good enough to go for a 12-mile run with a few friends … and I decided to believe that I was healthy again, whether or not I really was. I went into a pretty good training week – 45 miles of running, including a track workout, 25k of swimming, a criterium and an Olympic-distance triathlon. Not exactly easing into things, are we?

My weekend race was the Federal Escape Triathlon. I managed to squeeze out a narrow victory over Charles Rivers in a hard fought race. Charles has consistently been a solid age-group performer in the Seattle area but he’s clearly upped his game this year!

I felt pretty trashed for my evening swim after the race … and equally so for my Sunday AM long run. With two weeks’ additional perspective, I should have just bailed on both of those workouts. Ouch.

In the two weeks since that race, I’ve settled back into my regular-season training cadence: track workout on Wednesday, Seward crit on Thursday, long run Sunday, various other weekend racing, weekday morning swims, weekday evening runs … the body’s response has been mixed … but that is part of coming out of a break, right?

The second half of my season will bring Kelowna, Pacific Grove and Tuscaloosa in rapid succession, plus the possibility that I get into the Pan American Championships in Puerto Vallarta. I also have two weddings and a Kona camp during that stretch, so I’d better be really careful about recovery.

Coteau-du-Lac Pan American Cup

Yesterday I almost scored ITU points. Again.

Coteau-du-Lac is a small town on the outskirts of Montreal. We swam in a canal, biked out-and-back six times on a road that ran along one side of the canal and ran out-and-back four times on a bike path that ran along the other side of the canal. It felt sort of like racing in an arena that had been designed for the express purpose of hosting ITU-style triathlons.

Our 75-man field spread almost completely across the narrow waterway. We knew the swim would be a violent melee as everyone jockeyed for position. I had a clean, fast start but was boxed in on both sides by the time we hit 150m. I couldn’t find a clean path forward and the pace seemed reasonable, so I sat in. Bad call. As things opened up a bit at 500m I found I could easily swim away from the guys next to me. I spent the last 1000m moving up and bridging gaps while feeling strong and efficient. But the damage was done. I exited the water in 42nd place, 1:47 down on Andrew McCartney and over a minute behind the lead group.

I got through T1 and se to work on the bike, passing a few athletes in transition and catching others early in the ride. We quickly had a group of about a dozen riders driving hard to catch the group ahead of us.  We frequently caught and absorbed stragglers from up ahead but made minimal headway in catching the front group. That group swelled to 25 riders at one point but they stayed organized enough to keep the gap steady. We passed them at close to the same point on every lap, roughly two minutes down. Ours was one of the better-organized ITU packs that I’ve ridden with, but it wasn’t enough.

With 1.5 laps to go, Jordan Jones told me that he was about to attempt a break and asked me to go with him. I had just finished a pull and didn’t think that I had great legs at the moment, so I declined. He attacked out of the U-turn and got a small gap … it looked like he was going to hang out 100m ahead of us and just wear himself out, but then as the group sat up a bit on the final lap Jordan got a pretty nice gap going into T2. I shoulda gone with him!

There was a crash in the front group around this time, reducing their numbers a bit and giving members of our group a better chance at cracking the top twenty and picking up ITU points.

I made a good tactical decision heading in to T2. I sat 3rd wheel as we neared the final turn while getting my feet out of my shoes. Then I attacked just before the turn and was able to cleanly lead the group into T2. Even with a bit of a stumble while racking my bike, I still exited T2 in 5th or 6th place amongst our bike pack and quickly moved up to 3rd.

I wasn’t sure how well the other guys in our bike pack would run, but my quick start on the run gave me a chance to try to go with any guy who passed me.  I did so a few times, staying with Gonzalo Tellechea of Argentina for about 400m (he worked his way up to 14th by the end of the race!) and Christopher Pons from Chile for 3km (he dropped me at 6.25km but only finished one place ahead of me). A few Canadians caught me but I sat in for a bit and then dropped them!

