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A few weeks ago I took part in my second Half Ironman distance race in Boise, ID. I thought I should at least post some photos and write down some thoughts. So, here it is:

Most people seem surprised by why I would go to Idaho for a race but Boise is a cool town with good crowd support, and it’s not that far a drive from the Bay Area. It’s a place we love to visit, race or no race. As a bonus we like to camp in the mountains around Idaho that it seems the rest of the world has yet to discover. Many parts of Idaho could be National Parks, but fortunately they are not. Boise is kind of like our Hawaii. The place we go to relax, eat good food, and not do anything in particular.

PRE-RACE

I was the usual disaster of nerves before this race. Actually for weeks leading up to it. Somehow running doesn’t get me stressed like a big triathlon. Still, I knew where I was going this year and what needed to be done. The line to register was insanely long but it went smoothly. I got my bike ready and took it out to Luck Peak Friday afternoon to check in. The wind was blowing and it looked like a thunderstorm could soak us any minute. A guy I talked to in transition was from Boise and said every training ride but one that year had been in the wind no matter what time he tried to work it. Ah, the Boise wind. I’m thinking that will always be a factor here.

The next morning I got up and had plenty of time to get ready since the race started at noon. We headed downtown and to drop off my run bag. This is how the transition looked:

Of course when I got there that afternoon during the race it was completely filled with bikes and I had a hard time finding my bike spot. After that we went back to the hotel for half an hour or so and I got all my things together, all packed into multiple bags to try and stay organized, then headed up to the reservoir. We parked below the dam easily and had a picnic on the lawn. At 11am we made our way up to transition which gave me about 30 min to get ready. All I had to do was add my computer, get my tires pumped up and fill my aero bottle. This time I didn’t lose anything!

SWIM (1.2 miles)
Time: 49:10

When it was our wave’s turn, we leaped off the dock and into the freezing water to await the start. At something between 51 and 53 degrees (depending on who you asked) it was colder than anything I’d swum in before. My hands froze and ached so I lifted them above the water. Looking around, everyone else was doing the same thing like we were all doing a tread water test. I tried to dip my face in the water to get used to it, but it was hopeless. It turns out low-50 degree water is much more unpleasant that high-50s water.

When our wave finally got to start I started to swim, but had to stop almost instantly. I’d breath, put my head back into the water and feel like I’d taken no breath at all. I looked up and started to breast stroke and realized about a dozen people around me were also breast stroking to regain their composure. It was like a panic attack but I didn’t actually panic. I was just so cold and it was taking my breath away. On top of that, water seemed to be getting in my goggles, water was getting up my nose, and I was trying to swallow half the lake. Clearly this was not going too well. I was less than one buoy down the course and I started to look around for a boat. Maybe if I bailed out we could spend the day doing something more fun that drowning in a freezing cold Idaho lake. How was I going to swim the whole course like this?

After alternating between drowning and breast stroke for a bit I finally started to breath again and make some progress on the swim course. My sighting was a total failure in the chop and seemed to be using much more energy than I was used to. I noticed the sun was right in my eyes too when I breathed on the right. It had a halo around it which I contemplated for a bit and decided it was my goggles though I’d never noticed that about my goggles before. Oh well, a mystery, but I could use it to sight. So each breath I’d make sure the sun was in the same place and then about every 20 breathes I’d make sure I was still in good shape as far as moving up the line of buoys. That seemed to work fairly well.

On the return stretch I got into an ok rhythm. I was actually swimming pretty straight but would stop occasionally to check where I was going. Out there was a pretty confusing mess of buoys and waves and people. Even when you could see where you were going it didn’t always make sense. At one point the course cut in close to the rock sides of the reservoir and I instinctively put my food down on it. It kind of stung and I wondered if I’d cut my foot on it. Also, had I gone so far off course? No, I was swimming a line about 20 yards off the shortest line and still headed for the second turn buoy so I was ok. Back to swimming.

The final turn was the so-called short leg back to the boat ramp. My stroke was going ok by now, but I still decided to stop occasionally and make sure I was swimming the best path. There was a lot of people stopped in the water around here or holding onto boats so navigating through all that was a challenge. At one point I restarted my swim with a frog kick and my calf cramped up painfully. So painful I thought I’d torn it or something. I wondered how I was going to bike or run with a torn calf. What a weird way to end my day. But it subsided and I didn’t feel anything more from it the rest of the day. Something new I guess. Turns out lots of others had calf cramps too.

I made it to the boat ramp and was pretty glad to get out. The people around me didn’t look too good so I imagined neither did I. 49 minutes was only 2 minutes faster than last year when I swam with one arm! That was a little disappointing. I needed to work on my open water skills because that is a clear limiter with my swimming now. Maybe ice breaking skills too.

T1
Time: 6:36

Transition was mostly uneventful except I tore my bib and took maybe 30 seconds trying to make a new hole for it. In the end I just tucked it into my shorts and got out of there. This is probably my favorite photo from the day. I look like I’m racing a triathlon:

BIKE (56 miles)
3:13:09

It was a relief to get on the bike. Time to have some fun. I’m more of a land person than a water person so as long as the bike kept working (please, please, no more flats!) I was pretty comfortable with this. We spent a lot of time since Boise last year biking, keeping it as our dominate long workout each weekend. In October we rode our first century. In February we trained for the Death Valley Spring century and suffered it out in 30 mile/hr head winds all day.

I divided the course up mentally and had a plan for each section. My strategy was based mostly on what I’d learned from last year and what I’d worked on the previous 12 months.

Last year the wind tore everyone up and being new to the biking world really struggled into the wind. Instead of pushing the pace I fixated on my power. Some people went by me, sure, but I was doing the right thing by watching my power and hoping for a break back into town. My pre-race plan was to ride 150 watts for the first hour and then increase from there. In fact, I did that (I rode 149 watts avg the first hour), so that was right on even though I hardly used my big ring the whole way out. So far so good, but at about an hour and a half I climbed a hill and after that my watts went down the tube. My average watts by the time I was done with the bike leg was around 110. I coasted it home and really it was all I had.

This year I’ve concentrated on endurance. I decided I wasn’t using the power I had so we went through two cycles training for 100 mile rides. By the winter I rode for 7 hours with over 160 watts average (mostly into a headwind). I’d shown I could do it and that if I could translate that into a 3 hours of HIM level effort I would be much improved.

So my plan was to go harder earlier on than what I’d think of as even pacing. My reasoning was the last year the course had significant headwinds on the way out of town so I’d try and get through those sections the fastest before the afternoon winds picked up. I wondered if this was wise. This year I felt like if I kept to 170 watts on the way out I’d be able to hold it together for the return journey with my better endurance. Or, I’d at least see what happened and learn something to take to my training to come.

But enough plans and power meters and hopes and dreams.

Out on the bike this time was seriously fun and the P2C was pretty much awesome. A big difference was I never felt uncomfortable on the bike this year, my position is so much better and feels powerful. At the time (and especially compared to last year), I really felt like I could ride a HIM bike leg and race a bike in general. I passed probably around 100 people on the bike, but unfortunately I was only catching the age group ahead of us, the twenty-something woman, not the rest of my age group. If I was a 20-something woman I’d have been pleased with my increased position but I knew it was a bad sign. At the time wondered how much faster I needed to go. About a mile/hr it turned out. Most of my age group rides shockingly fast. Sigh.

Finishing up the bike ride the guy next to me coming into transition described the course as the bike ride from hell. I couldn’t have agreed less, he must live somewhere flat. I felt my bike ride rocked. I’ve been learning how to ride a bike fast for only 18 months and I think it’s starting to come together. It’s no flat course, nor was it without wind, but I rode the flat parts over 20 miles/hr, the down hills 30+ and with the climbs and the no-pass zone etc averaged about 17.5 miles/hr. I’ve never really ridden a bike that fast for so long, so in that way it’s progress and I’m now in sight of where I need to be. After taking 4 hours last year, I hoped to get my bike down the 3:30, and in the end rode under 3:15.

Still, I have mixed feelings about my bike ride because of my age group position, which was bottom 25%. That was a lot of training for a mediocre result. Fortunately most people just think it’s awesome I finished, but I would really like to do a little better than that and feel like I was racing with my age group pack. So what to do…

1) Looking at the power graph I think I can already ride faster, with no more training, just some more experience. I was suckered into feeling at the time that my speed was good enough. I’m going fast, right? Why go faster? Save it for the run. When I’m doing 20 miles and hour but my power is dipping, I should be going faster. Everyone else is.

2) My power graph reveals holes, the places where I backed off. In one long section I rode behind a woman on a cool looking bike. It was a gradual uphill section. Why did I ride 130 watts the whole way along this section? I think I was feeling relatively fine and was kind of over passing people. I think the reason was that in my head the woman in front of me looked like she was moving along strong at a time when I was starting to feel the fatigue appear and I was content to follow her. 15 mins later I got wise and passed her and never saw her again. It’s important not to get suckered into too slow a pace.

