IRONMAN BOULDER 70.3 2012 - Rage Against The Machine
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
By: Bart Stevens
Race Report
Ironman 70.3 Boulder
08/05/2012
INTRODUCTION
The following is my dispatch from the field at 2012 Ironman 70.3 Boulder. As many know, my last race report for 2012 Ironman Coeur d’Alene this past June was absurdly and notoriously lengthy. This one is stupid-long as well, but just not as much. You won’t need to take off work. That report was comprehensive and verbose and dramatic and humorous and completely appropriate given the bizarre series of events that transpired during that extraordinary weekend. But that was then, and then is now. And I’m fixing to hit you with a sequel totally fresh and new and powerful.
Think more The Empire Strikes Back or The Godfather: Part II, and less Staying Alive or Caddyshack II.
As in all race reports, my goals remain three-fold. First, to genuinely honor the journey, including all the hard work and dedication put forth in training and the multiple facets of the sport that were drawn upon to complete my race. Second, to provide a detailed chronicle of my experience that I can freeze in time and refer back to at some point in the future. When I eventually (and inevitably) get so big and famous in this sport that I forget how I got there, or get branded “an overnight success.” I always hate that.
Lastly, as always, I am attempting to produce perhaps one or two small nuggets of data or insight that can be leveraged by others undergoing similar challenges. I am the king of self-induced pain, and triathlon success is largely built on the shoulders of others- drawing on both successes and failures. So it is therefore incumbent that I make this smallest of contributions to the collective effort. Usually it’s my remarkable blunders that get the most play, but maybe one day I’ll do something truly extraordinary that will make it into the annals of triathlon lore. (Yes, I said annals!)
There would be no exciting drama in this particular adventure, however. No tales of chick sunglasses or cosmic intervention. No wild late-night parties or mysterious interactions with demons from the underworld. No violence, no vulgarity, and (thankfully) no constipation. This story will stand on its own merits. I think you’ll find this report wholly distinct from IMCDA 2012 and yet still retaining all the classic features of previous reports, plenty of revelations of character flaws and personal confessions that should best be kept private. That’s my legacy to this wonderful sport.
TRAINING
OK, so coming out of IMCDA I fell immediately and deeply ill. I firmly believe it had been building through the taper (as is common), carried through the race (which is probably why I didn’t win), and simply did not fully manifest until I landed back on Texas soil. Oh I don’t know, in addition to the crazy volume leading into the taper – wreaking havoc on my immune system and sleeping habits – could the insanity of the IM CDA weekend also have contributed to this situation as well? Possibly. Freezing cold water, the physical stress of a full-Ironman, a flight (or six) packed full of borderline-ill folks flying to and from an area of the country I’d never been to before- all of these most likely conspired to shut me down the very first day I returned back to my normal life.
I’ll keep things pithy (haha, ya right!) and just say that I came down with what has now been diagnosed as a massive sinus infection. BTW: I never get sick, so in addition to the dozens of new and fun symptoms I enjoyed (continually running nose, stuffy head, sneezing, dizziness, rolling migraines, loss of appetite, bizarre sleep patterns), my inability to accept that I was indeed a walking disaster only served to compound my destruction.
And of course, with a rapidly approaching IM 70.3 Boulder race in only six weeks, I was becoming more and more uptight with each day of lost training. It’s kinda’ hard to wake up excited about early morning fartleks when you’re falling asleep at 5 PM the day before on the couch in your work clothes. I was learning the hard way about the folly of scheduling two long course races in relative succession.
Going forward, I think I’ll plan at least sixty days of space between any future long-course beat-downs. I lost about almost two and half weeks of training to an infection that I’m still carrying two months later, and while I had overcome the most overt aspects of the illness by mid-July, I still can’t seem to eradicate some of the others. I’m hoping I haven’t done major damage, but we won’t know for sure. Part of me believes this scenario was the appropriate remuneration for your typical, crazed OCD triathlete, and that maybe the forced downtime would produce some benefits, like so many of the elite triathletes I have read about in the magazines.
Unfortunately, you lose a shocking amount of fitness when you go into complete physical shut down for a few weeks, and my emergence from this episode was rough. I immediately re-evaluated some of my outcome goals for Boulder and tweaked my training regimen for the remaining two-week peak-phase cycle that I had left to focus on more high-intensity, upper-threshold VO2 max work. I also leveraged the forced downtime to begin absorbing additional strategy insight, both online and in print. In addition to the Endurance Nation and Slowtwitch forums, I reread the classic Training and Racing with Power and Jason Selk’s 10-Minute Toughness, which is a great and concise mental training program centering on visualization and self-talk. Both highly recommended.
To my complete surprise, my body responded quite favorably to this new schedule, and I immediately logged some seriously rad workouts. By the second week of peak training, I had returned to power and pacing levels only witnessed in the peak days of IM CDA training. And my entrance into a modified one-week taper left me feeling as strong and confident as I’d ever felt before. So much so that I decided to hatch a plan I eventually dubbed Project Mayhem (from my favorite movie Fight Club.)
What is my Project Mayhem, you might ask? Well, lucky for you, the rules aren’t nearly as strict as the rules of Fight Club- we can talk about them. Project Mayhem is, quite literally, where you rage against the machine. Unlike the original version, however, the only one you hurt is yourself…. and you like it!!