On the first lap I tried to count guys ahead of me and figured I was in about 25th place. I was pretty sure that Jordan was in 20th place at the time – the last guy to get points – but knew that he would likely move up a bit more.  I passed a few guys on the run but still thought I was in about 23rd place starting the final lap.  By now there were lapped athletes all over the place and it was hard to figure out where you stood.  I counted guys who I thought were on their final lap and was encouraged to come up with a total of 19 to 21 … I passed one more athlete during the final km and thought that I might have squeaked in for points … but alas, I was officially 23rd. Oh well.

Dan McKenzie passed me at the beginning of the final lap. At the time, I was running behind a Canadian guy who had caught me. I hoped the Canadian would go with Dan but he couldn’t quite muster the speed, so I went around him but the gap was already there. Dan caught a few more guys and worked his way up to 20th – the last guy to get points.

I thought that I did a good job of pushing and really “racing” on the run. A few times I would get passed and immediately tuck in behind the passing runner, often countering 500-800m later and dropping the guy after getting a bit of a rest. I was hurting a bit at times, but I tried to just think of it as one of those hard track workouts where you just try to hang onto the guy in front of you and you don’t worry about how it feels.

All in all, I felt pretty good about my efforts on the swim, bike and run. That first 500m of the swim really killed me this time around. I need to be more aware and more aggressive early in the swim. But I did a great job of moving up during the last 1000m. Then I rode pretty strong and smart … I’m not sure how much run speed I would have given up if I’d gone with Jordan … then I ran pretty well.

Swim: 20:07 (42nd), leader was Andrew McCartney at 18:20-ish
Bike: 1:00:10 (2nd pack). Front pack went 59:30. Most of the difference must have been on the first and/or last laps.
Run: 35:18 (26th) … the 21st-place split was 35:08 … so it might be interesting to look at more numbers

The best run of the day was about 32-even, from a guy in one of the later bike groups.  The race winner was in the mid- to upper-32s, IIRC.

I have a few pictures from our “homestay.” It was an interesting one. I will try to pull together a travel post if I can find the time.  Thanks for reading!  Next up: San Francisco on July 10th!

Issaquah Triathlon: Meet the Pro, and Volunteer!

This Saturday I will be racing at the Issaquah Triathlon. This will be one of my tune-up events for the next ITU Pan American Cup in Coteau-du-Lac, Quebec, on June 26th.

I raced at Issaquah back in 2004 and 2005. The 2004 race was my first overall victory in a triathlon, so that was pretty memorable. In 2005 I finished second behind Jon Salerno. I just found a picture online from the 2004 race – it looks like I blew a kiss to the photographer! Classy!

In addition to competing in this Saturday’s race, I will also be hanging out in the expo area after the race to talk triathlon with anybody who wants to stop by. So come find me! I will have one of those big collapsible canopy/tents set up with a few chairs. I’ll be happy to talk about training, nutrition, racing, equipment, travel tips, the Olympic qualification process, life on the road, incriminating stories about other pros, … whatever you have always wanted to know about triathlon! I will have some coupons and giveaways from a few of my sponsors & friends – Brooks running shoes, Nuun and Bill the Butcher. I will have some of my racing equipment on hand for you to check out, including the latest Helix wetsuit, goggles and accessories from Blue Seventy and a set of brand-new Mad Fiber wheels. I will also have some information about a few training camps that I am helping to organize – a week-long camp in Kona this August and then also some warm-weather training camps this winter.

This is the first time that I’ve put together an informal “meet the pro” event, and if people seem to get a kick out of it then I will gladly do this again at other Seattle-area races. If you have other ideas on how to make this awesome, please let me know – chris [at] christremonte [dot] com.

On a related note: I talked to the Race Director yesterday and they could still use a few more volunteers. These events take a lot of manpower in order to go smoothly, and we racers really appreciate your help. In fact, to show my appreciation I have teamed up with Bill the Butcher to offer a $25 gift certificate to each of the next four people who offer to volunteer at the race. If you are interested, please email info@issaquahtri.com and then also email me at chris [at] christremonte [dot] com so I can set aside a gift certificate for you!

I hope to see a lot of you out there this Saturday! Woohoo!!

