Adjusted Reality

So, I spent a lot of time belaboring this point here, but since this is my corner of the internet, I want to jot down how I’m going into and what I plan to take into this race.

Our spin teacher (also profesh cyclist) said something that stuck with me.  Don’t feel sorry for yourself out there.  At first it hit me as a weird sentiment, and oddly unmotivational.  Then, I considered the hippie rainbows and flowers “be grateful you’re able to do this triathlon thing” which is a nice thought, but when you’re killing yourself on the second loop of a run after 2+ hours of pushing yourself in the heat and humidity, you don’t feel lucky about anything. Trying to shove that in my head to pull out on lap 2 of the run will result in racing me giving past me a few middle fingers.

I really think it’s more literal.  Don’t feel sorry for yourself.  Just do the work.  Just carry yourself through the day you have worked for, and deposit yourself across the line according to plan because you know you can fucking do it if your head stays out of the way.  When you get to the SUCK part of the race (and if you don’t get there, you’re not racing hard enough), emotions are the enemy.

So, the overall goal, is to spend just a smidge less than 3 hours, if all goes ideally well, out of the inner caverns and craters of my head, just executing on paces I know I can do but have yet to put together.

I feel like racing my 28th triathlon, these things should be rote, but they’re not.  Every race is a different beast.  I felt like I was less specifically trained for this one, but then I rocked the fuck out of an Olympic brick in practice on Saturday, so maybe it’s just taking what went right at the last one and expanding upon it.

Race Week:

Monday: easy 4.25 mile treadmill run with a few race pace pickups.

Tuesday: up early to get cavities filled (yay?) so no lunch workout, but legs smashed at endurance cycle for 90 minutes.  Good stretch after.

Wednesday: off.  Needed it.

Thursday: Double bricks (15 mins bike/1 lap around the school x2) with 1 mile run cooldown.  Mixed these with race simulation bricks so I practiced each transition twice.  I was holding below race pace like a champ.

Friday: Now, it’s time for the part that many athletes don’t like, but I actually do – the rest part.  I finally feel like the fatigue is starting to clear.  Just a little.  And I’ve got 3 more days before the race.  Today’s goal is one more OWS in my wetsuit to practice taking it off quickly.  And that’s IT.

Saturday is a day off.  All fun stuff, no workouts, but also no beer or staying up late.

Sunday, after a quickie spin to keep the legs loose in the morning, we’ll pick up our packets and drop off the bikes and then do something inside and quiet for the rest of the day.

Monday (Race) morning – the norm is a kind bar, coconut water, and purple stuff.  I’m super happy they changed the timing – last year, my wave was set to go off at 8:40… this year it’s 7:47.  One hour cooler.  Fuck yeah.

The weather is… curious.  Looks like the forecast calls for a cloudy morning (good) but high for the day is 85 and it’s going to be 80% humidity (yuck).  I can’t control the weather, but I know I got out in worse conditions last week and ran a 10 minute flat pace off a very challenging bike ride, so I’m not going to stress (too much).

And, for the three hours I’ll be out there, here is what I intend to hold in my head.

Swim:

This swim is a time trial start (yay) so it doesn’t really matter where I start in my wave, though any extra minutes I can bank against the climbing heat and humidity is probably best.

Right now, the difference in my fast and steady intervals are really negligible in the pool.  I want to make sure I stay focused and don’t day dream, and definitely be breathing hard, but I think trying to redline this swim would be a mistake.  I want to skirt the line between steady and hard.

That usually nets me about a 28-29 minute 1500m swim in the pool, so I’m going to aim to see a 1:42-1:46 per 100 YARD (1:52-1:56 per 100 meter, but my OWS watch shows yards), which I think is realistic.  I don’t look at my watch a whole lot in the water, frankly, last tri I didn’t at all, but if I’m looking for a metric to aim for, here it is.  I’m hoping this is 33 minutes all said and done accounting for the swim course maybe being a little long and the timing mat being somewhere between exit and transition.

