My Triathlon Adventure

My training volume was really low this year.  I can’t really explain why, I’m guessing it was because I didn’t have a big race driving me.  I wasn’t really sure until pretty late that I was going to even do a triathlon.  Even then, I was so worried about the swim that was all I focused on.  That’s going to change in 2012.  I am planning on doing a ton more races next year, and I’m seriously going to focus on running.

My goals for 2012:

Major Goals: Lose 15 pounds before the Half Iron race, do the Litchfield Hills Olympic Triathlon, and the Hartford Marathon

Minor Goal: PR for my Half Marathon at the Iron Horse Half Marathon

Other than that I am going to work through some triathlons and I might do a 5K or so for good measure.

I am going to shoot for an injury free year, to that end I will do the following:

• Daily stretching of my hamstrings, lower back, hip flexors, and glutes
• Daily work on eyes closed balance, and strengthening and activating my glutes and legs

My training plan will include all triathlon sports, but will have an intensive focus on running.

The run training will have three phases:

1. Phase 1: slowly increase volume with short (3-6 mile) runs while working on building more core and leg muscles
1. All runs will be in zone 2 the whole time
2. Work on form correction i.e., forefoot landing, high cadence, and good running posture
2. Phase 2: Slowly increase volume and distance
1. Continue in zone 2, add some race pace miles at the end of the longer runs
2. Add some interval work 6-8 weeks before the half iron race
3. Phase 3: Continue to increase the miles, less focus on heavy leg work, maintain focus on core
1. Continue in zone 2, add continue adding race pace miles at the end of the longer runs
2. Add some interval work 6-8 weeks before the Marathon

The goal here is multifaceted, I want to become more flexible and balanced, I want to get lighter to make me faster, more efficient, I want to increase my core strength so that my form does not break down, I want to slowly build my endurance while also doing some speed work, and finally, I want to correct issues with my form to increase my running efficiency and reduce impact on my joints.

I have already started working on stretching, and even in the week or so that I’ve been doing it I already notice a difference.

I’ll put some posts together on my progress for both form correction, and flexibility shortly, but these are my goals.  I think that by tackling my training on all of these fronts I can prevent a repeat of the injury plagued 2010 training season.  I now have a lot more miles in my legs, and I am going to slowly build up to those bigger distances.

My new training cycle starts right after the Hartford Marathon, it’ll be here before I know it.

Today I ran the Unionville Road Race 5K.  It was hot, really humid, and pretty miserable.

My goal was to do 8’s but I wasn’t sure that was possible.  With the heat and humidity I knew it was going to be tough going.

We got to the event late, and I ran to get registered and get everything together.  I made it to the starting line, which was in the sun, and just started to sweat.  Ugh, brutal.  I could tell 8’s weren’t in the cards for me today.

As the horn blew I took off.  I checked my pace, and it was in the 6’s.  Time to slow down.  I backed off a bit, checked again, and I was at about 7.  Slowed it down once more and got to 7:44.  Good, let’s see how that goes.

Before even getting to the mile mark I could tell that this race was going to be grueling.  I was really hot, my heart rate was over 170, and I was starting to slow down to right around 8’s.

As I hit the first mile mark I got my time 7:40.  That was good, but it wasn’t going to last.

I hit the water station and had to slow down, they only had a couple of people there and they were getting hammered.  Luckily they had a lot of water on the table, so I just grabbed a couple and took off.

I dumped one cup over my head, and sipped from the other one.  It helped cool me down a bit, but I was still hurting.  It was tough just thinking about the fact that I was only halfway home.

We popped out of the rails to trails section of the race that we had spent about a mile on, and turned onto rt. 177.  The next section of the race was on the sidewalk.  This wasn’t an issue since the crowd was now thinned out.  It was at this point that I contemplated walking.  My quads were on fire, and my shins were getting sore too.  I just wanted this race to end.  But I didn’t walk, I kept running.  I did ease the pace a bit, and my heart rate stabalized.

A few more people passed me on this section, but mostly I just kept up with the people around me.  My pace was jumping around a bit, but I was just trying to hold on.

With about a mile or so left, I started to feel a little better, I think my heart rate was settling down, I maintained my pace, but I didn’t go any faster.

With about 300 feet to go I picked up the pace again, but there was no one to pass.  I ran it home just as my wife popped out of the crowd to take my picture.

