ASPHALT JUNKIES Summer Bronzing Crew - CLOSED (Page 28)

Race report for Syracuse 70.3 is posted.

I have the Tri Fly and love them. Mine are similar to these but a different color:
http://www.trivillage.com/pearl-izumi-tri-fly-iii-carbon-triathlon-...

I've been at Youth Camp all last week but back in the (bike) saddle now and caught up on all posts. Congrats to everyone getting in good training and races, especially Tony and Jo! A HIM is a HUGE accomplishment!

Well, I got zero training in while at camp. I was the director, so was just too busy. Thursday night I was at the ER w/ a kid until 4am. Then I got home Friday night at 8pm. Even though I was exhausted from a long week, I decided to go on the Sat AM group ride. I did great the first 40 miles, but then hit a wall! My HR spiked and I could not get it back down... it stayed above max the last 45 min of the ride even though I was taking it super easy. I'm not sure if it was exhaustion from the long week, the heat, the fact that I hung off the back and didnt draft any, or what... but that has never happened to me. But, was glad to get a nice bike in after not working out all week- 60 miles.

I need to decide soon if I'm going to do the full iron b/c it's filling up. I've never trained in the summer here and am a little concerned about the heat... Today I got a 10 mile run in and legs felt good, but it was HOT... 96 plus humidity. My shorts got so soaked w/ sweat that they started to fall off... ha! That's a first.

Jen,  It sounds like you had a great race.  Nice finish and placements!  I also love the times when I kick the trash out of the younger crowds.  When I was the part of the younger crowd (doing other things besides triathlon) I always thought guys my age were old and unable to compete.  Well, now I get the luxury of being the old man that can set fire to the kids.

Warren,  The power meter sounds like such a great tool.  Someday!  Someday!

Darek,  I use the Garneau Tri speed shoes.  I have only been using them for 1 year and only one race so far but they do provide a much faster transition than cycling shoes.  I would suggest practicing getting into and out of your shoes (either kind) each cycling workout.  During the warmer months I never take my shoes off of my bike.  I leave them on the pedals and start my ride by getting into them and end my ride by taking my feet out in the final 200-300 feet of the ride.

It's that time already!  The man is calling me.........This working thing has my triathlon thing really upset.

Dirk, take it easy at work!
Will, congrats on working the youth camp. I'm sure it made a difference in a lot of kids lives.
Tracy, fantastic on the run!!!
Jo and Tony, hope ya'll are having a good recovery week.
just got in from a bike and swim, finally relaxed in the water... I am slow as molasses but at least i could swim further.

OK, I'll leave ya'll alone for a while...off on vacation!

Derrick I also use the Garneau tri shoes. I have the tri lite shoes and I like them. They have the big velcro strap across the front and are easy to get in and out of.

Will nice bike ride even after a week of no training. Are you gonna pull the trigger on this IM or what? I don't envy you because of the heat but maybe you can do some of your training earlier or later in the day so you're not getting the full effect of the heat.

Tracy glad to hear that you coming along nicely with your running not only that but to see you getting faster is pretty amazing. Keep it up.

Dirk sorry to hear that work is taking time away from your training hopefully things will get better for you as I know you've got the HIM coming.

Karl glad to hear you got a good swim in and don't worry about how fast you're going just swim! I feel like I got run over by a truck today, worse than yesterday. That race took a lot out of me more than I thought. I'll not be doing much this week and will be trying to get ready for my Oly this weekend. Also I didn't answer your question when you PM'd me about IMWI. Initially after the race this weekend I though there is no way I am going to be able to
finish IMWI but after having time to reflect I think I am right on target with where I need to be. Two months to go and ready to start my peak training and take this thing to the next level!

Brenda thanks for pointing out the correct spelling of Derek's name. I'm very embarrassed and Derek is apparently too nice to correct us.

Lol, no worries, there's lots of different spelling of my name out there. My last name is McAlpine, and thats been butchered quite a few times over the years, so Im used to just letting it slide. Im also pretty bad with names myself so it make me feel a little better about it.

Will,

Maybe you are catching me in an off mood here....but I would suggest that doing an Ironman might be something like becoming a missionary...in that if you don't feel a very strong calling, you shouldn't.

Keeping in mind how much training it takes and how you feel about summer training and the fact that you have to ask the question at all....I would say the time isn't right.

Feel free to disregard this advice!

Ok, now some ramblings about my weekend's race.

I had placed a $1 bet with 4 people. We all had money taped to our bikes. I had 3 of the bills taped to my disc and another taped to my frame. I used ultra tough packing tape to ensure nothing got lost.
The water temp was 84 degrees and felt great.
The temperature was mild in the morning. Race start was 7:30 so temperature wasn't a factor as far as I could tell.