So here’s some context: I joined EN in January 2012, after a two-year training program best characterized as random and haphazard, and with a mediocre string of late-2011 performances to show for it. Not bad, especially for a newbie. Just not awesome. And as we all know, this sport can quickly devolve into a slippery slope of anxiety and depression for people like me who are mentally weak, marginally unstable and easily agitated. Accomplishments that were once unfathomable soon become unacceptable.
It’s really bizarre, actually. A person who once struggled with say, running a 10K might find themself- within just a few years- beating themselves up for a sub-8 minute half-marathon. You might even exit such an experience wondering why you suck so badly at this stuff! It’s a deeply corrosive mindset that I apparently enjoy with relative frequency. Some of you might understand what I’m talking about. But we’re not here to psychoanalyze (I hope), so let’s just say I am “afflicted” with delusions of perfection. Day tremors, if you will. My inability to be perfect (or even reasonably competitive) makes this a confounding condition.
Coming out of an Intermediate Half-Iron training plan for 2012 IM Oceanside 70.3 and then an Advanced Full-Iron for 2012 IM Coeur d’Alene had left me in pretty decent shape. My sick self could still run circles around my old self – the one that so enjoyed Xbox and Cheez-It’s. (God, I do love Cheez-It’s…) And remember, I’ve only been abusing this drug for three years, so a lot of the gains I am seeing are still surprising the hell out of me with increasing regularity.
In a way, EN had dropped a virtual Ferrari engine into this Taurus body, and frankly, I was still trying to figure out how to drive the thing. (Well, maybe it was closer to a Ford Fiesta engine, but you get the idea…) As noted in both my two previous race reports, I finished both of those 2012 Ironman races with gas still left in the tank, and that perplexed me. Maybe even haunted me.
You can see it in my race photos, it’s like it wasn’t even hurting, but yet my times were hardly stellar. Classic sign that I was going too easy, and was failing to dig as deep as I could, or should. Was I just weak? Unable to break through a pain threshold? I partially believe I failed to race into new pain caves because I was still so surprised to even be in that position at all. The “suck” was now so much further away than it had been in the past. I suppose my mind was still struggling to reconcile what my body was telling it. It was saying, “Hey brain! You’re still driving this thing at 50 mph! Stop being a Nancy! I’m telling you we can run this thing up to 80 mph!”
Even with my new Ferrari – er, Fiesta – engine, my brain was still convinced I was a Taurus. I know I still looked like a Taurus, and I am certain I still smelled like one, too. The brain only knows what it’s seen, and up until this point in my life, it had only seen school zones, lots of neglect and some fairly questionable driving habits. Take it slow and easy, Mr. Brain was now saying. Don’t push the envelope. You don’t know what will happen. The doors might fall off! You’ll get a ticket! Come on man, you’ve had some success, you should enjoy it! Life is pretty good at 50 mph, don’t you think? Don’t risk it. There’s always next season. Ya, next season… Now let’s watch The Bachelorette. Emily, is about to pick Jef! This one is true love for sure!
Isn’t that just a metaphor for life? (The speed limit, not The Bachelorette.) Yet another ‘comfort zone’ illusion that our brain has carefully cultivated, aided by years of evolutionary biology, to protect us from unnecessary harm like say, wrestling a bear with our bare hands or trying to fly with just our arms? (Both of which I have done, by the way. No big deal.) The same walls that the sport of triathlon so aptly destroys for so many people on a daily basis?
Well, I didn’t know, but I was about to find out. Project Mayhem had been officially launched, and there was no going back. I was going to redline this Fiesta in Boulder. My plan was to induce some massive pain and suffering into the equation. Really try to bring the thunder, so-to-speak. I would kick/stroke/stride like hell until I couldn’t anymore. I would push beyond 100%, my goal to bonk or die trying. And without a sensible, mature and intelligent adult in my life, there was no one to ask, “Whoa, buddy. Hold up. Have you contacted your insurance company about this?”
I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to simulate such an environment: Boulder sits at almost 5500 ft. I live at approximately 1640 ft. I figured that alone should produce some major physical stress. And when I looked at the online Participant Roster, I’d say a good ¾ of the participants were from Colorado, which should have been a huge red flag right there.
In addition, I was coming to town with some good fitness, but also some residual sickness as well. I would only have two days to acclimate to the elements (haha!), and would be driving 1000 miles each way to get there. The swim was shaping up to be too warm for wetsuits, and the state was currently enduring a scary heat wave. And there were going to be some very fit cats up in them thar’ hills- I was starting to prepare myself mentally to get lapped all day long. If things got ugly, I secretly hoped the Ironman Live functionality would be down again, so my mom wouldn’t have to watch the destruction. (And I was not disappointed. It was down, as usual.)
But I had a couple tricks up my sleeve. Of course, my Ironman Coeur d’Alene experience hadn’t completely disappeared; I decided it was just lying dormant. My FTP had risen to a solid 230W, almost 50% higher than my initial levels in January. My half-marathon paces were still well below sub-nine. And I had a nice tan and new, aerodynamic haircut. I was more relaxed because I had downgraded this race from a ‘B’ race to a ‘C’ race, and I expected to derive some benefits from that, after the disastrous tizzy I worked myself into in Coeur d’Alene. I supposed I was still in that all-too-familiar post-Ironman burnout phase where you’re a little lost and unconsciously start to question your identity somewhat, and wonder where the path leads from here.
