Are there carbs in humble pie? My race report from IronMan Cozumel 2014

Another race report can only mean one thing: I did another race.  Aside from my incredulous powers of deductive reasoning, you'll be dazzled in the following paragraphs by the recounting of the kick in the crotch that was IronMan Cozumel 2014.  Read on, dear soul, read on.

First, may I take a moment to explain where my head was at while preparing for this race?  Since you can't answer, I'll just go ahead.

Either the sun was bright or I was channeling my inner pirate.  AAARRRGGGGHHHH!

I had just come off of what I thought to be a pretty good showing at IronMan Mont Tremblant, beating my previous years time at the same course by about 2 hours.  Boom.  This strong finish gave me a great sense of accomplishment and self-worth as an athlete.  This sense would be dashed in short order by the proverbial Mexican mariachi band that marched across my face.  Going into this course, I knew 3 things: 1. the ocean swim has a current in your favor but you'll probably get eaten by a shark, 2. the bike and run courses were reportedly a bit windy but flat as a tortilla, and 3. bean burritos should never be used for carb loading the night before an IronMan.  I was prepared.

The Swim
Let me preface by saying that I've only done one ocean swim for a race in my life.  During that swim, I got motion sickness and yacked 3 times, which is as lovely as it sounds, and thought I was legitimately having a stroke when my left eye went numb and cold.  Swims like that leave a certain mental marker on a guy, so getting ready for this second ocean swim in Cozumel had me gnawing my fingernails like they were electrolyte tablets.

The conditions of the water were not helping in the days leading up to the race.  The wind was so strong on Friday (race on Sunday) that during the ferry ride, the crew handed out barf-bags to the passengers because the sea was so rough.  The bags did not go unused.  Upon arrival to the island, the ocean was well decorated with white capped waves, signaling certain doom.  These facts, along with the joy of having hollywood worthy disaster scenes play out while sleeping about floods, drowning, and destruction by water, did not help ease my nerves before race day.  I was a mess... roadkill level mess.

Saturday morning, on a relatively empty belly, I got in the water for a practice swim.  The wind had really died down and with it, the tumultuous water conditions.  I swam about 200 yards out and back and was concerned with how I felt: happy.  That was stupidly beautiful.  It's pretty impossible to be concerned about much of anything when the show that has been playing out meters below you stars schools of tropical fish and a sting ray.  The water was warm and welcoming and the beauty was enough to settle my nerves.  For the first time in about 10 days, I wasn't dreading the swim.

Now on to race morning, we all squeezed ourselves into various garments of latex, rubber, and spandex.  It was basically a public service announcement for safe sex...in goggles.  The age group wave start is usually not my favorite for one primary reason: I'm slow.  This typically means that the fast swimmers in the groups released after me are tasked with climbing over the carcass that is my body in the water.  I feel badly that I'm in their way, and I'm frankly not in love with someone trying to swim on me.

This swim however was a complete surprise, in the good way.  Because it is point to point, the athletes were able to spread out quite a bit and find some room.  Translation: very little bumping and grinding.  I had a few little collisions but got through the entire portion without getting my clock cleaned by a flagrant elbow or angry calcaneous directed at my upper teeth.  Success!  And again, the spectacle that was going on below us was magnificent!  The water was crystal clear allowing viewing to the sea floor, which was teaming with fish and sea life.  Best distraction for a swim ever, except that time I did laps while listening to my underwater iPod at a geriatric nudist pool.  That was pretty distracting too.

As for the current, later discussion revealed that it wasn't very strong this year and didn't end up helping as much as we might have hoped.  That said, I pulled off a pretty good time for my standards and got out of the water feeling surprisingly at peace.  "This was going to be a great race," I foolishly mouthed.

Results: 1:23:23 which is about 10 minutes faster than what I would normally do.  185th place out of 466 in my age group.

