Lake Norman Y Sprint Tri 8/28/2016 -- Race Report

This was the race that was supposed to be my first ever triathlon in August 2013.  But I pulled my hamstrings three weeks before the race, so missed the race and then took a few rest years before diabetes mandated that I get my butt off the couch for good in May 2015.  Ironically, instead of being my first tri, Lake Norman Y Sprint in 2016 was instead just a training race for IRONMAN 70.3 North Carolina.

This race came in the middle of my last training block for my half-Ironman and I felt pretty sore and tired.  Kelly didn't have a whole lot of rest in this training block as her goal was to progressively overload me until taper in October.  I didn't even do a race report for this one contemporaneously with the race.  I just went, did the race, ate all the food at The Egg in Davidson and then went home to nap.

This race had a super-early start at 6:30 as the increasing traffic on Main Street in Davidson almost killed this even.  Traditionally run by SetUp Events, the Lake Norman Y switched the race to Jones Racing Company for 2016.  Due to the early start, I stayed over at my fried Amy's house, as she lived only a 5 minute drive from the Lake Norman Y.  Although the air mattress accommodations were quire comfortable, the two roaming, nocturnal cats were a little disruptive so I didn't get the best night's sleep.  Sometime in the middle of the night, one of the cats knocked over my bike, which also caused some sleep disruption.  I mention all this because every triathlete needs to have  reliable stock for excuses as to why they didn't perform as well as they thought they should so, for those keeping count,  have two excuses: (1) coach overloaded me, and (2) cats.

The 6:30 start was somewhat poorly conceived.  With such an early start, I arrived around 5:45 a.m. and set up in the dark.  While pre-dawn setups are par for the course in an IRONMAN, they are not always quite as appreciated for a sprint.  Promptly at 6:30 a.m., everyone was ushered to the water to..... wait.  They couldn't dispatch the swim waves until sunrise and sunrise was not until 6:45-ish so me all waited until around 6:50 or so before it was light enough to start the swim in Lake Norman.  It was a wade-out-into-the-water start, and there was a lot of waiting around for a small sprint race.  I had practiced open-water swim in that lake a lot throughout the summer as the Lake Norman Y hosts many supervised open-water swim events from May to August in preparation for this race.  But the light was way different at the break of sunrise than it is at 8 a.m. when the practice OWS starts so everyone's strategy of following the trail of sunlight back into the dock didn't quite work as well as usual.  All the same, it was a good, although warm, non-wetsuit legal 750m swim.

The bike course is a well-known course and I had biked it many times over the past year.  It was a pretty long course for a sprint, at 17.5 miles, with lots of rollers and some pretty steep hills on Faith Road before the turn back to the Y.  Regardless of the early start time, by the time we were heading back on Hwy 115/Main Street into Davidson, the traffic was getting pretty heavy.  I saw Amy at one of the turns into the last mile or so before transition and it was good to see her out on the course.

The run was hot, through the unshaded neighborhood streets behind the Y and I was feeling a weird combination of aerobically fit, hot and really sore from my lower back down to calves.  But the pace I held was pretty good for at that stage of my training, all things considered, and I was happy to have another race done and in the books before my final tune-up race in September at White Lake Fall International.

Not too bad for a slow triathlete 16 months off the couch whose coach was torturing him :)

That sprint tri at the Lake Norman Y was a nice race with a substantial bike course.  It is sad to see it go, but with no ability to mitigate the traffic situation around the Y, there was no choice but to move it a couple of miles north to the Ingersoll Rand business park for 2017.

Downtown Anaheim Marketplace 5k 6/11/2016 -- Race Report

29:53

I started out way too fast (around 7:30 pace) but caught myself quickly and gradually slowed down to a 10 minute pace and then felt that I was able to speed up to about 9:30-9:45 while still staying in the 160 bpm range for an average pace of 9:34 in mile 1.  In mile 2, my hr had gone up to about 165-170 so I slowed a bit to 10 min pace for about 30 seconds to let my hr come down a bit – I had to do this twice but maintained a 9:47 pace for mile 2 and an avg hr of 168.  In mile 3, my avg hr had gone up to 174 and peaked at 184 so I was pretty close to my max towards the end of the race.  With about 0.4 miles left I wasn’t sure whether I could hold on but did with a 9:38 pace in mile 3 and a 7:51 pace for the last tenth-mile, finishing at my max hr at 189.  It was a hard race to be at threshold for the whole 5k but was happy to be able to really race it!  Turns out the endurance training did translate to a faster speed potential over a shorter distance and all the training with a hr monitor taught me how to manage my hr during a short and intense race!

