Penn State's mentor group - CLOSED! (Page 52)

GRB1 - 2010-05-15 7:28 PM

Good luck with the race, let us know how it goes.

phxphotog - 2010-05-15 7:25 PM Had a little snafu at check in today. I was given the wrong race number and didn't notice it until I got home. The name was "Todd" it was "sprint" and the shirt size was "large' but the last name and age didn't match. Emailed the race director and we worked everything out. I'm now assuming the number that was given me and my chip and everything will go with that number. I guess you learn something every race and I learned to not have them put the number in the goody bag. Look at it and then put it in the bag. The race numbers had a tag attached on the bottom of it that had all of the name, age etc but I never even looked at it. just assumed that I had the correct #.

I'm # 785 at the Tempe International Triathlon tomorrow.

Kath2163 - 2010-05-15 1:33 PM I just had the 12-27 put on my road bike. I have my first "real" ride tomorrow and I am a bit nervous. I am riding with a cycling group (never have done that before) that my friend is a part of. I have joined their team for the MS 150. From all I know they are a very friendly group and welcome people of all levels. The one thing that I had to do which I really didn't want to do was remove my aerobars from my road bike. We are riding in Boulder tomorrow and apparently doing some good climbing. I have never ridden in Boulder before and between not knowing the route, not knowing 99.9 % of the people and this being most likely my most challenging and longest ride to date, to say I am a bit nervous is an understatement. I am sure I will be fine (I am a much stronger cyclist then a runner) but I haven't ridden near as much this winter as last winter and not knowing what I am getting myself into is very unsettling. Being nervous for me is nothing new. I mean, I get nervous for people I don't even know. It is very tiring

phxphotog - 2010-05-15 7:25 PM Had a little snafu at check in today. I was given the wrong race number and didn't notice it until I got home. The name was "Todd" it was "sprint" and the shirt size was "large' but the last name and age didn't match. Emailed the race director and we worked everything out. I'm now assuming the number that was given me and my chip and everything will go with that number. I guess you learn something every race and I learned to not have them put the number in the goody bag. Look at it and then put it in the bag. The race numbers had a tag attached on the bottom of it that had all of the name, age etc but I never even looked at it. just assumed that I had the correct #.

I'm # 785 at the Tempe International Triathlon tomorrow.

dharris13 - 2010-05-15 7:53 PM I did a 70-75 mile ride this morning then a 2 mile run after. It was a nice feeling at the end of the ride to know i had a lot more in me..and once i got to the run i knew i could run long if i needed/wanted. I went a little faster than my goal IM race pace. Overall it was a very uplifting workout I could feel a little pain in the groin, but its is def healing well!

dharris13 - 2010-05-15 7:50 PM

Enjoy your maiden voyage

phxphotog - 2010-05-15 10:53 PM

Nice workout today. You're doing great toward your IM.

zionvier - 2010-05-16 6:13 PM What a day.... woke up at 3:45am, met up with the team at 5am (actually met up with ALL my friends, we had 8 different 5 person teams).  The race started at 6am, I had the 5th and final leg (2nd longest) at 5.3miles (Garmin said 5.37 and I was cutting ALL the corners for the shortest path).  Colfax is notorious for not knowing how to measure a course, even had their USATF official BQ status revoked at one point.  My split was 37:13 ( a 6:56/mile pace as far as the Garmin is concerned).  Overall, the entire team did AWESOME.  We placed 7th out of 444 relay teams with a official time of 3:00:59 (but again... Colfax is stupid and they only give the last relay person a timing chip and use the gun time as the official start time regardless of when you cross the starting line... and obviously don't give anybody split times.

But wow... 7th?!?!?! we had no idea we'd rank so high.

I then went out for a few beers with the teams, then made my way over to the ride I organized.  Got my butt handed to me on this ride.  Out of the 9 of us that showed up, one person was dropped in the first 5 miles (she barely held a 15mph pace and I had posted it would be a 17-18 pace for 50miles).  I dropped back and talked to her and she said she was fine with being dropped.  Someone else joined us about half-way in, hung with us for about 10 miles and turned back as soon as it went uphill near the end.  But wow... it was like sprint intervals with these guys.  We'd slow down for other rec path users, then they'd sprint out and get up to 23+mph, hold that and slowly come back down towards 21mph.  In the end, we did average 17mph of actual riding.  Although I do feel a little bad about those that got dropped, I kind of think they didn't realize what it actually takes to average that kind of speed.  I think I'll have to be more specific when I post rides like that about how 17-18mph average means there will be spurts of 20+mph that compensate for the slowing down in corners and around people. I don't think anyone enjoys getting dropped on a ride and I always feel bad when it happens to someone.  I dropped back to them a number of times each and told them to grab my wheel and tried to pull them back to the group, but as soon as I hit 19+mph they'd fall off.  

