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…

Training report: Just like a fish

I found myself in a strange environment a few times during these last couple of weeks.  It was like a normal room except that I usually had to be in a basement to find it, there was a strong smell of gross chemicals, and there was a huge hole in the ground with a lot of water inside.

Perhaps unrelated, but there was also an alarming number of people who clearly had issues as children when it came to sharing toys.

That's right people...I have been swimming!  Perhaps this doesn't seem to warrant celebratory exclamation marks, but I assure you, it does.  I am a lousy swimmer and to be frank, rarely do I enjoy a session in the pool.  I feel like it's just like running, only soggy and without any of the joy.

The rest of these past 2 weeks has been a well distributed smattering of running, which is FINALLY happening outside again, and bike riding indoors.

My only concern is that I have a race this coming Sunday in Haines City, Florida to the tune of 70.3 miles.  My training has been pretty spot on, but I have yet to ride my new bike outdoors to date.  I'm not so crazy about having the first long ride I do on this new bike be during a race, but what can you do?  I'll ride some the day before the race to work the kinks out and hopefully not bust my face on the road.  However, I guess if there is face busting to be done, better to get it over with before race day!

So here's to a week of tapering and mental preparation.  My body is where it is going to be on race day and I have to say that I am pretty excited to be heading to my first race of what potentially is going to be a fantastic season.

As for what I expect, it's hard to say.  Partly this is just the first race of the season to shake off the winter cobwebs, but I would be lying to myself to say I didn't have a tentative goal in mind.  I surely would like to cross that line in 5:30 or better but you never know what you'll face on race day.

Should you find yourself either racing or spectating next Sunday in central Florida and see a moderately  tattoo-covered athlete looking like he's questioning his life's choices, say something encouraging to him.  Possibilities include "you're doing great," or "finish strong," or "love-handles and thinning hair are super sexy."

Wish me luck!

Swim Camp?!?

For any of you who know me well, a blog entry titled "swim camp" must have you intrigued.  Me going to swim camp is about as likely to happen as Kathy Griffin going to a religious based finishing school.  Let's qualify that as not so likely.

And yet, hold on to your spandex, I did indeed go to swim camp...on purpose! I wasn't even tricked into going.  Forget that, I actually paid for the stupid thing!  What the what?

Think I'm exaggerating?  Here's all the backstory you need: last year before the gun went of for IronMan Mont Tremblant, my swim training consisted of 2 workouts...total.  One was an open water swim in a lake that lasted about an hour, and the second lasted 32 minutes in the basement of a NYC pool.

God how I wish that was dramatically enhanced to make this a better story, but that truly is how much I trained for an IronMan swim.  It went super well, as I'm sure you can imagine.

So now that you know how much I love swim training, picture me on a plane headed to Ft Lauderdale for 3 days of nothing but swimming.  Was I drunk?  You'd better damn well believe it.

I'm about to say something inflammatory.  A truly offensive and disrespectful statement.  I'll likely offend many of you and have certainly offended myself...

I enjoyed swim camp...

Gross!  What a filthy thing to say, right?  I'm ashamed and only hope my Mom is not reading this, never mind my coach.  Imagine what he would do with such information.  He might actually expect me to swim before my next race.  Oooooohhhh, I just got chills!

But you know, there really is something about flying somewhere (warm climate helps) and having nothing to do but pretend you're a professional athlete.  Wake up, eat breakfast, swim, eat lunch, take a nap, go for a quick run, stretch, swim, eat dinner, go to bed, repeat.  I could get used to that schedule.

So the fact that I didn't hate my life and spew curses at my fellow swimmers was pretty surprising, but the coolest part of the whole weekend was some of the company we shared the pool with.

I'm a tattoo fan as you might have gathered and there was some pretty impressive ink on a few of the athletes.  Picture 5 interlinking rings of different colors...  Yep, there were freakin' Olympian level swimmers in the lanes right next to us.