I had held too much back at IM Oceanside and IM CDA, but there had been value in that, because I had established a new “floor.” But this round I resolved there would be no regrets and no “what if’s.” I would be firmly focused on determining my new ceiling. I would send WTC 2012 out in a blaze of glory. Or a blaze of destruction. Either way, it would be glorious. And from the ashes, I yearned for new insight that would arise and carry me into next season. I would purposely rage against the machine.
PRE-RACE
Okay, so that was all very dramatic. Conversely, the entirety of the events leading into Ironman Boulder was quite anti-climactic, and I was cool with that. I had enjoyed enough excitement in Coeur d’Alene for several seasons. I was blessed to be able to stay with a cousin who lived about ten minutes from the Boulder Reservoir, the venue for the race. And let me tell you what a sweet venue it is. Known locally as “The Rez,” The Boulder Reservoir is essentially a 700-acre park used for recreation, drinking water and irrigation. It contains a small man-made beach (which hosts the swim start) and a fairly large parking area, and makes for an ideal location for a triathlon.
The Rez has only two drawbacks. The first is that there is a fee to enter the park anytime except for race registration and race day. In addition, the designated swim area is extremely limited at all times except during the race, which prevents you from being able to get out and do a practice swim beyond a small roped-in 50m X 50m area, right up until the gun goes off. Both are minor inconveniences.
The water this time of year was a stunning 75 degrees, cold enough to be ‘wetsuit-legal’ but warm enough to still make swimming almost enjoyable. Virtually all 1800 racers wore a wetsuit, but there was actually some concern leading into the weekend about whether it would exceed the 76 degree threshold that would make wearing one a disqualification from LVQ (Las Vegas Qualification). That didn’t happen.
On Friday, my cousin and I decided to ride the bike course, which essentially resembles a large rectangle bordering the outer perimeter of the Rez. You are riding on a busy street for part of the route, but Boulder has fairly generous riding shoulders on virtually every road I saw. That was rather remarkable for me coming from a community that has only one bike lane in the entire county. The pavement – even on the shoulders – was smooth and the majority of the route occurred on low-traffic country roads.
In case you live in a cave and were unaware, Boulder is an extremely progressive community with very passionate fitness enthusiasm, the likes of which I have never experienced in my life. And even my previous home of Austin has nothing on what I can only describe as a training mecca. Residents of Boulder are very fortunate, and deserve a lot of credit for cultivating such an environment. Within 24 hours, I had already confirmed with my mortgage lender that I was still too far underwater to sell my house and relocate. Which is probably a good thing, since Boulder real estate is frankly, out of this world, and they don’t seem to be too enthused about welcoming anymore Texans to the area. (Oh well, I tried.)
I became concerned during the Friday ride because the conditions were both hot and windy, with temperatures topping out in the mid-nineties (in Colorado?!) and winds a consistent 12-15 mph. I have a deep sensitivity towards the negative perception of triathletes from pure road-cyclists, so whenever I ride my tri bike with a roadie like my cousin, I always try to stay up on the hoods for the vast majority of the ride, only getting aero for the steeper descents. As a result, I led the majority of the ride to work on my pace, and in the process got completely annihilated sitting up into the wind on the first (west) and second (north) sections of the ride. While Friday was blisteringly hot, Saturday was downright temperate (low eighties), so this made for some interesting conjecture on what Sunday might hold.
In addition, the wind intensity tended to vary, both from one day to the next, and also during the day itself. I suspect that this is why the race is typically characterized as fast for the pros, who are off their bikes a little around 10 AM, and generally have completed the run by 11 AM- before the wind really picks up. The rest of us age-groupers usually schlep around the bike and run course until well after noon, when things can get downright uncomfortable. (I guess the solution is to just get really, really fast so that I can claim my pro-card and start the swim at 7 AM with the rest of my soul mates.)
Now seems a particularly relevant time to vent, so I will: Ironman Boulder was the third consecutive WTC 70.3 race in which my age-group (Men 30-34) was the absolute last swim wave. This also occurred at both Ironman Austin 2011 and Oceanside 2012. In my opinion, this is ridiculous. With at least fifteen age-group waves per race, the odds of being last three times in a row are 1 in 3,375. So the only logical assumption I can come to is that this seeding is either purposeful or someone is derelict in their responsibilities.
I would suggest that an athlete can surrender as much as 10-15 minutes in a HIM by being seeded in the last wave group versus their first-wave self, especially in extremely hot conditions like Austin or (this year’s) Boulder. In addition to the ambiguous effects of standing around on the beach for an extra hour before their swim start, this athlete can be subject to focus and energy drain that naturally accompanies such a lengthy delay.
Furthermore, it just seems that environmental factors always seem to worsen throughout a race day (primarily from heat and wind), in addition to shrinking supplies and support at aid stations, increased congestion on the (non-draft legal, two-loop) bike course and gradually diminishing spectator support. When I exited T2, for instance, it was 85 degrees, but when I finished the race it had risen to a very un-Colorado 94, so I believe that it matters. And when two random racers jokingly commented to me at different points in the race (without even any prodding) on how glad they were to already be on the second lap after I merged with them out of T2, it reaffirmed my conviction that the impact is legit. It was that hot.
