Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

Tag: racereports Page 7 of 13

3M Half Marathon – hold onto your hat! #upwindtodowntown

By

On January 23, 2017

In Uncategorized

Right after running 3M in 2016, I signed up again.  It’s seriously one of the best chances I’ll ever get for a PR – it’s in January, so it’s 99% likely to be gorgeous weather for running, and it’s net downhill which makes it fast (they call it #downhilltodowntown).  Every year I sign up, I’m like “this is when I’m going to take a crack at that 2:07:xx”.

Pre-race, the ever important porta potty stop and huddling for warmth with a few thousand of your closest runner friends.

Then, every year, I realize that January is not really my month.  I’m either deeeeep into marathon training and fatigued or this year, very undertrained and also deeeeeep into fatigue having finished a 3 week block of the highest volume I’ve ever done.  I’ll probably early sign up for it again, and say the same thing.  I actually think next fall/winter I might just concentrate on halfs and see if I can get faster but something will inevitably come up.  But it’s still a fun race that everyone does so I don’t mind showing up and seeing what happens so much.

Let’s talk about how untrained I am to run a solid half marathon.  If this was a cycling race, I’d be golden.  Swimming?  Probably a little better off.  However, in the last 3 months since my 70.3 I have run a 10 miler and two 11 milers, but ZERO of the miles in any run have been speedwork, and my total mileage is about 100.  Yeah.  My normal weekly mileage this time of year is more than my currently monthly mileage.  Yeah, I’m riding all the bikes, but still.

The point of this big long depreciating diatribe?  I lined up with only two goals yesterday morning: 1) work hard but still be able to get up and train today and 2) if at all possible, try not to get a personal worst at this race, which meant I needed to beat 2:27. Any of the outdoor runs I’ve done lately have been paced slower than that so that was actually a consideration.

It was a SUPER pretty day for running… except for the 25+ mph wind gusts… #upwindtodowntown

We started with the 2:15 pacer since that seemed like a reasonably hard goal right now, and ran with friends until they decided to take off and go a little faster.  I took in a caff gel right away over the first two miles, and stopped at an aid station to wash it down.  It was so windy, my hat blew off and I had to chase it, and then I had lost them.  I figured that was the last I would see of anyone and it wasn’t even mile 3.

Let’s also talk about how Zliten and I respond to rest.  He takes months off running, he runs amazingly (even better than during training).  He is the epitome of a low volume runner.  I take more than a week off running regularly and my legs forget how to run.  It will be MONTHS until I feel like I’m a competent runner since I took a fall break.

I ran harder trying to catch up, and finally I saw Zliten running alone.  He was wearing a red shirt, which was the same color as this year’s race shirt which EVERYONE was wearing, so it was hard to pick him out.  I was looking for Matt, the shirtless guy in the kilt, who was slightly more unique.  I asked him what happened and he said he wanted to race with me instead.  Awwww.  I’m not sure if he was fatigued or just being nice, but I decided I would take it!

We clipped along at 10:30-ish pace – he stopped to use the porta potty and I kept running but slower, so he could catch up (and he did within half a mile).  I found that the 10:30-ish pace was just a hare past comfortable, so I kept letting Zliten get a little bit ahead and then put on the gas to catch up.  Around mile 6 that was getting tougher so another gel went down the hatch.

Spoiler.  We all finished.

By mile 7, we took a turn (more) downhill and that gel started doing it’s thing and I started feeling good, so we sped up.  We passed the 2:15 pacer and started talking finish times and we figured we’d put as much time as we could into the 2:10 pacer and see how close we could get to catching them.  Actually doing it was kind of an impossibility without me running my 5k pace for 5 miles at the end of a half marathon (which would take all the pixie dust and magic in the world), but I said I’d be ok holding the sub-10 pace we were but it was business time, no talking.

I shoved my headphones in and we went fishing.  I actually felt really good until about mile 10, which is where the hills start going the other way.  Zliten loves the hills and runs faster on them, so I spent that period fishing for him, I’d let him get a little ahead on the way up and catch him on the flat.  At that time, I started moving from actual words to grunts, except I told him I hated his face and legs for going too fast, so I’m pretty sure I was the best running companion ever.