Partly this made us all feel like short, unattractive girls at the school dance who sit in the corner with no one asking them to dance.  Ok, maybe it just make me feel like a short and unattractive girl.  Welcome to my life.  But watching these guys swim was an incredible experience.  Holy hell can they move!

And that was the highlight.  I don't fancy myself someday becoming an Olympic swimmer, as I'm probably more likely to sprout gluten-free baked goods from my nose, but it was pretty amazing to swim with the likes of these dudes.  To see what the human body is capable of.  To see how efficient someone can move when so well trained.  To see how damn good you can look in a speedo if you work out 30 hours a week...

Am I a swimmer? Nope. Will I be super excited tomorrow when I do my obligatory swim session of the day? Highly unlikely. But perhaps, and bare with me here, I just might not hate it.  I just might get in that water and do my workout without whining like a little bitch.

And that my friends is progress.

Weekly review: a week on sneezes and sniffles

Perhaps it was the screaming crash back to reality after a monumental trip in Italy, but this week was chalked up mostly to gooey tissues and zinc lozenges.  Yes indeed, I got a cold.  At least I had the decency to wait until I got back home, right?

No complaints here though, I promise.  Reliving the wonders of this last trip more than got me through an achy body and puffy eyes.

I was able to eek out a spin class on Monday, the first day of the cold, and thought I was dying.  Granted it was the first workout in a couple weeks after living the life of a starving sloth in Europe, but that class was hard!  I was lightheaded and even a bit queazy, which was concerning as I didn't know I had a cold yet.  I thought I was just SUPER out of shape!

Imagine my relief later on when my hair started hurting.  That's right, my hair.  Why is it that when a virus is taking hold of your body, your hair and scalp are the first to be symptomatic.  Please tell me that happens to other people and I'm not just overly follicularly sensitive?  I'm sensitive about it falling out, but hurting seems different.

And while we're on the topic of cold-induced questions, why do zinc lozenges have to be so nasty?  It's not the taste, as they are a delightful cherry sensation, but rather the gross cotton-mouth effect they have afterwards.  I swear my throat hurts more after a lozenge than it did beforehand.  Can't I just slurp on a tasty menthol lozenge and swallow a zinc pill?  Why must the zinc be ingested in lozenge form?  Anyone?

These are the problems I face in my life.  I'm glad you're starting to understand how difficult I have it.

Well here we are at week's end, and the cold has finally been bested (thank you zinc lozenges).  I performed somewhat adequately yesterday for a 1.5 hour spin class, and surprised myself today during an interval/weight training session with treadmill sprints.

The diet has also been so clean it squeaks.  I started my 45 Paleo challenge on Friday and have been going strong ever since, with the small exception being a celebratory glass of Pinot Noir on Friday night.

So all in all, this week was a recovery from vacation, grueling as it was, and a great start to the next phase of training and healthy living.  I know it is still a ways off, but my first race is looming.  April 2014 starts off the season with a half IronMan in New Orleans!

The clock ticks...

How Italy made me a better athlete

I know this isn’t a travel blog, but how often does a guy get to go to Italy and write about it?  I just spent 9 days in this incredible country and wanted to tell you about my experiences and how they have made me a better triathlete (hopefully).

First of all, if you know me personally or read this blog on a semi-regular basis, I don’t have to tell you that I didn’t do a lick of training and ate like it was going out of style.  Let’s chalk this trip up to a 9-day aggressive tapering phase with some impressive carb loading.  Don’t forget the gallons of wine.  I like to think there were some antioxidants in there or something.  But even if I’m wrong, it was worth it.  That was some well-rehearsed and fully intended gluttony, and I’m more of a man for doing it.  Literally - there is now more of me.

First time I've used a spoon to eat hot chocolate.  Perugia is known for it's chocolate.  Think a melted bar of the best dark chocolate you've ever had, with some hot heavy cream mixed in.  Yeah...like that.

This particular glass of Chianti made me hate American vineyards...