Ixtapa

This past Saturday I races in the Ixtapa Pan American Cup. Due to dangerous surf conditions, they changed the race to a duathlon at the last minute: 3k run, 40k bike, 10k run. It can be hard to keep your “game face” on when that happens – even though you still want to go out and race your best, you trained for a swim-bike-run race and you planned/hoped to drop some of the best runners during the swim.

I was pretty confident coming into this race, even though my training since Ixtapa has been a bit spotty. (I am working on another post about that spottiness.) The start list looked a lot less intimidating than the start list for Ishigaki, or the list for any of the Continental Cups that I had done in the United States.  There were sixty guys on the list, but I felt like a top-20 finish would be very reasonable and that a top-10 could be possible if I raced well.  But the run-bike-run doesn’t let me show off all of the swim training that I’ve done this year. Oh well…

The first run went off at a surprisingly reasonable pace. I didn’t take any splits, but the whole pack stayed mostly together until we hit the turnaround. Except it wasn’t the turnaround. The 3k out-and-back hadn’t been part of the original race course, so many of us had run it during warm-ups … but most of us didn’t see the right turn that took us up a rather gnarly hill. So instead of turning back towards transition and cruising down a gentle hill, we had to shift gears and charge up a somewhat fierce hill. I lost a few meters at the real turnaround when a few guys in front of me cut the corner and I didn’t. The downhill was steep enough that it was hard to let loose … the bricks/cobbles didn’t help, either! But I slowly reeled my way back into contact with the runners ahead of me.

Entering T1, I saw that Francisco Serrano was not far ahead of me, so I knew that I had a chance of catching the big mass of bikes. I had some trouble clipping my helmet on, though, and my transition was ten seconds slower than that of the fastest two dudes. Not normal for me. But everything else about my T1 and my first 5k of the bike was pretty smooth. I chased up to a group of 5 or 6 guys and sat on a wheel while I got my shoes on. We negotiated a few tight corners and stayed within sight of the growing main field. I took a long, hard pull and got us within 100m before wiggling my elbow for another rider to pull through. Nobody did, so I kept working … but after another 10-15 seconds I started to tire so I waved my elbow again. Nothing. Crap. I tried to pull off and they all just followed me. Ouch.

Without knowing it, my pull had whittled the group down from 7 guys to 4, and the other 3 were pretty gassed… so finally Felipe van de Wyngard from Chile took another pull, even though he had just been on the front before me, and the two of us took turns until the turnaround at 10k. But the impetus had been lost and as we neared the turnaround we could see that the main field had opened a distressingly large gap. Crap.

On the way back to town, Van de Wyngard dropped out and Leif Baradoy from Canada has a mechanical mishap (broken seatpost!), leaving me and James Bales from San Antonio. James wasn’t feeling all that good on the bike, so I did most of the work while keeping him around to spell me from time to time. I was hoping that the main field would ease up a bit and give us a chance … but it was not meant to be.  We lost 6 or 7 minutes to the main field. Ouch.

By the time we started our run, the leaders were already finishing their first 2.5km loop. I was able to stay close to a few of them for the first 1.25km and I still felt pretty good until about 4km … then the wheels sort of came off the wagon for a few km. I was dumping ice water over my head every chance that I had – I forgot to mention that it was 90+ degrees with 60-70% humidity! The run was a battle of attrition! But sadly I wasn’t invited to the battle. I was able to pass a few guys who were a lap up on me, and I caught two struggling runners from the main bike group … but finished the race in 32nd place, 13.5 minutes behind Sean Jefferson.

If I had ran my same not-all-that-great run split from the main pack, I would have been 22nd. If the competition of being in the main group had pushed me to a better performance then I could have broken the top twenty. You’ve gotta keep looking for that silver lining, right?

Looking back, it was surprising and encouraging to see that I may have been the strongest man in that bike group. Felipe was likely stronger and just gave up a bit once the main group was out of reach … but I am accustomed to being on of the weaker cyclists on the circuit and I now know that this isn’t necessarily the case. I also learned that you can’t count on your group to finish a chase for you. When you get that close, you’ve gotta just have that killer instinct and close it yourself if need be. A bit of hesitation likely cost me.