My total time was about 26:35.  Not where I wanted to be, but I’ll take it.  This race pretty much ends my 2011 race year, so that’s that.

This past weekend my wife and I did the half metric century ride put on by Cycling Concepts in Rocky Hill.  Including the one wrong turn we made, which added about 2 miles, we did about 40 miles of riding with 2700 feet of elevation change.  It was by far the hardest ride I have done to date.

There were so many hills.  I’m proud to say that I climbed them all.  No walking for me.  There was one hill that seemed nearly vertical.  I’m sure that looking back on it it was probably not as big as I remember, but I very nearly didn’t make it up.  It was so steep that I couldn’t get comfortable standing, so I just started swerving left and right and with about 10 feet to go and finally made it up.

It was a lot of fun to ride with my wife, who did really well herself btw, but it was a really tough go.

Having said that, I really really like my bike.  It just feel great on it.  I’m planning another couple long rides before the year is over, but none will be that tough.

This past weekend my wife, sister-in-law and I did the Guts and Glory Challenge at Browstone quarry.   All I can say is wow.

We were on a team with another member of the tri club, and it was a lot of fun.  There was a 400′ swim that lead to a rope climb.  Then we had to carry a 4″ pipe that was maybe 6 feet long through a tire run, under a 20′ log wire barrier, on a mile or so run, through an oiled tunnel, down a zip line, up an 80′ cargo net, and down another zip line.

The rope climb was tough.  The rope was pretty thin and made of nylon so it really bit into your skin.  The tunnel was nearly impossible.  It was tight and slippery.  It sounds like most people skipped it.  Three of us on our team made it through.  The zip lines were awesome, and the cargo net was scary but doable.

It took us nearly 90 minutes to get through it, which put us dead last in the race.  I’m fine with that though, we were doing it for fun, and I can’t think of a more fun way to spend a few hours.  Good times!

I’ll most likely be doing this again next year.

OR; I survived my first real tri!

Pre-Race

It should come as no surprise that I was very nervous about this race.  It was my first “real” triathlon.  It was my first “real” open water swim.  It was also going to be the very farthest out that I have ever swum in the ocean.  Over the summer I had one ocean swim with my wetsuit.  I stayed near the shore, and the chop made it nearly impossible for me to swim back because of my lack of bilateral breathing skills.  I wanted everything to go perfect so the day before the race I went to packet pick up at Zane’s Bicycle, and decided to take the opportunity to scope out the race location and the bike course.

I drove to the swim area and looked around.  The ocean was fairly calm, just a few waves lapping the shore.   I stared at the ocean, thinking, well if it is like this I’ll be OK.

I got in the car and drove the bike route.  I did get a bit turned around, but ended up finding my way.  It was a bit hilly, but it was a really beautiful area.  I did notice one turn where the road was a little rough, but otherwise things seemed straight forward.  My inexperience did get to me at this point though.  All I could think of was how was I ever going to find my way?  There were a lot of turns, it was a fairly technical course, and without help I was going to struggle.

I drove back home feeling pretty good about things.  My wife had her packet pickup that afternoon so we swapped out the kids and she headed out while I took the kids to Tae Kwon Do.  We met back up at home and I started my race prep.  Work has been so busy that I hadn’t gotten time to put anything together yet.  The night before I found a website called RaceChecklist.com.  It is a great site that you can use to generate a race checklist.  You click off check boxes and generate and print the list.  It helped me make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything that I might need.

With race checklist in hand I felt more or less prepared.  I still had to clean and oil my chain, and make any last minute tweaks to the bike.  I loaded it up into my car along with the bike pump and headed inside.  I loaded my transition bag with the checklist items and crossed them off one at a time.  With my bag complete I just had a few items that needed to wait until race day.

Typically the nerves associated with a race cause me some serious digestive issues.  We’ll keep it at that.  I didn’t want to end up running to the bathroom repeatedly on race morning so I knew I had to have some sort of medication plan ready to go.

Medication Plan

I decided to take two Imodium tablets the night before the race, and then take two more the morning of, along with some motion sickness medicine.  I followed the plan and it worked really really well.  I only had to go to the bathroom once all morning which is just about perfect.

