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Lava Man - TriathlonSprint
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 Swim
Comments: We start in waist deep water. I swim a few strokes and realize that this really hurts my right shoulder… so I dolphin my way out to the first buoy, which actually kept me right with the main pack of swimmers in my wave. I notice a number of the first timers are walking, and I consider it for a minute but remind myself that tri is swim/bike/run, not wade/bike/run. Oh well. At the first buoy, I have a little more clear water so I start swimming. There’s a pretty big chop hitting us diagonally from the right, so I start breathing only on the left. This had the advantage of somewhat making my stroke more even, since I had NO pull on my right side. I tried to really focus on body roll, but honestly I had no flow at all, the whole swim just hurt and I was happy not to quit, since I spent probably most of that swim thinking about it. Honestly I think one of the only things that kept me from quitting was a) embarrassment, and 2), it was almost as far to swim to shore directly as it was to swim around the last buoy and finish the swim. I hit the beach at 11:06 on my watch, then ran over the mats, through the kiddie pools to remove sand, then over the timing mats. What would you do differently?: not crash my bike, get in the water for a warmup (although in this case that might have made me bail on the entire race)  Transition 1
Comments: Yeah, I walked. The asphalt parking lot was ouchy on my feet and I was feeling pretty sorry for myself at that point. I get to transition and my stuff is soaked (mist turned to light rain). I run my bike out to the timing mats, and off I go.  Bike
Comments: By the time I’d gotten my feet clipped in and gotten up to speed, it was really raining. This was my second ever ride in the rain, so I was probably a bit more cautious on turns than I needed to be. I’m sure the crash had NOTHING to do with that either. Anyway, I tried to just settle in and push hard. The course was three loops, the first loop started with a loop around an island, the “bridge” over to the island was the course’s only hill. It gained about 6 feet of elevation and was very short, so it wasn’t exactly much of a hill. Then you headed south and then north on a divided, flat, slightly curvy road. It was great as you could see people (and spectators) a few times. I got passed by the eventual winner at least twice. Southbound was downwind, so I just tried to keep focus and stay in the moment. I think I was generally doing about 21 mph downwind, and for the same effort could only manage about 17 upwind. I focused on spinning rather than mashing, and on not wiping out on any curves or the UTurns at the north and south ends. Great ride for me, possibly my best ever even with the rain and the long ride the day before. I swear I didn’t really feel fatigue from the day before in my legs at all, I’m sure it was adrenaline. I tried to pass as much as I could, and the only people who passed me were the seriously in shape guys on expensive bikes, and one woman. I should have had some shot bloks, but the package was closed and I was too much of a weenie to open it while riding in the pouring rain. What would you do differently?: set up nutrition pre-race Transition 2
Comments: This time I jogged. My stuff was really soaked by this point. I got my shoes and visor on, and put my race belt on while I was running out of transition. What would you do differently?: remember my garbage bags  Run
Comments: The second I started running, I could feel every little bump and bruise from the day before. I though about quitting for pretty much the whole first half of the run, but I refused to DNF, and I kept telling myself that it would be a long cold walk in the rain if I stopped running. About 7 minutes in I stopped to fix a sock wrinkle so it wouldn’t blister, and it was so hard to start running again. My ribs hurt, my knees hurt… I was just one whiny biach. I saw AdCo running the other way, and that perked me up a little bit. I started focusing on my running rhythm, which wasn’t hard to do since one shoe was making a lovely squelching noise. At the southern turn around, I had to run through a big puddle so at least then both shoes made noise. The rain kept picking up, and once I hit the turnaround the combination of the rain and the headwind just SUCKED. I kept focused on my rhythm, and tried to just stay running comfortably hard. I didn’t have my garmin on (didn’t want to kill it in the rain), and I refused to look at my watch, so I just ran. When I got tired, I backed off for a minute or two, but then I tried to pick it back up. About 3 miles in, I got passed by two women who were very funny, so I pushed myself to run with them for a while. I did this a bit at the Rev3 relay, and it helped me run harder than I would alone. I lost them at the north turnaround (which was a little over half a mile from the finish). I finally got to the turn to the finish, where we had to run across a field with some major puddles. I kicked it as hard as I could, but didn’t have it in me to catch the women I’d been running with. Post race
