Pleasant Prairie Triathlon - International Race - TriathlonOlympic

Seeded myself at the front and sized up the competition, like I always do. Holly and the kids were right there taking pictures and getting ready for the race. The gun went off and this year I went slower into the lake to make sure my goggles would stay on. Passed the first three guys in front of me rather quickly. And then saw this guy going pretty good. I grabbed on to his feet for about 50-75 meters, but the pace was too hard for me to sustain. I let him go, flipped over to my backside, did a couple backstrokes to see if there was anyone else to swim with, and we had already separated from the pack. Oh well, that meant my best option was to swim this alone. Sure, it would cost me a few seconds, but I am confident in my ability to swim very straight, so at least I knew I would be doing the shortest course possible.

I went at a comfortable pace and pushed it the last 500m to pretty much full out. Passed a bunch of swimmers in the two waves in front of me. Turned out the guy that took off first swam a 20:15, and was able to put 2:19 into me (about 10s/100m), so that explains why I couldn't hang. Turns out I put about 2:00 into the 3rd place guy, so glad I didn't wait.

Comparison over the years:
2006: 25:30
2007: 22.26
2008: 23:05
2009: 22:34

Nothing really. I think I could have pushed a little harder, but liked the pace and then pushing at the end. Maybe, just maybe kept pushing to stay with the guy, but that would have hurt real bad, and not sure I wanted to get that deep into the pain cave until the bike.

The transition area this year was another 100m away from the beach. I took the goggles off and swim cap up the run from the beach. I did a nice paced jog to my area, took off wetsuit, put on my helmet and took off with my bike. No hesitations, no hiccups. This was the fastest T1 in my AG of the people who finished.

Not sure I could speed this up without running faster...which *may* have been a good idea.

Got on the bike pretty smoothly, had some issues with my velcro in my shoes. Saw Holly and the kids, and Callan informed me that I was the second silver cap out of the water (great, now to catch 1st silver cap guy). Climbed the first hill, and looked at my HR, which was about 10 beats over LT. Not good, but RPE didn't feel like that, so I just went with it. Realized that my legs weren't firing like they should have been, but I had felt tired all week. I was about 20-30W below my wattage target and HR wasn't coming down. Decided to go by RPE and watts and just push with all I had for one hour.

The bike course was very empty on this first lap. I started looking for a guy with a calf that had a 35-39 in it (love when races put our AGs on our calves). I ended up passing the guy about 4 miles in. Good, now I just had to hold off the other people in our AG. I continued to hammer and to see if I could catch coredump. I saw him at the loop (1/2 way done) and actually looked at my watch to see how much ground I needed to make up (he started a wave earlier - 3:00). I got to that point about 1:01, so I had made up some ground but wanted to try and catch him before the run.

Got to the second loop and continued to hammer with what I had, which wasn't nearly what I wanted. Legs just couldn't push, but the HR was over LT. I just said, whatever, and continued to grind it out. I got passed at mile 18 or so by one dude in our AG, and then another guy got me around mile 20 (also in my AG). Those were the only two dudes that passed me. I did try to stay with them, but it wasn't happening. As things turned out, it wouldn't have mattered anyway, as they both ran sub 6:06m/m for the 10K.

Made it to the downhill, saw Holly and the kids again. She told me that Chris had just gotten on the run course and she said, "You better catch him". She loves the competition. I took the feet out of the shoes, did the dismount and hurried to transition, hoping the running legs worked a little better than the bike legs.

Nutrition/Hydration: Based on being a little dehydrated last year, I took in 1 bottle of infinit and another 20oz of water.

2006: 1:12:22, 20.6mph
2007: 1:09:26, 21.5mph
2008: 1:00:50, 23.2mph *
2009: 1:00:15, 23.4mph *

* based on shorter course of ~23.3 miles. Used



Ideally, I would have tapered and had fresher legs. But, I have bigger fish to fry in just 4 weeks at IMWI. I proceeded this week with three 18+ hour build weeks. Not ideal and it looks like it caught up with me a bit. I did get strep throat the prior week, too, and was still probably affected there, as well.

But, its nice to know that I can still put up a decent bike split even with some adversity.

Very good transtion. 7th in the AG, but only by 10 seconds. Just racked the bike, put on the shoes (no socks for Oly and under), and grabbed garmin, hat, and race belt.

Nothing.

Got out on the run, and the legs felt pretty good. HR was again high for the effort, so I just said screw that, and ran. I had to catch Chris. I got out of T1 and saw Laura (StartingtoTri) and she also informed me that Chris was out in front of me by 30 seconds.