I went through with the plan to run barefoot right through T1 up to T2 (9/10s or so).
I felt good during warm-up. Got a little over a mile in ending up at the swim entry. I then got in the water and swam about 300 meters. Then got in line for the TT start. I was seeded 17th of the 400ish people.
(#2 seed was a woman with a swimming gold medal....so we all wondered who the dufus was that had seeded himself #1!)

When everyone was going off 1 by 1 I worked my way down to the starters, making sure to stop a few feet further back than they asked us to. I didn't want to accidentally trigger the timing mat before they sent me off.
I went down the ramp at a relaxed run (boat ramp). The ramp is covered in algae and is slick, but from past years I've mastered the technique of running in and then keeping pace with my momentum so I don't push or pull on the ramp. My toe caught on something though and the best way to salvage things was to dive early. No worries, my dive carried me out.
During the swim I succeeded in swimming straight and swimming relaxed and breathing well. Never got gassed. Even felt my arms getting fatigued as you would hope to in a 400 swim. I felt like I did really well.
I came up the boat ramp and took the hand of a helper there to help pull me up the slick ramp and ran up the steep slope. As soon as I got to the top I turned and ran through the T1 and straight out with my cap and goggles in hand. I immediately felt my Achilles hurting unusually bad, but expected it to ease up after a few seconds.
As I ran through T1 I had a few people remind me that I had no shoes on! They thought I'd forgotten. I went on up the hill (as this was mostly up hill) and was running well...felt like I was fast. And it was just a minute and I was passed by one of my $1 guys. I knew he'd be faster on the run, but as # 20-something, he had already closed the start gap on me!
As I made my way to the top of the hill I began to feel the bottoms of my feet getting raw. Then some of the asphalt went from smooth to rough and that caused a little discomfort. Oh, then Caitlin came running by me like a gazelle (that's another $1 person).
I heard a few more barefoot comments along the way...most of them along the lines of 'that's cool' or 'that's tough'

I got to T2 and stepped on my towel to clean my feet. Noticed a bloody toe. Had my helmet on and then ran out of T2 with the bike pretty quick. Got on the bike at the mount line by stepping on my forward pedal and swinging over as I rolled. After I got out on the main road I had a 1/4 mile gradual climb that I finished before getting my feet in my shoes. I had serious trouble getting my left foot in and coasted to a crawl while I struggled with it. So right there I lost the time gained by having the shoes on my bike....Note: if you don't get those shoes on without any bobbles, then it probably slows you down more than putting them on before you leave transition!

Now the hammer was down and I began riding. I kept things under control on the uphills and relaxed whenever I was over 30mph. I got a mile from the turnaround when I saw the leader on the course. So he had a 2 mile lead on me. I think he was #4 at the start. Before the turnaround I had caught Caitlin and said hello! Then I caught the gold medalist woman who had amassed quite a lead on me in the swim.
I saw all of my #1 people there of course....
All in all I had a decent bike leg without working it too hard. I could have gone harder because I didn't do any suffering on the ride, but I was at threshold so it was a smart ride...saving something for the run.

When I came in to T3 I did everything right. I had a nice rolling dismount to a run at exactly the dismount line. I racked, dropped the helmet, got my shoes on without delay, grabbed my race belt and ran out. This is where things should have gone well, but hmmm...I don't know...I didn't really catch anyone that mattered.
This last run was only 2 miles but it was out and back. So I did see the race winner on his way back in and he was definitely well out of my reach (or anyone elses). With about a half mile to the turnaround Caitlin came running by me. That was game over with her running ability. But I was happy to see how slowly she left me! I saw each of my $1 bet people on their way back, seemingly not too far in front of me. But 2 of them are known better runners so that was lost. The 4th bet was with a guy that started something like 67 so I was ahead of him, just didn't know how it was going to fall out after he finished.

In the end I felt like I'd run well enough and biked well enough and swam well enough...just didn't beat anyone.
Oh, and when I saw the results I was depressed to see I was about a whole minute slower than last year.
Oh, and last year the swim was 100 yards long!

So I guess I just suck!

Oh and that Achilles never improved. Hurt me every step of the way to the point that I just barely ran without resorting to limping.

When I finished, I saw my bloody toe which I thought was just a random leakage, skin peeling off the bottoms of my feet, and the Achilles hurting worse than ever before and it took half the joy away.
In the aftermath, I suspect my toe was broken when I entered the water. But it doesn't hurt much unless I squeeze it or move it (under it's own muscle power). The Achilles is the real problem.

I wasn't able to run (or do much of anything, including walking) until this morning. After 45 minutes on the bike, I did 2 miles at 4.3 miles per hour. It hurt, but subsided somewhat. Then I did another 45 minutes on the bike.
I'm going to keep gently persuading it all week and see if I can race on Saturday. If not, perhaps I'll just pull out in T2 so I get something for my money.

I haven't poured over my splits yet, but probably got marginally slower in every section of the race over last year.