But wow... what a day... I'm beat.

phxphotog - 2010-05-16 5:13 PM I did the Tempe Int'l Sprint this morning and I had sleep, hydration and possible nutrition issues today. Didn't sleep very much last night, just couldn't get my mind to slow down. Knew late last night that I hadn't properly hydrated as Phoenix is very dry and we use A/C a lot. I could feel that my mouth was dry and that I wasn't properly hydrated. Woke up and really knew I needed some water. I just couldn't get enough in me this morning to make a difference. I have had issues with dehydration before and have gone to the ER in an ambulance before so I'm susceptible to it now.

Got there in plenty of time and pumped up my tires. Got my wetsuit on and went to the start. It was a deep water wave start which was fine and the water was actually nice (75 degrees). I let a lot of people go and swam a good race for me. The turn at buoy one was a mess because there was 50 people trying to get around it at once but that was fine. i found someone to draft on and swam at his feet for the whole race. I do need to get warmed up before the race with a light jog or something. Getting out of the lake is with a set of stairs and the first step is at water level which I didn't know so it took me a second to figure out how to get out of the water. Wetsuit came off good and T1 was under 3 min which was an improvement.

The bike started off strong but some hills at the end slowed me down a bit. I need to train on hills because it slows my speed down too much. I got passed a lot on the bike but I was fine with that. I don't think I really got passed by people that are at my level. Dropped my water bottle going into the parking lot where transition is. Oh well, $15 down the toilet. T2 was also good, almost under 2 min.

The run was the worst thing for me today. Usually is the worst but I drank too much water on the bike and it was sloshing around at the beginning of the run. I thought I was going to throw up or crap. I was thinking, "Don't do this to me." but I kept going. I did walk some but started running again after about 10-20 seconds. I was happy with my run time even though I felt like crap.

This race brings out all the serous tri people in Phoenix and AZ and I just can't compete with them. I wanted to be below 1 hr 30 min and I ended up at 1:35:47. I think if I could get better on the bike hills and keep working on the run I could be in the 1 hr 20 min range.

I'm calling this time a new PR because my 1st sprint, the run was only 2.65 miles and today it was 3.1. With all the obstacles I put in my way, I still think I did OK. I finished 390 out of 485 which puts me BOP which is where I know I'll finish for now. A good learning experience for hydration and nutrition.

Swim 10:10
T1 2:58
Bike 44:17
T2 2:19
Run 36:05

Total 1:35:46

Bike Graph:



Run Graph:

zionvier - 2010-05-16 5:13 PM What a day.... woke up at 3:45am, met up with the team at 5am (actually met up with ALL my friends, we had 8 different 5 person teams).  The race started at 6am, I had the 5th and final leg (2nd longest) at 5.3miles (Garmin said 5.37 and I was cutting ALL the corners for the shortest path).  Colfax is notorious for not knowing how to measure a course, even had their USATF official BQ status revoked at one point.  My split was 37:13 ( a 6:56/mile pace as far as the Garmin is concerned).  Overall, the entire team did AWESOME.  We placed 7th out of 444 relay teams with a official time of 3:00:59 (but again... Colfax is stupid and they only give the last relay person a timing chip and use the gun time as the official start time regardless of when you cross the starting line... and obviously don't give anybody split times.

But wow... 7th?!?!?! we had no idea we'd rank so high.

I then went out for a few beers with the teams, then made my way over to the ride I organized.  Got my butt handed to me on this ride.  Out of the 9 of us that showed up, one person was dropped in the first 5 miles (she barely held a 15mph pace and I had posted it would be a 17-18 pace for 50miles).  I dropped back and talked to her and she said she was fine with being dropped.  Someone else joined us about half-way in, hung with us for about 10 miles and turned back as soon as it went uphill near the end.  But wow... it was like sprint intervals with these guys.  We'd slow down for other rec path users, then they'd sprint out and get up to 23+mph, hold that and slowly come back down towards 21mph.  In the end, we did average 17mph of actual riding.  Although I do feel a little bad about those that got dropped, I kind of think they didn't realize what it actually takes to average that kind of speed.  I think I'll have to be more specific when I post rides like that about how 17-18mph average means there will be spurts of 20+mph that compensate for the slowing down in corners and around people. I don't think anyone enjoys getting dropped on a ride and I always feel bad when it happens to someone.  I dropped back to them a number of times each and told them to grab my wheel and tried to pull them back to the group, but as soon as I hit 19+mph they'd fall off.  