There's me in the background, the one who is all wet

Transition 1 went off without any surprises either.  I rinsed off the salt water in the showers provided, and yes, I sang as one is obligated to do while showering, and grabbed my bike gear bag and made off for the changing tent.  After what I wrongly thought was an adequate coating of sunscreen application, I dashed off to my bike for a torrid love affair with the beast.  Time for T1: 8:44

The Bike
Before I tell you about my bike performance, a discussion about my training is warranted.  I actually spent a lot of time on my bike preparing for this race and came in pretty confidently.  The only problem was that all of the time I spent on my bike was done in 2 hour increments, indoors.  I'm not too proud to announce to the world that my longest outdoor ride was done during IM Mont Tremblant.  Actually, to be more accurate, my ONLY outdoor ride was Mont Tremblant.  Still I reasoned that this bike ride would be much easier than such a hilly course that I had done pretty well on just a few months prior.  What could go wrong?

I had done my power testing and found that my endurance zone range was about 155 Watts to 185 Watts.  We decided to play it safe and aim for my normalized power on the bike to be 160W.  Again, a refresher on the problem here is that I could hold 160W without any trouble at all...for 2 hours.  After that, it was a mystery.  Perhaps not the best training strategy?

I started the ride spectacularly, holding about 163W and passing people like I was getting paid for it.  "I am SO fast," I thought.  What a fool.  The first dose of reality came with a soft left turn about 10 miles into the ride.  What awaited us was a brilliant headwind reported to be sustained at 30mph.  Well, that slowed me down a notch or two.  But still, I am not a novice to this sport and know what I'm doing (reader: insert sarcastic face here if you wish).  I kept my cadence high and held my wattage like I knew I should.  Just stay in aero position and keep pedaling.

I had to admit that about an hour into the ride I felt like 160W was going to be too aggressive.  By hour 2, I was certain of the fact.  If this had been a half IronMan, I would have been golden.  But seeing that I had only completed my 1st of 3 loops of the bike course, I knew I was in trouble.  Try as I did, my wattage kept falling lower, and lower, and lower.  How lovely that the headwind on the back side of the island just got higher, and higher, and higher.

People had told me the wind was a major factor in the race.  They neglected to tell me that I should train inside a tornado to prepare.  I could not believe how strong the headwind was, and similarly, how crappy I was feeling.  I also hadn't trained to be in aero position for 6+ hours straight and my neck, back, and shoulders would scream every time I was there for longer than 10 minutes.  "Just sit up and take a break," you suggest?  Yeah, might as well have been riding the brakes while dragging a parachute behind me.  Sitting upright in that wind cuts your speed horrifically.

To sum up the bike ride, it was a battle.  I ended up with a normalized power of 138W which means somewhere about half way through, I officially tanked.  People talk about having a certain amount of matches to burn during one race.  My match box was a smoldering heap of mess.  That bike course spanked me like a bad, bad baby.

My hope for the bike ride was to hold 160W and finish with a time of 5:45 or better.  In reality I finished in 6:24:58, 124th in my age group.

Transition 2
This is usually a fast transition for me.  Not this time.  I was pretty shaken by that crushing blow from the bike and I just couldn't seem to rally.  I was dizzy, my legs were wobbly, and my belly was making a threatening gurgley noise, a triathletes worst nightmare.  "To hell with this," I thought.  I am a runner.  I will crush this flat course run.  I will still pull off my goal run time.  I WILL bend down to tie my shoe somehow.

I somehow managed to get changed and ready for the run and went to look at my watch for my time.  Yeah, it wasn't there.  In my delirium and haste, I had managed to leave my watch face attached to the mount on my bike.  I took a moment considering my options: run back and see if they could somehow find my bike a get my watch for me, or just throw caution to the wind (no pun intended) and run based on feel.  I chose the later.  Bad move.

My time for T2 was a terrifically slow 11:39.

The Run
I started the run with what felt to be about an 8:30 pace, which was after all my goal.  That lasted no more than 200 yards before I simply had to stop and walk.  Confidence boost, it was not.  The gurgle of the belly was also becoming more angry and pronounced.  Oh boy.

