John Katsoudas MHST race report - 14 years in the making!
Going from "I want to be a triathlete again" to "I'm a triathlete again" over the past year has been a sometimes painful but mostly incredibly rewarding experience.
My last race was 14 years ago. In the intervening years, I've taken time off from triathlon to spend more time with my beautiful kids and wife, focus on career, and had several failed attempts to come back to the sport as I battled various injuries. A little less than a year ago (on my 48th birthday, to be exact) I decided that enough was enough, and I was going to invest the time and effort to get back into the sport, whatever that entailed. The ultimate goal was to do another Ironman in two years (July 2019, for my 50th birthday), with the year one goal being a HIM. Over the past 10 months, I've lost 30 pounds, suffered and recovered from tendinitis in my foot, a pinched nerve in my shoulder, and intermittent lower back pain (this has been my undoing several times in the past). I've managed to overcome those injuries and am now 5 weeks out from 70.3 Coeur D'Alene, feeling fit and healthy and ready to race!
A significant step in that direction came at a small local race yesterday... the Morgan Hill Sprint Triathlon. This is a race that I've done several times "back in the day" and I ride the roads that make up the bike course on occasion, so this is "home turf" so to speak. The "official" purpose for doing the race was to work through all the race day logistics (new wetsuit, is the bike setup working OK, practice transitions, etc.) before CdA. The real reason was that I was dying to race, and it's a fun local race, and mostly I didn't want my first race back to be a HIM.
Race morning came far too early. OK, to be honest I didn't sleep at all the night before, so it felt like it took forever to come. Why the heck do races need to be so early anyway, especially sprints? Can't we all just get up at a civilized time, have some coffee, wake up a little bit, and then go race? No.... up at 3:45 for a 4:45 departure from home, arrive at the course by 5:30, set up, warm up, and racing at 7AM. To say that I was ambivalent about this schedule is an understatement. I'm not a morning person.
OK, I'm at the course, transition is set up, I've walked the route from the water exit to the bike rack and counted how many racks to my spot. Time to fire up the electronics and get ready to race soon. You know what's a fool's game?... trying to pair your head unit to your power meter when there are 600 other power meters around you. Not happening. Time for a quick warmup spin on the bike to get away from everyone. I go for a mile down the road and... voila! power meter found! ... followed promptly by a power meter low battery warning. Sigh. This is exactly why I wanted to do a short race before the biggie so that everything that could go wrong would go wrong today and not in 5 weeks' time. Also, for those that have read this far... you'll be intrigued to know that the Garmin Power IQ app on the new Edge 1030... the thing I was counting on the run the BestBikeSplit power model for this course that I've pre-ridden several times... requires a paired phone and an internet connection to work - neither of which I had at the moment. So, best intentions notwithstanding, my strategy for the bike was so far out the window I couldn't see it. You know what you do at a sprint tri when your fancy bike strategy has gone out the window? You ride as hard as you can. In retrospect, this was exactly what I needed to have happen. For the past 10 months, I've been variously dreaming of, rehearsing, and dreading this day... the first race back. I had unknowingly worked myself into a position where I was so focused on executing a complicated strategy that I had lost the forest for the trees. Now I had no choice but to just go out and race by feel, at least for the swim and bike.
The gun goes off, and I'm swimming. I manage to avoid the mosh pit and settle in behind a good pair of feet. For the next 1500m I just keep telling myself to focus on body position, breathing, and form. I'm comfortable, cruising along passing some folks, not getting passed by too many... it's going about as well as I could have hoped for. Well, except for the fact that my open water sighting sucks, and I swim in a zigzag pattern. I came out of the water a full 5 minutes faster than I had anticipated, and my wife was standing there to greet me! T1 in 1:05 - felt smooth and not rushed.
Now I'm on the bike and pushing hard. My power meter is intermittently giving me readings and cutting out. When it is working, the numbers I'm seeing are way higher than what I had planned to ride, but the adrenaline is flowing freely, I'm passing people and feeling fantastic. The bike leg is far and away my strength. I remember to drink my full bottle of Gatorade, and I cover the 16 miles and am off the bike in under 44 minutes. On to T2. My left foot is numb so putting a sock on it takes what seems like forever. I'm out of T2 in 1:30 and running.
I've got my power-based run strategy memorized. My Garmin 935 is only showing me 3 data fields: distance, power, and pace. The course is a 5-mile out-and-back, so my strategy was to do the first mile in z2, then ramp to z3 until the turnaround, and then give it whatever I had from there. I glance at my watch for the first time after ~1/2 a mile, and I'm solidly in z4 power. It doesn't feel like a blow-up is imminent, so I continue. I soon learn that I can't drink in full stride. The attempt to drink at the mile 1 aid station is a graceless blend of spilling Gatorade all over myself while simultaneously choking violently on the one gulp I attempt to swallow. On I go. Mile 2 - slow down, grab a cup and manage to drink 2 sips before picking it up again. No need to drink from there on. I hit the turn, and now I'm playing the mental game of hunting down people in front of me to take my mind off the pain. 2.5 miles go by in the blink of an eye. I manage to pass the person I've been "hunting" for the last quarter mile right before I enter the finishing chute. There's a mild disappointment that he's not in my age group, but a pass is a pass. I hit the line as they butcher my last name. I can see my wife staring at me. She comes over and asks what I've injured. "Nothing," I say, "I'm fine." She's sure I've injured something based on the pained look on my face as I crossed the line.
Now *that's* racing. That's what I've been missing for the last 14 years... the chance to absolutely wreck myself for 2 hours with a group of local fellow triathletes.
The best part is that my finishing time was a full 10 minutes faster than my 14-year-younger self's best time and good enough for an age-group top 10. I'm a triathlete again. On to Coeur D'Alene!
Things I learned (in no particular order):
- 11-28 cassette = good! Thanks to all those that replied to my forum question with that suggestion.
- Have your electronics sorted out BEFORE you arrive on race morning.
- Change the batteries in your power meter before any race.
- Stop and kiss your wife/husband when you pass by them. It will cost you a whole second, but it will make the monotony of standing around in the cold watching you (and mostly a bunch of strangers) race a lot more meaningful for them.
- Turn your race number belt facing forward when you see the photographer in the distance.
- Plastic grocery bags on your feet for putting your wetsuit on are worth their weight in gold.
- The post-race beer line (at 10AM!) is astoundingly long.
- All the perceived discomforts of race morning (it's early, it's cold, blah, blah) all go away when the gun goes off.
... and the #1 thing I learned: that group of 5-6 people (you know who you are) that give me kudos for practically every workout I post to Strava, regardless of how big or small it is, are awesome. This is just one example of how seemingly trivially little positive validations help me to overcome mountains of challenges.
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