I set the alarm for way too early o’clock and tried to get some sleep.  I tried really hard to sleep but my mind was on the swim.   I was also inexplicably worried about the bike ride.  I’m not the most confident person on a bike, but I feel much more solid lately.  I don’t know why I was getting nervous about it now, but all of those pre-race jitters left me with little sleep.  Maybe 4 hours.

When the alarm went off I was already awake.  I threw on the clothes that I left out for myself, tri shorts, tri singlet, sweatpants, wind breaker and fli flops.   brushed my teeth, medicated, grabbed my tri bag and headed out.

The drive was uneventful.  I wasn’t that nervous to be honest.  It was still dark out until just a few miles from the race location.  As I approach the sky just started to light up.  I found a parking space, grabbed my gear and headed into transition.  I picked a spot, dropped my bike off, set up my transition area, and went over to the chip pickup and body marking area.  After getting body marked I walked back to transition and counted racks from both the bike entry, and the swim entry to make sure that I would quickly find my bike.  I met up with a friend Betsie who was also part of the YMCA tri group and was doing the race with me.  She still had a bunch of setup to do, so while she took care of that I headed back to the registration area.  The registration area was on a deck overlooking the swim start.  The ocean was as still as glass, not even a tiny wave.  I have seen lakes with more motion.  I watched as a boat motored off to drop the buoys.   As the first one was dropped off I remember feeling relief.  OK that’s not too bad.  As the boat moved on to drop the second one I thought, ok, good enough…stop there…where are you going?  It seemed like the buoy was miles away.  Wow, that was going to be rough.  I tried not to let it get to me, but I was starting to get a bit nervous about the whole affair.

It turns out I was going to be in the last wave.  With about 15 minutes or so to the race start I went over to transition, took off my sweatpants and put on my wetsuit.  I wandered over to the beach where a couple of other tri club members were, and I watched the first waves go off.  I scanned the beach for my family.  My wife and kids and my sister-in-law were all coming to watch me race.  They came later just so that they could have an extra hour of sleep.  I was wondering if they were going to make it in time, and sure enough there they were.  I ran up to give them all a hug.  That was all I needed to get me going.  I headed back to my wave, and waited for my turn to start.

Swim

I spoke to a couple of the other guys lining up in my wave.  We were all first timers, and the tension was palpable.  One of the guys I spoke to said he had never done an open

The worst part is behind me, literally!

water swim, the other had done limited open water swimming.  I remembered my first open water swim, it was terrifying, I felt bad for that first guy, this was going to be an interesting experience for him to say the least.

The countdown started, and I thought about how I wasn’t really that nervous now.  Maybe it was a good thing to have gotten there so early.  This allowed me to work the nerves out, and relax.  Seeing my family certainly helped as well.  The horn blew and we were off.

Being the last wave there was no worries about other people swimming through us, so I found an opening in the middle and I started my swim.  The swim start was fine.  No bumping really and I was glad for that.  It wasn’t long before I started to breast stroke.  I wasn’t tired, I was just uneasy.  I didn’t want to swim off course.  It would be a good time to mention that I have no breast stroking ability, so I just kind of floated there while making arm movements.  I doubt that I made any forward progress.  Within a few minutes that doubt started creeping in.  “Oh boy, my arms are tired already, this sucks, I can’t do this.”  I realized that, although I hadn’t gotten to the first buoy yet, I was already pretty far from shore.  My mind started trying to get me to freak out.  I stopped repeatedly to breast stroke.  I could hear people chattering in the background “are you ok” “how are you feeling.”  A lot of chatter for a swim.  It sounded a lot like that scene from Titanic where everyone is in the water.  It is quiet, the waves lapping here and there, and the whispers and chatter of nervous people.

I kept it going, no time to turn back, you can do this.  I made it to the first buoy, because I stopped so often I never had issues with swimming off course.  I was stopping waaaaaay too much.  But I think I needed that just to feel comfortable.  The good news is that I wasn’t breathing heavy.  I hadn’t choked on any water, really in the grand scheme of things I was doing really OK.  In fact, I started noticing that I was getting more tired “breast stroking” than just swimming freestyle.  I set a goal, swim to the first turn buoy and then you’ll be fine.

I started doing more and more stretches of freestyle swimming.  I really pushed myself.  Before long I was doing longer and longer stretches of freestyle.  Every so often I would fine myself swimming near someone, but that was pretty rare.  At one point I did get bonked in the head by someone, and someone did swim slightly up my back, but it never freaked me out.  As I focused on that turn buoy I increased my freestyle stopping just enough to site.  At one point I popped my head up and banged right into the buoy.  Luckily it was just an inflatable balloon, so I smacked it out of the way and went around it.