However, I stuck with it.  Every time he ran ahead, I asked myself if I had that gear and was I willing to shift into it, and the answer was always yes.  This is a good thing.  I’m not exactly sure how much slower I would have finished if Zliten wasn’t towing me, but I am certain it wouldn’t have been faster.

Rainbow legs followed Zliten’s stupid (lovely) face and legs.  Thanks Zliten for your face and legs!

We found the last uphill right to the finish and crossed the line together at 2:13:40 (just slightly above top half in my age group).  It’s my 5th best half (out of the 14 I’ve ran) and I expected to be much slower, so I’ll take it!  Hooray for aerobic capacity crossing over between sports, because I *know* this is not because of my run training.  The best feeling is that even though this is my fastest and longest run in months, I feel like I had more distance in me (though more speed? not really).  One of these days I actually will spend a cycle trying to crack open that PR, but for now, I’ll get on with rest week and keep building that cycling for Ironman Texas.

The rest of the day was for mexican food, some beers, using the puffy massage legs, napping, and watching movies.  I’m loving the post-race nap tradition and I feel pretty decent today to get on with my training, so I can check off both my goals for this race.  Win!

Save

Lifetime Indoor Tri – Brush that rust of your shoulder

By

On January 11, 2017

In Uncategorized

We found out a buddy of ours was doing his first triathlon at the Lifetime Indoor Tri, so we reswizzled our plans and decided to end our first week back with a good solid effort.

jan10-1

Team kit = reimbursement for the race. 🙂

There was zero taper for this, in fact, I was pretty darn wiped from over 10 hours before I even woke up Sunday morning.  I wasn’t going into this as a “this is a test of my athlete worth” mindset at all.  This was a hard effort to kick off IM training and to support a friend, that’s it that’s all.

It’s a good thing because I bungled a lot of the setup and things and went into both the swim and the bike frazzled.  But overall, I’m pretty happy with the day.

It started with sleeping in a *little* longer than I had hoped (I was up really late on Friday and my sleep schedule was a little wonkified).  We got there with enough time but I farted around too much in the locker room, I guess, because I got to the pool and got rushed to a lane and was still putting in my earplugs with 20 seconds to go.

I didn’t get my garmin started properly, and I was stuck with whatever music popped on my swimp3 player (and it was EVERY SLOW SONG from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack).  Zliten and I were sharing a lane and he started pulling away from me, but I know I go through 3 stages on a hard swim:

  • 0-2 mins – let’s do this
  • 2-5 mins, I suck at swimming and I want to throw my goggles
  • 5+ minutes – ok, hit my stride and I can do this

This was no exception, and at 5 minutes my form came back and I felt less like a flailing fish, and I got half a lap ahead by the end.  Sadly, I ended up at 19 laps, which if it was a 25m pool, is pretty darn slow for me, especially at a *effort* – for example, yesterday, I swam 1:50/100m over 30 mins and I wasn’t close to redlining like I was Sunday.  Ah well, we’ll never know if it was me or the pool. 🙂

Swim: 10/32 – 40 points

This time, I remembered how hard it was to put on a sports bra while wet, so I wore it under my swim suit.  That was a good decision.  I actually got out before Zliten but I waited for him and we walked up together and they were like OK, get your bikes set up go go go go and I did.

I got going and tried to start up my phone with my kick ass turkey trot playlist… and since I haven’t used it since then, for the life of me, I couldn’t find the music app.  I asked Zliten but he didn’t remember either.  I spent the first 5 minutes cycling looking for my playlist and cursing (sorry random guy next to me), until I finally gave up and listened to Spotify.  I had to keep hunting and pecking for songs on my Most Played playlist.  I listened to Rise twice, Dirt off your Shoulder three times, Bad Habit twice… but it worked better than nothing.

As a product of being a little angry and also all the bike training lately, I was able to push a decent amount of watts and ended the 30 minutes with 10.4 miles.  I figured there was NO WAY I beat Zliten but he only got 9.1.  I actually went back and looked at 2015’s results and I would have been 1st place female overall by far with that bike so I’m pretty stoked.  Oddly enough, if you focus on something, you get decent at it.  Who knew?