After about a mile of pitiful jogging, desperate walking, and progressively impressive tummy gurgles, I decided to just suck it up and resign to walking and porto-potties for a while.  During each race, you have to accept where you are at that particular moment and manage it.  At that point of the run, I was a barely ambulatory troll with some unpleasant gastrointestinal goings-on.  "Manage the moment," was my mantra.

About a mile down the road I started to feel a little better.  I had picked up my pace and was feeling borderline good.  I have no idea what pace I was running, but it felt to be in the 8:30-8:45 range.  And I tell you, dear readers, that I so deeply tried to keep that pace.  But all the caffeine and simple sugar in the world can't help you when you start a marathon with so little left in the tank.

I ran some of the time, jogged when I just couldn't hold a strong pace, and walked more than I have in the past few races combined.  Having a lot of friends on the course helped spur me along at times, but the reality was that I was just having a terrible run for my level of run fitness (yes, I actually did train appropriately for the run!).  At least I managed to escape relatively unscathed, despite my poor gangly nasty toe.  Yes, it does feel great, thank you for asking.

My original goal for the marathon was to hold an 8:30 pace and finish in the neighborhood of 3 hours and 45 minutes.  In reality I turned in a time of 4:26:26.

Overall Thoughts
This race is spectacular and I can see beyond doubt why everyone I know who has raced it has come back with highest marks for the course.  The swim is breathtaking, the bike and run are challenging but interesting, and the local people are some of the warmest and most delightful folks you'll ever meet.  If that's not good enough, they have Mexican food everywhere, the equivalent of living a childhood Christmas morning at each meal.

I have now completed 5 full distance IronMan races and am always taken aback by how different each experience is and how very much I learn from all of them.  This race taught me more than I expected certainly, but probably the most of all my races.  I learned that ocean swimming can actually be quite pleasant if you don't eat 4 pounds of bananas immediately beforehand.  I learned that while indoor trainer workouts are extremely valuable, they will never fully replace the training you get on a long outdoor ride.  I learned that an IronMan course should never be taken lightly, even if it is the flattest on the circuit.  I learned that my mouth loves Snickers bars while biking but my belly feels differently later.  I was reminded that while these races always provide a nice heaping dose of pain and struggle, the feeling of crossing that finish line and hanging yet another medal on my wall brings me immense joy.

To answer the question posed in the title of this entry, yes there are carbs in humble pie, and boy did I have a nice slice of it.  I came into this race feeling pretty sure I was going to pull in a time under 11 hours.  With a total finishing time of 12:35:10, I was reminded that humility is as important a training tool as is the physical training itself.

There is no shame in my result, and in fact, I feel I am a much stronger athlete because of it instead of in spite of it.  Having a race beat you down like that will do one of two things: discourage you from the sport and make you see reason as to the madness of doing this voluntarily, or add fuel to the fire that is the desire to push yourself harder and return to the line more ready and triumphantly than before.  I'd wager you can guess which of those options I am feeling post-IMCOZ.

I got my ass handed to me.  But the silver lining of the story: after all that biking and running, my ass is looking pretty damn good.

When I see you on the road, say hello.  When I meet you at the starting line, return the polite nod.  When I celebrate the success of my next finish and the accomplishment of another seemingly impossible goal, join my celebration.

My sincere gratitude to you for reading and keeping me honest, as well as to the sport we call triathlon.

Ironman Mont Tremblant 2014 Race Report

Dear victims of neglect and shame, I owe you an apology.  It has been far too long since we last caught up, and for that I am ashamed and deserve a public flogging.  Life happens, fires require extinguishment, blogs get neglected.  It’s a tragedy of Shakespearean quality.

So what better way to come back into your lives than with a race report!  The following is the gory account of my recently completed 4^th full Ironman distance tri: Ironman Mont Tremblant 2014.  Let’s call it, “Sugar, Bludgeoning, Gooseflesh, and Rocketfuel!” (the name will make sense later…)

Back Story

I did this same race last year and still have the scars to prove it, both physical and emotional.  It was a terrible race for me.  I had woefully undertrained and got what I deserved.  I finished the damn thing but was completely miserable almost the entire duration.  I would write about it here but it’s just too painful.  See my previous posts if you’re a sadist and want to enjoy my pain.

