Pre-race
Arrived very early so I wasn't rushed and to avoid parking issues. I made sure to have a couple bottles of water & sports drink to carry to the beach for the 2 hour wait for my wave's start and stretched out my pre-race nutrition accordingly. I waited until about 40 minutes before my start to get on the wetsuit and get it so I wasn't standing around sweating in it. The water was 61F and after the initial shock it actually felt almost perfect with the warm and humid air.
SWIM
I lined up at the front anticipating a sub 30 swim. Minimal contact and slotted right between 2 guys and swam strong but stay well under control right near threshold and quickly eased back to a tempo pace. Neither pulled in front and I didn't want to drop back and have the pace slow down, so we swam together. I lost them just after the 1st turn and in some lap traffic. I did possibly my best job of sighting and swimming straight ever in a OWS. It paid off with a 70.3 distance swim PR by almost 1 minute. Looking at the Pro times, it was a little fast, but not much, a pretty honest swim course. 2 take-aways for me... and these are pretty obvious, but worth repeating as they have a greater impact than swim fitness itself.
I have fast swims when I:
1) Swim straight! I did a much better job of sighting and sighted much more frequently.
2) Swim along side someone else
3) Get into a rhythm really soon, relax, stretch out my stroke and can pay attention to my catch and timing.
Last note on the swim. The last 100 meters was in shallow water. I opted to dolphin dive and swim until it was below my waist. That seems to be much faster than those walking around me. I hit hte beach and saw 1:30 on the clock so i know I came in under 28! Swim PR...nice!
T1
I was careful not to run too hard in the sand off the beach. Its' easy to be pushing well over threshold at that point. Long run through transition. AWA rack was near the exit so a short run with the bike. No shoes on the bike for this race, so I elected to put my shoes on, then run the 30 yards out from there. I haven't run in my cycling shoes in almost 10 years. I find it funny because I fumble more getting clipped on on a flying mount, that I do sliding my feet into shoes held with rubber bands.... oh well. Just another reason I'd like to see an Open Elite wave that goes off maybe 10 minutes after the female pros with the same drafting and other rules as the Pros. Maybe move the Male pro start forward 10 minutes. But I know that presents some challenges.
BIKE
My legs felt great. I settled in around 80-85%, surging a little as needed to get through traffic. I focused on holding a good aero position as best I could, but I had to stay up a little more than I like so I could see down the road further. As anticipated, the roads were a little rough in sections, but excellent in others. A real mixed bag. I dropped my tire pressures just a little and of course run Latex Tubes. I ran around 98 psi front on narrow rim older Zipp 404's and 95psi rear on a wide rim Firecrest 808. I'm running around 167lbs right now (It shows on my run split compared to Kansas last year). My goal in this race was to really lay down a solid bike split, see if my position improvements this winter paid off, push my limits, but still ride within my fitness. Just feel it out. There's a lot of turns on this course. OF course every one has me passing someone at a 10mph+ closing rate. I called out my presence deliberately. I probably sounded like a jerk a little, but if it keep everyone safe and allows me to race, then it's ok in my mind. though I'm not sure most triathlete know what "inside" or "outside" means. It refers to the position in a corner. If I yell "inside", and it's a let turn, I'm passing you on the left and taking a tight line. If it's a right hander, I'm taking a wide line and praying the lapped rider holds their line. I overcooked a few turns but recovered ok.
Then IT happened. The one thing that always goes wrong in a race. Around mile 15 on a left hand turn, I rubbed my elbow pad switching from aero to sitting up for some lap traffic and my right pad came unstuck off the velco. I almost was able to grab it as it was in my lap for a split second, but missed it. For a few seconds I debated turning around. But it would have been unsafe to do at that point on the course. I elected to solider on. I has a nice bruise to show for it. I spend the next 90 minutes or so, managing weighting my right arm over bumps. Hard ot say what it cost me. I couldn't stay as aero, was a distraction and I wasted energy for the run and a modified pedaling mechanics holding myself off the bars. If it was an IM...I would have stopped and used bar tape to fasten the neoprene bag the hold my flat kit in my draft box as a makeshift arm pad. But it was a good mental test. I ended up with the 3rd fastest amateur bike split. Corrected distance average speed was 25.7mph. That beats my previous corrected best of 25.5 at Steelhead.
I consumed about 60oz of gatoraide, 3 gels and a 1/2 bottle of water on the course. Right at 400 calories per hour. As usual, I waited about 15 minutes until I had relaxed, settled in and HR dropped a little to drink anything.
T2
Nailed my flying dismount, one of my better ones in terms of speed and timing. Took a moment to put on socks and off I went. Pretty uneventful. I fumbled putting on my visor and GPS watch while running as usual, but NBD.
