This weekend I travelled to Knoxville, TN for the REV 3 Olympic distance triathlon. 1500 meter swim, 25 mile bike, 6.2 mile run. The added twist is that when B moved to Texas, he didn’t quite manage to get everything into his shipping crates, and so he rented a one-way U-Haul, which I drove from DC to the race. The drive down was long but uneventful, and I picked B up at the airport late Friday night. The day had been hot, but forecast was for a cooling trend over the weekend. (In literature, that’s known as foreshadowing).
Saturday we got up and headed downtown to pick up our packets and scout the course. B had attempted to ride the course the last time he went through Knoxville, without much luck. Before we got on the bikes, though, we went for a swim in the Tennessee river – the race called for an open water start, about 300 meters upstream, turnaround, and 1200 m downstream. Several big-name pros were there, and because the water was in that range where wetsuits were legal for amateurs but not for pros, they were in speedos – grrrrowl! We got in, swam the course, and talked about sighting and strategy in the swim. Then, back to get on the bikes.
About 20 minutes into the ride, we run into Ritchie Cunningham, a pro who B knows pretty well, and we started riding together. This was not a great idea for me – I wasn’t feeling very strong, the course is pretty hilly, and eventually I just said to myself “no prizes for going hard today” and let them go. B came back to me, and agreed that it was just a scouting run, so we knocked the pace back a bit and followed the course out. Turns out there are quite a few hills around that part of Knoxville. We got to a point where we thought the course turned around, and headed back. This turned out to be quite mistaken, and not paying closer attention to the maps (or having better maps, or a guide) ended up hurting me a bit on race day. Even after slowing down I was still hurting some, so I sent B on ahead and limped back in, worried.
Some context – I had done a hard ride (60 miles with 7x seated climb out on McArthur Blvd) on Thursday – I didn’t expect to be hurting from that on Saturday, much less Sunday. Another factor is that my son, J, had been diagnosed with strep a week ago – but he got antibiotics, seemed fine, and I didn’t think I had anything to worry about. But maybe I had strep? I still don’t know, going to try to see the doctor soon though.
Anyway, after racking the bikes, we headed out to get some chow and catch IronMan2 on IMAX – woohoo! That was fun. Grabbed some pasta after the show, then to bed. A bit late, although I don’t expect to get much sleep the night before a race.
But 4 am came too soon the next day. Up, breakfast, coffee, and down to the racecourse. It was 45 friggin degrees. I didn’t have a fleece – just running pants and a long-sleeve technical tee shirt. We were on-site at 5:30 (for a 7:55 start for B, and a 8:20 start for me) and I did not much enjoy the next 150 minutes. This is not to say that getting there early isn’t the right call – if something had gone wrong with the bike, or I had forgotten something in packing, I would still have had time to figure it out, just to say that when it was 91 on Friday, I didn’t expect the race to be held at ~50 degrees. Taking several trips to the loo before race start isn’t unusual for me, but today, I was glad that I had time to get everything out of my system. By the time we were lining up and the pro race started, my teeth were chattering uncontrollably. I huddled in my wetsuit waiting for my wave to start, finally deciding shivering wasn’t a good way to warm up. So I ran along the promenade and in the parking lot for 15 minutes or so, looking quite the sight in my wetsuit I imagine. But my teeth stopped rattling, anyway, so that was a win.
The race itself – my swim wave consisted of men 40-49, women under 29, and “Clydesdales” – men over a certain weight, I think 200 lbs, but I’m not sure. 39 people in my age group, the men 40 -44. I came out of the water 10th in my age group, a blistering 22:13 seconds later. When I say blistering, I mean, really, unreasonably fast. That is ~90 seconds for 100 meters, which is fully 16 seconds per 100 meters faster than I was swimming in the pool earlier in the week. Some of that probably came from the current (remember, downstream for 900 meters net!) but mostly, I think the course was short. This was the first open water swim where I felt pretty good about my sighting – no wild wandering off course, no getting kicked in the face. But I tell you, swimming in the pool just doesn’t get you ready for the adrenaline of swimming with 50 people, passing some, being passed by others. I kept having to fight to keep my heartrate down and my breathing steady – with not a lot of success. I swam hard, and came into T1 panting and out of breath. Overall, 99th fastest swim of the day, out of a field of ~350.
Transition wasn’t fast – you had to run up a ramp from the river, across a major street, around the transition area halfway before you got to your bike. I ditched the wetsuit and decided that I wasn’t going to put on my technical t-shirt, instead just opting to go with the armwarners that I had already prepared to put on once I was riding. I did put on socks, though, something that many veteran triathletes skip – but I skipped that step at the Rumpass, and my feet didn’t do so well, so I sucked it up and took the time to get the socks on. Total transition time, 2:10, and I passed 8 people in the process. Unfortunately, none of those people were in my age group.