When I made the turn I got my confidence back.  Because the buoy weren’t set to a square, the first two buoy went out the farthest, so I was now as far into the ocean as I was going to get, the rest of the swim was heading to shore.  To me, that meant I was halfway.  I now went ever longer with my freestyle stroke.  I rarely paused, and I started passing some white caps from the wave ahead of me.  As I made the last turn I put it into gear and started doing proper freestyle with sighting.  I also started swerving slightly but I was feeling much better.  I also bumped a few more people, and at one point I actually got a dirty look, whatever!!  With about 200 yards to go I started kicking.  I have been told that kicking in triathlon swimming is not a good idea.  It tires out your legs and really doesn’t add any appreciable speed.  Like a good trooper I just dragged my legs behind me the whole time, and just started kicking to warm up.  I have to say, however, that my kick made a huge difference.  I’m not sure if it was just a perception thing, but I felt like I turned on an extra gear when I started kicking.  I was really moving.  I felt great as I approached the shore, then, out of nowhere, BANG.  I feel this thump against my forehead as the swimmer in front of me made one last kick for shore.  Immediately I felt every muscle in my body tense, and both of my legs cramped at the hamstrings, and calves.  As soon as I felt that cramp twinge I relaxed them and it went away.  I think instinctively I just relax when I feel that twinge, and it really seems to help me get through them.  With all of that going on I just stopped swimming and as I did my feet hit sand.  I was done!  The swim was over!  I certainly didn’t set any speed records, but I do have a PR (it was my first Sprint so yay).  My goal was to survive the swim, I did that and more.  I felt good, not tired, and I wasn’t breathing heavy.  It was a good day!

T1

Despite the fact that I practiced removing my wetsuit in the water, despite telling my wife that she should remove the top part of her wetsuit in the water, despite all of those things, and perhaps because I had just been kicked in the head, I just ran out of the water.  I tried and tried to get the strap off, but it wasn’t until I was half way to the transition area before I got the top half undone.  I did manage to hold my cap and goggles so that they would stay in the sleeve, so it wasn’t a total loss.

To be honest, T1 was a blur.  I don’t really know what took me so long but at 1:53, I’m not complaining.  I opted to ride without socks, so I quickly threw on my helmet, bike shoes, and glasses.  I tossed my wetsuit into a corner, grabbed a quick sip of my water bottle, and took off out of transition.   I hoped on the bike and off I went without issue.

All in all a pretty successful first transition.  Unlike the Winding Trails tris that I’ve done, I wasn’t even breathing heavy after the swim so I was good to go.

Cycling

It’s important to note that my wife was one day away from her first triathlon as well.  I spent a lot of time prepping her on rules, and common rules violations. 

Zipping out of transition.

Unlike my triathlon, hers was sanction by USAT and she had to follow the rules or face a penalty, or even disqualification.  With that in mind…

I started the bike leg with the goal of just hammering it.  I am not competitive in my running skillz.  I can run, but I can’t run fast.  I was expecting, maybe a 9:30-10:00/mile.  So my only chance of doing well overall was to have a magic bike split.  Who cares if my legs are shot, I’m going to be slow.  I decided to use just water in my bottles, and one Raspberry GU which I would take at around the 10 mile mark on the bike.

The first mile out of transition was very crowded.  The biggest issue I found with going in the last wave was that there were a lot of people in front of me on the bike course that looked like they were checking an item off of their bucket list.  The bike for them was a leisurely stroll.  Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing at all wrong with that.  In fact, I think there may be entirely too many people that take themselves too seriously.  BUT, you should still follow the rules.  You should maintain distance from the rider ahead of you, but even more importantly, you should stay to the right of the road, and you should never ride two or even three abreast unless you are passing someone.

I struggled to get around a number of people without crossing the center line.  It was rough.  At one point I was passing a woman who was just riding beside another person.   That other person was in the middle of the lane, so with two abreast there wasn’t much space for me to pass without ending up across the yellow line.  I went for my pass, and just then the person on the outside starts sliding over.  I edged over and started screaming, “I’M PASSING ON YOUR LEFT…I”M ON YOUR LEFT…PASSING ON THE LEFT!!”  I don’t know what this person was thinking, I was right beside her practically screaming into her ear, and she just kept coming.  Maybe she was deaf?  But if that is the case, then I suggest that she LOOK BEHIND HER before making a move.  I ended up having to swerve across the line to prevent a crash.  In the end it was a non-issue, but it could have ended badly.