Bike: 1/32 – 51 points

We had a little break getting set up on the treadmills and Zliten helped me find my playlist.  Whew.  I was honestly looking forward to this part the least.  If I’ve neglected something the most, it’s been run speed.  My plan was to start at 6.0 and go from there.  I started… and 6.0 was actually tough.  Ugh.  And then my playlist failed after one song.  Let this be a reminder to check your equipment before every race!

I’m might have had a little boost if I wouldn’t have had to expend the mental energy dealing with my music, but let’s face facts.  Last week, I’ve did a 11 mile run and an almost 4 hour TT bike ride, my longest swim in a while, plus a bunch of other stuff.  My run game is not especially strong right now.  I hung on and ended with 2.08 miles in 20 minutes (9:36 pace), and my heart rate was at 175-180 which is my redline heart rate, so I did all I could.

Run: 9/32 – 32 points

It was a solid hour of sprint triathloning, and great way to kick off tri training, and the start of a great day.  I came home, and ate all the things, and actually even passed the heck out for an hour after stretching and rolling.  Appropriately enough, I dreamed about biking.

And… after waiting for 3 days for results – I got 3rd overall!  I’m pretty excited about that, and it proves that the bike matters the most. 🙂

Save

Hurling turkeys, bike adventures, and all the holiday things.

By

On November 29, 2016

In Uncategorized

Right now, I’m in the proverbial second half of the 70.3 run, or the last 10k of the marathon – survival mode.  I decided to pool my vacation days for almost a month off in December, which will be AWESOME once it gets here, but very stressful getting everything ready to go enjoy that.  Light.  Tunnel.  Getting there.  But, since I have a spare moment, I wanted to write about a few things I’ve been up to.

nov29-3

Hurling turkeys isn’t as bad as it seems…

Since we weren’t running a marathon like normal, we signed up to do the Thundercloud Turkey Trot downtown Austin.  25k people registered = 25k people in traffic going to exactly one spot, so we finally made good about our idea to cycle down and back.  It took approximately 75 minutes to do that and I’m pretty sure it would have taken longer to drive, sit in traffic, park, and do the reverse once the race was over.  And… bikes!!!

The ride was a little chilly on the way down, but with gloves, three layers on top, and leg warmers on the bottom, I survived, which is good recon for longer rides in the winter.  This is new territory, folks!  It was a nice, chill, mostly-downhill 8-ish miles there as a warmup, we got the benefit of bike valet which meant a bag check (when the race wasn’t offering it), and we had plenty of time to tinker around before lining up.

My goal was to race this as hard as I could, because, why not?  I lined up, was feeling my music, and crossed the start ready to play parkour with a billion other people.  I did that up the first (pretty much mile long) hill, and hit low 9-something once my garmin beeped the first split.  I felt kind of terrible but in that “I just ran really fast up a hill” way, and had faith that when the course flattened out, I could catch my breath a sec and rock it out.

Once the course flattened out, instead, I got hit by the worst cramp I’ve ever had.  I’m still not 100% sure if it was girlie time fun or something bad I ate fun, or just a twisted amalgamation of both fusing together to cause me agony, but it was ROUGH.  I convinced myself that “fuck it, I had less than 4 miles left, race through it”, but soon after I started feeling dizzy and dizzy is not something we ignore.  I pretty much stopped in the sea of people (sorry, I hate when people do that), and started shuffling.

Thankfully Zliten had caught up and found me just as I was pulling over to the side.  I sat for a bit, searing pain and dizziness not letting up.  I convinced myself I needed to get up and walk to the aid station, so we started… and then I had to pull over on the side of the road and be sick.  This is not only the first time this has happened to me during a race… but I’ve never hurled during a workout either.  But here I was, mostly collapsed on the side of the road, heaving into the grass.  I pretty much thought I was going to die.

Zliten and the nice officer right there (sorry guy!) kept asking me if I wanted medical.  I couldn’t envision going anywhere but that little patch of dewy grass right then, I said no and kept allowing more my breakfast to rejoin the earth.  Oddly enough, after whatever needed to work itself out of my system was gone, I sat up and everything felt, like, magically better.  We tried walking and it was fine.  Once we were up the hill and to an aid station for some liquid, I said we should try running again.