3) My power is wavy when the course rolls. I should be on the power more going downhill or when the terrain eases up. It might be just a few moments but it creates real dips in my power and I could be going faster. Working to smooth out the power on the rollers should be a focus for the next year. I know how to keep my power down but have a harder time keeping it up when the going gets easier.

4) Maybe more endurance.

T2
4:12

Last year someone grabbed my bike and took it to its spot and handed me my transition bag. This year I was totally on my own and for the life of me couldn’t find my bag. There was thousands of bikes in transition by the time I arrived, and I knew the lamp post it was across from, but I still couldn’t find it. Eventually a volunteer came over and helped me.

After that it went smooth. Changed shoes, took an expresso Gu, put on my hat and headed out of there.

RUN (13.1 miles)
Time: 2:25:23

I was pretty excited with my bike split, especially since it was 47 minutes faster than last year. My legs didn’t feel so bad though they were certainly heavy for the first couple of miles. I was ready to finish this up strong. But then something happened, slowly, and my splits got longer and longer. My first two miles went by in 19 minutes, which wasn’t too bad and then I started to feel ok running. After that: 10:00s, then 11:00s, a 13 min/mile or so…

So what happened? Why did I run 25 minutes slower than my open half marathon time? Aid stations, and my paranoia about getting down food and water so that something bad didn’t happen further into the run. Perhaps I should have swallowed what I could and kept running. Instead I would take forever to get what I needed and basically try to look after myself at each stop. Standing by the last drop trash cans trying to down the last of a cup of water is probably a waste of time. And with an aid station every mile this really added up.

While this problem is perplexing, here are a few thoughts for reference next time:

1) I suspect I came off the bike dehydrated. That always seems to be a downward spiral that causes my stomach’s lack of interest in taking in food or liquid. The solution to that is fairly easy: drink more on the bike. As it was I drank almost 60oz in 3 hours.

2) I should consider only water and getting as much of it as possible down, but if its not down by the last drop, keep running. Maybe one cup for a swallow and one cup for cooling if needed. Stay away from the Powerbar stuff they have now. Then replace calories with Gu (or blow it off if needed — I could probably get by with 2 Gus but this time tried to take in 4 to see if that would help). I should also practice taking cold water while under stress.

3) The expresso Gu followed by multiple caffeine Gus maybe isn’t a good idea under race stress. Try non-caffeine next time.

Anyway, the run was cooler this year and Patty reported I looked pretty good this time. I caught a few people in my age group (and lots that weren’t of course). Again plenty of people were walking so I went by them. At the end, in what was maybe fitting, my finish was overshadowed by someone in my age group flying past me to take another spot away. Sigh.

TOTAL TIME: 6 hours 38 min.

Race reports, Triathlon

As we drove to Death Valley down the central valley an incoming email buzzed my iPhone. It was from AdventureCORPs. Prediction for the weekend was for near freezing conditions and possibly rain and snow. The email began with “I’m not trying to scare anyone…” But we were scared. We signed up for this ride as a way to motivate us to continue riding though the winter, but still we struggled with the weather. It remains somewhat a mystery how you ride and stay warm, dry and comfortable. But we had overcoming things which previously scared us though: we could now set out in the rain and not be totally in fear. While we’d come a ways, a bad weather century ride was something we weren’t fully prepared for, mentally or physically.

My fitness on the bike seemed to have come around so I was looking forward to a fast ride. We did a couple of 70+ mile rides and a collection of 50 mile rides. In our last ride we threw in a climb at the half way mark that set a new 30 min power record for me (one not on a trainer at least), and that was after hours of riding. That’s not to say I’ve suddenly become a great cyclist, but signs we there that we’d improved. I felt ready for anything. Well anything except bad weather.

Death Valley is one of our favorite places. It’s also the scene of most of our great outdoor disasters. The place has a way to take a toll on man and his equipment. There was the time when we ripped two 4WD tires apart up some jeep trail and ended up dragging the backend of the car miles, followed by hitchhiking through the night. I still think of that trip fondly, especially the part where it also started to snow. Another time a storm came though so hard it broke a pole on our 4 season tent and launched it way up a canyon, completely destroying it. That was fun too.

Thursday night we camped up Echo Canyon, the same place as the tent disaster. It’s a beautiful place when it’s not destroying things. Behind you is a slot canyon that you can drive up to reach a set of mine ruins to explore. In front of you the scene drops 1600ft to the Death Valley floor and then rises 11,000 ft up into the snow covered Panamint range.

Friday morning started still. The sun rise hit the mountains cycling them through a range of pinks and purples and oranges. Even Kelly enjoyed the view. Later in the morning, with Kelly’s Grandfather (Patty’s father) in tow, we headed up the canyon to check out the mines.

In the afternoon we drove the course to check out the climb and by evening the wind had really picked up, especially at Furnace Creek. By the time we headed over for the AdventureCORPs Yoga the wind was blowing so hard it was difficult to even walk in the RV park. All you could do was laugh it was blowing so hard. We knew they’d run the ride regardless, but we couldn’t imagine riding in that kind of wind. The Yoga turned out to be fun though as we huddled in the shelter behind the buildings there and the event organizer led us through a yoga routine yelling above the wind.

Instead of camping we cleared out the back of the car and slept in there parked in the same site as Patty’s parents. It wasn’t the best nights sleep listening to the wind and feeling the car being buffeted around. Hope for even going for a ride was fading but the morning brought workable weather, it seemed. It wasn’t too cold, it wasn’t raining or snowing and the wind was nothing like the night before. The ride was a go and optimism filled the air.

Furnace Creek to Badwater

Distance: 17.3 miles
Time: 1hrs 52min
Power: 156 avg, 169 NP (graph)

The second wave was ready to head off as we circled behind the group so we decided to head off with them. The pace was easy as we headed uphill from Furnace Creek towards the intersection with Badwater Rd. I was feeling the pace was a little too easy and went by a few people with Patty following behind me.

As we reached the top we turned towards Badwater, about 17 miles away. I instinctively changed up to my big ring and thought we’d be off but I then noticed a problem. We’d just turned into a stiff headwind. The usual still mornings in Death Valley were not working that way this morning. The wind was blowing strong from the South and the next 40 or so miles of the course were directly down the valley, south, with no shelter. Just one big wind tunnel. Of course it took a while to think in those terms, for the moment I changed back down gears and started to slog it out.

We were averaging about 10 miles per hour. Long gradual climbs became 6 mile/hr 200+ watts. It was equivalent in effort to real climbing but yet they looked almost flat. Wind is the unseen enemy. Finally a top would appear and I’d barely change out of my lowest gear as I pushed on down the hill at maybe 11 or 12 miles/hr.

At 1 hour in Patty and I stopped and ate a Gu each. Patty was having trouble drinking because she needed both hands on her handlebars in order to not be thrown off into the desert as the wind shifted around. She took in a little fluid and I was glad for my aero bottle although I was having trouble being on the aerobars in the wind as well. Here we ran into Patty’s father and Kelly for the first time. They asked if we were ok, beginning a trend of theirs of turning up while we were stopped somewhere. We handed off our warm gloves since the cold wasn’t going to be our problem today at least.

Occasionally we’d be overtaken by some riders from the third wave. One group went by in a pace line and while I couldn’t catch the back of them the trailing riders seemed to be getting a good break. I had nobody ahead of me to break the wind and it was brutal. One guy who went by chatted for a bit. We agreed how demoralizing making such slow progress was. Moving forward like that, with vast distances ahead in the wide open desert floor and making 10 miles/hr progress was hard to weigh against how far we had to ride. It seemed hard to imaging pushing into the wind for more than 40 miles, then doing the climb, and then riding back. Even the thought of the returning tailwind didn’t make it seem possible, we wouldn’t even make the cutoffs. How many hours till the turnaround? Five? Six? Instead of that I found comfort in my power meter. I settled on trying to ride around 150 watts, keeping under 200 for the tough bits, figuring I had a long way ahead of me. The most important thing was that I could see I was doing something as the miles came so slow.

I pulled into Badwater a few minutes ahead of Patty. Nobody there seemed to know what the deal was with the cutoffs. We were already an hour late and the day was young. We ate a little food but forgot to fill our water bottles. In my mind I’d not recalibrated the next aid station distance to take into account the slow speed we were moving at.