Shortly after coming that the race leader passed me heading in.  Wow he was cruising.   A bit later, I passed Betsie on the side of the road.  I asked if she was OK and she said yes.  I pressed on.  One thing of note is that there were more hills than I expected.  It wasn’t an easy joy ride for sure.  The ride preview from the day before, however, paid off.  I was able to anticipate both the messy intersection with the bumpy transition, and a very sharp left turn so things worked out.  Throughout the race I was next to a guy riding an old school steel bike with shifters on the down tube.  The bike sounded like it was barely holding itself together, but he was really rocking it.  We passed each other back and forth in the beginning, and I lost him after that.  About half way through the ride this fit woman blew by me and I tried for a little while to stick to her tail, but I wasn’t able to.

As planned, at mile 10 I took my GU.  Right then I was passed by a guy on a tri bike, and that guy on the steel bike.   As they passed me they slowed down, and so did I.  We came up to a hill with a right turn at the crest.  I used that opportunity to push past them both.  I cranked it and got around them at the corner and kept pressing.  The tri bike guy caught and passed me, but the steel bike guy didn’t have the gas.  I rolled into the transition feeling good.

T2

I dismounted the bike without issue, and headed into transition.  I racked the bike and took off the helmet.  During the bike portion the sky was overcast, and because of all of the trees I just couldn’t see well with the glasses so I took them off and tucked them in my tri shirt.  I really need to get clear glasses.

I had brought some socks with me to put on for the run but hadn’t really decided what I was going to do.  When the time came I opted to wear them.  I was afraid that with my wet feet I might hurt them on the sneakers.  It didn’t take long to put them on, and before I knew it I had my visor on and was out of transition.

Run

Here’s where it gets interesting.  I felt really good coming off the bike.  As I started the run I felt like I was jogging.  I couldn’t seem to pick up the pace.  I looked down at my

Final Kick to bring it home. (Please ignore the heel strike)

Garmin…then did a double take.  The Garmin said 6:22.  I don’t do 6:22.  I actually wasn’t sure I actually knew it was possible for me to run that fast.  I told myself immediately to slow down.  This pace was a recipe for disaster.

As a side note, I suspect that the differential between the speed of the bike i.e., 18+MPH and the speed of a run i.e., 6-7MPH, makes the run feel slow even if you are cruising.  It will be important to keep that in mind going forward because I could easily burn myself out trying to speed up.

I slowed the pace down to what felt comfortablish.  I was running between 9 and 8 minute miles.  I know, I couldn’t believe it either.  I don’t know where that came from.  On the run I passed a handful of people, but in a memorable moment, I was passed by a 67 year old like I was standing still.  Wow, he was impressive.  I kept my eye on him, but he kept slipping away from me drifting slowly into the distance.

The run course was dead flat.  It was right along the shore, and it was really nice.  The sun was starting to peek out from behind the clouds, but the weather was perfect.  maybe low 70’s or so and dry.  I ran into a handful of people that I knew.  It was an out and back, so on the return I saw Betsie again, and a couple of other people that I knew.

I managed to maintain my pace on the return trip, and with about 300 yards to go I gave it the kick.  I ran past just a couple more people, and ran through the shoot.  It was great to see my wife and kids there to greet me.  They even made me a sign.

Post Race

After the race I was beat.  I’m not sure I remember being that tired before.  Surprisingly only my lower back and my shoulders were sore.  I suspect that was due to the cycling.  I had a bagel or two, and we headed for home.  The next day was my wife’s tri, so I had to do the setup all over again.  All-in-all I had a blast.  I can’t wait to do my next tri.  I think I’ve caught the bug for sure.

Times

Swim: 23:12 (1/2 mile)

T1: 1:53 (I think this was miscounted which explains why my bike time was best overall)

Bike: 46:09 (13.4 miles ) Includes the run up from the beach (maybe 150 yards)

T2: 1:13

Run: 27:06 (3.1 Miles)

Total: 1:39:33

Place: 21/27

Prediction Review, and Wrap up

Here are my goals from pre-race:

Number 1 goal, was to finish.  Check.  I think I crushed this goal.  Not only did I finish, I did it without panicking, and really without issues.  The swim was easier than I thought, and next time I know I can do better.