After that debacle last year, I immediately signed up for 2014.  I needed a redemption race.  I needed validation.  I needed medical attention.

So my preparation this year was going along quite smoothly during the winter and leading up to a half IM in Florida this past April 2014.  I was proud of my bike performance, had a decent enough swim and run, and was feeling like I was on the right track to smashing IMMT!

Then I stopped training for 2 months and gained 20 pounds.  Oops…

As mentioned before, life happens.  During this time I was just keeping my head above water.  Clearly the way to do this was to eat copious amounts of processed carbohydrates.  What could go wrong?

Around early June I finally snapped out of it and got back on program.  I again felt motivated and ready to CRUSH Ironman Mont Tremblant.  The only difference now was that several parts of my body would jiggle merrily when I moved too abruptly, and I would gasp for breath after climbing 2 flights of stairs.  I had some work to do.

Compressing a very long and arduous couple of months into one paragraph is the only way I know to convince you to keep reading.  I trained.  I stopped eating like a maniac.  I focused.  I spent hours looking in the mirror and practicing my angry triathlete face. 

And now the calendar told me it was one week until race day.  Oh boy!

Side note: I’ve always thought that really serious triathletes could be spotted by the baby skin-hairless quality of their entire body.  That’s right, true triathletes had one common enemy: the dreaded hair follicle.  At previous races I was always slightly ashamed to be sporting my hairy legs, trimmed and well groomed or otherwise.  I could feel the eyes of judgment from the other competitors.  I knew what they were thinking: “Look at that poor hairy fool with his dreadfully hairiness.  Doesn’t he know how critical it is to shave ones legs to become a real triathlete?”  Then they would walk away, making not a sound of friction or wind resistance between their impossibly smooth appendages and the world around them.

That being said, I decided this was the year to get serious.  The only problem was that I was super uninterested in having razor burn on my legs. 

Solution: waxing!  That’s right, I decided to pay someone a pretty good amount of money to angrily rip the hair from my body, right out from the root!

I’m not terribly religious, but this must have been hell.  I made promises in that room to God, Buddha, Ganesh, and Anne Rice.  I also realized that I clearly didn’t know human anatomy nearly as well as I had originally thought.  I will go on record saying that the hair follicles on your inner thigh are directly connected to your appendix.  I swear they went that deep, at least.

So now I was ready!  I had trained.  I was less jiggly.  I was smooth enough to be in someone else’s clothes without them knowing while they were still wearing them.  Let’s do this!

The race site

Mont Tremblant absolutely does it right, end of story.  The locals are so pleasant and happy to see their town overrun by a few thousand people in compression garments with ravenous appetites.  The village is like a miniature Disney attraction that is just too adorable.  The scenery is astoundingly beautiful.  If there are better places to have an Ironman race, I am not yet aware.  Go there, you must.

The RACE!

The Swim (aka: the bludgeoning)

The swim takes place in this pristine lake surrounded by mountains and evergreens.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was almost enjoyable.  Don’t worry, I know better.

You see, I am a slow swimmer.  I did this past swim in 1:39.  Well before the cutoff time but really pretty abysmal.  The problem with being a slow swimmer, especially one who is male and between 30 and 34, is that your wave starts the swim immediately after the pros and immediately before the other 2000+ swimmers get in.  A good number of those 2000+ other athletes swam much faster than a 1:39.  I know because each one of them let me know they were passing by punching, kicking, elbowing, scratching, clawing, and biting their way over my slow ass.  My favorite is when someone unknowingly swims up upon you and in a matter of seconds has somehow mounted you from behind.  Imagine my surprise and delight to be swimming along and suddenly realize someone has managed to swim up between my legs and is now using their entire body to press me underwater.  It’s like a normal Friday night in college, but in wetsuits.  Actually, I think the wetsuit thing was also tried in college, but that’s for a different blog.