Badwater to Ashford Mills

Distance: 27.4 miles
Time: 3hrs 50min
Power: 136 avg, 148 NP (graph)

Back on the road and it was more of the same. I slowly pushed myself past a guy and said “are we having fun yet?” “Oh God Yes!” he replied. Patty told me she’d decided to make it a metric century and turn back at 30 miles, or the mile 29 mile marker along the road. I told her to sit behind me and I’d pull her, but it didn’t help, she fell off my back wheel and was gone again. The people on the course were now quite spread out, but usually I could see someone a ways ahead. The vastness was a little overwhelming, such a small bike in such a big place, in such awful conditions. I saw little choice but to keep pushing forward. The road through this section was more or less flat, but would wander out towards the center of the valley and back following the coast line of the ancient lake. The wind grew worse out the further towards the center of the valley you got, or was plagued with cross winds, and at times I was barely moving. For a moment I actually longed to be closer to the valley’s side walls for the ‘relief’ of a steady 20 miles/hr straight-into-the-face wind to deal with.

I stopped a couple of times to wait for Patty, once a little before the mile 29 marker and then again at the marker. Eventually she came into view and looked broken. She was ready to go back but I decided I would keep going at least until the Ashford Mills aid station. The assumption was, of course, that the ride back wouldn’t be so bad. I’d come a long way to ride and complete this century, and trained all winter. That’s a lot of traffic lights on the road out of Danville, freezing mornings where we hardly saw another cyclist all day, my awesome run of flat tires… We’d convinced Patty’s parents to drive down there and look after our daughter so we could do this. I wasn’t feeling like giving up even though I knew deep down all my energy was blowing away in the wind and I may not have it in me to get back. This was uncharted territory for my endurance.

We said good bye with a hug and we headed in different directions. Back to my 150-160 watts, back to very slow progress. I started to pass some people, clearly anyone around me was starting to fade. I ran out of water too as hours went by. And running out of liquid also meant I was not getting the calories I was counting on but I wasn’t thinking too clearly either because I could have compensated with the Gus I was carrying. My heart rate was also up though this section as the terrain became more hilly and my vision was vaguely blurry.

Eventually I rode into Ashford Mills, almost 4 hours after leaving Badwater, and was seriously close to being done.

Expensive bikes and people lay on the ground not moving anywhere. Nobody’s race wheels were helping them too much today but there sure was some good looking bikes lying in the sand. Patty’s father and Kelly turned up just after I arrived. They said Patty had ‘flown’ back to Badwater on the tail wind. That sounded good, perhaps I could do this. My spirits lifted. Then again I was beat and still had a 1300ft climb to do before even the turnaround. Kelly said I should do it. After they left I decided to give it a try.

Climb to Jubilee Pass and back to Ashford Mills

Distance: 12.6 miles
Time: 1hr 15min
Power: 120 avg, 159 NP (the climb was 168 avg, 177 NP) (graph)

As I headed out the wind was actually still for the first time as the 6% climb ran perpendicular to the valley. It wasn’t as bad as I imagined it, averaging about 180 watts in my lowest gear. Unlike the wind I could see my goal and measure my energy against the visible obstacle. Interestingly, it really didn’t feel too much worse on my legs than the previous 5 hours and it was quite easy to settle in. I stopped a couple of times because I thought it seemed like a good idea to take it a little conservatively, but before long I reached the top. I felt a moment of victory. I’d been on the bike so long, but was only at the 52 mile turnaround. It was 1:30pm, over 6.5 hours after the start and over 5.5 hours of ride time.

The organizer took my bib number and a photo of me. He thanked me for coming so far out on the course. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, probably that I should have given up long ago. I took a moment, clipped in, and headed back down the hill. There was a certain amount of head wind on the descent but I mostly coasted to save energy and regretted giving my Jacket to Patty’s parents. It was cold, but the scenery was was worth the climb as I looked down into the valley and the clouds and light moving in across the mountains. I still wasn’t sure I had another 50 miles in me, 40 by the time I got back down to Ashford Mills, but if the weather cooperated I might make it back before the 10 hour cutoff.

Back at Ashford Mills I grabbed food, some water and used the port-a-potty, but didn’t stay long this time, I needed to get moving. As I clipped in the aid station people were talking over the radio, asking if it was raining at furnace creek. No, they said, it was dust, and the wind was coming from the north. THE NORTH??!! A grown went though the aid station. I was looking a 40 miles of riding north to get back to Furnace Creek. My response? Denial. I peddled off.

Ashford Mills to the end

Distance: 13.2 miles
Time: 1hr 03min
Power: 124 avg, 143 NP (graph)

For the next six miles I flew, carried along by a glorious tailwind. I sat at 20-24 miles/hr on the flats, 30+ mile/hr on the downhills without even pushing hard. I remembered for a moment that biking could be fun. I started to think I’d be back in a couple of hours at this rate and that my decision to continue to the turn around point was the right one. Life was good. But that was crazy thinking and altogether short lived. Up the valley the salt flats and sky ominously merged into a dark wall that looked a like a mix of rain and dust, maybe. Still, I hoped I could get somewhere near to Furnace Creek before I hit that or any wind change.

It was not to be. Within a moment my tail wind turned to head wind. It was like hitting a wall. I was still 35 miles out and my speed was down to 6 miles/hr and power back over 160 watts. I was a little surprised that my trashed legs were still cooperating, but it didn’t make it any easier. All that energy going into the pedals and 6 miles/hr coming out. I had my head down watching the white line, I watched little pebbles come by so slowly, one painful pedal stroke after another. Then I’d look up at the vast expanse ahead and feel crushed. It was a mental game and in this section I was losing.

My carbopro mix was also a little messed up so I stopped for a moment and poured some of it out and mixed it down with water. It gave me a moment to stand there and contemplate what I was going to do. Make it to Badwater, then hope I could get a headlamp from someone? Hope Patty came looking for me? Sit down right here and cry? All valid options. Shortly after that a strong looking rider came by me, slowly. I said hi but he didn’t say anything back. I though he might be just unfriendly but I now think he was just too deep in his own misery. In my mind I imagined every one else doing so well, cutting though the wind with effortless ease, success being the only option. Most of them were already back at Furnace creek celebrating a fine day out.

When Badwater seemed too far away I refocused on getting to the 29 mile marker (30 miles from the finish) where Patty and I had said goodbye. Some part of me expected she’d still be there and the idea gave me a little comfort.

I neither made it to Badwater nor even the mile 29 marker. In the end some riders ahead of me waved down the Timing company’s pickup truck and started to load their bikes in the back. I rode towards them but didn’t hurry. I wasn’t sure what to do and was hoping it would drive away so I didn’t have to think about it. The strong looking guy also pulled over and started to load his bike on too. I guess a way home had just handed itself to me and it seemed the obvious thing to take the ride too. I was 71 miles into my ride and my day was done.

The scene back to Furnace Creek was devastation. The organizers were sending out SAG vehicles to collect people and random cars were also bringing riders back home. We were full but riders tried to wave us down. Those still moving were all over the road, not caring. People had stopped in the middle of nowhere and just sat down with their bikes unable to go on. Others were slumped over their handlebars. Many riders had already left the course. Many had called an end to it at Badwater, the scene there was littered with riders who couldn’t make it back the final 18 miles.

In the end the majority of the 400 who signed up DNFd (or DNS.) The results show about 100 finishers in all the distances out of the 400 entrants. What I didn’t know was that the organizers extended the cutoffs so people who finished into the night got an official time. My assumption was that I wouldn’t get a time and be recognized as a finisher even if I made it back and that certainly weighed into my decision to take a ride. If the original 5pm time had still applied only about 20 riders of the century would have finished.

Hats off to anyone who made it back though and the amazing ultra-century and double century riders who finished on such a rough day.

Patty and I eventually reunited after she failed to find me on the course. She had not made it back to the finish line either having hit the wind direction change earlier in the day just past Badwater. After struggling for a while her parents came by and she called it a day and took the ride back with them. She was 50 miles into her ride.

Overall stats

Distance: 71.14 miles
Time: 6hrs 59min (8hrs 13 min total)
Power: 136 watts avg, 354 watts max, 156 watts NP
Graph: HR, Power, Speed vs Time
–

We didn’t hang out long, just enough time to get some pizza. The weather had become drizzly and night was coming. We left and drove out of the park and through to Ridgecrest for the night then home the next day. All in all it was sort of a disaster and an adventure at the same time. I’ve clearly arrived at a better level of endurance but still, after training all winter we were disappointed at how the day played out and that we couldn’t have made it through the whole course together.

Biking, Death Valley camping, century, cycling, Death Valley, Wind

Leading up to this race there was only one thing on my mind: my arm that I injured by falling off my bike two weeks earlier. I made the decision to drive out to Boise anyway, get myself in the water and see how it went. The goal was to just make it to the finish now, the swim was going to be a one arm affair, the bike would be about staying out of trouble and hope that something didn’t happen that I couldn’t manage. Then the run would be completed with whatever I had left. All the while the goal was to enjoy it as much as possible.