Realistic Goal: Swim: 0:20:00/Bike: 0:50:00/ Run: 0:31:00/Total: 1:45:30

I was slow on the swim, but I stopped way too much, that I can fix.  As for the rest, I crushed it.  I beat the bike time by nearly 4 minutes, and the run time by 4 minutes.  I also crushed my proposed transition times to slay that goal by just about 6 minutes.  Woot.

But what about my aggressive goal?

Aggressive: Swim: 0:20:00/Bike: 0:40:00/ Run: 0:28:00/Total: 1:31:30

Well, my swim was still slow obviously.  My bike missed the mark by almost 6 minutes, but I did smash the run time by a minutes, and if I’m honest, I didn’t think I could do that run time.  Overall I was within about 8 minutes of my aggressive goal.  I can live with that.

In the end I missed my aggressive goals for two reasons.  The first was the swim jitters.  I kept stopping, but really, I didn’t need to.   Nothing changed physically when I made the first turn.  In fact, if anything I should have been more fatigued.  No, this was an issue in my mind.  I can correct that.  As far as the bike is concerned, hmm, it is the only segment I am disappointed in.  Not because I missed my aggressive goal, no the time had nothing to do with it.  My plan was to really push myself on the bike.  To let it all hand out there.  I know that the bike is my strength, if only because I am extra week elsewhere.   I am actually disappointed because I just didn’t push myself on my bike.  If I had really pushed myself I may not have met my aggressive goal, but I sure as heck would have been satisfied.  In fact, if I had cleaned up the swim, and met the bike goal I would have been firmly in the top 100.  I spent most of the bike leg of my race with my HR below 165.  If I was really pushing it it wouldn’t ever get below that number.

In reviewing my run data, I think I could have pushed it harder there too.  I felt really good throughout this race, I think, if I feel the same way next time, I will push things a little more.  That’s pretty good all things considered.  What a blast.

This weekend I faced my fear of swimming head on.  I did my first open water sprint triathlon ever.  A 1/2 mile swim in the ocean, yep I did it, and according to this post I survived it.

I have a full race report to do once I get some free time, but today is too busy to even contemplate it.  But the most important news is that I did it, I faced my fear and I won, big time!

I’m also proud to say that, the very next day, my wife faced her fear of swimming in a sprint triathlon of her very own.  She did a 1/2 mile swim at the women’s triathlon!

What an amazing weekend.  Lots to talk about, and even a few pics.  Yay!

OK, so this is my first “real” tri, so it makes sense to go ahead and set some goals.  I’ll have three staged goals, let’s see how they go.

Goal 1:

Just finish.  I mean, wow, I couldn’t swim not too long ago.  The idea of swimming 1/2 mile in the ocean is surreal.  Just crossing the finish line in one piece would be amazing.  So that is my first goal.

Aggressive Goal:

Swim: 20 Minutes

T1: 2 minutes

Bike:  40 Minutes

T2: 1.5 minutes

Run: 28 Minutes

Total: 1:31:30

It would be tough to meet that bike time, AND that run time all together.

Realistic goal:

Swim: 20 minutes

T1: 3 minutes

Bike: 50 minutes

T2: 1.5 minutes

Run: 31 Minutes

Total: 1:45:30

Lets see how it goes.
Gulp!

[[Note: This report is pretty over due, I have been pretty busy with work and life, so I have been working on this in sections]]

The last tri in the series snuck up on me quickly.  I couldn’t believe that the fun was almost over.  I was planning to do the longer full sprint, but my wife convinced me to do the tiny tri again.  And by convince I mean she said “Want to do the tiny tri?” and I said yes.  I was determined to have a good swim after the last two or three rough ones.  how did it go?  Erm, Yeah.

Swim

Like I said, I was determined to have a good swim.  I was pretty nervous still, but I made my way to the front of the pack.  It’s a tough thing to do because everyone wants to start in front, even the slower swimmers, so I got as close as I could.  I could hear my heart beating it was racing so much.  The horn went off and I dove in.  I swam between a few people, sighted here and there, and after what seemed like a long time, I ended up at the turn.  I swam around the turn and headed back.  I was more or less alone the whole way.  People in front of me were swimming at least at my pace, and no one caught up from behind.  I did stop a couple of times and found that I was floating pretty well, which is encouraging.  I came out of the water breathing heavy, but otherwise feeling good.