In the end I was the 3rd Master, leaving the AG win to the guy behind me, who thanked me profusely!

If anyone has read this far, thanks for your time!

Jeff great race this weekend. I don't care if you were a minute slower than last year and the swim was shorter, it absolutely amazes me that you can do what you do with your achillies not 100% and having a freakin broken toe before you started the swim!

Brenda is right, you had surgery in the off season and you did have that rough Xterra race (you do remember that?) and you still put up these amazing results. It may not be up to your standard or what you were hoping for but none the less what a great effort!

As always a great summary of the race, I know I've said it before but you write some of the best race reports here on BT. Thanks for sharing the experience with us and I hope you are feeling better and are able to race this coming weekend.

Thanks for catching the butchery of Derek s name.  I have a bit of an excuse.  One of Laiken's best friends name is Darek *spelling correct here*  Besides, I spelled Jonathan's name wrong for 2 years before he corrected me  and I didn't have an excuse for his name.

No power outages for me last night.  In my earlier post I was simply indicating I needed to leave for work.  And as we all know, work gets in the way of our training........Work sucks!!  Okay, I actually like my job........most of the time.

I am equally happy that we are headed that way this weekend too.  Lis and I are camping at the fairgrounds again beginning Friday night and we'll leave on Sunday and head home.  And I too am hoping the storms forecasted over the next couple of days amount to nothing.

__________

Edit:

That's a great race report Jeff.  It's likely that your body was slowing you down due to the trauma going on in your foot.  It still sounds like a great race and certainly a different strategy than anyone might have expected.  I can't imagine going shoeless for a race.

Edited by DirkP 2013-06-25 5:38 PM

Warning: Work vent to follow, skip as necessary!

I enjoy my job 99% of the time, its challenging to come up with new and innovative ways to make plastic pellets. Also the challenge of motivating people that just don't want to be motivated is fun! But why in the world do people think I care who is dating who, and why does it come onto the factory floor? A loonngg time ago I learned work is work and personal is personal. So why do people feel the need to make out in the break room? Then act like it is no issue when I question them on it! I had to go as far as showing them on the security camera so they understood how bad it looked! C' mon this isn't high school and I have absolutely no patience for this crap!

ok back to more pressing matters, I swam back to back 400's under 9 minutes today! I know not fast for you fish, but for me it's about a minute faster than jut a few months ago. I guess spending more time in the pool is beneficial! Warren: can you feel that gap closing?

That is a valid gripe at work. My current company has so many hookups its nuts. The interesting thing is that most of those people think no one knows they're doing it. And these are very high level, professional, married types. Very sad.

In terms of the gap, I think you need to start focusing on the eating part of your training - like how much pizza can you tolerate over long periods. And beer. I actually have little to no idea how fast I can swim a 400 since I get in the water about as often as the Cubs win the World Series! I'm banking on a 95 degree day with high humidity for you in Sept. Otherwise your run may be too much for me to overcome, but bring it on.

Dirk, WOW the driver of that truck should be counting his blessings, man that looks bad and I'm sure as bad as it looks it could have been a lot worse. Glad to hear that he is alright though.

I got my first workout in since the race in Syracuse. I have been very tired since Sunday but today was the first day I wasn't sore so I wanted to get out and swim. I was able to hook up with a couple of other people and we got a great OWS in at the lake this evening. By far my best OWS this season. Man I wish I would have swam like that at the race and the funny thing was I was really tired today. I didn't think I could swim as fast or as hard as I did this evening. Glad I got to go out there and I think I'm done with the pool thankfully.

Dude!!!!  That looks bad!  Glad to hear he is ok!

I've been kind of pissy the past few weeks.  Tonight was the last night I will be teaching Spinning class in my current evening location.  Childcare is closing at that particular gym.  I've been teaching at that time on Monday and Wednesday for the past 6 years.  I'm going to be teaching in another location but some of my students will not be able to attend due to finances.  I'm sad.  I managed to hold back my tears until I drove away.  They all wanted to give me a sweaty, disgusting hug after class.  Damn all of them!

Iam alive lol. We are back to civilization and have cell phone usage we were at our property in PA where there is nothing but nature I will try to post a pic anyway although I missed my goal time of 7 hours for Syracuse by ALOT this was the best race ever.....i had fun, met a lot of great people one of them Tony someone from finland 2 from Brazil got a big hug from the girl I helped finish the race and with all the crazy conditions I can proudly say I Finished I will post all the details in a RR
We are heading home today and am definitely looking forward to my own bed and getting g back to training although we did do a lot of hiking that included a lot of hills

Tony congrats again you did amazing!
Jen congrats on your race
Matt lots of liquids on those hot runs
Jeff as always great race
Dirk iam happy to hear no one got hurt in that roll over
Warren I can't wait to hear more on your new toy after this race I think I need one

Edited by Jo63 2013-06-27 7:17 AM