Pre-race:

I drove into Boise Friday lunch time and headed straight for the quest arena in the middle on the downtown area. The Ironman show was obviously in town and very fit people where all over. I was hoping to grab my packet and get out of there and head for the hotel. There was a lot to get ready. Unfortunately there was a lot to get done just to get a race packet, and a long line to even get to that point.

After all that I stopped by the rock tape guys and showed them my arm. They seemed interested in doing what they could for it and 20 minutes later the guy had deep tissue massaged me (“don’t hit me if it hurts”) and cross crossed my arm in black and white rock tape. I wasn’t really sure it would do me much good but any support was probably worth trying, plus he did really ease out some sore spots.

Swim (51:15):

The race started at 2pm. As the pros headed off down course Patty helped me get into my wetsuit. In the blazing sun we were all out there baking like seals on a rock. Sweat ran down my face. The thought of getting into the water started to seem very appealing. We shuffled down the boat ramp. We were next.

Suddenly I noticed that I’d become calm. I was looking forwarded to the relative simplicity ahead. Put on cap and goggles, get in water, swim. No more worrying about if I had everything at transitions, what I should do about my arm, should I even be racing. Just swim. The final prep had been stressful. My swim bag that I needed to put my wetsuit in after the swim had gone missing, and when I’d discovered my front wheel soft from being parked at T1 all night I’d not have time to change it so I took it to the tire guys and had them put air in it. That would have to do.

We waded into the water and within a couple of minutes, right as the pros came out of the water and everyone was watching them, off went our wave. The area around me was filled with my wave for quite a while as I started to swim as best as I could. Every pull with my left arm hurt and felt weak, so I mostly swam with my right arm. Slowly I drifted off the back of the wave, although plenty of others of my wave also drifted back. I could at least move forward.

After a while I heard a kayaker yelling at us. The swimmers around me and I were headed in towards the center of the course a little. When I stopped to see what was up the scene around me was confusing. The chop had picked up further from shore and from so low to the water it difficult to decipher the buoys I was supposed to be following. For a moment I thought we were totally off course, but it wasn’t too bad. I corrected slightly and headed for where I saw the most swimmers.

I was actually surprised how far out I’d got, looking back to the shore the beach looked very small. Now would be a bad time to panic I thought. That made me panic a little.

I made the far out turn buoy as another wave come by. I imagined for a moment that might go badly but I kept my line and they swam around me mostly. At one point someone smashed into my left hand, just what I needed, and there was the occasional side body contact, feet contact, the usual. Nothing too bad. With a wave every 5 minutes I was never short of company.

Periodically I’d go back to my fallback mantra: pain is just another feeling. My wrist and arm felt bad, every pull hurt, but it wasn’t getting worse. For a while I tried swimming with a closed fist, like a drill, but then give up on that because it didn’t feel that much better.

Sometimes I’d stop to see where I was, wonder how far to go, wonder how many yards that was. Then I’d start counting my strokes again. Breath 5 times then look where I was going. Repeat. Sometimes I’d try to match pace with another swimmer but then three strokes later they were magically gone.

Heading back to shore seemed to take a lot longer. The chop was going over my head pretty frequently and I swallowed plenty of water. The good news was it was some of the best tasting water I’ve ever had the pleasure of choking on in an open water swim.

We rounded the final buoy and headed for the boat ramp. This swim was starting to drag. My right arm was getting tired and my left shoulder was starting to ache from whatever modified stroke I’d just made up. Probably one where I wasn’t rolling as far left as usual. The boat ramp finally appeared under me and I kept swimming until it got really shallow and then I was back on my feet.

T1 (6:40)

Well I was sort on my feet. Woah, sea legs. Running wasn’t a good idea so I walked up towards transition. Patty reported later that I didn’t look too good. Actually I felt good, and I was certainly excited to be out of the water and tired of swimming, and thankful my arm held up to my main request of it for the day. I was just needing a moment to adapt to being vertical.

At the top of the ramp I looked back down at the water and was surprised to see white caps (my wave had white swim caps on) still in the water. Not last out of the water!

I pulled off my wetsuit to my waist and then had the wetsuit strippers do the rest.. That was awesome, I was out of that thing in seconds and jogging into transition. Not too many bikes left in my rack.

I kept my transition simple, But everything had to come out of my transition bag. Wipe feet with towel, put on socks, put on cycling shoes. Grab helmet, everything in helmet into tri-shirt pockets, two Gus and my bonk breaker bits, etc. Race belt on. Helmet on. Grab bike and go..

Bike (4:00:51):

At the mount point I got on my bike as carefully as possible. I had to take off on my aero bars which was a little wobbly and for some reason I had trouble clipping in. Fortunately nobody hit me. I headed up to dam, tried to change down gears and found a problem. The indexing for my bottom two gears was out and they wouldn’t engage at all. Bonus! they worked fine the day before. Sigh, bikes. There’s always something out of your control!

I took it easy down the hill away from the dam. There was plenty of people and it seemed like a good place to have an accident. Fast moving younger age group athletes coming from behind, slower riders ahead. Everyone getting settled.

And so began the bike. For the first hour my plan was to take it pretty easy. I was cruising along ok, working my way past plenty of people but none of them were in my age group. I took it easy on the hills while others got out of the saddle and attacked. I watched my power meter and sipped my bottles.

All the while I was slowly realizing certain things, while other things remained a mystery until it was too late or until after the race. In no particular order:

1. Wind

It was a brutally windy day and the further out on the course we got the more exposed it was. 150-180 watts equaled 8 miles and hour. Sometimes it was like climbing a hill for 5 miles, or 10 miles. Sometimes downhill peddling got me 14 miles an hour and being sand blasted from the side in a cruel wind tunnel. Sometimes it was gusts that made me fear of being picked up and slammed into the pavement, and I didn’t want to do that again! Or gusts that would take away my speed and I’d have to accelerate back up again. And sometimes, seemingly so rarely, it was downwind and I felt too drained from the upwind effort to take enough advantage of it to make up for the slow upwind trip.

It was frustrating.  I consoled myself noticed nobody around seemed like they were  doing much better, but it didn’t matter if everyone was suffering too, time was drifting away from my goal and I wasn’t making any progress on my age group.

My lack of experience riding in wind was obviously going to cost me.

2. Power

The second thing was my power meter and gear selection. This was my first time riding outside with a power meter and the results were actually pretty surprising. And surprising is never a good idea in a race. With the bike crash it was my first time back on the bike and I knew that would be an issue. Still, better to ride with it I thought, get the data recorded and use it as a learning experience.

In the end, I don’t know. Not that I think it wont be useful going forward, indispensable even, but for this race I got some confusing messages that didn’t really help. Where it was good was the hills, until of course I couldn’t change gears down and further, and I had to stay on my aero bars because of my arm. Then my cadence went south and my power spiked. There was no choice, it was that or walk. But mostly I moderated my output into the wind and hills with the meter.

Where it was a problem was that I’d see my watts were low, 110-120, change gear and try to pick up my speed. The moment I did this my power would spike over 230-250. For most of the race I would do that, freak out at the high instantaneous power, and back down a gear again. Back to low watts and low speed. “If you have a choice between two gears pick the lower one,” was the voice of my bike coach guy in my head. I wondered about that as a peddled along, perhaps my gear ratios were the problem. Then one time I tried it, 50 miles in, waited, spun my legs up in the bigger gear and then saw the power drop back down to 150. Maybe that would have been useful earlier on! Oh well, races are a good place to learn new tricks, right? In the end I gave up plenty of time simply by listening to the meter instead of my own body.

3. Position

Thirdly, as a said, the only way I could ride a bike one armed was to be on my aero bars the whole time. Every moment be it up a hill, into the wind, or even if I just wanted a moment in a slightly different position. Always on the bars. I slowly realized that I just don’t ride enough on my bars to be able to do it for 3 turning into 4 hours of riding. I was beginning to get sore all over, and it as slowly occurring to me that I don’t have as much power in that position as I rarely ride like that in class. My hips were starting to give out too, so a problem was my power assumptions weren’t based on the same position. Who actually knows what my threshold would be on my bike. I never tested myself like that, but thanks to the accident I was riding like that. Clearly that wasn’t working out too well. I rode my the power I wanted for the first hour and then after than it collapsed. That could either mean that my endurance wasn’t there, or my power pacing was too high.

4. Flat tire, again!

I only know that one after the fact. When I picked up my bike, following my run, my front wheel was flat. Yep, I rode a soft front tire for who knows how long. Not dead flat, but soft enough to push your thumb right into it. Even if I’d known I wouldn’t have been able to change it one handed, but who knows what that did to my ride. Nothing good I suspect.