But let me tell you what I saw, what I experienced, how this trip changed me in some way.  I won’t get too heavy on the historical facts and details, frankly because I doubt I remember them accurately.  But seeing as I usually connect with the human-interest story in a tale, that is what I am coming home with to share.

Rome

I saw some pretty impressive things in Rome and to list them here would be an exercise in fact checking and reader boredom.  I did get to see the Pope and stood in the piazza as he blessed the crowd.  Now I’m nowhere near Catholic, but I’ll take a blessing from the Pope any day.  Especially from a Pope as cool as this one.  I’m sure I’ll be winning my next race as a direct result of this blessing.  Boom…Pope style.

What I did see however that slapped me in the face like a drunken sorority girl was the Coliseum.  This place is, and was, somewhat humbling.  Never mind the brilliant feat of engineering and architecture, I was more struck by how incredibly messed up this place was.

In it’s glory, this structure was the site of 3,000 people and 9,000 animals dying in a matter of 100 days, all for the sake of entertainment.  First, the slaves or prisoners would be put into the arena, unarmed and naked, left to fight against animals brought in mostly from Africa.  Picture large cats, elephants, and the like.  After the animals tore these unlucky victims to pieces, they were then slaughtered in kind for the crowd.  The floor of the arena was covered in sand to soak up the blood.

This mention is not to pass judgment.  Who am I to do so?  It is rather an opportunity that showed me what life was like for people in a different time.  The next time I am upset about something trivial in my life, I should remember that I am not being eaten by a bear at Giant’s stadium while naked and unarmed.  I’ll count today as a good day.

In Rome I learned something to make me a better athlete: perspective.

Assisi

So this joint is the burial place of St Francis, the dude San Francisco is named after.  I mention him because his story is pretty noteworthy.  Born into a very wealthy family with privileges galore, he eventually renounced his family and wealth to live the life of a poor priest who catered to those less fortunate.  This stood out to me, much like the story of The Buddha does.

To be of the mindset to give up your life of comforts for something you believe in is an impressive task, and one for which I don’t know that I would have the strength.  We all make sacrifices, but few of us commit at this level.  I give up certain things and make tough choices sometimes, but never have I walked away from my life to do what I thought was right.  It’s impressive.

In Assisi I learned something to make me a better athlete: sacrifice.

Sienna

This place was awesome!  I had never heard of it before arriving, but check this story out.

Sienna is laid out into several districts, 17 to be exact.  Each of these districts is assigned a certain mascot if you will: Shell, Unicorn, Ram, Elephant, and so on.  But this goes far beyond living in a certain neighborhood like SoHo or the East Village.  No, no.  If you are born in the Shell district, you are a Shell for life.  There is even a ceremonial non-religious baptism into the district of your birth. 

Here’s where it gets interesting.  Twice a year, the town has a horse race in the town square where the districts compete with each other.  The winning districts horse brings said district ultimate bragging rights for the next full year.

Now listen how intense this gets.  No matter where you presently live in the town, or in the world for that matter, during the 3 days before the race, you move back to your home district.  You might be an Elephant and be married to a Ram.  During those 3 days before, you leave your own home and move back to your district.  For those few days a year, you are fierce rivals!

Talk about domestic dispute!  To hear the locals talk about this event, you would imagine it is the most intensive athletic competition ever held.  They take it more seriously than we do our Super bowl. 

In Sienna I learned something to make me a better athlete: competition.

Venice

Here is a city that is built on stilts.  That’s right, things were so bad back then with all of the wars going on, the Venetians had no other choice than to go a few miles out into the water, shove some tree trunks into the ocean floor, and then put platforms on top to build a city.

They did that hundreds of years ago, and I can’t get a pedestrian bridge from Hoboken to Manhattan?  I want answers…

There is something about doing things that are impossible that really clicks with me as an athlete, and building a city on top of the water at that time sounds pretty impossible. 

In Venice I learned something to make me a better athlete: setting goals that are hard.

Florence

In Florence I saw the statue of David which made me realize how freakin’ hot I could be if I did all of my training.  I’m totally going to start that now.