I’m okay with pulling the short straw of the last wave occasionally or even in succession. But there are thirty-five WTC 70.3 races in the Americas each year and none on US soil between Austin and Oceanside. So how is it possible that I could be dead last in both? Moreover, there are thirteen US races between Oceanside and Boulder- with only a handful in the south (Florida, Kansas, etc.) As such, it's seems almost statistically impossible that I could be in the very last wave three time in a row. Something’s amiss.
So, truly, I’m not complaining about a simple luck of the draw- life’s not fair, and there are far greater injustices in the world. I’m still racing myself at best, and my age group at worst. It’s simply the logic behind the “coincidence” that I cannot wrap my head around. WTC is a very large, very sophisticated and very profitable company. As such, I think the organizers at WTC should make efforts to ensure that no age group should be last twice in the same country, much less the same region. Three times is unforgiveable.
Either that or they should just come out and admit that they hate men 30-34. There, I feel better. I’m sure tears are falling for me. HTFU!! Now that everybody thinks I’m a complete wanker, let’s move on.
THE RACE
Swim
The swim was amazing, as already mentioned. The water was absolutely perfect, reasonably clean and virtually still. The air temperature at that point is somewhere in the 70’s, the sun sits at about two o’clock and it feels great. We started from a standing water position, which was a first for me and easy. Sighting’s a little tricky without a lot of distinct landmarks inside the park, but I couldn’t complain about anything. In my town, I sight off a herd of cows. Swimming at that elevation was a slight challenge, but really not that noticeable. It’s a fast swim, I set a PR of two minutes.
One unique feature of this swim, though, was that it went clockwise. I’ve done about 10 WTC long-course races so far in my life and every one of them moves counter-clockwise, whether it be the rectangle (IM CDA, IMTX, IM Oceanside) or the triangle (IM Galveston, Buffalo Springs, Austin). The layout of the Rez beach and parking lot pretty much dictate this switch, but it felt a lot like driving in Europe- when you swim with buoys to your left for so long, you feel exposed when they’re on your right. No big deal, just different.
Bike
The bike was my favorite part of the race. As previously mentioned, it’s your standard clockwise, two-loop rectangle design. It has one reasonably long and steady ascent per loop, but no steep grades like Coeur d’Alene and with virtually none of the fast, tight turns characteristic of IM Oceanside. Riders come out of transition and ride a couple miles south on a mild hill to reach the Rez exit, then turn right. They then ride another 2-3 miles on a closed country road before taking another right turn onto Foothills Hwy (SH 7), where you begin a roughly seven-mile gradual ascent that is tough but truly the only real challenge on the entire course. Of course, you’re battling wind and heat and the elevation, and other gifted riders and traffic, but regardless it is still an incredibly simple, fast course.
For the first time in a very long time, I experienced significant pain emanating from my glute and shooting down my left leg as soon as I exited T1. This was a big surprise because, as I’ve become more fit and flexible and a more educated triathlete this season, these kind of random “surprise” pains rarely visit me anymore.
Perhaps due to some major focus and adjustment in the off-season, both to my bike stroke (lead with the knee, lift on the hills!) and my run gait (eliminate the bounce, level the hips), I’ve typically only had to deal with the normal muscle strains arising from high impact and effort. As such, I was pretty sure I had become overzealous and over-kicked on the swim, and therefore assumed that this pain would eventually work itself on the ride. It did not, and was something that I was forced to ride with the rest of the day. I knew from experience that the location of the pain meant that if I rode prudently, it probably wouldn’t be a factor in the run, and it was not.
As soon as you turn right off of SH 7 onto St. Vrain Rd (the northern part of the rectangle), you get to enjoy just about the fastest, cleanest 3-5 miles you’ll ever experience in your life. With the wind at your back, no traffic whatsoever, smooth pavement, and no major turns, it’s just a flat out time trial for the next 20 minutes. For those so inclined (translation: those with a pulse), it’s pure ecstasy to completely pull back on the throttle and just let those horses run.
I have many, many weakness in this sport, and the bike in particular, but traversing a steady decline like that is not one of them. I immediately geared down to the big ring and the smallest cassette at the turn and once up to speed, I literally could not feel the pedals I was going so fast. Just flying past folks. On the first loop, I peaked at 42.5 mph, while on the second loop (once I felt comfortable enough to fully implement Project Mayhem), I exceeded 47 mph for several minutes. Good times.s
Keep in mind this is on at best a 3% grade, so you’re not exactly “bombing” down a dangerously steep hill like in Oceanside and this speed was at a cadence exceeding 140, so you know it was fast. I flew past about 50 people each lap, and without even having to pedal for the majority of this section. I just squeezed the top tube with my thighs as tight as I could and held on for dear life. Most fun I’ve ever had in a race, fo sho. In my brain, that’s one of the memories I’ll savor forever.
The only unique challenge of the bike course for me was the elevation in Boulder, sitting around 5,900 ft. As mentioned, I live at around 1600 ft., so I could definitely tell the difference as soon as I arrived to town. Where this effect was most discernible was heart rate, which I should have expected but hadn’t really thought about leading up to the race. When I’m pounding out miles indoors on my trainer at home. I can rarely exceed 130 bpm on the bike (but can easily approach 180 bpm in run sprint training.)