–

It seems like all that was probably a bad experience. In fact it was pretty fun out there. We love Boise and the reality was, above silly watts and flat tires and broken arms, that it’s been my dream for years to do this race, 6 months of training and I was finally out there doing it. I didn’t doubt during the bike that I’d finish, not once. I watched birds of prey fly over fields, the deep dark green of the snake river’s valley farms, the sprinklers, the sun, the big sky. The place has beauty of its own. I also love riding fast, even if it’s not fast like all the athletes ahead of me. Blowing through town, through the red lights, through wide closed off streets, people cheering. It’s a blast.

–

For nutrition I worked my way through my three bottles of carbopro mixed with nuun perfectly. Each hour I’d stop and fill my aero bottle and eat since I wasn’t going to take any chances while moving with one arm. Hour 1 and 2 I ate half a bonk breaker, and on the third hour I took a very warm roctane gu. Then I grabbed Gatorade from an aid station for extra fluid and put it in my aero bottle for the rest of the trip back to town since I was so far into overtime I’d run out if supplies. In a way when I think what went the best in the race, I think following my race plan nutrition.

–

Finally the 56 miles came to and end in the middle of downtown Boise. I unclipped way out from the dismount to make sure I could, pulled up and got off without even falling down.

T2 (3:45):

Transition number 2 had its own problems. When I wonder if I rode hard enough in the bike I think of this transition. My legs were not pleased to be walking. Volunteers directed me down a row of racks almost to the run start. Another volunteer grabbed my bike from me and racked it for me and asked me if I needed anything off it.

Near me another athlete was having a quick conversation with his family. Wind was the topic of the day. Another guy near me joined in with “I can’t feel my legs!”

The slowest thing about this transition was just getting myself to my rack spot. After that it was swap shoes, helmet off and hat on. I grabbed 3 Gus and headed for the exit.

Run (2:20:58):

My plan was to run between each mile marker and walk 30 seconds while I worked on my bottle. At transition I’d made the call to leave the bottle behind. It was hot from sitting in the sun all afternoon, had leaked into the transition bag, and I just felt like I didn’t need something else to hold onto after 4 hours holding onto an aerobar with my right hand.

My legs felt like lead weights as I headed out onto the run course, as I expected they would, but they loosened up over the first couple of miles. Initially the idea of running 13 miles seemed pretty unimaginable so I just started to think about running to each aid station. I gave up my mile marker walk plan within a couple of miles too and instead concentrated on the aid stations. Each aid station I grabbed a sponge to cool off (it was hot out and I was getting overheated between stations), then grabbed a cup of water and a cup of Gatorade. Before exiting the aid station last drop zone I made sure to finish both.

I was actually running pretty well I thought, but the aid stations got harder as I went. The two cups were getting harder to get down, so in that sense I got slower mostly from that. It became a balance between dehydration, and getting a stomach cramp from drinking, and time in each aid station. I didn’t really know what might happen if I stated to blow off the drinking and eating so I started to actually stop at the aid stations until I drank what I could. I think in the end that was the right thing to do.

Around mile 10 I started to feel some cramping in my left quad, which started to make my left knee hurt a little. A couple of miles later my right quad was also signaling it was done for the day. Oddly I kept running while a lot of people around me were now walking. Destroyed quads was the common theme out there after the windy bike ride.

On and off through most of the run I’d been behind the same woman. We’d go through aid stations at different rates but somehow I ended up right behind her again. I thought of passing her, but wasn’t sure I’d be much faster anyway. Perhaps that was a mistake, she was like the easy pacing option, but she wasn’t exactly moving fast. The last mile we chatted for a bit. She was from orange county and said she’d started to fade.

I pulled ahead of her and headed for the finish. By that point I was just glad to be done. About 50 yards from the finish the orange county woman ran by sprinting for the finish. I picked up speed and caught her by the line. I think I heard my name called but it was a big blur.

Across the line a volunteer grabbed me to make sure I was ok. I really was, apart from my quads and my arm I was totally fine. He pulled off my timing chip and I was done.

Conclusion

In the end I had a pretty good time. There’s no doubt that WTC puts on an amazing race, they do everything they can to make sure it’s a good experience. Physically was a long tough day, but once I made it through the swim I wasn’t in any doubt I’d make it.

I’m still a little sad about the bike split, but if I’d gone harder then I don’t know what would have happened later. Maybe I should gone harder to find out, but It’s easy to try and guess afterwards of course and I’ve yet to look at my power data. I tried to pace the bike at the time, but in the end I neither caught much of my age group, nor ran very fast off the bike. To figure out exactly why that was and what to do about it will clearly take a lot more contemplation, followed by much more work on the bike.

Going forward we’re away camping and hiking for three weeks and my legs have mostly recovered and my arm seems to getting better. After that we hope to do more biking, perhaps a fall century and return to Bizz Johnson for a half marathon. I’d like to do another Half Ironman race, maybe even later in the summer, but we’ll have to see.

Race reports, Triathlon Boise, Half Ironman, race, Triathlon, Wind

A slightly late recap of week 3 of my 4 week build phase. The total hours are a little down partly because of the missed pool swim and partly because I’ve changed accounting of my ride time. I now only count time moving, which on Saturday was actually 25 min or so less than time we were out on our bikes.

Swim: 1hr 56 min

Three swims this week. I think overall my mood was discouraged with swimming.

Monday and Wednesday I did my pool swims as scheduled. Monday’s main set was 4x200yds which I thought went well. Between 3:40 and 3:50 for each of the 200s. I was actually kind of excited about that pace. On Wednesday I came back down to earth with a 2700 yard session at the Oakland YMCA crammed in before I had to be at Kelly’s school for an event. This time my 200 meter swims were at more like 2:00/100 yards, though mixed into a lot more yards. My endurance felt better than the previous couple of week, but obviously it effects my pace quite a bit.

I felt by Friday like it was too late to get faster so I bailed on my so-called quality set. Instead I went open water swimming on the weekend for the first time this year. It felt suddenly great to be out swimming. No chlorine. No black line. No locker room full of fat ugly naked people. It’s like trail running after running on the treadmill all year. Plus, wetsuit buoyancy is always fun. I think this will be the pattern from now on, open water experience will be more useful to me than a third pool workout.

Bike: 6hrs 13min

Another two M2 sessions on Tuesday and Thursday. At Tuesday’s class there was hardly anyone there as the class was riding to Santa Cruz for the tour of California stage finish. On Thursday they all turned up smashed for racing 120 miles with 3 trips to skyline and back to coast, or something like that. It was all super grande burritos this and tacos that. Um, what? Anyway, it serves them right. Maybe next year!!

Our weekend didn’t lend itself very well to a biking. Three birthday parties to take our daughter to! However at 3pm on Saturday we dropped her off at a party and set out towards Davis hoping for a little central valley flat and fast. Patty was pleading for a break from the hills, and I was trying to get a little race specific. As we got out that way the sky filled with dark thunderstorms and the wind started to blow.

It could be like that in Boise. Maybe it would be good experience. Or maybe we’d be hit by lightning or blown off our bikes into the path of a truck. Or maybe we’d just be plowing into wind and rain for hours. We bailed on mental toughness and turned and headed back towards home. Our ride was around the Three Bears loop again. We made about 42 miles or so out of it, with lots of climbing.

This ride was a little discouraging. I felt slow over the hills, as usual, but quick on the flats and rolling terrain. On the hills I worked hard to get up each climb only to look back and see Patty 40 meters back. Three months of bike training over her and I’m just 40 meters ahead of her? On top of that my GPS data would suggest that on the flats I wasn’t exactly going too fast either. I should be able to sit in at 18+ miles/hr given the watts I do these days in class, but instead I average more like 15-16 miles/hr. Perhaps the fatigue runs deep and a taper and race excitement will do me some good.

I’m contemplating getting a Powertap. That would answer a lot of questions. And REI has 20% off right now. There’s only one reason not to get one: money.

Run: 1 hour 55 min

While I’m still not running that much we hit the trails twice this week and loved it. It was great to run in some beautiful places again. The first run was an evening one out in the water district near Moraga, slotted in before an LMJS Race Committee meeting. It was mostly just the horses, the wood peckers, the bunnies, the turkey vultures and us. Running over hills seemed hard but I also felt strangely strong. It was a good run.

On Sunday, again following the theme of squeezing in workouts where they will fit, we dropped Kelly at the third of her parties and went running in Tilden Regional Park until it was time to pick her up. I felt like I wanted to run for hours, but I also felt tired from the bike ride the day before. Not so much that it really got in the way of running, but still it took the edge off the fun. Patty declared that she hated to run after biking and that she wasn’t cut out to be a triathlete. She does seem to have taken a general liking to biking however and we’re hoping to do a century this summer.