T1

What can I say, it was what it was.  I put on my shoes and made the trek up to the bike.  It’s a long run, and that makes it take deceptively long time to get to the bike.

Bike

I wanted to go hard on the bike.  I had newly adjusted my front derailleur, which is a long and complicated story, which had given me so many issues, and felt like maybe my chain wouldn’t pop off this time.  I also had adjusted my seat to a proper height and thought that I was really in a good place to push it.  Thankfully I wasn’t nearly as winded as I had been in previous races, so I gave it a go.  I was hammering the bike, I passed a number of people for a change, and things were feeling great.

About 2/3 of the way through the course there is a section with a lot of sand.  There is a way to get around the sand by following a track on a narrow berm to the right of the sand pit.  I had done that before, and went for it again this time.  I hit the berm just right, and then noticed that there was a big divot in it.  Before I could even react my front tire fell in the hole and I flew over my handlebars and on my side.  It was in slow motion.  I felt my shoulder hit, and then my head slam into the ground.  The good news is that my helmet stopped me from hurting my head.  I got up, looked the bike over and tried to ride but I heard some rubbing.  I pulled off to the side and worked on trying to figure out where the rubbing was coming from.  Eventually it went away, I still don’t know what it was.  I jumped on the bike and took off.

While I was figuring things out my wife passed me, asked how I was, and when she saw I was fine she kept going.

I chased her through the rest of the trail, but because of a couple of tactical errors, I had to walk a hill and never saw her on the bike again.  The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful.

T2

There isn’t much to say, dropped the bike off, threw off the helmet, and headed out on the run.

Run

I could see my wife not far ahead of me and I thought it would be cool to finish right with her.  She says she is a slow runner, and typically she is at least a minute or more slower than I am.  Catching up to her won’t be a problem I thought.  I ran through the trails and my heart rate and breathing were out of control.  I couldn’t make a dent on her lead.  Eventually I sprinted to catch her.  I ended up beside her with about 1/4 mile to go.  My breathing was erratic, just really huffing and puffing.  About 100 yards later she dropped me.  I just couldn’t keep up!  She ran through the shoot about 30 seconds before me.

Even with all of those issues, I finished with a PR.  I don’t have an official time because my timing chip ended up somewhere on the bottom of the lake, but I did a decent job of setting my stopwatch splits.

Race Results

Total time: 37:02

Swim time: 4:44 (200 yards, good pace for me)

T1: 3:02 (a really long transition run)

Bike: 20:08 (3 miles)

T2: 0:01 ( I just tapped the button twice)

Run: 9:08 (That is a zippy pace for me, and wow, my wife killed it!)

All in all I was happy with my race.  It gives me a little confidence boost for my tri in Madison.  Oh, and I got a nice souvenir too:

OK, so, there are times when you really want to crush yourself into oblivion (OK so I’ve heard that some people have those desires, whatever), but this what I endured this weekend was completely accidental.

My wife and I decided to have an adventure weekend for our anniversary.  We spent an amazing Saturday at Brownstone Park.  If you like the water, this is the place for you.  You can swim, play on obstacles in the water, kayak, and zip line.  It was a blast.

My wife and I tested out our new wetsuits with a quick swim.  We both bought Xterra Vortex 3 wetsuits (more on those in a later post) and wanted to get used to them.  We are both really tentative swimmers, and with our first open water tris looming in the horizon we needed to get used to swimming in them.

The good news is that the buoyancy that the wetsuits provides makes open water swimming that much more doable.  We had a blast that day and had a great dinner that night.

The next morning had a bike ride on the schedule.  We set out for a 30 mile bike ride through the eastern half of CT.  I knew it was going to be hilly, but we were going to test our limits.  Unfortunately the trip was pretty last minute so I literally mapped out a route minutes before leaving the house with my 2 year old climbing all over me.  We started the ride and it was tough.  We about collapsed (actually my wife literally did) on the way up a large hill in Glastonbury.  We had figured it would be a 2 and a half hour ride.  About an hour and change we were at mile 13.  That’s when things got ugly.  The route turned abruptly into a gravel “road.”  Before long we were walking it.