I worked on finding a rhythm that felt a little uncomfortable, but something I could sustain for 6.2 miles. I saw Holly and she informed me that she had lied to Chris and told him that she hadn't seen me, yet. I laughed, knowing that he was really going to be surprised when I saw him at the turnaround (1.5 miles). Chris has really been running good lately, so I knew it wasn't going to be easy to catch him.

I spotted him and did the watch check again when he got to the 1st aid station (1 mile), and he had about 28 seconds on me at that point. OK, I was running around 7:00m/m and thought I should be doing 6:45s or better. Just figured if I could keep putting about 10s/mile on him, then I would pass him eventually. At the turnaround, I also saw Lauren Jensen. She was about 30 seconds behind me. She beat me by a minute last year, so I had a goal of trying to beat her this year. So, now I was playing two games in my mind: 1) Don't let Lauren catch you 2) Catch Chris.

I cut the gap on Chris in half by the time we got back to Holly and the kids. Knowing they would be there, was a huge boost. You see, if I wouldn't have made up any ground, Holly would have surely let me know with some words reminiscent of my old Football coach...and running fast seemed like a better option at that point ;)

Around mile 4, I was within striking distance, but I had used up so much energy to catch him, I wanted to recover a bit before passing. Well, Chris heard me and said, "Is that you, Scott?". I was going to try and disguise my voice, and say no, its Lauren...but just plain talking was hard enough. I responded that it was me, but I wasn't passing yet.

At the 4.5 mile point I made my move. It was a slow one and I could feel Chris on my feet. We had to make a bunch of turns at this point that made things difficult to keep a rhythm. After about 30 seconds or so, Chris passed me back. And he was flying. I was thinking WTF? How much gas left does he have? I let him go and just kept up trying to make sure Lauren didn't pass me, too. We made it to the next turnaround, and this is when I realized that Chris thought the finish was closer than it really was. I also heard Lauren hollering, "1 water, 1 gatorade!".

I then re-passed Chris and started to switch positions with some of the guys in his AG. I figured I was putting some distance between us, but knew Lauren was still there. There were no more turnarounds, and I didn't have the energy to look around so I just went as fast as I could. Pushed my HR all the way up to 177 (not high for most of you, but 15 beats over LT for me). I put on the finishing stride, heard my name called and then finally looked back. Lauren was right behind me, and Chris was right behind her.

Very cool run, when you have a competition like that. Chris and I train together and we can really push each other. This wasn't even close to my best run physically, but it was a good one mentally. I, again, felt like the legs weren't responding, but I left it all out there and made it hurt.

My splits:

1m: 6:59, 154ahr, 158mhr
2m: 6:58, 158ahr, 161mhr
3m: 6:53, 163ahr, 166mhr
4m: 7:02, 166ahr, 167mhr
5m: 7:13, 168ahr, 171mhr
6m: 7:12, 172ahr, 177mhr
0.08: 6:10, 176ahr, 177mhr

Nutrition/hydration: a cup of water at every aid station, with the exception of 2 at mile 2 and a gel.

Comparison:
2006: 52:12 (8:24m/m)
2007: 45:12 (7:17m/m)
2008: 43:24 (6:59m/m)
2009: 42:46 (6:53m/m)

Nothing. Again, same limiter as the bike. Lots of training and a bigger day in less than a month.

Grabbed a gatorade, talked with Chris, talked with Lauren. She is really cool. She rememembered me from last year and told me that she was using me as a rabbit on the run. She also told me that she went off in the wave behind me...so, well, I didn't get that goal. Maybe I should have a goal to try and beat her at IMWI??


Lots of training, no taper. Strep throat the week before, still on antibiotics. Smoking a bowl, before the event [OK - just kidding on the last one...wanted to make sure you were still reading this novel]

On the flip side, I improved in every aspect of the race over last year. Sure, not as much as I would have liked, but thats what keeps us going. And I was able to get on the podium in what was a C+/B- race.

One other interesting fact that Chris and I looked at after the race was our run splits. It turns out that whoever was chasing/trailing on the run, had the faster run splits. Hmmm??


This is a great event. Lots of people and you get to see everyone multiple times on the run. Very nice award ceremony and raffle at the end (although it is long).

Couple of minor complaints:
1) Post event food sucks
2) They need a better way to have spectators park and watch, as well as the athletes getting in to the event
3) There were some changes to both bike and run courses. The volunteers really need to stay on top of those points where the course changed. Lots of oly people taking the sprint routes on the run...
4) Either need to go back to the old bike course (24.85 exactly) or find a way to get that extra 1.5 miles back in

Still, love the venue, and the race.