Nutritional experiments

I’ve also been experimenting with what to drink/eat on the bike for the race. It’s still a work in progress but I tried just carbo-pro in water (3 scoops) and while it has a slight flour-like taste to it, it’s still easy to drink and I didn’t get sick of it like the Gatorade. This week I’m going to mix in some Nuun for flavor and electrolytes, and if that is vaguely successful then at this point I’ll go with that mixed with pieces of bonk breaker. Unfortunately that leaves me a little short of sodium especially if it’s hot and I have no heat training at all. I tried adding salt directly to the drink mix but the taste took a big dive in the direction of sea water, so I don’t think that’s a good option unless it can be covered up with more flavor.

For the run I’m going to do what I always do, do the Gu. I might up my planned intake to every 3 miles instead of every 45 min. Then I’ll take liquid at the aid stations. Actually I really haven’t decided that, I might run with a bottle.

Anyway, that’s it. In just over two weeks I’ll be loaded up and driving to Boise!

Biking, Running, Swimming, Triathlon

Another big training week, over 12 hours this week. I finally completed plan on the swimming and biking, plus my yoga session, but only ran twice. In theory we were going to run off the bike on Saturday, but our ride went so long we high tailed it back to Oakland to pick up our daughter. In general I’m feeling pretty strong right now and the cold I was sniffling with a week ago seems to have mostly gone away. One more big ride in a week and then I’ll begin to taper. Exciting!

Swim: 2hr 28min (6435 yards)

Three full sessions this week which really increased my distance. On wednesday I fitted the swim into my day by swimming at the Oakland YMCA downtown. They have a 25 meter pool rather than 25 yards so I did my workout in meters. Who knew a meter could be so much longer than a yard? Anyway, that resulted in my longest ever pool session: 2734 yards exactly. It was a messy mix of lane swimmers so I didn’t even bother to log my lap times, but the core of it was 500 meters of drills and 10x100m as fast as I could.

During most of these laps a man with a sleek swimmers body stood at one end of my lane watching us. He was waist deep in water and looking annoyed. Eventually I guess he decided we were not good enough to swim with and he left after doing two laps of butterfly in the next lane over. Sorry dude, we are not butterfly swimming freaks like you, but at least we were swimming laps, and I’m not swimming that slow when I’m swimming 100s. I could see why he might be generally annoyed though, in all the other lanes at least one swimmer was pushing the definition of swimming to include -floating with the current- or -jumping up and down shaking hands above the water-. Sigh, swimming sucks. And not because of the swimming part.

Bike: 7 hrs 8 mins

Another two sessions at M2 and I’m feeling like my biking is really coming around. I now classify hills as nothing but rollers that I can mostly cruise over without too much trouble. Tuesdays class I already blogged about. Thursday I was working at home, combined with trying to get a family of raccoons out of our attic so I had to take public transport (bus, bart train, bus) into San Francisco to take my class and then (bus and bus) all the way home again. The instructor was a fill-in so it was a different style. He had us do a spiral ladder 3min, 2 min, 1 min, 30sec, with power increasing up from 70% – 110%, then reverse the durations but keeping the power high (110% down to 95%). After that I think it was 3x5min at 100-110%. I say I think, because I think I blanked out somewhere in there. The session finished with some sprints. 100% is a 10min max power. By my counting I did close to 15 min (broken) at or above 100%, and a bunch more in the 90% range. Ouch. Still threshold workouts like that are what I need.

Saturday we drove up to Windsor, CA and rode a variation of the Vineman course. In total we rode 60 miles, thanks to getting lost a few times. It took us forever, but included stops at goats, horses, muffins at a cute general store, and a lot of stops to look at a slightly blurry printout of the full vineman course map. A beautiful bike route the whole way, the hills are still very green.

Anyway, I spent a good amount of that time on my aerobars and have gained a lot more confidence. I don’t think I’ll change them again, just go with it now I have something I consider slightly comfortable. While Patty and I generally don’t ride too fast together, I did a few sections at what I considered the effort I hope to use in the race. The result was a little over 18 miles/hr on average over rolling terrain. It would be nice to have a power meter in the race, but it isn’t going to happen for this one, so at this point I think I’ll go off my HR, which I think should be 140 or less. I may go into M2 and ride 70-75% on the power for 1/2 hour or so and see what my HR does to get a final plan.

On the down side I partially pulled out my rear shifter from the end of the aerobar and lost my lowest two gears during the steepest climb of the route, so I’ll have to fix that this week. I did still make it to the top though. That course is super-rough in places, I’m surprised anything is still attached to my bike anymore. Also, my hydration wasn’t too good either as again I got pretty tired of the gatorade. I took in about 50oz of fluid containing about 650 calories, plus 220 calories in bonk breakers and a 100 calorie Chocolate Gu. 1050 calories, or 215 calories and hour. Not enough! However, that didn’t count the muffin, and the muffin was good!

Run: 1 hr 46 min

Still not much running, but I did try. We set off to run 13 miles on Wednesday. Following the longest swim I’ve ever done that morning and a pretty tough bike session the night before, we made 3 miles and gave up. Both of us felt exhausted and hungry and decided instead to just go get hamburgers and extra-salty fries! The next morning I ran to Kelly’s school while she rode her bike for Bike to Work day, then ran home. At least that was a decent run so I can still do it. Otherwise it’s getting pushed out of the way to let my other key workouts happen without being compromised by exhaustion.

Biking, Running, Swimming exhausted, hamburgers, m2, muffins, salt, sonoma, vineman, ymca

I finally took a HR monitor to the bike class at M2 Revolution tonight. This is what my HR looks like during an bike class, apparently:

All in all pretty low compared to running intervals.

I think the workout was:
1) Ladder warm-up:
3 min, 2 min, 90 sec, 60 sec and a few 30 sec building up power as we go, alternating high and low cadence with some standing
2) threshold set
4 min @ 90% power followed by 4 min @ 100% power
2 min @ 90% power followed by 6 min @ 100% power
3) Strength set
(2 min climbing cadence 75rpm at 110-120% watts 40 sec aero, 40 sec hoods, 40 sec stand) X 2
(1 min 70rpm 120+% watts 20 sec aero, 20 sec hoods, 20 sec stand) X 2
4) Activation set:
4 x 20 sec high cadence, high power. 500+ watts.
5) Cooldown, easy spin

** 100% watts is max average watts over 10 min TT.

Biking

Wow, it’s May. That means I’m now into my more focused race specific training, the so called Build phase. Four weeks to get myself ready. Unfortunately the Base phase now ends a little unsteady, featuring a marathon, dubious swim training, and now two months of twice a week bike training at M2 and what I’ll call “time in the sandal weekend” riding for the past month.

Although last week was a recovery week I still logged over 10 hours.

Swim: 1hr 41 min (4200 yards)

Mondays swim was just an easy 1000 yards in the pool. Almost not worth getting wet for, just did laps and tried to not get run down by the master swimmers. Switching to Mon, Wed, Fri puts me there when the Masters swimming are churning up the middle lanes. This is going to be an ongoing problem. I noticed some of them wore fins. How is that allowed? Anyway, a good recovery swim.

Wednesday’s swim was a 500 yard warmup followed by some drills, followed by 1000 straight yards. The schedule called for 500 yds of the drills so I’ve been rotating between some bi-laterial practice, finger drag, fist swimming, catchup and some sighting practice. I could use more of all of those, especially the bi-laterial breathing, but at least I get some in. Interestingly I swim faster either with bi-laterial breathing, or 4 strokes per breath. However, I don’t last too long like that before I start gasping for air and inhaling water.

The sensation of drowning is never far away even though I’m still amused with actually being able to swim these days.

Fridays swim was a 500 yard warmup and then 8×100 and then a cool down. A pretty short effort, but it was supposed to be a fall back week. For the first time in who knows how long (perhaps ever) I swam three days in a week. Time to get to the pool has to happen at lunch time and it’s easy for it to get bumped for something else, usually work related. The 8x100s went well with all laps under 2:00/100yd pace. My first two were too fast, around 1:50 pace, but that’s too fast to do 8 of them, so they slowed to 1:55-1:58 for the rest of them.

Bike: 5hrs 19min

A fall back on the bike too this week, so other than another two sessions of power training fun, we treated ourselves to a mountain bike ride in Marin at China Camp State Park. This park is pretty cool (for mountain bikers) in that a) the single track is actually open to mountain bikers and b) hikers seem to have given up the trails to the bikers as a result. We can now rip it up as much as we want. Just Kidding.

The trails were really spectacular, and pretty hard in places. The initial climb was up 1000ft to an old Nike Missile Pad that overlooked the bay, Mt Tam and San Rafael. This is where the photo at the top of the page was taken.