Transition 1:

Looks like we lucked out and it’s closer again this year (same spot I’m accustomed to, not moved due to construction).  This should take about 2 minutes off my transition expectations.  Ha, wouldn’t this be funny if this is what gets me under 3? 🙂

I’ve practiced getting my wetsuit off and I *think* I’ll be ok.  First race without a peeler… hold me!

Otherwise, my goal is to go minimal.  Socks, shoes, helmet, glasses, go.  I plan to have two bottles full of heed and a few gels in my bento box to pick from.  I’ll stuff my bike gloves in my bento box JUST IN CASE but I think I can deal without them for 25 miles.  Especially if I’m spending most of my time in aero.  Which I should be.

I’m going to try and carry the same thought as I did through Rookie – the first segment of the race is swimtranstion1.  The first time I will allow myself to catch my breath will be on the first bike flat section.

Bike:

I want to cook this hard like Rookie.  This course is one of my favorites, and while not totally flat, definitely has sections where I can fly.  It’s one of those ITU type 4 loop courses.  There’s one decent incline at the beginning of each lap and one short “get out of your seat” on the second half, but they took out one of the BRUTAL hills from Tri Rock, so I see good things happening.

My goal, actually, is to post my best triathlon bike speed ever.  Like, by a lot.  I like to set reasonable goals.  However, my husband pulled this out of his ass legs in 2013, and we are both the best cyclists we’ve ever been, so I can do it.  It’s just about keeping high cadence, riding aggressively (hopefully not aggressive to other dumbasses like last time, but it is a very crowded course so we’ll see), and remembering what those endurance intervals at Pain Cave feel like, and, uh, staying there for 80 minutes.

I want to beat 1:20, which would be 18.75 mph.  Two years ago I did 1:24 – or 17.6 mph.  I was recovering from being sick.  I think if I beat my Rookie time by 2 mins, I can beat this one by 4, especially since that probably wasn’t my top form.

Basically, this is the pace I’m having the most difficult time talking myself into, but I think I can do it.  Rock and roll, let’s  push THOSE WATTS (sadly, since my power meter is not waterproof, I’ll be going without, so I guess THAT EFFORT).

The last 1-2 miles, no matter what, I reduce the effort a little and spin lower resistance and higher cadence to get my legs ready for the run.

Planning on gel #1 at about 20 mins in, and then assessing how I feel, if I want another closer to the end.

Transition 2:

Copy and paste from Rookie: Every. second. here. is. a. second. I. have. to. run. faster.  Helmet off, shoe, shoe, shoe, shoe, visor, race belt, effing GO.  The run starts the moment I get off the bike and anything that impedes that is a rude interruption that should be done away with.  This is not relaxytime, this is BUSINESS time.

Run:

I really and truly believe I can make unicorns and rainbows explode here if I can just keep my head on straight.  This specific run course has been a party to one of my most spectacular fizzle-booms where I PW’d my 10k run by about 2 minutes per mile, or something.  However, I kinda want to show it who’s boss, so that’s something.

Mile 1 will be all about settling.  Getting the run legs.  Focus on cadence.  I expect this to be slower than race pace.  Maybe by even 1 minute per mile.  This will not freak me out.  This is normal.

Because, then it’s time to mother effing descend.  This is what we do on runs.  This is rote.  Every run finishes faster than it starts.  This is how I want to race, so this is how I train.  Once I settle in, I’m going to start gradually work my way down to race pace and then really push it on the second lap.  I’ve tended in the past to get demoralized on two loop Olympics and slow down at the end.  This time, I want the second lap to be the best because I’m ripping up the pace.

My goal with the run is to not question if I left anything out there.  I’d like to beat 1:02.  I’d love to go sub-1 hour.  I’d super love to PR my standalone 10k from 2009 at 56:54.  The last result is unlikely, but I really think if my head can stay out of my way I can do myself proud here. And definitely not be feeling sorry for myself.

If I only have 1 gel on the bike, I’ll have another one in mile 1.  If I’ve had 2, I may gel closer to 3-4.  But I think I need at least one to properly push a 10k.

