Finishing the Swim. In the background there is still plenty of fog.
I stared on the right side of the swim so that I could swim my own pace initially and not start out too fast. Two other athletes lined up even further right. Once the race was on started pulling to the left, which was kinda annoying. But after we traded places I was clear to swim my pace. I noticed that most people were swimming to the left and every 100m when we saw a buoy come back right. Sighting was a little challenging because of the fog, but I always managed to see the next buoy and swim what I thought was a straight line compared to most others.
I focused on high turn over and pulling a lot of water. I was swimming along another guy for several hundred meters and then decided to fall back and draft him since we were the same speed anyway.
At the first turn buoy we turned into the sun, which made the sighting pretty hard, but I wasn’t too worried if we were a little of for the 100m, but as it turns out again I was spot on and didn’t have to course correct.
I was in the 4th wave and each previous wave had a 4 min gap. I was surprised how early I started catching some of them. At the halfway point it got somewhat annoying how many people of the previous wave I had to overtake. Some of the suddenly changing to breast stroke, some using other athletes as their “swim lane dividers”.
On the way back we followed the buoy line which was a few feet directly under the buoys. Unfortunately, that was the same strategy as many of the slower swimmers. I decided to just stick with the guy I was drafting which led to body contact several times. Despite that eventually, I got separate when we were swimming through a big group from the wave which started 8min ahead of us. I felt really good in the water and was happy to see the 31min swim time when I came out.
T1:
I felt a little dizzy again which reminded me of Seafair so I wasn’t running too hard right away. Besides the asphalt was also painful. Wetsuit came of quickly but I managed to put on the helmet in a way that my glass visor fell off. So I had to take it off fix it and put it back on. Which meant I lost a few seconds. Time: 1:51
Bike:
At the very beginning of the bike. If you look closely you can see that I didn’t close my right shoe and are not in the left shoe yet.
I was cold right away. The temperature was in the low 50s and riding with wet clothes (bike shorts and singlet top) on the bike wasn’t all that great. At least I put on the toe warmers because I figured it would be cold. Right of the bat I was pushing 200 Watts which made me happy. Initially, I was overtaking many people from the previous waves and the street was quite busy. It didn’t help that a truck was stuck behind some slower cyclist and 4 of us had to overtake the big car on the left in the oncoming traffic lane.
Than I was behind a guy who rode to the right into the ditch of the street twice and just barely recovered. I couldn’t wait to get past him and made sure to leave ample room when overtaking him. Besides incidents most riders were behaving as expected and to my surprise it was a very clean race (at least around me) with hardly any drafting violations.
Around mile 10 of the bike it was time for my 2nd gel and I noticed how cold my hand were. I had a hard time to squeeze the gel bag with my hand into my mouth. After that I did some finger exercises to warm them up. I figured I might need them to squeeze the breaks eventually.
Cold, but still smiling
While the power numbers where well above 200W and close to 250W it suddenly dropped. For a while around 100W, than 50W. And that was it for my power meter, I assumed the battery were empty. For the rest of the ride I had to focus on HR and feeling.
At least the sun was coming through a little and the temperatures started to raise a little. I made good progress and checked my split at every 5 mile marker. It seemed I was around 14min for 5mile which would result in a time just over 2.5h hours. Which I was happy with since that meant I could get close to my previous PR time at least for the bike portion. They had timing mat at the halfway point which I crossed in 1:19. I knew the 2nd half of the course is much hillier and therefore a little slower. My back started to get tight again, which I knew was from tight hamstring and gluts.
I told myself that this was it, I had to start pushing myself and deal mentally with being uncomfortable. I made sure to check the HR and kept pushing. While in the first half I was going back and forth with many other people. Now on the 2nd half I left most of them behind me and there were only a few other riders which were going a similar speed. I still was overtaking people from previous waves. But at times I couldn’t see anybody in front or behind me.
Fun fact: This time I “only” managed to reach 49.9miles/h (80km/h) on the downhill, 1 mile slower than last time.
I was able to maintain my HR all the way to the end. Finishing the bike in 2:42min. During the race I miss remembered my previous time as 2:33 and so I was disappointing that I was that much slower. But I also knew that there was no point in dwelling over it. So I focused on the next task at hand which was T2 and then run.