I have a bit more to say about the non-racing parts of the trip, but this post is already rather long so I will save that for another day.

So Close?

Yesterday I raced in the Ishigaki World Cup. The ITU has posted a short article and video here.

My big goal for this race was to finish within the 5% time cut-off and to therefore earn ITU points. My stretch goal was to also finish in the top twenty places and to therefore earn partial travel reimbursement from USA Triathlon. An even bigger stretch goal was to finish in the top ten, as this would get me a paycheck and would also get me closer to qualifying for USAT funding. A smaller goal was to make it out of the water with any reasonable swim group and to therefore not ride alone.

I didn’t really accomplish any of these, other than my swim being almost decent.

I exited the water in 26th place of 38 guys, at 17:52. I was 13 seconds behind a six-man chase pack and 20-30 seconds ahead of what would become the next chase pack. I had a quick T1 but couldn’t chase down the group ahead of me. The bike course included a U-turn at 1k so I could see the next chase group forming behind me. So I made a smart decision to ease off just a bit, get my shoes on and grab a drink before the pack caught me. The alternative would have been to continue working hard in order to get caught a bit later, and to be more tired.

The chase group was really cooking. Michael Poole (NZL) was driving the pace. I had to work a bit just to catch onto the tail of the line. The first few corners were a bit discouraging – a few of the guys in the middle of the line were slowing down and the six-man group was having a small accordion effect. This was causing me to have to sprint out of each corner in order to keep up, and there were 10 corners on each of the 7 laps. Early in the second lap I hit a patch of sand while taking one of these corners and I lost my nerve just a little and grabbed a little too much brake … and I was gone. I couldn’t close that gap. Dropped. Ouch.

The rest of the bike leg was a fight just to not get lapped. I rode one lap with Tim George (AUS) but I was just too cooked to keep up … I rode the rest solo. The main group did ease off a bit on the last three laps and I found that my gap was staying about the same, but I was already a few minutes behind by then. Adding another level to my frustration, the chase group that dropped me did eventually catch back onto the main field at the beginning of the last lap! If I had stayed with that chase group, then I should have been able to stay within the time cut-off. 29 guys finished the bike in that group. Two DNF’ed and 26 of the other 27 stayed within the time cut-off. Ouch.

My run was painful. I didn’t have much to run for, other than pride, and my pride was pretty much shattered at this point! But luckily the large and enthusiastic crowd gave me a lot of support, even as I limped to a 38-minute 10k.

If I had stayed with that group then I should have scored points. I was right there … although at the time, I didn’t think my group would catch the main field. I was wrong. I fought hard to stay on but could I have fought harder? Do I just need to train harder/more/smarter? Being stronger on the bike never hurts your chances, right? But a bit more swim strength or even navigation skills could have gotten me into the next chase pack, which caught the main field much sooner.

Ishigaki World Cup!

Check out the start list for the Ishigaki World Cup, on April 25th. 

In three weeks I will be racing in my first ITU World Cup.  I was hoping to get into one before the end of this year but I had been targeting Huatulco in November.  Then the ITU moved Huatulco to the same weekend as my brother’s wedding!  So I am glad that I was able to get into Ishigaki instead.

The ITU will be posting live text updates to this page their website and to their Twitter account. They will also post a race recap video a few days afterwards.

The top 50 finishers can get ITU points as long as they are each within 5% of the winner’s time. How many finishers end up within the cut-off is heavily influenced by whether there is a breakaway, how big that breakaway is and how much of a time gap they can get. I can’t chase a break alone, so my likelihood of getting points will depend a bit on the efforts of other racers. Last year a strong break made it so that 23 guys got points, all running 33:15 or better.  In 2008 the break was smaller and 35 of 38 finishers were within the time cutoff.  In 2007 nearly 50 guys scored points, while there were 16 DNFs.  2006 was another tougher year, with 23 of 36 finishers scoring points.

