South (Haven, MI) Beach Oly Success
I started doing triathlons about 5 years ago after a running injury. The common thread that ran through my races is I would always lose it on the run. I was not a great swimmer--middle of the pack really. So I would get out of the water, hammer it on the bike, then suffer through the run, lose the mental game, and miss my goal. I did this in 3 ironmans and several shorter races. I wondered how to break the cycle.
I started drinking the EN coolaid in the December 2011 OS and stayed with it into the 2012 season. My spring runs were better than usual, and I was becomming more consistent and stronger by degrees on the bike. My swimming also felt more under control, for want of a better way to put it. But I wondered if this would translate to a better triathlon performance overall.
I had been watching the weather, and decided it was safe to sign up for the Oly down in South Haven, MI. It was billed a special qualifier for the Age Group Nationals, but considering that the AGNs filled up in May, a June qualifier was kind of useless (but the name sounded cool). In any case, South Haven is on Lake Michigan a couple hours from Chicagoland, so many racers came from Illinois with some really cool hardware. The guy who racked his bike next to me was a friently guy from Chicagoland. He had a Specialized S-Works with zipp 808 tubulers (he loved tubulers; I'm a clincher guy), power meter, and a IM New Zealand travel bag. I was impressed, even intimidated. Just to safisfy your eager minds, I passed him on the bike course and never saw him again (not that he won't smoke me at our next meeting).
Once I got my bike squared away, I put on my wet suit and headed to the swim start for a warm up swim. The water was perfect, about 68 degrees; the morning was calm, sunny, about 65 degrees. I swam about two hundred yards out and back; everything felt fine. We had the course talk, the jet ski rode the course so we could see where to go, we lined up, and bang, off we went. A lot of people ran through the shallows like it was an Easter egg hunt. The experienced swimmers did the porpoise thing. I didn't want to spike a heart rate, so I moved along well but not too fast. Once the water was deep enough to swim, I settled in and focused on my strokes. I wasn't even in the middle of the pack, but I was calm, and I avoided the frey at the first turn buoy. I swam at a my race pace for a couple hundred yards and then noticed that I was passing people pretty regularly. I just kept plugging along. I finished the swim at a 2:00/100m pace, which is no where near fast, but I felt fine, and I was right in the middle of the pack.
T1 was pretty routine: remove wet suit; put on bike shoes, helmet, sun glasses; do an awkward bike mount and try to fall on ground; on second attempt, get on bike and ride away with a cramp in my rear. Somewhere in there I started my bike computer in time to see that the first hill out of T1 took about 300 watts to climb. Once on the open road my goal was to ride between 90-95% of FTP, which I did fairly consistently by watching my Garmin which tracked my lap power in 5 mile increments. I had to stop once because my race belt was wrapped around my bars (I forgot to put it on in T1) and then again when some road debris stuck to my tire and had to be pulled off by hand. I drank water early, then some sports drink with Salt Stick tablets. On the way back in, I got the distinct feeling that something was creating resistance. I looked at my tires and couldn't see any problem, so I wrote it off to bad sensory perception. Later, after the race, I found that my rear wheel had come out of allignment and was rubbing hard on the brake. Must have gotten jarred on one of the bumps or pot holes on the course. I wonder how much time that cost me?
T2 was a blink of an eye and I was shuffling up the same hill I rode on the bike. I passed a guy in my age group and started to worry about keeping ahead of him. I had a side stitch, and I was worried about my pace. My first mile was a 7:53 which is nearly my Z1 easy pace. In mile 2 the side stitch lessened and my pace quickened to a 7:26, the next couple of miles were at 7:18 then I started to feel the pull of the finish line and the heat from other runners whom I had passed in the last mile, and I ran a 6:58 mile. I felt like I was just hitting my stride when I saw the finish line below me on the beach. I passed a guy running down the stairs (yes, we had to run stairs to get back to the beach) and bolted across the beach to the finish line.
Overall, my stats were 2:26:xx for the race, 29:xx on the swim, 1:07:xx on the bike, and 46:xx on the run, plus 2:xx for T1 and 50 seconds for T2. I hope that adds; I'm working from memory. Surprisingly, I was first in my age group on the run. Imagine that. I though I was dragging. Anyway, I hope someone enjoys this. Thanks to all of you.
Comments
Steve,
Sounds like you've gotten a lot out of EN and had an awesome day. Don't know if you qualified, but wanted you to know that even though nationals"filled up" in May, if you qualified at a regional qualifier then there is a slot for you. They kept open slots for those who qualified at the special qualifiers. Just wanted you to know
. Awesome job!