Full Vineman Triathlon - TriathlonFull Ironman

Well. I did surprisingly well on the swim, despite my inability to see anything and the crowds of people. When we last purchased goggles, Doug and I got defective ones. From the beginning, these dumb goggles fogged up immediately upon contact with the water. Luckily, I bought us new non-fogging googles (same model, just a different batch) in advance of this race. Unfortunately, however, I left them in my swim bag and raced in the foggy goggles. The result is that the swim felt like the beginning of the movie "Saving Private Ryan" to me. I could see only fog (in my defense, there was fog on the river), splashing, and other bodies hitting me. As Doug and I had discussed, I seeded myself near the front of my wave, so my start was relatively easy. As I started to get into a rhythm, though, I started hitting the slower people from the younger women's wave. Walls of people crowded, kicked, and punched me. At the first turn-around, I started encountering people from Doug's wave. I did the math assuming that I was going my usual 2:00 per 100 meters pace and determined that the folks from Doug's wave were swimming about 3:00 per 100 meters if I had passed them. Wow.

I know that I said this last year at Wisconsin, but I have never swum amongst so many clumsy oafs in my entire life. I got kicked in the googles, in the mouth, in the chest. Finally, on the second loop, I started swimming a modified catch-up drill with my hands facing out so that I could make a wider stroke and use my palms to push anyone near me away. The push-away stroke worked well and I did not get hit as much after I figured it out. It was probably not as efficient as a regular stroke, though. The non-efficiency stressed me out a little bit, but I rationalized extra effort in the swim with the fact that in training I swam well over 4,000 meters every Friday, with butterfly and fist drill. This turned out fine.

Inexplicably, I got a calf cramp on the second loop because I pushed off of the bottom of the river after crashing into some guy's calves because he was standing and walking in the middle of the river. I have only ever had this bad a cramp one time and it would not rub out, so I just swam with my other limbs until it subsided enough to use my leg again.

Pick a race with a "harder" swim. I think people choose this race because the swim is safe (water is 6 feet deep at most) and as a result there are a lot more weaker swimmers to navigate around.

It was cold exiting the water, so my transition time is extra slow. I am very glad that I brought arm warmers, though, because I would have frozen on the bike otherwise.

Speed up!

This is a great bike placement for me. Very happy with only losing 3 places on the bike despite 2 potty stops (one to potty, one to apply chamois butter). The "La-di-da" pace worked again and I passed a zillion people in the last 20 miles because they had gone out too fast. My bike fitness was good, despite only doing the 2 100 mile rides. Thank you Doug for making me do the trainer workouts.

Nutrition was a crapshoot. I accidentally left my peanut butter at the hotel, so I had a banana and a piece of Cliff bar at the first two aid stations, which was too much food. I was not drinking very much the first lap because I launched my GU Electrolyte brew in the first 10 miles and the Gatorade was too strong-tasting to me. Plus, it was cold oustide, so I was not thirsty. I stuck to the "drink when you are thirsty and eat when you are hungry" plan and only ate 3 more GUs for the rest of the ride. Ooh, they tasted good, though. Peanut butter GU is such a nice treat. I drank a decent amount of water when it warmed up, but did not go overboard and tried to put it on my head instead to stay cool. This worked well.

It was very cold starting the bike and my feet were numb until I reached Chalk Hill the first time. I might recommend a full bike jersey to help stay warm.

However, it warmed up after the marine layer burned off, and I got hot, so maybe the tri jersey was the better plan.

Changing tents were far away, so I did not change clothes. Just stuffed my "oh poop" bag in my pocket, changed socks and shoes and took off.

If they had not been wet, I would not have changed socks.

