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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 4×200yds 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

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 8×100s 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

Swim

1 Mile in 36:26

The swim went well, which was kind of a big deal because 6 months ago I couldn’t swim a lap freestyle. Now I’ve done a mile swim in open water. There was a wicked current as you got further out, all the pros ended up swimming up current to get to the first buoy. Successive waves headed further and further to the right. I went around the buoy ok, but ended up kind of far out, not totally out, but I swam further than I needed to (or maybe the current kept pushing me out or something). When I made the final turn it was closer to shore and calmer. No more waves splashing on me and bobbing up and down, which I wasn’t so prepared for. My practice open water swims were calmer for sure. So for the last 1/3 mile I got into a pretty good rhythm and started to take a few places back. Open water swimming is pretty fun actually. It took like 36 mins, which I’m ok with. Work to be done there to stay with the pack, but it’s ok. I think for my level of open water swimming experience I did fine. I was a little surprised how fast everyone was. Not too many people behind me at all! Tough AG!

The bad thing was I cut my foot all up on the rocks getting into the water. Didn’t notice until the transition when my foot was covered in blood. Nice.

T1

Bike

22 miles in 1:48:52

The bike was my worst event by far. People are so strong and fast and because there was 3 laps the pros (and strong AGers) were flying by continuously on their space age tri bikes. “leeefftt!” whooosh! I was doing about 15-16 miles/hr on average (it was really a very hilly course), about the speed I expected. They were doing 22 miles/hr. Most of the rest of my age group was doing 18+ miles/hr. I’m not going in another tri until I think I can ride 18 miles/hour over hills for 1.5 hours at least. And then, as if I wasn’t doing bad enough relative to everyone else, I got a flat back tire on the last lap! After working on that for a while a former Olympian (Victor Plata) came running by on the run course and offered to help. He changed my tire for me! Actually, like 10 people, all top athletes in the midst of their own race, pretty much offered to help me. In a way that was a highlight. Can you tell the guy who rides a mountain bike and never gets a flat?

T2

Run

10K in 1:00:36

The run was the run. It was 10K. I was kind of tired. A little dejected. Not really feeling like killing myself by then, although I could have moved up like 5 places pretty easily. By that time most people were walking and at least I was able to run the whole way. That’s some kind of achievement in a triathlon I suppose. Took me about an hour. It was a pretty run. There were deer.

At the finish line Kelly ran across with me. At least one person doesn’t think I suck, though she thinks I’m crazy.

Post race

Total time: 3 hrs, 34 min

Not my greatest event, but at least I finished as people keep trying to tell me.

Triathlon Biking, marin, olympic, race, Race reports, Running, swimming, Triathlon

On Saturday we completed our first triathlon in the non-competitive, Tri for Fun series at Shadow Cliffs Regional Park in Pleasanton, CA.

—

It was 7:25am and I stood knee deep in a muddy lake. Around me I was surrounded by nervous people. Minutes earlier I’d kissed Patty goodbye, in case one of us drowned. She’d left with the earlier group which, as I stood there, was rounding the first buoy of the course. I couldn’t spot her, so hopefully she was in the mix somewhere doing fine. I turned my attention back to the guy standing in the water with the microphone. We were the final wave, and he was making jokes, mostly. “If you don’t know why this is like water polo, don’t be near the front.” I think that part was serious. I looked around and I was sort of near the front as many people had joined my wave. I tried to move sideways, but it wasn’t going to be enough. There was way more people in this wave than I expected, maybe a hundred people had joined it behind me and there was 20 seconds left. Oh well, I’m going for it. I looked down at my watch and it was ready to go, pulled my googles over my eyes, took a deep breath, and thought this is it, I’m finally facing my swim fear for real. The horn went off and we all started to move forward…