I’ve heard that World Cup races are “ridiculously hard” and “the most pain you’ll ever feel for two hours,” but it should be a fantastic experience. There is minimal room for error, especially in that critical first half-hour of the race where you need to make a strong bike group. A mistake in the swim, in T1, or early in the bike can torpedo your whole race.

This will be a bit sooner than I was planning to start my ITU season, but my fitness is feeling quite good across the three sports. My splits in the pool have been as good or better than I’ve seen since college. My bike numbers have been good in shorter stuff and questionable in longer TTs, but my on-the-bike performance in pack situations has been better than ever. This bodes well for ITU racing. My run is a bit of a question mark. I’ve done 4 track workouts so far, with solid if unspectacular numbers … but most of those workouts have been after hard swims, so I know that I have another gear in me.

I did a bit of race simulation on Saturday. It was so hard that I almost threw up a few times, but it was great to go through the motions and get mentally dialed in.  The simulation:

• Set your running shoes out on the side of the road as if it were T2.
• Ride about two miles away.
• Lean your bike against a street sign. Make sure that your shoes are clipped to the pedals and your helmet is situated for a fast T1.
• Walk 100m away … get ready!
• Drop to the ground and do ten push-ups. If the lake weren’t 48 degrees this would have been a swim & run-out.
• Immediately jump up and sprint down the road to your bike in bare feet.
• Put on your helmet.
• Grab the bike and run about 50 yards, flat out.
• Do your best flying mount.
• Ride at 350-400W for at least a minute before putting your shoes on.
• Once your shoes are on, continue at 300W+ for four more minutes.
• Get your feet out of your shoes, then do a nice cyclocross-style dismount when you get close to your shoes.
• Run the bike the last 20 yards and lean it up against … whatever …
• Put on your shoes while taking off your helmet.
• Take off at near-sprint pace for 400m, then settle into 10k pace or a bit faster for an additional 600m.
• Cool down completely.
• Repeat as desired!

Seattle RainMan Indoor Triathlon

On Sunday 21 March I volunteered at and raced in the Seattle RainMan Indoor Triathlon.  Highlights of the day included:

• Learning exactly how an Indoor Triathlon is organized – I’ve done over a hundred outdoor races but this was my first indoor race
• Running into Ray Maker somewhat unexpectedly, as we were 2500 miles away from his home
• Leading the crowd in a rousing rendition of Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer as the final wave hit the halfway point in their bike leg
• Giving the pre-race briefing to most of the waves of athletes in the race
• Kicking off my own tri season with a good hard effort

Ray’s post does a great job of describing how the race was organized, so I won’t repeat much of that content here.

I did most of my volunteer work in the bike area. We had 24 indoor trainers set up to handle two heats of 12 simultaneously. The timing of the heats was such that as a participant, your trainer would be in use by another participant when you started your swim. It was up to the volunteers to move the bikes and transition gear around so that everything would be ready for swimmers exiting the water.  

The setup and logistics for an indoor race seemed a bit more challenging than for outdoor races. There is less of a course to set up and marshal, but there is more ongoing work that continues throughout the race. For example, at an outdoor race you would do the pre-race briefing once whereas with the indoor race we briefed each of the 25 waves individually.  Also, each bike had to be moved into and out of the trainer area by volunteers.  Lots of work, but it made for a new/unique experience for many racers and also for an otherwise impossible opportunity to race a triathlon in Seattle in March.

As for my own race … we decided around noon that there would be enough space and enough volunteer bandwidth to let me jump in and race. I had been on my feet since 6:30 and I’d raced my bike at Tour de Dung the day before … but I was eager to see what kind of splits I could throw down.

Swim: you swam as far as you could in 15 minutes, then your time was converted to a pace and then into a virtual time for a half-Olympic race. (Other indoor triathlons have been scored on arbitrary points, but I made up this approach and the TriFreak folks thought it sounded good, so they used it. Go me!)