Even out on my local rides it’s a real challenge to exceed 145 bpm in heart rate on the bike. I mean, it has to be true Zone 5-type effort to generate that kind of stimulus. And as I read books like Training and Racing with Power and the triathlon magazines, it’s always perplexed me to see the authors casually refer to HR data in the 160’s and 170’s. Like it’s just a normal thing. My lack of experience at that intensity prevented me from understanding that. I always just figured I was a big wuss, dealt with it as usual and moved on.
Now I understand. From the minute I fired up the power meter on the bike on the way out of T1, my HR went straight up to 150 bpm. I mean, like, immediately. Back home, it usually takes an hour to get into the 140’s. I’m not dealing with an excessive amount of life stress and I’m getting some decent sleep these days, so the jump initially caught me off-guard- I’ve never seen the computer register anything over 150 bpm. Ever. And here I was averaging 156 bpm.
At that point, I could feel the additional exertion in my heart, my lungs and my legs, but as most folks know, when you come out of T1 in any race, it’s a little chaotic already, the adrenaline is pumping pretty hard and any data series is prone to be all over the map. I subscribed to the EN model of taking the first 30 minutes of the HIM ride stupid-slow, while taking on nutrition, going through my administrative checklist, performing my mental exercises and just bringing everything back into equilibrium. But I was getting extremely nervous.
The WKO Scatter Graph shows my HR actually touching 169 bpm before I had even left the Rez! Tell me that wouldn’t screw with your mind?! And although it started to slowly tick down gradually throughout the ensuing ride, it was still shockingly- and stubbornly- high. It shows me riding near 160 bpm up to the top, then sitting in the mid-150’s for the rest of the loop, and this data replicated on the second lap as well.
I didn’t know exactly what to do at this point, I knew from my training what this level of HR would do to my run, but I had never experienced the effect on my bike. If I had dropped it down to even the 140s, I’d be have been rocking about 15 mph, so that wasn’t going to happen. My brain told me that I needed to slow it down, but my body felt fine and my legs were strong. Most convincing of all, my power was right in the 200W range I had committed to for the race. So if it was Project Mayhem I had asked for, it would indeed be Project Mayhem I would get. I didn’t drive 2000 miles for nothing, so I became my own personal guinea pig in an attempt to achieve as much spiritual (tri-)enlightenment as I could fit into five (okay, six..) hours.
The bike was beautiful and fun, but frankly pretty standard. No surprises, no wrecks, no unusual features that required you to engage your brain. It became the simple math problem that this sport is supposed to be, simply requiring the rider to parse out the amount of power that they should know they can achieve, with a smart best-guess discount for the elevation change and the heat. I had illusions of averaging an Intensity Factor of .85 and Normalized of 200 like I was supposed to, but quickly decided to shoot for an IF of .777 and a NP of 190W. Hours and hours of work followed by study had told me that would allow me to put together a steady, impressive run.
And it did. I completed the bike in 2:48, which was by no means exceptional, but it was a 16-minute improvement over my last HIM in mild (sea-level) Oceanside, CA. More importantly, I even-split the bike within sixty seconds…. sweet!
I guess this is a good point to stop and pontificate about wheels. So if you read my IM CDA 2012 report, you know I experienced damage on my rear carbon rim right before the race that left the thing basically inoperable. $1000 down the drain, welcome to Ironman, thanks for playing. Losing that wheel was a fairly traumatic event- and still hurts to think about, but I persevered. I had originally thought I had run over something.
What you don’t know is that the bike was transported by a certain company that I will not disclose but will only say that this company is closely aligned with Ironman and has a virtual monopoly on WTC bike transport business. Well, when I went to pick up my bike the Saturday after the race at my drop-off bike shop in San Antonio, I immediately discovered that now the front tire had suffered a half-inch puncture, been ripped from the rim, and the rim itself had a huge gash across the rim and a crevice where the tire is supposed to sit, looking as if someone had jammed a screwdriver deep into the outer rim. It was obvious and deep.
Now the front tire and rim were destroyed, and the damage was eerily similar to the mysterious damage inflicted on the rear tire before the race. Though it was not apparent in Coeur d’Alene (I’m not a wheel specialist), it seemed clear that both injuries had been sustained as the result of the storing of the bike to and from the event. If this seems likes conjecture, ask yourself what you would have thought if you had rolled a perfectly good wheel/tire set to the transport company immediately after a race, only to find it destroyed in this manner upon pick-up from the receiving bike shop.
It was Saturday night when I picked up the bike so I called up the transporter first-thing Monday morning and explained the situation. I emailed pictures of both damaged wheels and reminded them I had purchased their insurance at extra cost. Two weeks went by with no response, then an email arrived from the president accusing me of damaging both wheels, blatantly questioning why I didn’t contact them the day before the race to disclose the first damaged tire, and essentially disallowing any liability for the damage of my wheels. Basically, they said I should be more careful with my wheels, good luck. They more than implied that I had damaged my own tires in Coeur d’Alene. Oh, and they also said if I ever publically accused them of this damage, they would respond accordingly. No sympathy whatsoever.
I responded by email by expressing my dismay that, as the largest bike transporter in the world, they had no process in place to confirm that wheels were delivered or released in good condition, or even a policy for those that weren’t, to protect them from these situations. I asked to actually see the investigative research that they gathered and said they would unleash on me in response to any public claims. I then asked if they honestly believed that I had punctured my front tire in the race, rode the remaining miles on a damaged rim, and then simply dropped off the destroyed bike and tire to them afterward.