Run: 1 hr 50 min (10.7 miles)

Another not great running week. It’s been a month now since my marathon, the arbitrary time I give myself before I do anything crazy in the running department. Unfortunately with all this other training going on I don’t really see much chance of doing anything interesting. The good news is I did run three times (sort of): a 5.5-ish mile run twice around the lake Wednesday evening, and a beautiful four mile run in the heart of the redwoods Friday evening. Also, just for fun, we ran a mile or so off the mountain bike yesterday. Mostly we ran out of trail so we headed back to the car and called it a day. Overall the running feels fine at this point, but I’m going to have to start upping the long run a little now and perhaps do one of my mid-week runs at tempo pace.

Oakland Museum

In other news, the Oakland Museum reopened this weekend with a 31 hour party. We decided to head down there at 7am and check it out. There was a lot of bubble blowing going on on top of the roof, free yoga in the main hall, and a pancake breakfast put on by the Oakland Fire Department. The changes to the museum are awesome, I can’t wait to go back and explore further. One of the best museums around, especially for Californian history.

Marin Farmers Market and Sports Basement

We headed over the the farmers market, which was only about 3 miles from where we biked the previous day. The report: a) strawberries not there yet, and what’s with nobody offering tastings anymore? I guess they know they are no good so far this year, b) Oakdale cheese is still yummy goodness and c) Kelly had her first pony ride there.

After picking up picnic supplies we headed down to San Francisco and ate in the Presidio. The after mouth of the Escape From Alcatraz was going on. Patty took her mountain bike into the nearby Sports Basement to get the gears worked on, which have never worked right, producing the quote of the week:

“Sorry, we’ve got 50 bikes to ship today and triathletes are very high maintenance.”

Biking, Kelly, Running, Triathlon

Another week of training. Seven weeks to go. This week was around 10 hours of volume, a bit less than last week because I missed two runs, a swim, and we’ll do our weekly yoga session tomorrow.I’m trying to relax about that, work and life are always going to get in the way.

Swim: 1hr 30 min

Two pretty good swims this week. I swam 2500yds for the first time on Wednesday, squeezed in before a day of torture in Agile Development training. By the end of that swim I was dragging and couldn’t really muster much more that a struggling survival cruise pace for the last of my 100s. Oh well, first volume then intensity. 2500yds took almost an hour including a set of drills, so that’s the longest swim workout I’ll do for this event. Now to make it stronger.

Bike: 6hrs 33 min

Patty and I headed off this morning for our ‘long’ bike ride, about 40 miles. We rode Pinehurst and Redwood Roads, past the back side of Lake Chabot to Castro Valley and then followed Crow Canyon across to San Ramon. I’m not sure we’d ride that last part again, people use it to get from 580 to 680 and the speed of cars and sketchy shoulder didn’t make for the funnest riding. Plus, we didn’t see a single other cyclist, a sure sign. Beyond that we stuck to the Ironhorse and St Marys Rd to get back to where we started.

We ride painfully slowly as we spin our way over hill after hill. And then once we were beyond the hills, riding on the recreational trails were congested today, lots of people with dogs and kids with training wheels etc. Oh well. Somehow I’m hoping the high intensity power training on Tuesday and Thursday will magically combine with my weekend time-in-the-saddle on race day.

Run: 1hr 41 min

Hopefully my running can still maintain itself while I get the biking and swimming in shape. This week I ran just once, Friday night. It was a beautiful evening run around Lake Chabot on the trails. It was the first time back there since the marathon. Lots of people. Felt strong even though my overall state is a little fatigued. Anyway, perfect way to end the week.

Garden

When you run for fours hours productivity for the weekend is shot. When you bike, other stuff can happen. Saturday we worked on the garden most of the day. The result was at least two green bins worth of weeds and other foliage. We also mulched the flower gardens, mowed and trimmed the lawns, and planted tomatoes and herbs.

Coffee

And of course there was coffee, to fuel it all…

Biking, Kelly, Running, Swimming, Triathlon

For Easter weekend we drove down to Death Valley for some camping, off-road driving and a little biking. Sunday morning I biked the 35 miles from the Hwy 190/Scotty’s Castle Rd junction to Badwater. Since Badwater is the lowest point in the US it was guaranteed to be a net downhill ride.

Unfortunately it wasn’t all downhill. Turns out I also did 1200 ft of climbing. Anyway, I’m definitely feeling stronger on the bike. Two months until Boise.

More photos of our Death Valley trip are here.

Biking, California, Death Valley, Sport, Travel, Triathlon Biking, Death Valley

Yesterday we ran the Oakland Marathon, the first such race in 25 years. Today, I’m limping around, legs sore, foot aching, but excitedly telling anyone I can about what a great race this was.

Oakland is a city bursting with so much enthusiasm for anything good that comes its way. Witness the Raiders fans for Exhibit A of Oakland loyalty you don’t want to mess with. It’s also a city that represents the world. Not just a black vs white racial mix. It’s everyone from everywhere. And for the most part it works. It’s diversity in people, food, ideas. It’s more complicated than crime statistics. If we ever live anywhere else, something will be lost that you can’t find anywhere but Oakland.

I’ve now lived in this city for 7 years and Patty was born here. We first moved to Oakland right after Kelly our daughter was born because both of us worked in the East Bay. At first we rented in Rockridge, later we bought a house in Glenview and watched that area emerge as a local dining center on our very own block. We live in a place where I take public transport to work, we walk to our local restaurants and stores, and all the neighbors kids run through each other’s houses like they were their own.

This is also the city where our running lives were born. The East Bay is home to some of the best runners and running anywhere in the world. While Lake Merritt forms a running hub with it’s dependable 5K perimeter, the hills above Oakland provide world class trail running over high Bay Area ridges to deep redwood ravines. Further east, beyond ‘the tunnel’, are endless miles of unbroken multi-use paved trails spanning the valley below Mt Diablo — perfect marked routes for marathon training. This is a place to get fit. Running fit.

Later we joined the Lake Merritt Joggers and Striders and eventually became board members. Last year the club was approached by the event organizers of the Oakland Marathon looking for a local club to partner with. The club agreed and we became the official training partner. We took on over 100 runners to train them each Saturday, running them all over the East Bay.

It was obvious that we had to drop any other plans and take part in this event.

While I’d plan out the LMJS training group routes and map them each week, hoping not too many of them would get lost, we planned our own journey to the race. A goal was to minimize how much time we spent on the pavement, so we alternated between long trail runs deep in the regional parks for strength and duration, and long pounding flat canal trail runs to build straight out long running endurance and some sense of pace. In one memorable run we set out pre-dawn with head lamps to run 20 miles in Lake Chabot. Thousands of feet of elevation change ahead of us we made it about 1 hour before it started to steadily rain. The trails became mud, we saw almost nobody in over four hours and when we were finished, soaked and muddy, we were tougher. At least mentally.

There’s almost always more to the journey than the destination itself. Finishing a marathon is largely (for us at least) about successfully getting to the start line ready to go. Months of long runs, sneaking runs in where they could fit, day or night, in the dark, in the rain or in the rare sunshine. Someone along the marathon route asked me “How do you run so far?” I thought of a winter full of running. That’s how you run this far I thought, you commit, you train, and you don’t miss workouts even if 4 hours of running in the rain one Saturday morning is the last thing you want to do. In the end the journey was already a near success, for the first time I was lining up at a marathon with no specific injury and was ready to roll. Just 26.2 miles of the journey to go…

–

At 7:30am we were off. Helicopters buzzed overhead. The sky filled with confetti and we ran under a semi-collapsing inflatable start line. It was a rocky yet memorable start. I looked down at my watch to see just how slow we were going. 8:30 pace. Way too fast but it felt like the slowest we could possibly run. Apparently the taper had worked. We slowed as the race adrenaline leveled out and settled in behind the 4:20 pace group leaders more by accident than anything. We decided we’d use them as a pacing wall, that we wouldn’t run faster than them for the first 10 miles.

Every mile, as we reached one of the official mile markers, we’d walked for one minute, then pick up our pace enough to catch back up to the 4:20 pacers. This took about 3/4 of mile if we did it right, faster if we surged too hard. Then we’d settle in behind them again. At this point their pace seemed so very slow, but we knew later that would change. A long way to go.

We quickly passed through the Temescal district and past our favorite coffee shop, Remedy, which was unfortunately still closed. No latte to go. Hundreds of people were out along Telegraph cheering. Next stop was Rockridge, where we ran the full length of College Ave. Again, lots of people out either watching or cheering. Lots of kids had made signs. Already we’d seen more spectators that either of our previous two marathons.

I’m in the bright yellow top, Patty is next to me in pink arm warmers as we head up Broadway towards Rockridge
(from flickr)

Beyond Rockridge we headed up to Lake Temescal. The hill, all part of the miles of climbing in the first 10 miles of the course, still felt easy on the effort scale. Others around me panted, or walked, or simply dropped back. We maintained pace, each mile slowly catching the 4:20 pace group again and settling in.