I picked my head up to see the clock after 700 yards and saw that I was just past the halfway point – 7:33. You didn’t get credit for uncompleted 50s, and I didn’t feel that I was likely to negative-split the swim that day, so I eased off just a little and swam 650 yards in the second half. I finished with about 8 or 9 seconds to spare.

Bike: after walking to my bike and jumping on, I tried to settle in around my estimated threshold wattage … but I had a hard time maintaining the number that I wanted to see. I knew how far Ray had gone so I tried to stay on pace to beat his total, but I came up short by maybe a third of a mile.

Run: I had a rather quick T2 and walked outside to start the loop around Green Lake. We figured out that the loop was 2.95 miles including the sidewalk between the pool and the lake loop. I tried to push it as hard as I could the whole way.  I didn’t feel great, but I didn’t feel terrible either.  I split a 17:04, including T2 … so maybe 16:45 or 16:50-ish for the 2.95 miles.  Not quite where I wanted to be, but as my first race-pace brick of the year … and on tired legs … I’ll take it.

Overall: I had the top swim and run splits and the second best bike split, for an overall “virtual time” of 59:28 for the half-Olympic course. Ray was next at 1:02:19 and Stephanie Ewert was third at 1:08:05.

break it down: Mazatlan

I didn’t race in Mexico ten days ago. But lots of other guys did. My goal this year is to get ITU points at multiple races and to get a World Cup start next year, so I am rather interested in seeing how the races are going and what I can learn from them.

I raced at the Pan Am Champs in Mazatlan in 2008. The ocean was really rough and the run was very hot. Ben Collins and Matt Chrabot slipped away on the swim and exited 15-20 seconds ahead of the main group.  The main group was rather strung out at the swim exit: it was a continuous flow of dudes for maybe 30-45 seconds. This led to a critical first lap on the bike, as everybody was racing to see what group they could get into.  I eventually ended up in a pack of about five guys and this was the first pack that didn’t make it into the main field. We were caught by one group from behind, swelling our group to 10-ish.  Up ahead, Matt & Ben extended their lead to 2-3 minutes over a very large group of guys who didn’t want to work together. Great runners like Jarrod Shoemaker wanted to catch the break but didn’t want to overwork themselves in the process.  Guys who didn’t think they could outrun Jarrod, like my friend Dave Messenheimer, tried repeatedly to bridge the gap but didn’t want to bring a better runner with them.  So the main pack muddled along – not fast enough to catch Ben & Matt but just quick enough every now and then to stay away from my group.  On the run, Matt ran a solid enough time to win the race. Jarrod & Francisco Serrano and a few others raced each other for second. Ben struggled in the heat and DNF’ed.

So anyways, on to 2010.  What can we figure out from the results?  I may have to ask around a bit to learn “what really happened,” as the numbers rarely tell the whole story.

The Full Results are on the ITU website, so I won’t copy them all here … but I will pull out some pieces to analyze.

Francisco Serrano won the race in 1:53:35. He only had the third fastest run of the day, 40 seconds behind Jarrod. So he must have been in a breakaway.

Cam Dye took second in 1:53:46. His run was 74 seconds slower than Francisco’s, so he must have been in a faster break … and Francisco only beat him by 11 seconds, so the pass was probably around a mile to go … maybe even later.

Jarrod was third in 1:54:12, with the fastest run of the day. So he outran the main bike pack … and also passed all of the other guys who rode with Cam and/or Francisco.  Let’s see how those packs played out…

Looking at the swim, there was a six-mean lead group between 18:46-18:51: Eder Mejia (MEX), Christian Ramos (MEX), Cam Dye (USA), Tsukasa Hirano (JPN), Kyle Leto (USA) and Leonardo Saucedo (MEX). Kudos to the Mexican team for putting three men in the break!  We typically think of that country having a lot of strong runners but few great swimmers … that seems to be changing.

It is sort of hard to see how big the next pack was. There were six guys between 19:20-19:27 (including Jarrod and John Dahlz), then six more at 19:32 (including Serrano and Americans Matt Wisthoff and Barrett Brandon) … then a 19:34, 19:36, 19:45, 19:51 … those guys trailing off the back *could* make the bike group if they really rail the first few miles.  But unfortunately for them, the guys ahead of them will also be sprinting so they’ll have their work cut out for them.