—

Our alarm would have gone off at 4:30am, except both of us had been awake for some time. I’m so used to running races that it’s barely exciting to think of one that morning. This morning was different. When we watched the tri for fun #1 there was a lot of people being rescued from the water, even in the supposedly experienced and elite wave. While my swimming has been going well (I’m up to swimming a mile straight in the pool, though not fast), the open water thing has remained hard with the various added stresses like sighting that seem to come along with it. Added to this was the uncertainly of doing it with other flailing humans in the water. Maybe it would be better having someone to sight off, or feet to draft behind? Or maybe I’d be run over, kicked, punched, semi-drowned, fight to the surface in a panic and not recover. Or maybe I’d simply be blown off the back of the pack and I’d watch everyone disappear around the course while I tried to go back to swimming like in the pool, the best I could. All these seemed like real possibilities. I simply couldn’t know what would happen once I was in a swim race.

A swim race! That’s so unlike me. I hated swimming as a kid. I couldn’t do it. It was all horrid chlorine and water up your nose and people yelling at you. Several months ago I couldn’t freestyle 25m. But, if I’ve learnt anything from running it’s that if I set my mind to something I can do it. Anything. Even swimming. So, this race was all about that. If I made that then my whole goal for the year to ‘learn to swim’ would be a success. I didn’t really care what happened after that, I was determined to make it round the swim course. Then I’d go for a bike ride with Patty. Then we’d do a little run.

We packed our mountain bikes with their nobly tires — it would have to do –onto the back of the car, along with our transition gear stuffed into a bag we got from some race, and headed out as the glow of the approaching dawn appeared to the east. Just before 6am we pulled into the parking lot at Shadow Cliffs.

The racks were already filling up quickly so we decide to grab our bikes off the back of the car and head right to them to get a spot. That strategy worked well because by the time we returned from our car with the rest of our gear and our bike pump space was almost gone and people had started to claim trees or picnic tables or just random pieces of grass.

We got registered and body marked. Patty showed me her ‘corrected number’. “I can’t believe she wrote my number wrong: it’s an omen, my whole race is ruined,” she sort of joked.

We walked down the the beach and listened to a ‘first timers’ talk. She ended by saying she hoped to see us crossing the finish line of an Ironman. Whether people like it or not Ironman and triathlon are inescapably linked. The question I’ve got twice now: did you do a half or full? Still, though this was short, it wasn’t that short for a previous non-swimmer. And on top of that, a 5K can hurt a lot more than a marathon. It’s just shorter and different. And it’s a place to start, anyway.

After the talk we did a little swimming. It was already 75 degrees, so getting into the water wasn’t very hard. The water was warm and the air was warmer. It felt good in the water, gliding along with the sun rising across the far side of the lake. We watched the first few waves go and then headed over to the start area. Patty would go in her age group wave (40+ woman) and I’d take the wave after that which was basically anyone who’d not already gone.

—

The Swim: 400yds in 9:28 (2:22 min/100yd)

… and so I dove in and the world filled with green bubbles and disembodied limbs. My head would surface and there’d be heads all around me. Some looking at me. I’d go back under and there’d be bodies and suddenly a foot from nowhere would come at me and I’d come up and tread water or throw in a little breast stoke because there was nowhere to go, and wait for a spot to open up. Back under with some freestyle. Back up and looking for space or a direction that might be clearer. Green. Bubbles. Random feet and hands. If I think back on it it’s surprising how fast we made it to the first buoy, our tangled mass was at least moving along.

At the buoy I breast stroked wide and then found some space and got myself into some sporadic freestyle. My sighting was going well and I kept thinking I’d get on someone’s feet and let them tow me along. But I’d do that and then next thing they were stopped in the water figuring out which way to go. So I’d go around them and start the process again. My heart rate was up for sure, the initial washing machine took a lot out of me, but it was under control. Breath, relax, breath, relax…

Also quicker than I imagined I reached the final buoy and rounded it with a clear sight to the shore. I’m almost there I thought. I was getting a little tired and was glad it wasn’t too much longer. This section dragged, but soon I was looking down at the bottom and the weeds growing there. I wondered if Patty was looking down at this too, the thing she hates most about swimming in the lake. The weeds gave way to sand and I put my feet down and started walking up the shore. I stopped my watch and stared at it disbelieving for a moment. It about a minute faster than I’d swam that distance in a pool. I’d done it! I looked back and there was a lot of people still out in the water, so I wasn’t the slowest either. The day was already a success. The months spent in the pool were a success. I could swim!