I certainly didn’t break any records with the rest of the race, but we clipped along at a 10-something minute mile chatty pace.  I felt like my brain was packed with a little cotton by the end, but I really think I just needed some calories since I was really and truly empty.  One hour, four minutes, some seconds official race time – for 1 great mile, 1 terrible and terribly long mile with about a 10 minute break and some walking, and 3 joggy miles.

After the race, we hung out with our friends for a while, and then we rode bikes home (uphill) and had a wonderful turkey day with family eating all the things and playing cards.  It was a total blip on the radar, about 15 minutes of sheer agony, but totally not a day-ender.

In retrospect, it’s great Ironman training.  I’m sure that at some point, something will be wrong with my digestive system during that 14-17 hours.  I’ve never had my stomach go THAT rogue on me before, but it’s a situation I’ll be prepared for if it happens.  In general terms of discomfort, everything in that moment was terrible.  I not only didn’t want to finish the race, but I wanted someone to come pick me up and carry me to a car and drive me home at that point.  Then, less than 10 minutes later I was walking, and then, less than 20 minutes later, I was running comfortably.  It’s about managing the dark spots to get back to the bright ones, no matter how dark they feel in the moment.

nov29-2

Granger Lake bike adventures…

It’s been a month since I rode anything of distance or consequence, and we got an invite to ride bikes around the Granger Lake area, so it was time to get reacquainted with evilbike and friends.  Zliten, Matt, and I took off from his in-law’s house before 9am and rode into the wind which was somehow coming from every direction (as it tends to do in the Texas country).  We took turns pulling and chatting and got a little lost (extra miles!) and enjoyed a morning of bikes.

It was a super pleasant ride.  Once we got used to the blustery day and got a little warmed up, the layers I had on were perfect (jacket, sleeves, short sleeved jersey, bibs with leg warmers).  We stopped a few times to get pictures of things and eat snacks and stash layers and stuff.  We flew down the nice flat dam road at 20+ mph for fun, but that was really, by and large, the only EFFORT (captial E) we made that day.

It’s nice that 60 miles is not the edge of my fitness right now.  The edge of my comfortable fitness, sure.  My quads had a bit of that long ride sting.  My hands were shot from chipseal.  But honestly, I was more concerned for Matt being late to his Thanksgiving meal (which ended up delayed until SEVEN THIRTY, so no worries about rolling in just before 2pm) than dying to get off my bike.

I did the stupid shit I do the last quarter of small group rides where I speed up and think I’m pulling everyone but end up dropping them and having to wait because slowing down at the end of a bike ride LITERALLY MAKES ME DIE INSIDE for some reason.  Joel and I raced down a 30 mph street trying to beat the speed limit around 50 miles in.  I intentionally fell off the nutrition at the end so I would fade a little but with proper fueling I think I would have been up for more.  I think I’m mentally and physically ready to start pushing the kind of bike mileage needed to train for the Ironman and that makes me happy.

nov29-1

We need a little Christmas, like right this very minute…

Normally, I’m a big fan of keeping the holidays kind of low key until real close to the day of.  No Christmas shit until after Thanksgiving, and frankly, since we normally head to Florida the day after turkey day, it’s a while until we’re fully ensconced in the holidays.

This year is different.  I feel like we really need it.  Like *I* really need it.  So, we bought wrapping paper 9 days ago and I didn’t even flinch at the massive set up at Big Lots.  We set up the star showers the night before Thanksgiving.  I’ve got most of my shopping done already and a lot of it wrapped.  We have our lights and tree up, and it’s halfway decorated (and the iguana has already broken ornaments).  We’re watching the shows we normally watch during the season.  It all feels so right.

The great thing about it being the holiday season and in the 70s?  Holiday light rides.  We spent an hour winding down every street in the neighborhood looking at lights.  We may or may not have gotten in the spirit ourselves as well (see above for the setup).  I’m aware we’re ridiculous and make zero apologies and give zero fucks.

And… such is life.  Back to the push of the last few miles productive days of the race year.  I know I’m going to finish survive, I just need to keep my head in the game and get there.