I started out too fast - in the 8:34 minute per mile range, but felt pretty good until I got hot and started hitting the hills. Very quickly, I decided that I would need to walk the hills in order to keep moving. For the first lap, that worked OK. Then, it got hotter. So, I designated any exposed area as a hill also so that I walked the hills and the exposed areas and ran between them. In the shady areas and the downhill, I was still holding a good pace (single digits per mile) but the heat/hills were draining. I ate my first GU as planned at mile 3 and another at mile 7. By mile 11 (time for the next GU), I was overheating pretty badly, and could not stomach (literally) the idea of food. I was craving salt, though, so I tried the corn chips. Too greasy. Later, I hit upon the idea of just licking the salt off, but the aid stations were out by that time. Finally, I asked the aid station workers whether they thought the coke or the gatorade had more salt. They did not know, so I went with coke. I got ice cubes at each aid station, put one in my top and one in my shorts (thanks Nerdjock for this idea!) and the rest in my coke. Sipping cool fizzy coke was awesome. I continued this for all of lap 2 and the rest of the race. I even stopped and asked the folks with hoses to spray my head whenever I came to them. If they sprayed my body, my feet got too wet, so the head-only plan worked pretty well.

The water made my socks chafe and I got a big blister on my heel. I stopped in the middle of lap two, grabbed a clorox wipe and paper towel from an aid station and did some triage. I needed the wipe to (a) disinfect, but mostly (b) to wipe the aquaphor off of my blister so that a bandaid would stick. This worked well enough that I did not have to stop to mess with the blister for the rest of the race.

I met lots of neat folks on the run and cheered for all of them. There was a woman in a bikini, another in Crocs, a guy in tiny spandex shorts, Superman, She-Ra Princess of Power, the Oh Canada guys, the young guns (younger women who passed me), the running woman (who I tried to stay with) and tons of others. I had fun cheering for all of them. Doug and Karen looked good when I saw them, so I was a little bummed that they would need to wait on my slowness, but decided to have a good time while I was out there.

Late in the 2nd lap, it started to cool off a bit and the coke started working! I felt better! The running woman and I were run/walking at a similar pace and we rounded the end of the 2nd loop together. I even ran up some of the first big hill. Yes! I calculated that there was very little chance of a PR, which was OK. I was feeling better and that is all that mattered. Then, as I passed Doug, he said Karen was just ahead and I told him that I thought I would bring it in with her. He thought that was a good plan, so that is what we did. Karen and I ran/walked the rest of the run as the sun went down. Karen's feet were hurting, so we did not set any speed records, but we still beat dusk and had a lovely time talking to all of the other racers. There were a couple of spectators who kept telling us "you can do it" "keep going, you can make it" and that hacked me off. There was never a point when we considered not finishing so I was insulted that they would have thought we might not make it. Whatever, we had a nice time and it was awesome to see Doug, Tom, Andy, Karen's dad and Sandy at the finish. Then, we went out for pizza, which was nice.

Nothing. The run/walk was perfect. I adapted very well to the ridiculous hills and heat. Sure, I hived up and felt like death for a while there, but water on my head, ice in my clothes, and coke - plus the run/walk had me fixed right up. NO GI ISSUES arose, so I am very pleased. I really do think that drinking less water played a big part this. Thank you Noakes.

Found some clothes for Doug who got cold after sundown, and headed to the car. Tom and Andy had already loaded up our gear. Bless them!


General malaise.

Karen's mom got sick and passed away. We had a bunch of drama at my office. Expedia screwed us so that we got a smoking room at the hotel. I overdid it at Lagunitas and slipped in the shower, bruising myself. The swim was like a war. The roads on the bike were so bumpy that it was not safe. The run was hot and hilly. I could go on, but the bottom line is that I just did not have it on race day. It is what it is. We still had a fun trip with good friends and that is all that matters.


This race is well-organized in a beautiful area. If the roads were not so bumpy, it would be a perfect race.

I think the race draws an above-average number of Team in Training participants, so do take that for what it is worth. It was great to cheer these folks and the Barb's race folks on, but it still hacks me off with the Team only cheer for people in their group. And, the San Franciso IronTeam totally copied the flames from our Team Buttercup kits. So, I may have some sour grapes. Pun intended.