Warm down: My dad and his wife had come to watch me, so I saw him right when I finished. He asked me something, and I hear AdCo say, hey, she can’t ever talk for a couple minutes after she finishes, so I didn’t worry about it. The post race food was all in a gazebo and it was packed, so I just walked back over to transition and drank the chocolate milk that was in my bag. We packed up our soaking wet stuff and then headed out, had a shower, went out to father's day breakfast, then drove back to MA. By the time we got halfway home, I was seriously hurting from the bike accident and I'm definitely in rough shape today. What limited your ability to perform faster: Well, quite frankly, this was my best race ever. Not sure if it was the weather (rain sucked, but it was nice and cool so I didn’t really overheat like I normally do), my lowered expectations (I pretty much gave myself permission to suck after the crash), or what, but aside of the swim I had my best ever speed averages in a sprint. Still need to work on efficient transitions. Oh, and that woman who finished seven seconds ahead of me? Apparently she was third in our AG. If I had caught her, I would have had hardware. But I can’t really worry about that, since I honestly left it all out there and except for the slightly slower u turns due to wet roads, I don’t think I could have gone any faster. Event comments: great job for a first year race, for sure. only issues were my bike crash the day before and the weather. Last updated: 2009-05-03 12:00 AM
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 2009-06-22 6:38 PM |
Veteran  264   Worcester, MA |  Subject: Lava Man |
| General Discussion-> Race Reports! |
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United States
Jersey Shore Tri Club
65F / 18C
Precipitation
Overall Rank = 138/169
Age Group = F35-39
Age Group Rank = 4/8
We headed down to Jersey on Thursday night, in the rain. We were going to go for an OWS on Friday, but we took a 3 hour nap instead. Saturday, we headed over to Lavalette (the race site) for our long bike of the week. It was supposed to be 3 hours in Z2, and Coach shortened our brick to 10-15 minutes since we were racing Sunday. AdCo and I rode one loop of the three loop bike course together to get an overview for the race day, then headed out separately. Our plan was to ride south on the barrier island (yes, flat as a pancake) to the southern end, then back up north, then back down to where we were parked, meeting at the car at the three hour mark. We head out, and AdCo drops me, but not as fast as usual. About 90 minutes into the ride AdCo decides he’s not having his best day and is going to ride with me. My upper Z2 was his lower Z2 on Saturday, which was nice. I was really having a great ride until The Incident… I was riding in the asphalt shoulder, there was a parked car ahead with a giant pothole between the back tire and the travel lane of the road, so I went to move into the travel lane to avoid hitting the pothole at speed. Well, on this section (Rt 35 N in Bay Head, for any Jersey people), there is a concrete travel lane and an asphalt shoulder, with a mostly small lip in between. I hit a section with a slightly higher lip, and skidded wildly into the travel lane. I almost saved it, but ended up falling and sliding down the yellow line. It hurt like an SOB and I felt my head bounce off the pavement, but there weren’t any cars driving by at that moment, and I managed to lay the bike down and skid rather than going over the bars and somersaulting. So my knees are scraped, my right elbow is scraped, and I’m really shaken up. I get over to the side and sit on the curb for a few. I was super happy AdCo was there – he made sure that the cars that were coming up saw the biker laying in the middle of the road, and hey, if you’re going to have a freaky experience, it’s always good when your spouse is there.
Anyway, he checks out my bike (seems to be fine except some torn bar tape), rinses my scrape with my water bottle, and asks me if I want to ride back, or should he go get the car? It’s only 2:15 into our ride, and we’re a good 20 minutes of hard effort from the car, and you know, I am not ready to give up this triathlon thing… so I got back on my bike and rode back to the car, relatively slowly and very cautiously. Five minutes later, it starts to rain. Oh, and for those of you keeping track, that was my FIRST ride in the rain, ever. We get back to the car, and I decide that I should see how my running goes since I wanted to know if I should race or not the next day. I run for 10 minutes, things seem to be OK. We pick up our race packets and head back to my Dad’s house, then head to the local bike shop to get them to look at my helmet (looks fine, no compression or cracking).
Get up bright and early after a pretty rough night of sleep. We were running about 15 minutes late, so we zipped over to the race site, and set up transition way too quickly. It was starting to mist and I’d forgotten garbage bags, so I resigned myself to damp gear. I only ate part of my breakfast (turkey bacon), didn’t have time to eat my rice. Over to the swim start, listen to the pre-race stuff, laugh at AdCo who needed to stop at the portapotties AFTER getting his wetsuit all the way on, then he was off in Wave 1, and I was six minutes behind in Wave 3 (the last wave).