But wow... what a day... I'm beat.

dharris13 - 2010-05-16 9:46 PM wow great workouts and race results everyone! Our group is kicking some major butt!! You guys all did such impressive jobs today and should be proud of yourselves!

zionvier - 2010-05-16 7:13 PM What a day.... woke up at 3:45am, met up with the team at 5am (actually met up with ALL my friends, we had 8 different 5 person teams).  The race started at 6am, I had the 5th and final leg (2nd longest) at 5.3miles (Garmin said 5.37 and I was cutting ALL the corners for the shortest path).  Colfax is notorious for not knowing how to measure a course, even had their USATF official BQ status revoked at one point.  My split was 37:13 ( a 6:56/mile pace as far as the Garmin is concerned).  Overall, the entire team did AWESOME.  We placed 7th out of 444 relay teams with a official time of 3:00:59 (but again... Colfax is stupid and they only give the last relay person a timing chip and use the gun time as the official start time regardless of when you cross the starting line... and obviously don't give anybody split times.

But wow... 7th?!?!?! we had no idea we'd rank so high.

I then went out for a few beers with the teams, then made my way over to the ride I organized.  Got my butt handed to me on this ride.  Out of the 9 of us that showed up, one person was dropped in the first 5 miles (she barely held a 15mph pace and I had posted it would be a 17-18 pace for 50miles).  I dropped back and talked to her and she said she was fine with being dropped.  Someone else joined us about half-way in, hung with us for about 10 miles and turned back as soon as it went uphill near the end.  But wow... it was like sprint intervals with these guys.  We'd slow down for other rec path users, then they'd sprint out and get up to 23+mph, hold that and slowly come back down towards 21mph.  In the end, we did average 17mph of actual riding.  Although I do feel a little bad about those that got dropped, I kind of think they didn't realize what it actually takes to average that kind of speed.  I think I'll have to be more specific when I post rides like that about how 17-18mph average means there will be spurts of 20+mph that compensate for the slowing down in corners and around people. I don't think anyone enjoys getting dropped on a ride and I always feel bad when it happens to someone.  I dropped back to them a number of times each and told them to grab my wheel and tried to pull them back to the group, but as soon as I hit 19+mph they'd fall off.  

But wow... what a day... I'm beat.

phxphotog - 2010-05-16 7:13 PM I did the Tempe Int'l Sprint this morning and I had sleep, hydration and possible nutrition issues today. Didn't sleep very much last night, just couldn't get my mind to slow down. Knew late last night that I hadn't properly hydrated as Phoenix is very dry and we use A/C a lot. I could feel that my mouth was dry and that I wasn't properly hydrated. Woke up and really knew I needed some water. I just couldn't get enough in me this morning to make a difference. I have had issues with dehydration before and have gone to the ER in an ambulance before so I'm susceptible to it now.

Got there in plenty of time and pumped up my tires. Got my wetsuit on and went to the start. It was a deep water wave start which was fine and the water was actually nice (75 degrees). I let a lot of people go and swam a good race for me. The turn at buoy one was a mess because there was 50 people trying to get around it at once but that was fine. i found someone to draft on and swam at his feet for the whole race. I do need to get warmed up before the race with a light jog or something. Getting out of the lake is with a set of stairs and the first step is at water level which I didn't know so it took me a second to figure out how to get out of the water. Wetsuit came off good and T1 was under 3 min which was an improvement.

The bike started off strong but some hills at the end slowed me down a bit. I need to train on hills because it slows my speed down too much. I got passed a lot on the bike but I was fine with that. I don't think I really got passed by people that are at my level. Dropped my water bottle going into the parking lot where transition is. Oh well, $15 down the toilet. T2 was also good, almost under 2 min.

The run was the worst thing for me today. Usually is the worst but I drank too much water on the bike and it was sloshing around at the beginning of the run. I thought I was going to throw up or crap. I was thinking, "Don't do this to me." but I kept going. I did walk some but started running again after about 10-20 seconds. I was happy with my run time even though I felt like crap.

This race brings out all the serous tri people in Phoenix and AZ and I just can't compete with them. I wanted to be below 1 hr 30 min and I ended up at 1:35:47. I think if I could get better on the bike hills and keep working on the run I could be in the 1 hr 20 min range.

I'm calling this time a new PR because my 1st sprint, the run was only 2.65 miles and today it was 3.1. With all the obstacles I put in my way, I still think I did OK. I finished 390 out of 485 which puts me BOP which is where I know I'll finish for now. A good learning experience for hydration and nutrition.

Swim 10:10
T1 2:58
Bike 44:17
T2 2:19
Run 36:05

Total 1:35:46

Nice race report.  Looks like you are making steady improvements.  Doesn't matter where you finished in relationship to everyone else, we are all racing against ourselves.  It is easy to let hydration go if your not paying attention to it, not just during a race but also the days leading up to a race.   Probably not such a huge issue for a sprint, but it can really bite you on your longer Tris.  Great work and keep up the push!

phxphotog - . I'm not a very patient person and I want things NOW and that's just not going to happen in triathlons.

dharris13 - 2010-05-17 10:08 AM

Yeah i can definetely understand your sentiment. Good things are worth waiting for