At the Lake I refilled my water bottle on schedule and emptied a ziplock bag of Gatorade into it. The official course beverage was Powerade fruit punch which we decided was the same flavor as cough medicine and couldn’t imagine drinking. Patty’s bottle was only half empty, but she seemed ok with that. We also took a Gu every 3 miles. All was going well on that front, for now.

Beyond the lake we entered the hilly residential streets of Montclair. People’s driveways filled with home made aid stations run by their kids. One family had a giant spread of banana bread and fruit and other goodies laid out for the passing runners. I felt bad I couldn’t take anything. I hope they realize how much support they provided just by being there even if most marathon runners aren’t going to go for banana bread 8 miles into a 10 mile climb. Their presence was awesome and as I could note all through the course, in any neighborhood we passed through, the community support for this race was like nothing I’ve seen in any race.

We finally reached the Mormon Temple that looks out from the East Bay hills over the whole Bay towards a distant San Francisco. We looked down into Oakland beneath us and mentally sketched out the route that lay ahead. Even a straight shot to the downtown buildings where the finish line waited seemed a long way. But, one mile at a time and we’d get there. I still felt good and it was all downhill from here.

Past the Temple we dropped hard downhill on Lincoln. The first mile was very steep. We tried to think of the advice we’d been given at Big Sur: Fast turnover. Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle. Our pace still quickened and we left the 4:20 pace group long behind us. Half way down the hill, less than a mile from our house, our daughter was waiting for us with her Grandpa. We each grabbed a replacement packet of Gatorade from him and I gave Kelly a hug. “Ugh! Daddy hugged me and he’s sweeeaaattty!”

We continued on as the downhill became much less steep through the Dimond district, past our local Peet’s coffee and Farmer Joe’s grocery store, past I-580, and down Fruitvale. The inside of my left knee started to ache a little. Crowd support was more scattered, but resounding enthusiasm for the race. People sat on balconies or on lawn chairs or just outside a local store, watching us run and cheering us on. Others just stood mouth open and watched and didn’t know what to make of it. I wonder if we inspired anyone to run next year? Or even just to run at all? We ran past car repair yards and Mexican markets and taco stands smoking grilled meat into the air. My tummy groaned. I guess time for another yummy Gu!

I really enjoyed running though this part of town. It’s not a part of town I spend much time in so to be able to run here and have some kind of connection with the people who live here was something you just can’t get on a regular day. People here didn’t even speak the same language as me, their signs of encouragement were in Spanish (“Sí se puede”), but to them I represented support for their part of Oakland, the part much maligned in the press, but yet full of great people and culture. Another interesting feature was the police who were helping with traffic control all over the city were also fully fledged race supporters, cheering on the race participants and us in turn thanking them for their help. One community, at least for a sunny Sunday morning in March.

As we headed back towards town I felt sad that this part of the course was ending so fast. When I’d thought of the race, imagined what it would be like while I trained all winter, I though of this part the most. The chance to see another side of my own city.

Unfortunately the miles were ticking past and we were soon in the mid-teen mileages. I refilled my bottle on International Blvd, about a mile past schedule. We’d taken half a Bonk Breaker on the steep downhill between mile 10-11, then a Gu at mile 15. Frankly I was getting a little sick of all the sugar and I could feel my nutrition getting away from me a little. My legs were starting to feel the fatigue too, although about what I would expect. All in all it was going well. Patty said she felt like she’d like to have felt better at this point and she still was only a little into her second bottle when I started my third.

As we ran back towards town on a long hall down International Blvd, a man yelled out “Where did you start running?” The man running next to me yelled back “Downtown!” pointing to the downtown buildings in the distance. The man next to me said to me “Ha, he probably thinks we only ran a few miles to get here,” “Yeah,” I replied, “but I bet he thinks that’s still a long way to run!”

We eventually turned in towards Jack London Square and ran through old produce warehouses and historic red brick buildings mixed with new developments of shiny metal condos and lofts. This was a theme of the more industrial parts of the course: old and new. thanks to the Jerry Brown push for redevelopment of the inner areas of Oakland. He would be proud of how the city was being represented today at least.

It was here we were joined by the back end of the half marathon race. And I mean the BACK END. Four across walkers were the name of the game and we were forced to weave around them for the next 8 miles. Could they not have timed it a little better so that equivalent paces could meet up with each other? I suppose that’s complicated. Oh well, with the full marathon crowd thinning as the miles went on, at least it made it still feel like a busy race.

At around mile 18 we headed across to West Oakland with it’s seriously industrial edge. “This isn’t a safe area, run fast” yelled one spectator. He was joking. Sort of. We ran into Kelly’s school teacher here too, she was running a leg of the relay. At the industrial art workshop of the Crucible we run through an archway of metal with flames coming out of it!

By mile 20 Patty and I were both struggling with pace. It’s those late miles before the finish line seems something you can push for that are the worst. The 4:20 pace group caught us and I ran with them for a mile. We hit the 20 mile mark together. Then the 21. Then I waited for Patty to catch up and the pace group was gone from sight and we never saw them again. We entered some part of town we’d never been before, some industrial back streets of overgrown lots with fallen down wire fences and discarded mattresses and trash. A part of town I’m betting not many people have run through before, at least not for recreation. During this section I was also trying to swallow another half of a Bonk Breaker and it wasn’t going well. I throw the last 1/4 of it on a pile of trash and give up eating for the rest of the race. My stomach wasn’t interested anymore.

Around mile 22 we emerged from industrial wasteland where-the-hell-are-we to near Kelly’s school. Her and her Grandpa were waiting there. Some kids and parents from her school had set up an unofficial aid station but had run out of cups a while earlier. I discarded my bottle there, I was done with Gatorade anyway and gave Kelly another gross hug. It was good to see them again.

We crossed over the the Lake right to the point where I’d met Patty for dozens of runs after work as we trained for the race all winter. Just one trip around the lake and I was done, like I’ve done hundreds of times. No problem. Except I was beyond beat.

And hot.

Hmmm, I hadn’t noticed that up until now. I took a couple of cups of water at the aid station and poured them over the back of my neck and then my head. The first cup of water to run off my head and down my face felt like I’d been splashed with a salt water wave. The cool breeze from the lake hit my wet body and an I felt a surge of energy. I headed off towards the Grand Lake theater and then back around towards the Lake. Another interesting part of the city, but too late in the race to feel a lot of appreciation for the scenery. At the mile 24 mark I stopped for my walk break and look back. Patty was nowhere to be seen. I started walking to the aid station up ahead instead of resuming running, grabbed some more water to pour on myself and to drink. I looked back again and Patty was still nowhere to be seen. I felt like I needed to get running so I headed off. It was the end of our run together.

I rounded the top of the lake and hit mile 25 running quick and strong. I passed a bunch of full marathon runners but they were very far apart. Someone yelled “Go full marathon runner!”, and a half marathon runner yelled back “Go all of us!!”. I thought, hmm, you have no idea what mile 26 feels like. But then I remembered what a big deal my first half marathon was and put the idea out of my head. We all have our limits and pushing past them is always an achievement to be acknowledged. I didn’t walk at that mile marker, with 1.2 miles to go, I kept pushing and my pace was actually good and strong. I turned off from the Lake towards downtown, glancing back to see if I could spot Patty at all. I wish she’d kept her bright pink arm warmers on, but in the crowd of people and the bright sunshine she was gone.

I took some final water and headed up towards the 26 mile marker in the shade of the tall downtown buildings. Again I stopped again and waited. I could hear the crowds of the finish line around the corner and someone yelled to me “You’re so close, keep running!”. Still no Patty. I don’t know how long I stood there. It felt like minutes. Maybe it was just seconds. Eventually I decided to finish the job. I took off round the corner and ran through a corridor a cheering spectators and across the finish line. My time was 4hr 24min.

–

I rounded the corner and got a foil blanket wrapped around me (the first time in a marathon, I felt finally like a marathoner) and a pretty cool medal handed to me. John Windle, one of the LMJS regulars was handing out medals. It was nice to see a familiar face. We chatted for a while until Patty came through the shoot in 4hrs 28 min.

In the end this was a fantastic, awesome experience because it was a truly unique community event. Thanks go to the organizes who put on an amazing first showing. And of course to everyone out on the course who came out to support the event. Performance wise, well I don’t know. Running a marathon is a shot in the dark. Pick too fast a pace and you’ll pay double at the end. Pick too slow a pace and you’ll still feel horrible at the end, but you’ll have a slower time. We wanted to go under 4:30 and on a pretty tough course we more than met that goal. In the end, who cares. We’ll have faster times, and probably slower times in the future, but what I really wonder is if another marathon will ever better this one in that special way that comes along so rarely in life. Somehow I doubt it.

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When we got home Kelly had left us a card with a flower taped to the front of it:

Lake Merritt Joggers and Striders, Marathons, Race reports