RUN
I had to really focus on slowing down. I kept seeing 5:30-5:50 on my GPS and it felt easy. But at the same time I had some cramping in my quads and hamstrings. I felt like somewhere around 1:24-1:28 was all I had in my today. I settled in to around 6:30-6:45 and just listened my legs. I thought this might be a perfect time to see if I could roll a negative split. Really ease off the start of the run and roll into it. The 2 hills in the first mile made that a smart play. I figured I had a solid swim and bike so I could play it safe. The fast guys of the age group, Dan Stubleski hadn't passed me yet, as he started 3 minutes behind. I was getting worried maybe he had crashed or had a mechanical. It turns out he swam a couple minute slower and only biked a couple minutes faster so we were almost even starting the run. That meant it only took him 5 miles to catch me. I wasn't sure where I was at otherwise. But I could see Scott Bowe at the turn around about 7 minutes up. He started 3 minutes ahead, so he had a 4 minute lead. I stayed relaxed, high fived and cheered some of the pros I knew that were finishing, took in as much water and gatoride as I could and dumped Ice down my trisuit and used the downhills to pick up the pace a little. I ate 2 gels, I grabbed from a table on course. One around mile 6 and another at mile 10. It felt a nice bump in energy each time. I ended up running a conservative 6:50 on 1st lap and 6:35 pace the 2nd lap.
At the turn around I took a split on my watch and I had taken 2 minutes off to Bowe so with a surge I might have a chance of bridging the gap, especially with a couple downhills near the finish. The course was getting pretty congested and my patience to passing was wearing thin with folks running side by side chatting. I counted down the last miles, played those games where you tell yourself... OK, 20 minutes left, 15, 10, 5, then the final 1/4 mile kick.
The effort paid off with a 3rd place finish, 22nd overall, 6th Amateur. It was a close fight after 2nd. Only 1 minute up was the 3rd amateur, 1 minute slower and I'm 5th in my age group. On to my home course for Steelhead in 3 weeks!!!
A shout out to TBC's own Jordan Bailey!!! 3rd amateur overall! Awesome race! That means, if he's so inclined, he could get his Elite/Pro status.
Other notes:
My size small sleeved custom printed trisuit, fit & functioned as well as it looked. Not arm flexibility issues, I think my average speeds at the wattage I put on showed it's fast, and it felt very cool. It seemed mostly dry feeling much of the time. The sun coverage was great. You can clearly see the tan lines, despite using sun screen. The sleeves extended most of the way to my elbows.
I also looked at some bike splits. I matched the 2nd fastest split of Dan Stubleski on the 1st segment. I'll have to see where my NP was at that point compared to the rest. That might be my power target in 3 weeks. See if I can hold that.
Can't wait. A well executed race overall always motivates you to push your training a little harder.
Final results:
SWIM DETAILS | Division Rank: 10
| SPLIT NAME | DISTANCE | SPLIT TIME | RACE TIME | PACE | DIVISION RANK | GENDER RANK | OVERALL RANK |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 1.2 mi | 27:39 | 27:39 | 1:25/100m | 10 | 57 | 76 |
BIKE DETAILS | Division Rank: 3
| SPLIT NAME | DISTANCE | SPLIT TIME | RACE TIME | PACE | DIVISION RANK | GENDER RANK | OVERALL RANK |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 mi | 16 mi | 37:16 | 1:07:53 | 25.76 mi/h | |||
| 34 mi | 18 mi | 42:17 | 1:50:10 | 25.54 mi/h | |||
| 42 mi | 8 mi | 18:17 | 2:08:27 | 26.25 mi/h | |||
| 56 mi | 14 mi | 35:24 | 2:43:51 | 23.73 mi/h | |||
| Total | 56 mi | 2:13:14 | 2:43:51 | 25.22 mi/h | 3 | 15 | 15 |
RUN DETAILS | Division Rank: 3
| SPLIT NAME | DISTANCE | SPLIT TIME | RACE TIME | PACE | DIVISION RANK | GENDER RANK | OVERALL RANK |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.4 mi | 3.4 mi | 23:15 | 3:08:39 | 6:50/mi | |||
| 6.6 mi | 3.2 mi | 21:58 | 3:30:37 | 6:51/mi | |||
| 9.8 mi | 3.2 mi | 21:17 | 3:51:54 | 6:39/mi | |||
| 13.1 mi | 3.3 mi | 21:34 | 4:13:28 | 6:32/mi | |||
| Total | 13.1 mi | 1:28:04 | 4:13:28 | 6:43/mi | 3 | 21 | 22 |
Transition Details
| T1: Swim-to-bike | 2:58 |
| T2: Bike-to-run | 1:33 |