I know none of these freakishly fast swimmers intentionally tried to kill me.  I’m sure it wasn’t their purpose to crack my skull with their furiously beating feet.  And yet, I’m pretty sure I came close to meeting my maker in that water. 

Call me crazy but I miss the days of one giant mass start.  Those who know they are fast can fight it out in the front.  Those, like me, who know they are not fast can find a nice safe spot in the middle of the pack where the possibility of getting a watery beating is somewhat diminished. 

Either that can happen, or I can just learn to be a faster swimmer.

But just to drive it home, here is the site of me getting on my bike after the swim.  Notice how many bikes are around me?  Yeah, that means that all of the other swimmers were already well on their way into the bike ride.  How embarrassing!

The Bike portion (AKA: 6.5 hours of gooseflesh)

Canada is cold.  I accept that.  But in August?  Apparently so.

I knew going into this bike ride that I had to play it safe.  My goal was 6.5 hours-ish for the bike portion and I knew I was capable of that.  I put my head down, kept my power output right where I knew it needed to be, and tried not to get upset when people would blow past me.  There was a nice gentleman who kept passing me like a champ going up hills, only to stop peddling on the downhill when I would pass him.  He was 60 years old.  Did I let this bother me?  I wish I could say no, but it was driving me crazy!  All I wanted to do was to just push really hard and smoke him, but I knew that wasn’t the race I wanted.  I ignored him, and everyone around me, and just rode my bike.

I was doing really well and staying on top of my nutrition plan and power numbers.  About 85 miles in though, I started to get a little tired.  I was ok, just ready to get off of the bike.  That’s when I had the first milligram of caffeine in two months. 

ZOOM, ZING, WHEE!  I had a HoneyStinger gel with 32mg of caffeine, not that much by most peoples standards.  And yet, I suddenly felt wonderful!  I wasn’t tired anymore, the pains and aches in my back and neck almost went away, and I totally smoked that old dude!

I finished the bike portion in exactly 6 hours and 30 minutes and was feeling great!

The Marathon (AKA: rocket fuel)

Running is what I love.  Every race I’ve done, I always feel good getting off of the bike.  Running is home base. 

My goal for this race was to hold around a 10-minute mile, or come in around 4:30.  My training hadn’t been fantastic with running, with my longest run being 16 miles during which holding a 9:30 pace was pretty tough. 

At the very beginning of the run, I had another gel with another 32mg of caffeine.  WOOHOO, YIPPEE, OH BOY!  That 10 min/mile pace seemed absurdly slow.  I started running a 9:30 pace for the first half mile, and even that seemed slow.  I decided, against better judgment, to just run according to perceived exertion.  Instead of staring at my watch all day, I was just going to run at a pace that felt good to me.  Imagine how happy I was after the first 2 miles to see I was just a hair over a 9 min/mile pace.  Was this stupid?  Would I crash?  Should I make myself slow down?

All good questions.  I ignored all of them.

The foremost reason I ignored them was the nutritional offering at the aid stations.  Where I usually do the marathon on coke (simple and immediate sugar with a touch of caffeine), this course was handing out cups of RedBull.  I used to race with RedBull and loved it, but let me remind you that I hadn’t had any caffeine for 2 months leading up to this race. 

After that first swig of sugar, caffeine, and God knows what else, I did indeed have wings!  I was holding a sub-9 pace without any problem at all!

I got through the first half marathon in just under 2 hours, and as is evident from the above picture, was terrifically pleased with myself.  Could I pull a sub-4 hour marathon during an Ironman?  Why not try?

I slammed back some more RedBull, thought a happy thought, and kept running.

The best part of the experience was that I was having fun.  This might have been due to a caffeine and sugar induced delirium, but what did I care?  I was counting down the miles to the finish line and smiling the whole way.  This is what racing should be like!

My official time for the marathon was 4:05* (the * is there because unbeknownst to me, the official timer started right after the transition tent where I had to make a porto-potty pit stop.   My actual pace for the marathon was 9:06 minutes/mile, which comes in just under a 4-hour marathon.  Unreal.