After those two groups, I see another cluster of six with times from 20:06-20:13. This group includes Victor Plata and Andrew Starykowicz, two guys who I have raced many times. Andrew is very strong on the bike, so I would expect him to be able to catch the “B” pack.  Victor, on the other hand, is nearing the end of his pro racing career and has been working tons of hours at his law job. But he’s been known to get in shape very quickly once he starts his serious training.

Behind the Starky/Plata pack, I see four guys between 21:48-21:56. They The spacing for the next fourteen guys is hard to figure out, stretching from 21:19 to 22:24 with gaps as large as 14 seconds. Finally I see am American I know (Cyrus) at 23:24 and an Israeli who I don’t know at 25:59. Both of these guys are in serious trouble at this point, since they’ll have nobody to work with on the bike and the Mazatlan course is eight 5k loops. Each loop only takes 7 or 8 minutes, so if you exit the water alone and already a few minutes behind, you will almost certainly get lapped out.  This was Cyrus’s first ITU race, and he took the experience in stride.  He’ll be back!

On to the bike leg … again, only looking at the times, so it will be hard to say when the groups formed, whether anybody bridged or got dropped … or whether a heroic attack/break lasted for 3 or 4 laps and then got caught … I can’t say who chased or didn’t chase a break … or whether the pack sort of let a weaker runner slip away … but with those caveats, let’s take a peek.

The strongest bike time of the day was Cam Dye at 1:00:31. Since he was also in the swim break, he must have been solo on the bike.  Wow.  Francisco had the next best split at 1:01:10. So he might have bridged up to some other riders. After that I start seeing a cluster of times.

To really get a feel for the bike leg from just times, you want to look at Swim+T1+Bike times. 

First Dude: Cam Dye, 1:20:04

Second Group: Serrano, Saucedo, Leto, 1:21:22 (+1:18)

Third Group: Ten guys including Jarrod and Wisthoff, 1:22:47 (+2:43)

Fourth Group: The Starky Express, towing six other guys including Barrett Brandon, 1:23:07 (+3:03)

Fifth Group: twelve or thirteen guys including Americans Jordan Jones, Justin Park and Matt Balzer, 1:23:48 (+3:44)

Sixth Group: six guys including Americans Jimmy Archer and Henry Hagenbuch, 1:26:15, (+6:11)

Stragglers: four more guys came in solo, at 1:26:34, 1:30:39, 1:31:46 and 1:31:51. Only one completed the run.

Lapped out: five guys … five more finished the bike but not the run, including the three mentioned above

Finally, let’s see what happened on the run.

Cam Dye ran strong out of his one-man break. His 32:53 was the 11th fastest run split, within 77 seconds of every runner except for Jarrod Shoemaker.  But he also lost 15 seconds in transition to Francisco Serrano.  Francisco outran Cam by 74 seconds … just enough to take the race win.  Cam held on for second.

Jarrod ran up into third place from that large third bike group.  His 30:53 was the best run split in the race by a rather large margin.

The other two guys from the second bike group – Leto and Saucedo – faded to 12th and 15th with splits of 34:41 and 35:20, a bit slower than the median.

Others from Jarrod’s group who ran well included Eder Mejia (32:03 to finish 4th), Crisanto Grajales (32:37 to finish 6th), and Arturo Garza (32:58 to finish 7th). 

Danilo Pimental and Matt Long ran up into the top ten from the fourth bike group.  Eligio Cervants ran up from the fifth group into 9th place with a 31:59.

Henry Hagenbuch (31:36) and Sean Jefferson (31:46) ran impressive splits from the sixth bike group but their six-minute gap to Cam and 2.5-minute gap to the fifth pack made it tough to move up all that much.  They finished 23rd and 24th, just outside of the top-20 cutoff to get ITU points.

Next up: I still owe you a post about the RainMan race, an update on recent training, and maybe a similar “break it down” post about last weekend’s Mooloolaba World Cup.