The determined face of a man going sub-30 for the first time in a 5k.

Pinehurst International Triathlon 5/20/2016 -- Race Report

Last in division, last in age group. 

Today was my first international distance triathlon and my second tri (since the Belews Lake International turned into a duathlon). It was another gutsy performance -- in that I finished.  And it was another dead last finish.  The way I look at it, I'm actually getting pretty good at triathlon but only if you measure something other than "speed".  Whenever I get frustrated with how slow I am, I try to remember where I was almost exactly a year ago -- newly diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and could barely climb a flight of stairs.  A year later, here I am.

Pre-race I had a granola bar, a banana and a handful of raisins. There were two rain showers before the swim start, but no rain at all on the course, which was lucky considering the forecast.

Swim (40:43, 2:15/100 yds).  My biggest improvement was in the swim -- 40 minutes for 1500m and it was a steady and calm, consistent effort.  Good sighting throughout and got to draft off people here and there. 

Another cold, gloomy day.

T1 (5:00). uneventful except for getting the wetsuit off, which I haven't really practiced, and putting on socks, which I don't usually do but have some lingering blisters on my heels.  

Bike (2:19:44, 12.7 mph) The bike course was hard -- lots of hills, much like Charlotte, and until I lose the weight built up in my sedentary years, gravity will not be my friend.   Just as I was thinking how uneventful the bike was, my wheel got stuck in a rut in the side of the road and I went down.  Fortunately, as I was climbing, I was barely moving so I didn't get hurt but my chain slipped down and got stuck badly between the bottom bracket and the cranks, which cost a few minutes and clean fingers.  And then when I got back to transition I forgot to dismount before the line so in a panic I rushed to get off my bike and forgot to unclip.  Helpful tip: always unclip before trying to dismount.  You heard it here first.  To sum up, hills don't like me. Nutrition on the bike was efficient and effective. In my water bottles I had 250 cals of reg Tailwind and 250 cals of caffeinated Tailwind. I had a stinger waffle at the start of the bike and 3 Huma gels and 1 stinger waffle every 7-8 miles of the bike. About 1100 cals. 

Everything but the kitchen sink.

T2 (1:57). Uneventful. Bike to run is pretty quick. 

Run (1:23:13, 13:11 pace).  The run course was, not to put too fine a point on it, ridiculous.  Hill after hill after hill.  I spent the entire run with lots of leg soreness watching the tenths of miles slowly tick by.  There was lots of walking up the steeper hills and through the water stations as I just struggled to get to each mile marker. ‎ I had water at each water stop and doused myself to cool down. I had a Huma gel at mile 3. 

A hilly, hilly run.

Belews Lake International Triathlon 4/9/2016 -- Race Report

PRE-RACE

Well, the first triathlon of the season did not proceed as expected.  The weather forecast for Saturday was a low of 27 and a high of 52.  The week of the race, the race organizers announced a duathlon option consisting of a 5k run/27 mile bike/ 5k run.  I opted to stick with the triathlon format using a sleeveless wetsuit, as that is what I trained for.  I planned to change in the warming tent for T1 into full winter biking gear.

For breakfast I had an apple, a banana and a Pro Bar Peanut butter and chocolate flavor (430 cals, 10g protein).  At 7:30 a.m. on race day, the air temperature was 41 and water temp was reported to be 60.  However, the extremely high winds created a lot of chop on the lake and the race organizers were unable to properly deploy the watercraft so the swim was canceled about 20 minutes before the start and about 2 minutes after I got my wetsuit on.  The duathlon format was mandatory.  Having the benefit of ignorance as to how much harder duathlons are than triathlons, I blithely changed into running gear and lined up for the time trial style run start.

No swimming today.