The Results and Recovery

My official finishing time was 12:29, a full 30 minutes faster than I had originally hoped, and a full 1:30 faster than on the same course a year earlier.  I couldn’t have been happier with my result.

As for the absurd caffeine and sugar intake during the race?  So what if I peed blood for a couple of days afterwards.  Who cares that at least one toenail will be making its final appearance in the next week? (photos not available)

The take home feeling for me was that I was reminded why I love this sport so much.  I set a goal for myself.  I pushed to reach that goal.  I learned, yet again, that I am capable of so much more than I really believe I am capable of doing.  My soul came alive that day and is still riding the high of the post-Ironman buzz.

I can’t articulate what it is about swimming, biking, and running across 140.6 miles that makes me happy.  I can’t say why I am looking forward to doing it again.  The only justification I can offer is that there are so few opportunities in this life to really prove to yourself how incredible you are.  There are a precious few moments or days when you face deep feelings of doubt and in the next moment overcome them.  So few experiences have ever given me the feeling of accomplishment and strength as I feel after doing a race of this caliber. 

I come alive during a race.  My mind clears and it’s like I can see clearly for the first time since last pushing myself that hard.  I find answers I have been looking for and am able to see my life’s struggles and challenges for what they really are: an inconsequential and trivial moment that bears little meaning or significance to my actual life experience.  I am reminded of the temporary nature of all things, that soon this race will be over much like this fleeting life we hold on to so desperately.  I am brought back into the present moment, which is all I ever have to experience.  A race is not about what you just did or what you have ahead of you, it’s about taking that next step and being present in your body and mind when doing so.  Life should be like that.  Perhaps life is like that and we just forget?

Or maybe I’m full of crap with what I just said.  We all know I do it for the shiny medal you get at the finish line!

Why we run and how we run

I geek out so hard over this video!

Firstly, it all makes such perfect sense.  The next time I get a patient in my office that tells me, "my doctor told me it isn't good for me to run," I'll probably respond by saying, "THIS doctor said it is ok to run, and this video explains succinctly why."

I also love a point that isn't discussed by the scientist but really jumps out.  Look at the differences between the barefoot video and the shod (wearing shoes) video.  The exact same runner is a mid foot striker when barefoot but becomes a heel striker when wearing shoes.

An interesting point seeing that the anthropologist is saying we use the Achilles tendon as a spring...  Well, if he's landing on his heel while wearing those sneaks, he will no longer be using the Achilles tendon as a spring.

GOD that was great!  Ok...  off of my soap box now.

Ironman Florida 70.3 Race Report

After arriving in Florida on Friday, I had grand plans of possibly going to the race site and scoping things out or just having a day out on the town to myself.  What needed to be done was some tedious paperwork and note writing to insurance companies.  Instead, I slept.  I arrived at the hotel at 2pm, opened my laptop, and just as quickly closed it.  What was supposed to be a 30 minute cat-nap turned in to a full afternoon and evening of pure sluggery.  Is “sluggery” a word?  Slug-like sounds lame, so I hereby deem “sluggery” a word.

Moving on.

Saturday, the day before the race, proved to be a bit more eventful than originally planned.  Here was the plan:

1.     Check in at the Ironman village

2.     Rescue my bike from Tri Bike Transport and say loving things to it

3.     Go for a quick spin around the area on said bike as I had yet to actually ride it outside

4.     Resume sluggery in some form

The actual plan went something like this:

1.     Check in at the village

2.     Drive the full bike course to get familiar with it (good idea)

3.     Rescue bike as planned

4.     Become witness to the chaos that is my life…

The chaos started when I noticed my front brakes appearing to be too loose, almost like they had been released to change the tire.  The problem was they hadn’t been released.  I tried to fuss with it for a spell and quickly felt inadequate.  It doesn’t take long.  I then found a smart looking beau (and by smart, I think you know what I mean) and he too felt inadequate.  No problem.  I went over to the mechanic and asked him to take a look.  I was told the wait was 2.5 hours and a flat charge of $50.