Two months later. No response. I guess that’s how you do business when you own the bike transport market for WTC.
Well, as we all know I’m a deeply principled and prideful (read: stubborn) man. You only have to fool me once. So instead of flaming said company online or within my centers of influence, I decided to do what I always do. I decided I would use this as an opportunity to explore other avenues of bike transport, including our local club sponsor, Tri Team Transport, and USAT’s new bike transporter, Raceday Transport.
I’ll also use this terribly unfortunate situation to finally teach myself how to disassemble my own bike and start shipping it via FedEx Ground. Obviously, I will never use this company again. Along with a bike box and many years of long-course racing, I figure these actions are a small price to pay to protect my property. I’ll also document better going forward.
Nevertheless, the destruction of my prized wheels left me with only my Shimano R500 stock wheels, so I decided to research other possible options. The largest and best known race day wheel rental company will also remain nameless in this report since they have now merged with a certain bike transport company who has merged with WTC. So obviously, they weren’t an option anymore.
After much research, the service I ultimately selected was Race Wheel Rental, a firm that rents race wheels for virtually all North American bike events and ships them to virtually any bike shop in the United States. In addition to free shipping included in all rentals and a huge selection of wheels, they provide what I believe to be a very cost-effective option for people in my position.
Consider this, hear me out, and feel free to comment: Say I’m your normal crazy, OCD age-group MOPer. I’m not super fit, and not all that fast. I’m Fred’s cousin, twice-removed. Maybe you’ve seen me at your last race. But I love triathlon, I train hard, and I’ve been working my butt off for a great season with some big-time races. I decide I must have- no, I deserve- some sweet whips to rock the courses in, and decide money is no object. I’m about to make it rain paper planes up in the club.
I’m completely balling in 2012 so I settle on the Zipp 808 Firecrest Clincher Wheelset, the big daddy of wheels, right? These things are so sick that Wheelbuilder doesn’t even publish their price online, they’re like a Ferrari. They seem to range from $2500-$3200 online, so let’s say I land a sweet deal on them for $2800, including some appropriate Continental tires, tax and shipping. They reside in a vault in my house and only come out for Ironman races, and say I neglect everything else in my life to race in three big races a year.
Race Wheel Rental currently rents this exact wheelset for $220 a race. How many years does it take to break even? I can barely do long division, but my estimates come somewhere near “a long ass time…” There are a lot of other reasons besides price to consider this arrangement. For one, you’re no longer at risk for damaging them in transport. The company also provides insurance on race-related damage of any kind sans gross negligence.
And who’s to say these wheels won’t be completely obsolete in a couple of years? The cutting edge wheel technology has flipped three times since I started this sport in 2009, so I can’t help wondering if today’s fancy wheels are today’s iPad. Does anybody expect to be using the iPad 2 in 2016? By then, I suspect we’ll be walking around with Garmin’s implanted in our wrists.
What if for some wacky reason you race less than you expect in the future? What if you get hurt, burnout or take a year off? What if you finally decide to leave the sport to save your job/marriage/family/sanity? And am I the only one expecting the Chinese to rip off this technology and be producing carbon everything for $2.99 in the next couple of years.
Lunacy? Maybe, but so is dropping $3K on a set of race wheels that might see pavement a few times a year. My point is that this is an option worth some serious consideration. And I’m not just saying that because I hate a certain unnamed tri-bike transporter.
Run
The run kicked my butt…. and I liked it! But I knew what I was getting into. I pushed pretty hard on the bike, harder than I’ve ever ridden before, but still not balls-out reckless like I used to race. I thought I could/would, but I’m not sure I even can anymore after discovering power and drinking the Kool-Aid. I guess I no longer see a triathlon as three sports anymore, but as one single sport with three aspects, no different than a basketball player thinks dribble-pass-shoot are the same game. It’s a cool revelation.
..Anyways, so while my legs were pretty tore up, my elevated heart rate hadn’t caused any major problems, which was the biggest surprise of the day. The run course was fairly reasonable; two loops on dirt road, rock and crushed gravel. I thought I’d be shuffling around the course all day like a smoker. And although I did not kill the run course, I was very pleased- I did 2:07, which is hardly impressive, but would have been an incredible performance for me in previous years even at reasonable elevation. But even though the Garmin was showing temperatures in the mid-nineties, with virtually no shade whatsoever (think Buffalo Springs), dry-heat sun beating down on me mercilessly, feeling like I was running around breathing out of a snorkel, and still hurting in a way that only Ironman can, I felt awesome!
My cousin came out to watch me and said I looked great, like I could do this all day. The last lap I was passing everybody, and those people still out on the course (mostly men 30-34!) were suffering. And it’s worth reiterating that this was no average field, virtually everybody who shows up for Boulder is legit. This is not to say that I was some stud- I still only ran a 2:07- but it was the feeling of running the last mile at the same pace as the first and just running like it was my job that was so stunning to me. I was pulling a huge portion of runners back toward me for the back split, the first time that’s ever happened.
I feel like I finally understand and have come full-circle with the EN model of execution. Power tells me exactly what my ride is going to be, and pace training tells me exactly what my run is going to be. Variables like heat and elevation and unforeseen surprises will improve or discount my final race time (5:40, by the way), but my training has completely converted my performance from a guessing game to a foregone conclusion, as long as I drive the vehicle that I’ve built over so many months properly.