Overall:

I want a sub-3.  Real bad.  So I’m going to go for it.  I keep wanting to caveat this with… but if I get close it’s ok… or other such backing down from the big goal.

But, that’s not fair.  In summary, my goal is to continue to move forward at a pace which brings me across the across the line in less than 3 hours.  Sounds simple, no?  Let’s see what Monday brings.

In a perfect world, my triathlon schedule for Season Part 1 would be super sprint, sprint, olympic.  However, since this is the real world, my next race is an Olympic on Memorial Day (Cap Tex Tri).  So, that’s some interesting gear shifting (and not just on the bike, har har).

While I’ve never done this race before, it’s on a very similar course to the Tri Rock which I’ve done twice.  And, it’s actually one that I liked a lot, except for the SEARING HEAT of Labor Day in Austin.  Hopefully late May cooperates a bit more.  2013 was pretty wicked hot.  2014 was torrential downpours.  Hopefully we get something in between.

My two showings previously were 3:25 and 3:28.  The first, in 2012, was a pretty proud and shining moment in my triathlon career with a 40 minute PR over my first Olympic. The second, in 2013, was a huge bonk after a week of some mix of heat exhaustion and a stomach bug.  I probably lost at least 10 mins on the run from walk breaks I shouldn’t have needed in a normal situation, sadly, after a pretty stellar swim and bike where I was on track to PR by a lot if I could even maintain what’s normally an easy jog for 6.2 miles.

I may look like I’m smiling here, but really I’m pretty much saying fuck you road, fuck you sun, fuck you hill I’m about to run up, fuck you triathlon, fuck you right off.

I took a break from it last year, volunteering for both instead.

This year, we decided that A) we wanted to do an Olympic and B) we didn’t feel like traveling so much after the last 3 races (before Rookie) in a row were out of towners followed by a vacation and C) Gatorbait was cancelled – which sealed the deal.  We’d give Cap Tex a try (a tri? …the puns are strong today…).

So, I’m starting to look at goal times for each leg.  My excuse is that I want to establish training paces, but really, I’m just on a pretty good high after Rookie and looking forward to crushing another race and… sometimes I just want to math nerd out over projected times.

And it helps when some of those A++++ type goals start looking like they have a 2 in the beginning of them instead of a 3.  Maybe like a 2:59:59, but still.  Exciting times.

Some maths to prove I’m not out of my mind.

I improved my last Rookie time by 5 minutes 15 sec, or about 7.6% of 69 minutes.  My last Rookie in 2012 went actually quite well, a 3 minute PR.  I didn’t have any real setbacks so no need to normalize.

If I put together my 2013 Tri Rock swim and bike, and the 2012 run (to give an accurate estimate of what I could do if I hadn’t bonked like crazy), that’s 11 minutes off the top of 3:28, so 3:17 normalized.  If I can also improve here by 7.6%, that’s a 15 minute PR, which accounts for a 3:02.

So, while a 3-and-some-very-small-change Olympic would be a party in it’s own right,  I’m within spitting distance of a sub-3 Olympic.  That’s a pretty fun number to chase.

So, what has to go right?

Transitions:

I’m leaving 7 minutes for transitions.  My transitions in 2013 at Tri Rock were just 5 minutes, but the results look like they were set up differently and longer here.  I’ll take any extra time here as a nice surprise but I will be prepared mentally to book through transitions and just take the beginnings of the bike and run courses a wee bit slower to recover if needed.

My goal with gear is to simplify as much as possible.  I can *probably* deal without gloves on the bike.  For the run, I’m hoping the weather will not necessitate a handheld (there’s plenty of course aid) but if it does, you bet your ass it will be frozen.

Swim:

Analyzing the results, I don’t think that it’s particularly long or short.  My swim was 5.8% faster than last rookie, so extrapolating to this swim, it only looks like a goal time of 35 minutes is possible.  I think that’s probably sandbagging, considering I can swim this distance in the pool 7-8 minutes faster without getting out of breath.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say 33 sounds reasonable unless the course is indeed stupid long.