What the what?  I was thinking this would be an easy fix, something akin to tightening some gadget or doohickey.  2.5 hours and $50?  No, no, I said.  I’m sure I can figure this out myself.

As it turns out, I couldn’t.  Neither could an impressive collection of cheerful athletes and spectators.  At one point we had somewhere’s around 10 people poking and prodding my poor bike.  It was like a multi-user prostate exam.  How embarrassing.  In the end, we failed.  Sheepishly I walked back over to the mechanic and got back in line.

While in line I called my coach.  That is what he is there for, right?  Random questions asked over the phone about mechanical issues with a bike.  He was concerned that it was not a simple fix at all but rather that my brakes might need to be bled.

What is this, medieval medicine?  I thought we were done bleeding people (and bikes) centuries ago.  When mentioning this to the mechanics they woefully reported they didn’t bring their “bleeding kit” with them.  I waited for a punch line but they kept a straight face.  I took it to assume there really was a thing called a bleeding kit. 

And here’s where the story gets annoying… (too late).  After some serious consideration of doing the race with only my rear brakes intact, and intense convincing by my coach that this would be a bad idea, I packed up the bike and drove to a bike shop an hour away for a bleeding session.

Well praise the Lord, after all that my brakes were working again.  The only problem was that it was now approaching 7pm and I had yet to resume the sluggery.  Dammit!  Oh well, I guess this means there will be no test drive of the trusty steed.

Fast forward to race morning.  You know when you hear something so distinctly that you would swear you heard it one way?  Such is the case with how I heard the closing time of the transition area in the morning.  I swear the dude said transition would close at 6:45am.  As it turns out, he apparently said 6:25am.  Imagine my delight to hear as I was leisurely walking towards transition, bike and gear bag at the ready at 6:20, that transition was closing in 5 minutes.  I believe I had a quick outburst of obscenities, likely poisoning the innocence of  near passersby.

In a mad dash I ran to transition area pushing down at least 3 elderly volunteers, dug out my junk from the gear bag, wrestled a pump away from a weaker looking athlete, and for good measure ran in 2 small circles while waving my hands in the air.  By the skin of my teeth, I made it in time.  How relaxing.

My swim start was 7:42.  Translation: stand around and count how many times you have to pee before getting in the water.  The final tally was impressive if I do say so myself.

The Swim:

We all know I’m not a great swimmer.  Middle of the pack is usually about right for me.  I’m not interested, or capable, of fighting it out with the strong swimmers.  Nor am I interested in getting clobbered repeatedly in the face by a stray foot attached to a breast-stroking swimmer in the back.  The joy of waved starts is that you’re surrounded by all of the above.  Fast people who started after you who find the most direct path to the finish line is directly over your body, and slow people you’re passing who have fantastically dense calcaneal bones that smartly find their way to the bridge of your nose at regular intervals.

That said, it was refreshing to see different colored caps now and then that started in front of me.  It was one of the more physical swims I have had in recent memory, which may be due to the weird course.  Instead of a big “U” shape, we went in a big “M” shape.  Lots of buoys to navigate = lots of swimmers in a small space.  There were more fists to the back of the head and heels to the face than I generally prefer.

All in all though, not a bad swim.  I climbed out of the shoreline sludge in 46:42, about what was expected.  Wouldn’t hurt my feelings to shave off 5-10 minutes though in future races.

The Bike:

Beginning my inaugural outdoor ride I was filled with excitement to see how my training was going to affect my performance and get a feel for my badass new bike.  Right off the bat, I noticed 3 problems.

-in my morning rush to get in and out of transition, I forgot to fill my water bottles.  First stop in 15 miles…I was gonna be thirsty.

-despite my seemingly strong efforts, I was getting passed like I was barely trying.  That hurts the soul as much as the legs, I find.