Obviously, I still have a long, long way to go, and a lot of improvement to realize. This is only my second full year of long-course, and virtually every aspect of my racing and training requires major adjustments. But I will improve. I will complete a full OS. I will build fast, and then put far on top of it. I will refine transitions and nutrition (and recovery!) and pre-race prep. But on this day, I did the absolute best I could do. I finished with all that I had, I left it all out there. I dropped two minutes off my swim. And subtract three minutes for stretching at the halfway run mat, and I split the run, just like I split the bike. I reached the suck and carried it with me for 6.5 miles. And I had a wonderful time. With my parents, my physiology, my work life and my limited resources, that’s really all I ever ask anymore.
Finish
For some inexplicable reason, the race organizers found it unnecessary to provide any finish line nutrition whatsoever. I was both dumbstruck and pissed. They had Wal-Mart brand water, but that was it. No soda. No pizza. No cookies or chips. And no damn chocolate milk. Nothing. You put it all out on the line for six hours, I guess you sorta’ feel like you deserve something.
Being in the last and second to last age group in Austin two years in a row, I was used to them running out of stuff. But this was different. It was like the complete opposite of Ironman Oceanside, which was a freakin’ all-you-can-eat buffet compared to Boulder. I have never been to a WTC event that failed to provide any sustenance for finishers- I always just assumed it was a given, like oranges at a soccer halftime.
Maybe they did run out. Or maybe they really do hate Men 30-34.
Post-Race
You might be wondering how close I got to the edge. How much rage I actually applied to the machine. I wasn’t completely sure myself at first. How do you really ever know? After the race I was pretty zoned out, and after enjoying my Wal-Mart water, I sat down on the sidewalk and waited for the world to stop spinning. It did eventually.
It’s always weird to travel to a destination race by yourself. You finish, and it’s kinda’ like, “Okay. That was fun.” Most people would find it kinda’ depressing, but I’m not most people. I got in the car and drove home. I wanted a Coke. I wanted a burger. I even wanted a beer. But I didn’t want anything more than I wanted a hot shower. The adrenaline started to wear off pretty quickly and I started to feel drunk. Which was weird since I’ve never been much of a day-drinker.
I was definitely fading fast. Your body can only hold so much glycogen, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. And without any damn chocolate milk for men 30-34, it was definitely gone. I drove about ten miles in the wrong direction on the way home. Then I pulled off the road, stepped out of the car and called Ralph. Now Boulder and I are one. When you’re 34-years-old and single, life doesn’t get much better than that. You live for the opportunity to work so hard you make yourself sick. It’s about the only time you still feel alive. It’s how you know you’ve accomplished something. I can hardly wait for next season to plop down $3xx for the chance to do it all over again!
EPILOGUE
On the day after the race, I drove the entire 14-hours from Boulder to my home in Kerrville, TX. It was a long and tedious drive, especially once you cross the state line into Texas. From that point, you essentially have 10 hours of a whole lot of nothing until you reach Kerrville, which is the first point on the satellite map of south Texas where it turns from yellow to green.
One of the things that got me through this trip was the anticipation of my traditional mini-reward for any long-course race: during the next 24 hours, I can eat or drink anything I want, as much as a I want. I know, it’s bad-boy dangerous. It’s also both glorious and bittersweet, however, as I end up devouring all the foods from which I normally abstain from during my training season- followed by the inevitable and painful blood-sugar spiked hangover that ensues soon thereafter. Like the classic movie Supersize Me, I usually become sick immediately, and my ambitious plans to gorge the entire day usually crash to reality by the first meal. Afterwards, I always find it unbelievable that the majority of our country actively chooses to eat this garbage as part of their everyday diet.
I got up super-early on Monday and broke through Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs traffic before the Monday morning rush hour. I decided to initiate the 24-hour debauchery by driving through a McDonald’s in Pueblo, CO for breakfast. As mentioned before, you normally wouldn’t catch me dead on their property 363 days a year, and definitely never at any of the locations in my city (we lack a health department). But I withheld judgment, pulled through and ordered two McGriddles, hashbrowns and a latte.
Three things stood out. First, I was the seventh car in the drive-thru when I pulled up, it was a dual-drive-thru (my first time to see that) and the place was completely packed. I thought, “Holy cow, this is how these people really start their week? By injecting poison into their system. And they think Ironman is dangerous!”
The second revelation was how cheap my meal was. I ordered more than I thought I could possibly consume and I think the bill was like $12. The third thing that was completely new to me was that those McGriddles were freakin’ amazing. Like a video in a middle-school science class, I could immediately feel the carbohydrate cocktail and synthetic chemical compounds coarse through my veins and snap my brain to life. I felt like Superman, I could see through walls and felt tingly all over. Whoa. I soon started to feel a little dizzy with stimulation and my senses were all humming in perfect harmony. I washed both sandwiches down with the large latte- the idea you could order anything with whip cream and caramel on it for breakfast was hysterical to me. (Remember, I don’t get out much.)This was going to be a great day!
My next memory is of the sugar crash that occurred about an hour later, as I passed through Raton, NM. I was ready for more. Surprisingly (not!), I was already starving again and realized I had to have more dextrose, citric acid preservative and propylene glycol if I was going to survive this day. However, I held back. I decided I would wait until Dalhart, the Panhandle town that like so many other West Texas towns has experienced a sudden and dramatic energy-fueled revitalization of people and pickup trucks.