RUN #1 (5k) -- 34:17, Rank 214/220, pace 10:37 min/mi (course was 3.2 miles per my Garmin)

The first run was pretty uneventful.  I was a little nervous as, due to travel and my knee injury, I hadn’t run since March 17!  Due to the cold morning temperatures, I wore my tri shorts, a long sleeve shirt and a running jacket.  I had a stinger waffle before the run.  I was able to maintain a steady sub-11 min/mile pace, keeping my hr between 147 and 167, depending on hills.  Splits were: 10:48 / 10:25 / 10:49 and 9:36 for the last 2/10 mile.  Elev gain was 223 feet.  When I got to T1 though, my legs definitely felt the effort expended on the run.

T1 – 8:48

Due to the unseasonable cold and high winds, I took time in transition to put on leg-warmers, shoe covers, which were tight and hard to zip up in the back, a ss cycling jersey over my long sleeve running shirt, a cycling jacket, gloves and a Gore beanie.  This all took a lot of time, especially the stupid shoe covers.

BIKE (27 miles) – 2:09:27, Rank 209/220, avg speed 12.6 mph

The bike was hard.  The course was extremely windy and there was 1,079 feet of climbing.  I have never gone for a 5k run before biking and my legs felt tired from mile 1.  Every time I felt like I was cruising at a decent speed, I hit a hill or wind or both.  I got passed so much that for a time I considered legally changing my name to “On Your Left”.  The bike course was two loops and towards the end of the first loop, many people shouted encouragement to me as they were passing me that I was “almost at the end”.  They did not realize that while they were almost at the end of loop 2, I was still only on loop 1.  While I was working at controlling my bike in the wind with 34mm rims and dressed like I was about to scale K2, some guy passed me with a rear disk wheel wearing nothing but a tri-suit.  At some point, around mile 21 I think, I heard an ambulance pull up behind me.  I moved over to the right to let it pass.  When it never passed me, I realized that it was sweeping and I was definitely the last one on the bike course.  This was, however, not a big surprise.  There was a big hill before the final turn, and after I climbed that hill the second time I was indeed almost done.  I saw my wife and my kids sitting on the grass a I biked in towards transition and they saw me and waved.  That was nice.  I turned in to transition and dismounted before the dismount line.  2 legs down, 1 to go.  I did stick to my nutrition plan on the bike.  I had 400 calories total of Tailwind in two water bottles and finished over 1.5 bottles, a stinger waffle in mile 1 (160 cals) and then a Huma gel every 9 miles (3x100 cals each).

T2 – 4:20

Apparently, taking everything off was a lot easier than putting it all on.  I also saved time by not taking off my helmet.  The kind people at Jones Racing Company noticed this before I left transition and offered to take it from me and bring it back to my bike.

RUN #2 (5k) – 41:32, Rank 207/220, pace 12:58 min/mi.

I ran in my tri-shorts and long sleeve shirt and gloves and kept my short sleeve bike jersey on as wind vest instead of putting on a jacket.  I waved at my family as I ran back out onto the course.  My legs and lower back hurt on this run. Quite a lot.  I knew that I could run the whole course and that I wouldn’t have to stop or walk, but that I wouldn’t be able to match my pace from run #1.  I just kept moving forward and didn’t look at my watch once the whole run, as there wasn’t all that much I would have been able to do with the information.  I knew I was running slow and that I couldn’t run faster, so I just kept a steady pace and kept on putting one foot in front of the other.  Apparently, if you keep moving, you do get to the finish chute eventually.  The run seemed to take forever.  After I got to the turn-around I didn’t see anyone else on the run course for the last half of the run.  When I ran back on to the road for the last half-mile, my friend Amy was driving in as she arrived just in time to see me finish. She offered me a lift and I accepted, but she pulled away before I could climb through the open window of her car so I had no choice but to run to the finish.  I was really, really happy to see the finish chute.  I got an enormous cheer from everyone waiting at the finish to see the last finisher and that felt nice.  Everyone at the race was very nice and supportive.  It felt very good to stop.

My first triathlon hardware.

TOTAL TIME: 3:38:23, Rank 5/5 novice masters male, 212/212 overall for finishers.  4 people DNFd after run #1 and 4 more people DNF’d on or after the bike.  I feel proud to have finished it and feel that I have come a long way since this time last year.