T1: ~5:30

I made my way up into the transition area. Patty was sitting by our bikes pulling shoes on. I grabbed my towel and dried down a little then sat down and washed my feet off with a bottle of water and pulled on my running shoes. Overall T1 was sort of a mess, but we got out of there eventually with our bikes and helmets.

The Bike: 11 miles in 41:15 (16 miles/hr)

The bike leg was the surprise fun of the race. We thought we’d be passed a lot because of our heavy mountain bikes, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. We just applied some of our trail running muscles to it, as well as relatively high fitness (for us at least) and started passing a ton of people. It was fun! There’s nothing quite as fun as riding past someone on a fancy tri-bike with your mountain bike. By the end of the bike course I was getting a little tired but was okay. I figured I could use up a bunch of energy on the bike and then tough out a 5K run.

The course too was nicer than I imagined, running either around the perimeter of the regional park or past vineyards.

We pulled into T2 something like 15 minutes faster than our test ride of this distance.

T2: ~2:15

This transition went much faster because we already had running shoes on. The only problem was the rack next to us started to topple and so we helped get it back up and everyone’s bikes back on it before we left. Otherwise it was just off with the helmet and gloves and on with a visor. I took a Gu and sucked down a little more fluid. It was pretty warm by now and the run course was nothing but exposed dirt fire trails.

The Run: ~3.2M 28:06 (8:49 min/mile pace)

Running wasn’t the easiest. My legs felt heavy and it was pretty easy to get a burn out of them. I settled into an uncomfortable 8:40 pace or so. It felt slow. I felt slow. But it seemed like a reasonable effort given it was baking hot and I’d used most of my legs propelling a mountain bike around the course. Plus, the Gu wasn’t sitting right.

At some point I looked back and Patty wasn’t with me. I decided to keep going and see if I learned anything by trying to keep up my pace under these conditions. My race thoughts were down to basics: how far to go, what’s my pace, is my HR too high? Occasionally I’d try to ponder how it felt, what I could compare it too. It was different from running alone for sure. Less pounding, more tired. Fatigue without the swelling maybe? And on top of that there was also the heat, which felt reminiscent of the Tilden race a few months ago. Cooking.

I tried to concentrate and keep going strongly. I passed people all over the place. The course had some hills and each one had a lot of people walking. Hills I could do, and so I ran right up them all, while I walked through the aid stations where I mostly poured the water on myself.

The finish was great with lots of people cheering. While hot and sort of hellish the run went pretty well. It wasn’t my fastest 5K but it certainly wasn’t my slowest. I felt proud of myself for not letting up during this run and pushing to the end. It’s always good experience to be suffering and endure past that point when you’d rather just stop and walk. That kind of pain is temporary, you can keep running.

Total: ~1:26:30

After I crossed the line I circled back and watched Patty cross too, not too far behind me. She was glad to be done.

—

In the end, this race was all about the swim and as I think back on it I still can’t imagine that it was me out there doing that, mixing it up in a watery brawl. It wasn’t really pretty as I never got truly clean water to swim in, but it’s all about getting around the course and I did that. I can’t help but wonder what a longer course would be like, if I could just get into a rhythm out there.

I was also pretty excited to get across a triathlon finish line for the first time. Now we have to figure what’s next. Our goals for this year have been met and for much of August we’ll be on vacation in South East Asia where training will at a minimum. That will make it hard to ramp up to something bigger this year on the triathlon front. But we’ll see.

Race reports, Triathlon Biking, fear, hot, swimming, tri for fun, Triathlon, washing machine