 

Austin 70.3 Part 2 – Seeing sounds and hearing colors.

By

On November 4, 2016

In Uncategorized

When last we left the story, I was very, very, happy to be done with the bike and have Death Star in one piece… but I honestly had no idea how I was going to run a half marathon.  It was really hot – time was closing in on 1:45pm and that meant the entirety of the run was going to be at the max temps (88, feels like 94 according to the weather).  I was kind of traumatized from all the energy spent on not-biking-stuff during the bike.  I was pretty happy I was able to hit my 17 mph goal but it took a lot out of me.  Physically I felt good, mentally, I felt a bit shell shocked.

nov4-1

Also, as I dismounted, I heard “holy crap, are you kidding” and saw THIS guy right next to me.  Dislocated rib, plan for riding 15 mph, whatever.  He had biked 3 hours flat to a HUGE PR.

nov4-5

That made me happy and a little demoralized and also a little motivated at the same time.  I thought I was finally going to win one race this year, and now I was going to have to really work for it, and I was pretty cooked just from the heat.  However, this is what we do.  Transition gravity got me a bit in T2.  I walked my bike in instead of running.  I sat on the ground to deal with my shoes and crap.  However, that extra few minutes helped center me, and I took off out of T2 running at a decent clip.

T2: 6:15.

Mile 1 ticked by at 10-something, according to plan, but then we hit this really daunting hill (the elevation chart I studied lied… 100 feet of ascent total my ass) and it hit me that we had to do that 6 times (3 out and backs).  I got through #1, but after the aid station around mile 1.5, I had to stop to fill my bottle and I just started walking.  Great.

Then, my husband comes back from behind again and says “we’re running for another tenth of a mile and then walking”. Ok, I think, I can do that.  So we did, and chatted about the race so far and his run plan and stuff and things.  With the crazy heat and lateness of the day and the hills I did not expect, there was not enough middle fingers to adhere to my own race plan.  Instead, I decided to adopt a run buddy for the first part of the race.

He was really happy that I was around to stick with him and I was happy to have some motivation through the first loop or two.  I told him that if I felt better on loop 2 or 3 I was going to take off, but for now, I was in.  It was really cute how a lot of people commented on us running together.  Awww, how sweet, they said.  Honestly, while it was REALLY nice to stick together, it was because we just at that same level of cooked but still moving forward point. 🙂

The aid stations were my lifeline.  My garmin shows SIX MINUTES of aid station stops, not because I was fucking around, but because it was necessary.  Find the ice table and 2 cups in bottle, 1 down the shirt, and every other station, one in the hat.  Find the gatorade and fill the rest of the bottle if there was room.  Find the water and dump over my body.  Then go.  Somewhere in the first loop, I got offered coca cola and tried some… and I was fully on the brown pony train from then on.  It was magical.  Every aid station I could get to it (some were swarmed with bees), I had a cup.  For the rest of the day, I was hearing colors and seeing sounds but it was worth it.

Starting on the second lap, I was trying to lengthen our run intervals between walks because I was feeling a little better.  At first Zliten was in, but then around mile 7, he told me my running segments were too fast and he needed more breaks, so we hugged and I kept trotting ahead as he took a break.  I was ready to start digging into the lead I needed to accumulate over the last half to beat him.

I had no illusions that I was going to be able to run the rest of the way, but my walk pace was pretty quick and I tried to keep my running pace a quick clip.  I attempted to only walk aid stations and the second halfs of uphills.  While a 12-something pace for most of the miles is not terribly impressive in and of itself, it’s not shabby considering how much of that was walking and stopping to take care of myself at aid stations.  If I could ever get a temperate day for one of these… watch out world!

nov4-3

I spent the last lap chanting stuff to myself, various mantras like “this pace is not giving up” and focusing on the fact that I was on track to beat 2:40 if I stayed with it and that seemed like something I could be proud of that day.  I also listened to Katy Perry’s Rise like, 6 times on repeat Friday evening, so that went through my head.  I followed some dude that had his coach on the course pacing him for a while (annoying) and then ran in the middle of some other tri team, both simply because they were going my pace.