I pulled into mighty Dalhart around 11:30 AM and decided I must find a McDonald’s in order to run train on their lunch menu. I wanted a Big Mac or three, but secretly hoped that they had a new and better sandwich that would replicate the experience I had enjoyed from breakfast. I was crashing hard at this point, and growing further depressed as I geared up for another eight hours of more nothing. Their location was right in the center of town, and as I pulled in I was surprised to find every spot in the lot full. At 11:30 AM on a Monday morning?
I had to park across the street. I wondered if maybe somebody was having a birthday party, so I stepped inside. Nope, just Bubba and his other brother, Bubba, standing in line with about two dozen other folks, all craned-necks staring up at the elevated menu like it was a solar eclipse. I was shocked, and decided I would take my chances with the drive-thru. But as I turned around and exited the “restaurant,” I realized this was not going to work, as there was literally cars wrapped around the place.
Saddened, I decided this was a clear sign I was not supposed to be here. Frankly, the collection of people waiting to eat from the trough inside made me lose my appetite. I mean seriously, if you walked into a bar and everybody was passed out sloppy drunk on the floor and drooling on themselves, would you really still want a drink? That was kinda’ how I felt, but I was also equal-parts pissed off. It wasn’t even noon! WTF!
So I picked up some Power Bars at the nearby convenience store and headed south, trying not to think about what had just happened. I decided I would stop in beautiful Amarillo for a late lunch at Whataburger, which is like a Texas version of White Castle. Same story: all parking spaces were taken, the drive-thru line ran into the street, and it was 2 PM on a Monday afternoon. I was looking at at least another 30-minute wait to nutritionally punish myself. I thought this was insane, and settled for a nearby Subway, which was virtually empty.
The sugar coma had long since worn off by now and as I rolled across the Texas plains, I became quite introspective. This is America. This is 2012. This is the reality for the majority of the population. This is where we’ve evolved as a culture, ingesting chemical compound cocktails into our bodies that we would sue the local utility company for leaking into our homes. McDonald’s feeds 68 billion (with a ‘B’!) people a day, about one percent of the population, and for the next three years, they’re going to open one store a day in China. And I read that the only place in the lower 48 that is more than 100 miles from a McDonald's is a barren plain in South Dakota. Americans alone consume one billion pounds of beef at McDonald's in a year – five and a half million head of cattle. How did we get here?
With this audience, I won’t belabor the point, this isn’t an editorial. What this is, is a reminder of why fitness- and multisport in particular- is so important. This isn’t just a hobby or a pleasant diversion. We have a culture that has spun out of control. As a society, we’ve surrendered our collective capacity to make the right decisions- regarding our diets, our bodies, our budgets, our leaders or even our future to some extent. And the trend is not promising. This is pretty weighty, esoteric stuff, I know.
My point is that what we do matters. Triathlon and exercise matter. When we accept that our individual ability to enact major societal change through the traditional channels has been marginalized, we’re left with the realization that we can only control ourselves, and the path of our own lives. But we need a tool to make this repair- our sport can be that tool for many people. Most of us were drawn into this lifestyle from being exposed to it by something or someone else. We didn’t wake up one morning and conceive of the idea of stringing three childhood activities together in unison by ourselves. We were influenced. And we have all influenced others.
I personally think it’s too late, but best-case the only conceivable way out of this (with this being the cumulative consequences for our current shared reality) is knowledge and accountability, and a honest cost-benefit analysis of our current lifestyle and a better way. And that’s probably not happening anytime soon for our country.
I won’t get political, but distributing the costs of our poor health decisions across the larger tax base will not solve our problem. Cajoling people to choose a different route is not the solution. Trying to remove the risks from the system won’t provide the silver bullet either. Sooner than later, each person will be forced to make this decision on their own, because the consequences will no longer be distributed, subsidized or masked by our leaders and institutions. And this adaptation will prove painful for many.
I believe that we as triathletes are already way ahead of the curve. Largely, we engage in this lifestyle because we like it and it’s fun. But we also know this in one of the very few addictions with positive outcomes and positive benefits for other areas of our life. We know what is essentially a secret. As this American experiment continues to play out, I believe more and more people will be yearning for similar fulfillment and hungry for a different path than the one they have been on up to that point. And our current participation makes us ambassadors for a better way of life, and I’m excited about this opportunity.
Triathlon transcends its effects on each of us personally. We are each laying the very early groundwork for a mass movement that I believe is coming, where people will have to re-evaluate their lives, habits and behaviors. This movement may not involve a bike, trainers or a wetsuit. But it will require a major paradigm shift in how we as a society choose to eat, consume, work and live.
I hope I haven’t been too preachy, but I probably have. If so please forgive or dismiss me. My trip through middle-America simply reinforced just how important this sport- and fitness in general- is to me and could be for this country. Today we’re largely viewed by the greater population as a niche, extreme collection of fitness freaks clad in spandex and carbon, and with major insecurity issues. And that I cannot deny.
But perhaps tomorrow, we’ll be called on to influence and educate our communities about the profound physical, mental, social and psychological effects that can be derived from this lifestyle. Hallelujah. Let freedom reign.
See you in 2013!
Comments
I had about 10 of my friends also drive to Boulder from Dallas, to do that 70.3. I'll have to get their opinions on the event as well.