As discussed with my coach I was supposed to do the fueling by feeling and only loosely follow the fueling plan. Which meant I ended up drinking only 2 bottles of sports drink (instead of 3.5) and ate one gel less than planned. Despite that my stomach was still on the edge.
T2:
Once I jumped of the bike I noticed how cold my feet where and running on the asphalt was painful especially since it was pretty rough asphalt. This time there weren’t any hiccups besides the guys next to me who put the bike into the rack the wrong way. Time: 1:51 (as T1)
Run:
Fresh out of the gate. Just putting on my hat. Glasses still in my hand.
Plan was to start with 6:40min/mile. Well I started running a 6min/mile but quickly noticed that and eased into a more reasonable pace. I started overtaking people right away. One mile in I head a guy coming up behind me and it took him a quarter mile until he passed me. I was thinking of running with him, but wasn’t sure if I could keep up with him and if it would hurt my race. In hindsight I probably should have gone with him. At that time I was already running faster than a 6:30min/mile and I figured I want to stay on the safe side for the first few miles. I felt good on the first loop and stayed in control, I got some fueling in every aid station but my stomach was generally not happy with me. It was nice to see the TN Multisport crew with lots of people who would cheer.
On the out and back when the lead bikers came, I counted my place unfortunately I lost track, but I was somewhere in the top 30. However the counting was somewhat meaningless because of the wave start. I also saw my friend Trev in front of me at the out and back and was wondering if I would catch up since he was quite a bit ahead.
First Loop out and back
On the out and back I noticed some strong runners behind me and I was worried that they would catch up if I would slow down. So I focused on pushing the pace.
On the 2nd lap it was much harder to see how many people where in front of me and who was on the 2nd loop. My stomach was a little upset but I was mentally in control and believed that I could continue this pace. The 2nd time on the out and back I noticed that the lead guys didn’t gain much on me and were just finishing up the race when I had less than 3 miles to go. I saw several people who looked like they were on the 2nd loop and told myself if any of them falters or slows down, I’ll run them down. I’m not going to slow.
Second loop, out and back
Once I did the turn around I saw several people who were still reasonable close behind me. I wasn’t too worried about them since if they were stronger why haven’t they closed in over the last ~10 miles besides to close in on me, they would have to run quite a bit faster than me and I was still running around a 6:30min/mile. I saw Trev and to my surprise he was behind me I later learned that he had to use a porter potty because of GI issues. I pushed hard to the very end and nobody else overtook me. I finished the run in 1:25:46 which is an average pace of 6:32min/mile. With an avg HR of 163.
With this performance I achieved a 4th place in my age group and an overall 19th place. (Technically 20th, but I don’t count the relay team which beat me by 35 Seconds)
After match:
This race certainly helped to build back up some of the confidence in my racing abilities. As 2 years ago I beat Amy again on the swim but only by 8 seconds. Considering that she was swimming 1/3 of my volume it is impressive (and mildly annoying 🙂 ) that she was that fast. After the race many people mentioned that they were 2-3min slower on the bike than previous years. I don’t know why it was slower, but that certainly makes me feel a little better since I was 5min slower on the bike. My run was 3 min slower than 2 years ago, but a 1:25 is still a great time and only 5 people ran faster than me on that day.
My coaches initial analysis is that I should have pushed harder on the bike and run. Because the HR on the bike wasn’t as high as expected and the run I probably could have gone a little faster in the initial miles. However, I think since that was the first Triathlon which went well for me I didn’t trust my abilities yet and it was important for me at least on the run to build into it.
Medal, 4th place Award, Worldchampionship 70.3 Coin
Looking at the results I noticed that the 5th guy finished close to me. Interestingly he actually swam faster but had a longer transition. I bike about 1 min faster but he ran about 30 sec faster than me. At the end he finished just 1 min behind me. I knew there were fast people behind me, but I wasn’t aware that another guy was breathing down my neck the whole race.
While I wasn’t as fast as I hoped I’m happy with the time and it shows that I’m close to my old performance levels. Besides my 4th place and some luck at the roll down earned me another slot for the 70.3 Worlds which for a change I decided to take. I did it in 2011 in Las Vegas and now look forward to compete at the 70.3 World championship in Australia in 2016!
Blog Post from Lake Stevens 2013
Congrats to a great race!
Have fun in Australia! 🙂