Bike:

This bike course isn’t particularly challenging – it’s not pancake flat like Play Tri, but it’s definitely one of the faster speeds I see during the year.  Using the reasoning above, my improvement over last Rookie was 6.25%.  Further extrapolation shows I can expect a 5 min 15 sec PR, which solidly gets me under 1:20 for the bike.  Zliten actually went sub-1:20 in 2013, and we’re both better cyclists now, so it’s not beyond expectation for either of us.

Run:

This one is harder to predict, and this is where it gets more exciting.

My run at Rookie improved over NINE PERCENT.  While I really looked at the bike as my breakthrough leg at Rookie, I really should be calling out the run.  I guess an almost 2 minute PR on a 2 mile run is pretty significant, actually, but it didn’t hit me until now because it was the only goal pace I didn’t actually hit.

Now, let’s throw that stupid 1:19 for 10k out in the trash.  That was a silly bad run for me.  In 2012, I ran a 1:08, which seemed like a solid, though not spectacular performance.  Looking at the Cap Tex results over the last few years, 1:08 is wayyyyyy down there in the bottom quarter of the runners.  So, I imagine the course is either spot on or short.

Doing the math the same way as I did for the bike and the swim, my predicted time comes out to about a 1:02.

Here’s those two minutes I need to shave off to get my sub-3.  Here is where I’ll really have to dig deep and push myself to bridge the gap between what is mathematically realistic and what I really want.

I’m pretty sure it’s physically possible for me to run 9:40s instead of 10s off the bike for 6 miles.  I just have to be ready to hurt for it.

So, who knows?  In a world of 2 minutes, a lot can happen.  I can swim closer to my pool times and make it all up there and come in significantly under 3.  I could have a mechanical on the bike and have to spend 10 minutes fixing it and have my goal time shot right there.  We could be blessed with mild, overcast, and breezy weather on the run where 9:40s are pretty reasonable to run.  It could be stormy like last year and I could get pulled off the course or get sick and not even start.

No matter which way the protein powder waffle crumbles, what’s exciting to me, like goosebumps-type-exciting, is that I’m doing math to get a time that feels crazy fast to me, but is really only a pinch of fairy dust from a solid day away.  Feels good man.

Maybe running those marathons over the winter wasn’t a waste after all, because for some reason, the best way for me to get better at the bike and the swim (and, ok, the run too, 9% improvement is NOT insignificant) was to run all the miles and ignore any sort of other training and not see a whole lot of actual improvement but go through a lot of personal development and get a lot stronger mentally, then take a bit of a breather and then start working on something completely different.  It feels like saying because blueberries are blue the dogs bark at midnight, but if it works, then bring it on the fruit and loud nocturnal canines.

And, maybe I’ve hit it on the head just right there.  I’ve had a lot of frustration with triathlon over the years in that it’s hard for me to put together a great day on all 3 disciplines.  However, with my season opener this year, I just ran a race that pretty much went all sorts of A++++ all over the course.  It could be a fluke, but just maybe, maybe it’s not.

Maybe this is the shit I have had in me for years, but running a marathon the whole way brought it to the surface.  Maybe I had to beat myself up running in the heat and the rain and the cold and for a week without seeing a ray of sunshine and by myself and without music and every day for 5 weeks in January to make me a bit more of a hardass.  Maybe something changed in me this winter, that when a 2 or 6 or 13 mile run off the bike starts to get painful, I have a little more “suck it up buttercup” in me than I ever have.

I’m pretty sure the cardiovascular endurance gains of running an average of about 40 miles per week for 5 months doesn’t suck either.  But, as I’ve seen, you can negate all that fitness by a brain that just decides not to show up or check out halfway during the run.  This year, I’m not requesting that my brain show up.  It’s coming with me, kicking and screaming if necessary, all the way to the finish line, on the remaining 5 race days in 2015.  No surrender.  No escape.