-my oh-so-fancy powermeter capabilities were not working.  All winter long figuring out my FTP and training zones, designing a race day plan on ideal wattage, spending embarrassing amounts of money to set this up, all for not.  Looks like I was on my own and had to rely on perceived exertion and cadence.

Not much I could do about problems 1 and 3.  I’d just have to get water later and I’d just have to deal with not knowing my exact power.  Problem 2 though was becoming rather vexing.  I felt like I was working somewhat hard and I was getting passed over like the jello mold at Thanksgiving.  My instinct said to push harder!  My training was solid and I should be able to keep up with these people, right?  But Lord knows, I will never forget the lesson learned in IMMT by pushing too hard on the bike early on.  I kept my perceived exertion where it should be and ignored the troves of athletes passing me.

My patience lasted for 5 miles. Then it stopped lasting.  Assuming my training was what it should have been and that something was wrong, I pulled over.  Imagine my delight at the irony of what I found.  My front brake, that just yesterday was not capable of reaching the wheel, was now ever so slightly constantly touching the wheel!  No wonder I had been passed so many times.  I was pushing against a lightly deployed hydraulic brake for 5 miles.

I unlatched the wheel, gave it a shimmy and shake, and saw I was in the clear.  Smooth sailing from here on out, right?  Nope.  Not 2 minutes later I was feeling slow again.  Pulling over, I see my brakes back to their old games.  I unlatched.  I shimmied.  I shaked…shooked…shook.  On the road again and feeling good.  It didn’t last.  For whatever reason, my newly fixed front brakes were now too fixed.  I had not choice but to release them.

The irony is delicious, no?  After all I went through the day before to make sure the damn things were working only to have to release them during race day and rely solely on the rear brakes.  To answer the age-old question: can you do a half Ironman with only rear brakes? The answer is yes.  Probably still better to have both sets, just sayin’.

With the stupid brake thing now fixed, it turns out I am kinda fast on the bike!  I was passing people, always saying cheerful things to them as I did, and was feeling great.  I wonder how my time would have been different had I not started the bike portion as I did, but I was still pretty happy with my result.  I averaged 19mph and came back to transition in about 2:52 bike time.  Not bad for an April race.

The Run:

Apparently I was not able to accurately estimate what 200 watts should feel like.  I started the run on, how shall I say, jelly legs.  Perhaps due in part to the amount of jelly donuts I had eaten over the winter, but presumably more so due to pushing a bit too hard on the bike.

I also hadn’t ran/rode the run course assuming it was going to be flat.  It’s Florida.  There are no hills in Florida, right?  You see where this is going.

The second half of the run loop (of which there were 3 loops of the run course) was indeed wonderfully flat.  The first half of the loop had some bitchin’ hills in it.  Add that to jelly legs and weather and humidity I hadn’t felt since last August and you can imagine how delightful my run was. 

My expected average pace was an 8:30 min/mile average or better.  I came in closer to 11:00.  There just wasn’t enough gas in the tank and those hills got walked.

As it turned out, the run was my highest age group ranking of all 3 disciplines.  Apparently all of us struggled with the run, which helped stop the hemorrhaging of confidence I felt at race’s end.  Still would have liked to pull in at least a sub 2-hour run.  Ended up being a 2:17 half marathon.

Post race pondering:

As a whole it was a great race and I’m proud to have finished where I did this early in the season.  I have a lot of work to do between now and my second attempt at the beast that is Mont Tremblant in August. 

The good news is that this race doubled my enthusiasm and energy to keep pushing forward.  This time last year I was just really starting my training, which never really reached respectable levels.  This year, in a word, I feel like I’m crushing it.  It’s a nice change to remember why you love something.  It’s a nice change to remember I love being a triathlete. 

Next event is a 7-day bike ride from San Francisco to LA, covering 545 miles in June.  The real countdown however has a big Canadian mountain at the top of it.  4 months until Ironman Mont Tremblant.  I plan to take no prisoners and eat no poutine. 

Ok, that’s a lie.  I’ll definitely eat poutine.  Maybe I’ll wait until after the race though…