I walked the last aid station and dumped ONE more load of ice down my top and said, “ok, this is it… finish strong”.  13 was my fastest mile at 10:25 and I was just so excited and pumped to make my way down the stretch of spectators one last time, and take the turn towards the finish.  I figured somehow they would lead us up one more hill for an extra quarter mile, but thankfully they didn’t.  The transition from outside to inside was very abrupt, but I was just so excited I pumped my arms in the air down the chute like I was winning this thing and crossed the line super happy!

Run Time: 2:40:06  51/93 AG <- holy crap, finished higher in my AG on the run… that is a testament to my fight.  I always fall off at the end.

Official Time: 6:04:51 51/93 AG

I finished hopped up on caffeine, shit eating grin, feeling like a fucking superhero.  My husband rolls in almost exactly 15 minutes later looking like THIS.

nov4-4

Best race finish picture ever. 

We did the normal things, which typically involve taking Zliten to medical but not actually needing medical (that face usually gets him sent there but he recovers quickly).  The inside finish helped us cool down quickly.  We took a post race photo.  We got food (some chicken baked ziti thing) and liquid.  We began the long process of getting all the race bags and bike all the way from T1 to the other side of the universe where we parked and watched people still streaming in.  It was a far cry from the last IM branded race we did, where we were almost the last two finishers and everything had already been taken down (no food, liquid, store, nothing).

The more time I’ve had to reflect on this, the more excited I’ve gotten about this run.  Of course there’s room for improvement, but I stuck with it mentally, and I didn’t give up.  I walked/stopped at aid stations, and a few hills as metered breaks, but that was it.  Zliten and I really helped each other out on the first half, and we parted ways when it didn’t make sense to stick together.  Sadly (for me), with the stops on the bike, I actually needed about 18 minutes on him, so he won this one by kicking some major ass on the bike.

I know I can run a 2:15 at one of the races someday, but not at this weight at that temperature on that course.  My second best time with all those challenges thrown my way is a perfectly good cause for celebration.

nov4-2

I’m not sure at what point my mind changed from “I’m never doing this course again” to “when I do this course again”, but I keep thinking about how to better train to conquer it.  The weather COULD POSSIBLY not suck.  The bike was wayyyy less annoying than expected.  Knowing the run course, I can actually train for the hills.  It does put a damper on celebrating one of my favorite holidays because of the weekend it falls on, but I’d consider doing this one again in the future.

Save

Save

Austin 70.3 Part 1, or when only one wheel falls off, it’s still a good race.

By

On November 2, 2016

In Uncategorized

On Sunday, I got the opportunity to race most of my sixth half ironman (their choice on the most-of-it part, not mine).  While I’ll try to keep the true nerdery and nitty gritty to a minimum, this is first and foremost MY soapbox and diary, so there will be some, to the tune of 2000 words from pre-race to T2.  Grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or some leftover halloween candy (ugh, it’s STILL not sounding good after all the gatorade and gels, it’s so sad) and let’s go on a journey together, shall we?

noc2-2

Pre-race dinking around.  I think we both walked over 12k steps just doing this…

On the other side looking back, I’m going to give my race prep an A.  I’m thoroughly pleased with the way I ate, the way I handled things.  Just a few drinks on Wednesday but I stayed dry the rest of the week.  I spent so much time in bed I was actually finding it hard to sleep more than 7-8 hours the few nights before.  Since I was rested and refreshed, I did short sessions (15-40 mins) each day besides Tuesday to keep the legs snappy.  The day before I rode around the block a few times on my TT bike to make sure I had tire pressure and swam 1000m.  Work could have been a little less hectic, otherwise, I had the perfect lead up.

The two things I put in the “con” category:  1) not getting a second longer race pace swim in my wetsuit, and 2) having to spend SO much time on my feet Saturday dealing with the treachery of checking in and dealing with multiple transitions in a giant size Ironman branded race.  One of these things didn’t end up mattering at all, though!