And out on the bike. I got off the UT campus and out on the bridge that would take me out of town, when I saw the leader of the men’s pro race coming back the other way. Which was pretty exciting. The first half of the race I went aggressively through except for the big hills, which I did my best to spin up. I noticed during the swim that my throat hurt, and on the bike I tried to drink some Gatorade, but I wasn’t having much luck there. At least it was going to be a fairly short race, I thought. In the first ½ of the bike, I averaged 19.25 mph, and lost 3 places in my age group. When I got to the place where B and I had turned around, the course turned Left, and I was off on a stretch of road I hadn’t seen before. In the first 20 minutes of the race, I had been picking off dozens of people who had started in the swim wave before me – but here, 40 m inutes into the race, it was pretty barren. I rode pretty hard, but kept in mind that there was probably at least one big hill left. About which I was correct – a monster that reduced me to my smallest gear and a slow cadence to boot. Near the top, I heard a rubbing noise from my rear tire, and noticed that it had slipped out of its place and was out of alignment, causing tremendous friction. I got off the bike, opened the quick-release, adjusted the alignment, got back on the bike, rode 15 feet, realized I hadn’t fixed the problem, got back off the bike, and saw a pack of about 20 people grinding their way up the switchback below me.
I scowled, fought the quick-release open again, jammed the tire in the correct position, tightened the bolt, and got back on the bike just as the pack passed me. Now, drafting is illegal, but when you are climbing a big hill like that folks tend to bunch up – so, they weren’t exactly a pack. In any case, I crested the hill, got in my aerobars and crushed down the hill with, frankly, a reckless disregard for safety. I never had to cross the double yellow lines – which is good because the road was open to traffic – but it was a near thing. By the bottom of the hill I had passed all but two of the people who had caught me up at the top.
I played ring around the rosie with those two for the next 8 miles or so, until we got back to the bridge towards campus. At this point, I thought we were almost done, and started looking for the markers to go back towards transition. Unfortunately, I was mistaken, and there was another 5 miles left to go. Pretty flat miles, where I could have put the hammer down and maybe made up some time. Another reminder that you always, Always, ALWAYS need to ride the course or know it well enough to keep yourself focused.
I did notice that I hadn’t been drinking anything, and tried to gulp down some Gatorade, but it still really hurt my throat. But I wasn’t feeling great. Total bike split: 1:22:24. I averaged 16.4 mph on the back 8 miles, what with stopping and all, and my average bike speed for the day was 18.2. Very disappointing after going 21.5 mph two weeks before in Richmond. And, 6 people from my AG passed me, never mind the 16 other people not in my AG who caught me up.
T2 was also not fast – someone had thrown their wetsuit on my rack space, and I had to waste time getting it out of the way. 2:07 was a pretty terrible split there, but at least I didn’t lose any ground.
So, I went out onto the run course, which I hadn’t scouted at all. (Boy, going to see IronMan2 didn’t seem like so much fun NOW, did it?) I usually go out too fast, so I was trying just to take good strides, keep up a good cadence, and find my feet in the first mile. I wanted to run ~7:15 per mile, and so, when I got to my first marker, and saw 7:52, I was a bit shaken. No worries, I thought, just bring it down a little, and, sure enough, I ran the next mile in 8:02. Gah! I did manage to bring it down for mile 3 – back to 7:50. At this point, I was really feeling pretty unwell, getting water at every aid station and getting only a sip of it before I spit it out, unable to swallow. I forced half a gel-pack down at the turn around, and at the next aid station tried to get more water – I gagged, had to stop, and if I had had anything in my stomach, it would have hit the sidewalk. I managed to stagger into a run again, and hold it together to the finish – but just barely. I passed one and was passed by one Age grouper on the run, for a net of no gain (or no loss, considering!) and ran the 10k in 48:30. 110th place over all, 16th in men 40-44. 2:38:30.
Then, straight to the medical tent, where I had a loverly little lie down for 30 mins or so, with plenty of electrolyte fluids – no IV, they weren’t really set up for that, which seemed odd, and thankfully someone had a blanket, because I was still freezing.
B had a good-but-not great race, and finished 12th in the elite amateur group, which put him out of the “points” category for the Rev 3 series – he needed a top 10 finish to get any points. As he said, “a lot of fast people showed up.”
My goal for this season is to finish in the top %25 of my age group, and I missed that mark. But, I think, if I had had a GOOD day, I would have been right about there. So, ok. Next up is the big race of the front half of the season, Eagleman, June 13th, one month out. Two more weeks of hard training for that, then we will try to rest up a bit and go in with a taper, instead of training through. Last year, there were 231 people in the men 40-44 age group. Winning time, 4:21:02. 57th place was just under 5:00 hours, and 23rd place 4:45. Supposedly the course is flat, so hills aren’t going to be an issue, but windy, which can make those times completely irrelevant. But the real difference between 23rd and 57th was the bike – 22.5 mph for one, 21.5 mph for the other. I think I’m going to try to get on some flats and push a big gear this weekend. Lets see if I can’t manage to build enough strength to push 22 mph for 2 hours at a go!
Part 2, containing more existential ruminations, to follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment