Cranberry Trifest - TriathlonOlympic

Boy, if I could only do the swim for a bigger chunk of my races :)Got what I thought would be a good spot up front to the right to start. That was until they told us to go to the left of the first bouy, and the right of the rest. Got pushed way outside of the pack and had to do some start stop stuff to move in.

Being in the last wave is a mixed blessing. The pond actualy starts a current, which you can see in the weeds on the bottom of the pond. This is way cool, especialy at the turns. The downside is sifting through the previous 3 waves of swimmers who are not quite as fast. Recent perspective allows me to give them huge cudos, and extra room. Problem was the last 200 had about 30 from the previous wave all packed up and I had to go way outside or sit back, so I went around. Oh well.

When in open water, I had great form and sighting. Will take that

Get into the corral a little earlier and try to be more front and center for the washing machine. I might also work a little harder on the first 200 to break away from some of the thrashers so I do not fall to far back.

Always impress myself with how quick the real time from the water to out of T1 is at this race. If it were all about the transition, I would be prety well ranked ;)

Not much to do differently with such a "long" run up and out of the water

I am dumfounded how I rode so fast the year I PRed this course. I had a resonable amount of ridding time in this year and wanted to stay above 18 MPH average. The last 4 miles just kicked the crap out of my average after the 140 overpass.

Unrelated to much of the overall results was the people on the course with me. First, starting that far back, not many people end up passing me, because they all started in front of me. I spent large chuncks of time playig tag with the same group of about 15 women as we kept dropping each other. The only thing that torqued me off was the group of 5 women that seemed to have an actual pace line going! I have seen drafting, but they just continued to do about 30 second pulls and get passed by the train of other 4 as they went. After about 10 minutes of trying to let them "finish a pass" I gave up and got in line. Took about 2 minutes to filter up to the front, and I was quickly repassed by two of the women. End resutl, the pace line got F*cked up and never regained form. Either way, I could play tag off and on with individuals withoug having to draft to get by the group. I so do not like the idea of drafting, but crossing the yellow line is worse IMHO, so I will take the chance at the penalty instead.

Going to need to push a little harder, and more consistant with the bike training. The TdF challenge always sets me up well, but I need to do something a little different if I ever want to PR this course again.

Other than heading for the wrong gate for the run, I can handle this, and I only got about 4 steps in the wrong direction before getting turned in the right one.

Nada

Ok, this is where my day gets monumentaly interesting. I had game planned to run under 12 minute miles, and figured I could put something in at the end. This was based on some sub 10 minute mile runs out of the few I have done in the last month. Nothing over 4.7, but were much quicker than the 12 MM I was shooting for. Put a few songs into my head from my Ipod and got a steady rythem going. Knew I would be passed like there was no tomorrow, and I was good with that.

-Started with a very respctable 11:22 for mile one. Figured that was about the pace I could sustaine and be good with it. The goal here was not to walk....
-Mile 2 was 12:19, a little slower, but well within range of what I was looking for. About this point, my stomach started to get very gassy. I figured puke, or pass out, but not walk first. I had a hint at the stomach issues on the bike, but more on that latter.
-Mile 3 yeilded a 12:42, slowing, but nothing drastic, at least for the fitness I was in, and my overall running history.
-Mile 4, 13:09. Cool, running strong, within my abilities, I can get in without walking at this point....

Somewhere after the mile 4 waterstop, probably about mile 4.5, I hit a huge proverbial wall. The first sign was I was hanging my head low to avoid looking at any false flats going up. I then started to run about 6 strides at a time with my eyes closed, only sighting to make sure I was not too close to the sholder. As I closed in on mile 5, I knew something was wrong. I was already at 14 minutes, and could just see the mile 5 water station about 200 yards away. At this point, my shuffle just migrated into a walk, since it was slightly up hill and walking felt faster anyway. My final 2 miles combined into 44:08, this is a 22:04 average, but it dose not fully show what was happening. I figure I hit mile 5 at about 17 minutes. This means my last 1.2 miles was was at about a 27 minutes!! Holy crap.

Now for the fun part. This became a survival issue now. I could do what I probably should have, at least in the minds of "normal" people, and just sat down, DNF and figured out how to get back, or just take 10 minutes and try and recover....NOPE. With the sprint cancleled, I needed this race for my 3 to rank in the USAT, so a DNF was not realy an option to me. I staggered on literaly. At a couple of points, I almost fell, my head was thrashing about like a rag doll. I am not quite sure how I stayed on my feet.

As I came up on the finishing shoot, I could not even muster enough strength to turn my race number backwards so I could not be announce comming in. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and have everyone go away. I sat in a chair in after the line for about 10 minutes. My calves were twitching hard core. The only other time in my life I could equate with this was the last 3 miles of my only 26.2. When I ate 2 rolls after finishing 26.2, I felt great, so I figured I messed up on neutrition. Got up and staggered to the food line. Of course it was about 100 people deep, so I went to transtion to grab the bagle I had taken from breakfast and intended to eat before the swim. Tried to sit down to grap gear and food out of my stuff. Calf cramped huge, had to stand before both cramped and I could not get up. Spent probably close to 45 minute at my stuff getting the baggle, 32 oz of gatoraide, 2 Ibuprofing and 3 endorolight tabs into my system. At that point, I began to feel human again.

Ok, here is the scoop on what I think happend with the stomach today. When I packed the other night, I grabbed some gel from the bulk container and put it into my flask. It said, best used before 5/09. Those things are always too conservitive anyways, so I still packed the 2 gels worth to race with. Between the questionable gels, and not eating the bagle BEFORE the race, I am pretty sure I was way down on calories pre race. I need to respect that getting up at 4:45, and eating eggs and bacon with 2 gels over almost 8 hours is not going to cut it. In the past, particularly when I have started in the last swim wave, I have eaten a few granola bars for extra fuel, just cause. I will have to respect the calorie intake for races, even as short as the oly distance, because extra time needs to be factored into how I am eating. Go figure, you would figure with the spare tire I lug around my waist, I would not have such an issue ;)

In the end, I am just very glad I did not take a ride in an ambulance when I probably should have colapsed. The realy cool thing about this is it shows me how hard I can push through senseless acts of stupidity when merited.

I think it has been covered. By the time I got to the BBQ, I took as big a plate as I could carry and scarfed it all down.


poor tacktics in nutrition is what I am going with. I think I could have kept running the whole way if I had not run out of fuel. To think where my run time would have been, let alone my overall time, if I had not taken the better part of an hour to go 2.2 miles. Could have shaved about 16 minutes off which would have been quite respectable for an overall time for me as of late. Instead, this was the second worst oly and my worst cranberry time ever. Good thing I had fun :)


Still my favorite race. Not quite sure why nobody asked if I was ok when I am staggering around for the better part of 1.5 hours with my eyes almost shut from mile 4 to the point I dropped in transition. Must have looked better than I felt. By the time I got home, I had the energey to unpack the car, take care of the cats, run some laundry etc. I feel like I could go for a run in the AM, but a swim is more likely.

From my perspective, this is not a negative review, but a record to look back on.