I wasn’t able to sleep that well Saturday night (big race, nerves, feeling rested otherwise), but I was up and at em at 4:45am on Sunday.  We did the normal stuff and enjoyed being on the home turf – 18 mins from bed to parking line at the race site.  I had some sports drink, 2 caff chews, a PB filled cliff bar, and we made our way from parking to shuttles to T1 with about 30 minutes to spare.

They had already delayed the race 30 minutes (from 7am to 7:30 start – which made sense with the later sunrise) a few weeks ago, and they tacked on ANOTHER 15 minute delay as we were arriving.  I told Zliten he would be starting around noon.  I shouldn’t have opened my mouth and jinxed him, it wasn’t too far off.  We did the normal setup and potty and finding friends and teammates and put on our wetsuits halfway and went and sat by the lake in this spookiness.

nov2-1

Borrowed from High Five Events Instagram… it looks almost post-apocalyptic, doesn’t it?

The race had been delayed indefinitely – they said they would start it as soon the fog lifted and it would go quickly.  However, the day had other plans.  By 8:30, the fog was not showing any signs of going away, so they made the call to cancel the swim and get on with the rest of the race.  I wasn’t sure how it was safe to bike in the fog either, but off the pros went at 9am as I ate my english muffin with cream cheese and bacon I had planned to fuel the first 1/3 of the bike.

For some reason, I was skewing WAY more towards the nervousness than excitement this race.  It’s a trend I really would like to reverse.  It manifests on the surface as just being over it, and it’s come up lately at my bigger races.  However, once the swim was dropped, for some reason, it made me feel better.  It made absolutely no sense.  The swim is one of my better events.  I’ve actually been swimming GREAT the last week or so.  I should have been really excited to show myself where I was at with my first wetsuit swim in a race in over a year, but instead I just felt relief.

I know exactly why.  I now had an asterisk.  Whatever I did at the race couldn’t be measured alongside other races.  It was it’s own thing.  I need to work on that crap, but since my last 3 A races have been UTTER shit shows, I’ll give myself a mulligan this time.

Back to transition – I’ve been in this situation before at a big race, and it takes forever to launch 2500+ athletes on bikes, so I wasn’t surprised when it was 9:30, then 10, and then I was lining up with the Death Star at almost 10:30 am.  Going back to the original race plan weeks ago, I would have been in the water at 7:45 and hopefully on the bike by about 8:30 (thus off the bike around 11:30-ish).  Also, the average temps on this day top out in the upper 70s – we were already closing in on that by the time I clipped in. Conditions: absolutely not ideal.

nov2-3

My bike was 3 away from this big pole.  I was super excited because T1 was going to be easy. Sigh…

Bike:

We got out and it was like a TdF situation.  Spectators were crowding the street and it kind of freaked me out (remember, we still had some decent fog going on and visibility was better but still sucked).  Other than that, the first few miles were pretty uneventful.  I was super excited to see that riding the Death Star on this course netted me some major free speed in comparison to Evil Bike.  The hills weren’t as hard.  My pace was much quicker without any extra effort.  This was good.

I wasn’t super great about staying in aero but the bike course was SO FUCKING CROWDED because of the way we started.  People were passing four or five deep out of necessity.  I saw later in the results that tons of people were DQ’d for various reasons, but I can’t imagine that they would have been able ding anyone in the thick of the AG race for drafting because there was simply NO WAY to be legal.

I need to sort out my rear bike bag with my co2s and tubes.  It won’t stay hooked on the seat.  By mile 5 it was hanging on just by the main strap.  People were kind enough to tell me about it, which was really nice in a race, but after a while, I wanted to just put a sign on my back that said “yes, I know, it’s fine (I hope)”.  At the first aide station, I stopped and tried to put it back on and it was flopping around again within a mile.  I shifted it over to one side, so my leg hit it while I was pedaling, so I could keep track of it somehow.  These tires being touchy and the roads being as rough as they were, I figured I had a 50/50 chance of flatting this race and without that bag, 100% chance of being out of the race.

The part I was least looking forward to actually ended up being one of the best stretches – 7 miles of long straight road which has a terrible shoulder, but a pretty decent middle when it’s blocked off.  I was holding about 19 mph early in the race, I had slipped a bit back into the 18s on some of the earlier hills, and on this road I made it back there just pushing the relatively flat road mostly in aero.