About 1/4 mile later we passed a jogger and I asked how long before the gravel ended, and he said maybe 1/2 mile further down the road there was a turn off.  Great!  We walked on and 1/2 mile later there was a turn, but the gravel continued.  There was a small paved path leading the way the directions had mapped it, but that was all.  We got back on the bikes to follow the paved path, and when I went to clip in my right foot I couldn’t.  it just kept slipping.  That’s when I realized that my clip had broken off somewhere in the gravel.  I figured it was a lost cause to try to search for it, so I clipped in one foot and headed down the trail.  About 1/4 mile later the pavement ended and so did any semblance of civilization.  The route that I had mapped out had a turn onto reservoir road.  Reservoir Rd. as it turned out, was a dirt path trail through the forest.  We literally forded several streams through the trail.  I took my shoes off and did the best i could to carry my bike, drop it off, go back to my wife, carry her bike, drop it off, etc.  Luckily I had my iPhone so I could check the route and see we were headed in the right direction (gmaps still said we were on reservoir Rd btw.

Finally, through the brush, we could see the road ahead.  For the first time in maybe an hour, I was excited.  That hope was soon deflated when we got to the next gravel road!

My wife flagged down a truck and asked how long before the gravel ended, and he said at least 2 miles.  Ugh.  We tried to ride but we were sliding all over the place.  I was too afraid of breaking of my only remaining cleat and then being stranded with no way to pedal, so I decided to walk in my socks.  We walked the next 2 miles watching google for signs of life.  I noticed that the road we were on intersected another road and thought that had to be where the gravel ended.  When we got there it was still gravel.  The time was flying by, and it was 3 and 1/2 hours since we started the 2 and 1/2 hour  bike ride and we were still on gravel.  Finally, up in the distance, almost like a mirage was chip seal.  I was never so happy to see chip seal in my life.

My wife suggested that we find a more direct route (we still had another 13 miles at this point) and I found a 6 mile route that would get us back.  We rode the rest of the way to the car without too much in the way of incidents.  I did have a lot of issues making up any hills since I was really only able to push down hard using my left leg.  It sure was a great one legged workout though.

As an added reminder of that painful day the soles of my feet hurt so much from walking in socks over the gravel that I can barely walk at this point.

[Update: 2 weeks later my feet still bother me if I step on anything out of the ordinary, like the fringe of our Persian rug.  I can run now, so that’s good.]

After thinking about the last post, I thought it would be interesting to compare my thoughts last year to those now.

Back in February of 2010 I wrote:

I started with a few laps just as a warm up.   About a month ago I could barely do a length, it’s kind of funny now to think that I could knock two laps off just to warm up.  At any rate, I then tried to do my laps.  I just couldn’t pull it together long enough to do more than 2 or 3 in a row.  It was disappointing.  After a while of thrashing it out, I decided that I should go to the bathroom.  Why do I always have to pee within 5 minutes of getting in the pool?

When I got back I felt better and ready to go, and go I did.  I started swimming and didn’t stop.  I pushed past 6 laps and thought “I can do 9.”  Then I got to 9 and thought, sheesh it’s only two more I can do this.  By the time I started lap 10 my arms were like lead.  They were somehow both numb and super-sensitive.  I can’t really explain it other than to say, I felt like they were cutting through the water like it was air, it felt like your mouth feels with novocaine, except that I had a heightened perception of the air bubbles running over my arms.  It was such a strange feeling.  I slugged it out though, and I got all 11 laps, 550 yards.  When I got out my legs were fresh and ready to go.  I think I have may figured this whole swim thing out.

Then yesterday’s post:

About halfway through the main set of freestyle laps I felt like I just couldn’t go on.  Assuming that I had pushed myself like that without a plan–which I wouldn’t–I would have stopped for sure at that point.  But with the plan in hand I did another 550 yards!  That is unheard of for me.

So 1600 yards pushed this to both my highest month and highest week of volume for the year.  I just printed out another set of drills for my next trip to the pool.  Very excited about that!

So not so long ago the accomplishment of doing 550 yards in 20 minutes or so was unreal, and last night I muddle through 1600 yards of my swim plan, it was tough, but doable.  My issues now are more along the line of improving my form, and of course the ever present issue with breathing.  Not too shabby.  We often need to remind ourselves of where we were so that I can see how far we’ve come.