After every training block at the end of the recovery week I’m supposed to do a triathlon. But this time I wasn’t so sure if I should. This season I struggled a little with the confidence in my fitness and I would have been just content for the Ironman to be my next race. However my coach said I should race and that it would be a good chance to build trust in my fitness and to block out fear of failure. He thought that the local Olympic distance race would be perfect for that.
So I signed up for this race and was getting excited. I knew that my fitness was good and I wanted to see how I would do. I saw that several people I knew would be racing too (Josh, Drew, Stuart) so I would have some good competition on the course. The race plan called for 280Watts on the bike and Keep HR around 163-166bpm (if power meter fails me again). Opening mile on the run 6:05min/mile and then run best effort. Some additional instructions from my coach: “No more Mr nice guy (during the race then turn it back on). You are super fit and just need to let your body deliver the goods.”
We arrived at the race a little later than I wanted and because of a long bathroom line I had to rush which also meant running to the car and back to pick up some transition gear. Put everything out and then run over to the athletes briefing. Well I guess I can call this the warm up. After the race briefing I still had 5min and so I was able to get at least a little swim warm up in. The water was 68f but felt pretty cold.
Swim
Swim finish, were I gloriously pose while trying to open my wet suit 🙂
I positioned myself on the left side and decided to go out hard and hopefully find a good pair of feet. Practicing group start in training camp helped, so when the gun went of I was in front. One group was to the left heading of course and there were 2-3 people just right to me. One guy was slightly faster and I let him pass and started drafting him. The pace was rather high and I had to focus on getting enough air. I was kinda exited to be that upfront in the swim and not just loose my feet right away. So I was determined to stay on these feet. On the first buoy there were about 4-5 people left and I was in 3rd position. I was excited to be in the first pack for once, and was even more determined to stay with them. Shortly after the buoy I overtook the 3rd guy and moved into 2nd place where I stayed for the first lap. On the 2nd lap some guy which was hitting my feet for a while decided to increase the pace. Things got shuffled around a little but we ended up with two leaders and I was right behind them. I came out of the water in 3rd and was super excited that I finished the swim in the first pack.
Thanks to Pat and John for all the swim race simulation in camp!
Swim time: 21:36
T1
I fell back a little on the run to transition since I swam pretty hard and I had to gather my breath. Once at my bike I took off the wetsuit and proceeded to put on socks. Which resulted in a horrible transition time. Since the temperature was in the low 50s and I didn’t bring my toe covers I figured I would be happier to not have completely “frozen” feet for the run. As a result I lost 40-50sec compared to the other athletes. Putting on socks on soaked feet seemed to be challenging 🙂
Time 1:37
Bike
pushing hard on the bike
To my surprise I wasn’t cold on the bike. Compare to the 70.3 in Lake Stevens I was also working much harder. It was apparently too cold for my watch which didn’t respond to my pressing the transition button and once it responded it showed me in T2. So I had to stop and reset the timer. Switch to biking and hand start it again. Then the my bike computer just wouldn’t turn on. Dang Garmin would just show “Working…” but never actually show the stats. It finally turned on after about 20min of riding after turning it off and on several times. At least I had also my watch on, but the numbers on the watch are different so I decided to ride by HR, which turned out to be pretty okay. The first loop was pretty event less. Mostly riding alone. One guy overtook me early on and I overtook 1-2 guys. Towards the end of the first loop Stuart overtook me and I was surprised that it took him that long to catch up with me. I guess that is a good sign.
The 2nd loop started sketchy. The police had stopped the traffic that the sprint triathlete could merge on the course. However when I approached they let the cars go and I had 3 cars in front of me which were following the slower sprint athletes. So I overtook the first two cars on the right and they made space for me. But the pick up wouldn’t make space for me. So I decided to overtake him on the left on the divider lane while there was on coming traffic. This was very sketchy and uncomfortable. The pick up driver yelled at the me: “Get off the fucking road”. I acted in the moment and with the sketchy situation I yelled back: “Asshole! It’s a race!” and showed him the finger. I’m not too proud of it but at least I can check of the coaches instruction (“No more mister nice guy”). I doubt that this was what he meant though 🙂
After that I was overtaking loads of sprint triathletes for the 2nd loop and several times there were a little iffy situations where the slower athletes were all over the road and despite me yelling “On your left” would still swerve in front of me. I even had to slow down through several turns to stay safe. That wasn’t that much fun. But all in all I was still able to keep up a decent effort.
I finished the bike in 54min and averaged 169bpm which was 3 bpm higher than planned and a solid effort. The average watts for the last 35min (of which the garmin worked) was 271Watts.
After the bike I was in 8th position. However, I didn’t know that since I lost track during my long T1.
T2
Because I had my socks on and the transition was on wet ground, I decided to keep my bike shoes on for the transition run and take them off right when I switched into the running shoes to run with dry feet. This again probably cost me several seconds.
Run
finish of the run
Right out of transition the run felt rough and I had to push hard to get close to a 6min/mile. My feet were halfway numb and running just didn’t feel right. I remembered the quote I read that you don’t have to feel great to have a good race and just went with it. It took me almost 1 mile to get into it. I overtook many athletes, but most of them were in the sprint wave and just had to run a 5k. Eventually, I saw Josh up the road. In previous races I managed to reel him in on the run, but this time I wasn’t sure he seemed to run a decent pace. It took me another mile to get close to him and eventually pass him. He told me that I was now in 5th place. When I got closer to turn around I started counting and saw 5 guys in front of me, which meant I was in 6th. I figured Josh must have miscounted. I didn’t know at the time that one of the guys in front of me was doing the sprint but missed the 5k turn around. So I actually was in 5th. At the turn around there was one other guy in front of me which I reeled in shortly after that and also the sprint guy. But I couldn’t see the people further up the road. I decided to keep on pushing and running the best I can but I figured I might have a hard time to catch the people in front of me. But you never know… With about one mile to go a volunteer yelled at me its all downhill from here, while we were clearly standing in front of a hill. I have no clue why she would yell that… Despite that I was feeling reasonable good and focused on high turn over.
I ran the 10k in 38:27 which is a 6:09min/mile with an average HR of 172bpm which is right below my threshold.
After Math
Awards. First in AG
As it turns out all 3 in front of me were from different age groups and therefore I ended up winning my age group. 🙂
It was a great race as always with BuDu racing and it was fun to race against some familiar faces. I’m proud that I was able to swim with the first pack and was racing strong. All in all it was a great race and certainly helped me with my confidence.
I learned that I earned a new nickname among some of my competitors/friends. Some of them apparently refer to me as the “Swiss Assassin”. I like the ring of that and might have to put it on my bike frame as they suggested 😛
Congrats to all my friends who were racing. And thanks to my awesome wife for cheering!
I approve of the finger: He got what he deserved 🙂