USAT SC NC - AT
The Short Course/Olympic/Standard Distance Age Group National Championship is the USAT's flagship event. Held in conjunction with the Sprint NC, 2400 racers in the Oly and 1500 in the Sprint on separate days, it's a major event which moves around every other year. This year and next, in Omaha. It's got all the hype and heft and crowds of any Ironman, but without the agony which starts coming after 8-9 hours of racing. For me, it's an opportunity to find some competition among my age peers, feel like I'm actually having fun while racing, and not blow a hole in my longer course training plan.
I went into the race with no expectations, although I knew, after finishing 9th @ the ITU World SC champs last year, and about 12th @ the USAT race in '14, that I would not feel respectable unless I had a similar result this year. So my pre-race thoughts:
- Swim - it's a fresh water, 82F, non wetsuit mandatory race. With 5% BF, and a weakening freestyle, I'm starting to sink like a stone in that setting, so I was not looking forward to this leg.
- Bike - I've been doing a lot of looooong (2-2.5 hour) climbs this year in the mtns of CA, CO, and WA, so I'm feeling pretty powerful. This course was totally closed, run in waves of about 100 people (each AG gets its own wave except ... well, see below), on fresh asphalt for the most part, with one 200' 9% gradient hill in the middle of the 24.8 mi out-n-back. Otherwise, flat along the Missouri River flood plain.
- Run - My run durability has been kicked up, but my speed is not there yet. Still, I knew 6.21 miles would not be a challenge to finish, just to pace properly. The course again is totally flat, minimal shade except @ the start and finish, and the middle miles through an industrial zone with a fling around the College World Series stadium halfway (see yourself on the Jumbotron - whoopee!)
When I arrived, temp was 95 F with a heat index of about 110, worse than getting off the plane in Hawaii. That night, a great Midwestern thunderstorm came barreling thru, dropping the temps 10-15 degrees, down to 65 @ daybreak.
The race itself:
- Swim: all men in AGs 60+ went together, for 180 of us - the largest wave. Most others were 85-115. A specially build dock was placed perpendicular to the shore into the oxbow Carter Lake, and we did not all fit on it, hanging on in the water. The first 200 meters of this race were the WORST scrum I have ever encountered in 17 years of racing tris. I'm a pretty confident swimmer, but I got a teeny bit anxious after a minute or so, so I looked for better water, found it, and realised, "Yup, it's true, I hate to swim without a wetsuit in fresh water." So I switched to breaststroke (my stroke during a mediocre swimming career age 11-21), and found myself passing a bunch of people. I decide to keep up with that until I stopped gaining on the folks in front of me, which didn't happen until about 1350 meters into the race! Big advantage - I could see my direction every stroke, so I kept a perfectly straight line and got a skeeter's eye view of the gyrations many weaker swimmers go through trying to stay on track. I ended up about 5-6 minute slower than my recent 1500m race times, 23rd out of 54 in the AG. I passed 2 people in T2 as I started to work my way thru the field.
- Bike - I took the first 5-10 minutes at an increasing IF of 0.8>>0.85. As usual, people were hammering up even the little rises, powering past me then getting caught on the gentle downgrades. I kept the pressure up on the flats, rode the real hill just under 1.0 FTP, and ended up passing 5 in my AG, while getting passed by 2. After I fueled up @ the turnaround, the final 12 miles into the dismount area took 33 minutes, with an IF of 0.89. My legs started to feel slightly abused by about mile 20-21, so I knew I was working well. I was all alone except for a 30-34 woman who served as my final rabbit back to the park. My time was 10/54 in the AG, and I may have been in about 18th place leaving T2.
- Run - even thought the weather had moderated, and even though our wave went 3rd @ 8 AM, by the time I started running, the bright cloudless sky was heating up, probably towards 80F and beyond. I knew I had biked well, as I had a bit of trouble getting up a head of steam (pun intended) during the first two miles. I was running purely by RPE, just observing my mile splits. I never even looked at my HR. I was looking at my cadence fairly regularly - it was 186-190 the whole way, and I have HR just above that, but it never registered in my brain. Going back to my file, I see I started out @ 125 (Z1/Z2) and rose to 140 (Z3) by half way, stayed there until the last half mile, getting all the way up to 144. I only hit 4 of the 6 aid stations for drinks, water on my head at all six, water to drink at the first 1, 2 & 4, and Gatorade at #5. My splits were: 8:46, 8:24, 8:15, 8:15, 8:08, 7:59, 7:06 for the last 0.22 mi. I passed several guys in my AG early on, then passed one of the two guys who got me on the bike @ about mile 2, and kept picking 'em off all the way to the end (I went by Bob Babbitt @ mile 5). My last split was so fast because I passed the other guy who gone ahead of me on the bike @ about mile 6. He was walking or shuffling like an old man when I went by, but I heard him suck it up and start to run with intention when he saw me - he had been a bit irritated with me going by him on the flats about mile 15, he got his "revenge" on the hill @ mile 17, and I didn't see him again until the end of the race. So I wasn't going to let him by once more. Apparently, though, he'd paced things wrong, as he had nothing left at that point. I passed a total of 11 in my AG (I think) on the run, with the 11th fastest time.
I ended up 8th in the AG. Interesting stuff from the results list: the top two guys were both from CO, and the next 5 from really warm spots like: FL, Marietta GA, Woodlands, TX, AL, Lake Charles LA, who may have been better heat acclimated? Also, no one who finished ahead of me ran slower than me, which made me feel good, in a way. And the times ahead of me were bunched - the top 3 were 16 minutes faster, and the next 4 were 5-6 minutes faster. Behind me were about 10 guys within 5 minutes. The top 3 guys were 1:09/1:10 on the bike, then there were a bunch of us @ 1:12-1:13. And my feeling during the run - that I was having fun, and had paced things properly - seemed to pay off. I don't see how, on that day, I could have gotten a better result, making me satisfied with my day, in particular with how I paced the bike, and how I kept winding things up all the way to the end on the run.
This race was very well run, and the venue, including the surrounding locale, was very easy to deal with. However, the large number of participants and associated spectators made for a big traffic jam getting in on race morning, delaying the start by 15 minutes. I had scoped out an alternative route in, arriving just before the police closed to roads down, so had no issues - it was 6 minutes from my motel to the transition area, all told, when others had to grind through 20-40 minutes or more of delay. If you go there next year, give me a PM, and I'll let you know my secret back-door plan for making the admin side of this race smooth.
Oh, one final thing, for fans of "The Walking Dead" You know those crickets, or locusts, or whatever they are that serve as the background music whenever the scene is outside, that makes things so eerie? Those crickets are everywhere in Carter Lake/Omaha. And they are LOUD. Coupled with the relatively uncrowded roads (at least to someone from the more crowded coast), I was constantly on the lookout for zombies while I did my pre-race run Friday morning.
Comments
You might have heard the ever-not-popular Cicadas, that are very present here during the summers. Loud shrieking that ebbs and tides constantly. I am not a fan!
Swim looked fun heh
Good job!
What I can offer is my wisdom on the "cricket" noise.....guessing like Scott they were Cicadas...they are all over the northeast (at least in Ohio) each summer....they are the ugliest looking insects you will ever see however I love the noise they make. I always know my big cycling blocks of training start when I hear them come out every July.
thanks for sharing.