As I pulled up to the turn around mile 28, on a slight uphill, I heard a *KATHUNK*.  I’ve spent the entire race being paranoid about my bike bag and flats and everything, so a weird sound made me stop and hop off immediately.  I figured a puncture was happening and I was very happy to see my bag still there.  I felt both tires and oddly enough, they were fine.

Then… I noticed my back wheel was off.  Yeah, you heard me right.  My back wheel’s skewer (which was still on tight) had somehow come out of it’s hole.  Your guess is as good as mine on how that happened because that shouldn’t really be a possibility.  I think I just stared at it for at least 30 seconds with a puzzled WTF look on my face, thinking my race was over and my new expensive bike was broke.

Instinct kicked in and I took off my skewer, making sure to save the little springy thing like Zliten told me last week, reseeded my wheel, and then put it back in and tightened it.  It seemed like the problem was fixed, but I spent a little extra time looking at other people’s bikes, and they looked reasonably similar to mine, I wasn’t missing any pieces.  I got back on my bike, thought, “here goes nothing”, and started to pedal, expecting to hear the same sound again.  It was fine.  I rode a little more gingerly than my even my normal bike weenie self for the next 5-10 miles.

nov2-4

It happened, so it’s on Strava (this seems to be WITH the autopause).

Between the stupid bike bag and the wheel and the flat paranoia, I had spent a lot of mental energy on this bike having nothing to do with making my bike go forward fast.  I lost motivation here in the middle and the speed came down with it.  All I wanted out of life was to be done.  Mile 35 was IMPOSSIBLY far from 56 and it was getting hot and I hated everything.  Then somewhere in there, I shoved a few date rolls and some gatorade down the hatch, the caff gel I had earlier actually kicked in, and I got to a part of the course I liked better and my mood improved.  42-ish on wasn’t even that bad even though the end of the course is not kind.

I am so thankful I’ve ridden this route twice, because the end is seriously demoralizing if you don’t know it’s coming.  It’s a short steep hill right into a long steep hill, and you figure “that was rough, I’m at mile 50, the rest of this course has to be just pedaling it in, right?”.  Nope.   Pretty much the rest of the way there is one long false flat that undulates with some moderate uphills.  And thankfully it’s wayyyy less soul crushing on a carbon fiber TT bike than an aluminum roadie.  There was one last FUCK YOU when you pass the transition area and have to go around the block, making the course almost a whole mile long, but then we finally hit T2.

oct6-2

Death Star and I were BOTH excited to not be cycling at that point, I’m sure…

While I’ve had a lot of bitchy things to say about the ride and the course, let me sum it up with some positives:

  • I caught an issue that could have actually wrecked my bike super quick and fixed it within about 3 minutes.  I am really, really proud of myself for problem solving.
  • Also, I’m really happy that my head didn’t go anywhere near “shit, not again this year” with my bike issue.  It didn’t even pop into my head until I started to write this up.
  • I fueled decently – 1 gel, 2 date rolls, and a metric ass ton of gatorade (2 full bottles to start, 3 stops where I got down at least 2/3 of a big endurance formula each time).
  • For as complain-y as I sound about this course, I had my second best bike split on a 70.3 (would have been a PR without the two stops) with everything that happened and also more climbing than I’ve ever done in a race.  My goal was to hold at least 17 mph and I did that even with a few wrenches thrown my way.

Bike time: 3:18:27 – 54/93 AG (of those who actually finished the whole race, DNS and DNFs like craaaaaazy here).

It was not my dream bike, but I did just about as well as I reasonably expected (my goal was 17-something mph, I hit that even with the stops) and my day could have ended up a LOT worse.  I’m still conquering this bike, and I’m excited to see how things progress over the next six months of riding before IM Texas!

Page 7 of 13

← Previous

Next →

About Me

I'm a video game producer and a lover of anything game related by trade.  I'm a triathlete by hobby.  I live for being on or in the water as much as I can - scuba diving, snorkeling, paddleboarding, water slides... you name it.  The dichotomy between my outdoor and indoor realities are interesting, but they're all mine!  Longer version here...

Search

Pages

Archives

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

Login

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén