Marble Falls Triathlon : Official Thread

I'm in.  Never done it before, but he area is pretty hilly and there is a good long climb out from the lake for miles.  Map the route here on BT and you can see the elevation profile.  More or less, you are heading up for the first 9mi, down for the next 2.5, then reverse it.  Should make for a nice return ride though!

If you are from Houston and not used to hills I would definitely find a way to work on it!

HERE is the route someone already has mapped out on mapmyride.

I'm still debating between this race and the Small Texan in Boerne. 

I did the HITS in Marble Falls in April.  The swim was pretty nice, but the area is quite hilly.  I went a bit slower than I thought I would.

I've heard great things about this race from the Austin crowd though. Everyone seems to love it.

This is a great race.  The bike part is on 281 south and 71 west, not north throught the city.  This is one of my favorite races.  A completely different race than the Hits.  The run is not part of the bike course.    I did the Small Texan last year and that race is much tougher than Marble Falls, although Small Texan was an Olympic distance.  

There are hills on 71 but you can get some good speed on the downhills.  Some are rollers.  This race is almost half the cost as the Hits.

See ya Sat.

Yeah I did the Small Texan last year and the Tiny Texan the year before.  I really like that race, and its a good benchmark for me to see how i've improved the past couple of years.  But I've heard so many good things about the Marble Falls tri I might just have to try it... we'll see.

But first thing's first!  We gotta go get us some Gators!

Well which ever one you do I hope ya do well.  The small Texan kicked my &$$ last year.  I was coming back from some injuries and it is a good but tough race.

I am ready for Sat did a swim and run today and sippin a brew right now. I think Chiquita will be there on Sat he is good on the bike. 

My goal is 10 min swim, finish the bike, and 32 min run.

Maybe I missed something - surely you're not referring to the Marble Falls Tri for these goals?  10 minutes for a 1,000 meter swim?  Surely that's a typo?  Finishing the bike doesn't sound anything other than reasonable, and 32 min on the run - that'd be nice on a 4.4 mile course (at least for me), but certainly not out of the question for a strong runner.

I'm leaning towards doing this one, a bit concerned about the initial climb out of town up 281 past the bridge.  Probably just need to HTFU and do it.  Are you doing this one?

ATX, I believe he is referring to the Small Texan which is this weekend.  Otherwise he is one big bad@$$ with those times on MF!

I say HTFU!   I've never done the race before either, but have heard nothing but good things about the race director and the event.  I've heard there is good BBQ cooked on site for afterwards as well.  Yeah, I think that first hill will be kinda tough, but get through that and the rest of the course should be pretty fast.  Looking at times from last year on the bike there were lots of very respectable times with lots of people avg'ing over 20.

Clarification the Gator is this weekend on Saturday.  Longday yesterday... Those times were the Gator.  It is a 500 meter swim, 13 mile extremely hilly bike and 4k.

The Marble Falls Tri is 1000 meter swim.  The bike is tough no doubt.  But I think the Small Texan bike is harder. 

The Marble Falls run is flat.  It is through the lake front neighborhood to the west. 

Well I'm not sure if I H'd the FU (yet), but I did sign up to HTFU.  Rates go up tomorrow, so pull the trigger today today if you're on the fence.  I got charged the full rate but talked to the RD, who assured me that he'd refund the difference at packet pickup.  There was some sort of snafu in the registration process tool, apparently.  

I did this race last year as the running leg of a relay.  It was a ton of fun, should be a blast to do it solo.  Except for that #$#! hill out of town. 

Cheers,

Eric

OK, I'm signed up for the intermediate, my brother is in for his first sprint!

See you guys there.

Looking forward to Marble Falls.  I had my best ride on my bike last night.  The group rides are paying off.  Lake Travis has some good bike riders.  I should be good and prepared.

There are three big Tri's on July 22nd.  Marble Falls, Small Texan, and Waco.  I have heard good things about Waco, the Beef Team is supporting the Waco Tri.  So Marble Falls may not be over crowded. 

I am going to drive the bike ride soon.  Marble Falls is about 40 min from my house.   I may even take my bike out and do an advanced ride.   I will let everyone know about the road conditions.

Two marks you coming, should be a great time. 

Any chance you could get away early Saturday a.m.?  I'll ride it w/ you if I can get a hall pass from the missus (took a 4 hr ride last Sat).  If we were out there by 7:00 even a slow ride would have us done by 8:30 or so and back home by 9:30 or 10:00.

If others are interested, please speak up.  I'll post again when I know for sure whether I can get away Saturday.

Hmm...thanks for the heads up.  I'll admit I try to avoid especially dangerous routes, and this is concerning.

Sorry if I got anyone's hopes up but I'm probably going to skip this ride until race day.  

Cheers,

Eric

Eric, like Dwight (txwildcat) says, come join us on Tue night for some good hills on 620 and Bee Cave and you'll be more than ready for the MF course.

https://www.facebook.com/ltcycling

Hey Chichitao and Wildcat, thanks for the invite.  I live down SW but may be able to make it Tuesday, I dunno.  I live pretty far SW (Circle C area), and work over by the Capitol, but I did do the dam loop last weekend (SW Pkway/71/620) and have ridden Bee Caves before, too.  I'm sure I'm making a bigger deal out of that first hill than it is - the ride last weekend had about 3,200 feet of climbing and I survived (just barely, and I sure didn't want to go run 4.4 miles afterwards, that's for sure).   

Either way, I'll try to get out there some night, even if it's not next week.  Thanks again for the invite!

Cheers,

Eric

In.  Psyched.  Not as worried about the initial climb out of town as I was before.  Had a great brick Saturday so I'm expecting good things in MF.

BTW, which team are you on, dj? Type I or II?  I've been Type I since April 1978. 

Cheers,

Eric

I'm on Team Type 2 at the moment, but am hoping to join the TT1 tri team next year if possible. I'm a Type 1.5 technically... not on insulin yet but probably will be in the future because my body just doesn't produce enough.  I started triathlon not long after I was diagnosed 4 years ago, but then found out that diet and exercise just wasn't enough for me.

So I'm not sure if they'll take me on the TT1 tri team, but until TT2 gets a tri team i'll keep asking!

How do you find the training/racing goes with managing your BG?

First, allow me a brief disclaimer - I reread my prior post and in my enthusiasm I think I may have come off as braggadocious re expecting "good things."  To be clear, I suck at triathlon and there's little if any chance I'll even be in the top half of my AG this weekend (see my sig).  I'm hoping to do well for me, which will probably put me in the 2:05-2:10 range.

Re training and racing, I've gotten things pretty well managed, though of course there are "wtf??" moments on occasion.

I'm on a pump, which makes things pretty easy to dial in.  Typically I like to work out first thing in the a.m. so that I've not had a bolus in the prior 10-12 hours and, as such, my insulin levels are approaching non-diabetic.  What I've discovered is that exercise has two drastic effects on the body's interaction with insulin:

First, it makes the body between 5 and 10 times more sensitive to the insulin (that is, under heavy exercise, I may only need 1/5th to 1/10th the normal level of insulin if I've eaten something before a workout or my blood sugar is too high and I need to bring it down).

Second, although for normal activities the "tail" of a bolus of insulin may only last for 3-4 hours before it's gone, under exercise those "tails" can last a lot longer (probably b/c of dynamic #1, above).  So even if I have an early lunch (say 11:30) and don't have any more insulin before a 6:00 pm workout, what I find is that it's still easy to crash at 6:00 pm b/c of the 11:30 bolus of insulin (unlike a 6:30 am workout where I can exercise pretty hard and not need to worry much about low blood sugar).

So what I do primarily when I exercise is manage my blood sugar with food (gu and other similar gels).  If I need to prime the pump a bit, I'll eat a gu before the workout and continue fueling as needed for the given level of exercise.

This gets a tiny more complicated when I'm swimming b/c the pump isn't waterproof, so I have to take it off.  Not a big deal, because again I'm exercising pretty hard and don't need much insulin, but occasionally I do see spikes mid-morning as the hour of insulin I normally get from the pump.

Tri's add another small layer of complexity w/ T1 closing pre-race.  I like to have the pump at my transition site so I can hook up to it in the process of getting ready for the bike.  Typically the RD's will let me back into T1 shortly before my swim wave so I can minimize the time away from the pump.  

I always have a glucometer w/ me in transition so I can test between stages if needed.  More often than not I'm fighting to keep my blood sugar up b/c the activity level is usually pushing it down hard.  I've read other Type I's report that races can tend to cause their blood sugars to spike, presumably b/c of adrenaline, but that hasn't been my experience.

Really the only thing that bothers me is that it typically adds 10-20 seconds to my T1 time to hook up to the pump before the bike.  Other than that it's pretty manageable and I can't say that the diabetes or the pump slow me down at all.  I'm just not very fast to begin with.

Let me know if you have other questions, happy to discuss anything diabetes related w/ you or anyone else who's curious.  There have been quite a few excellent threads on slowtwitch from some pretty hardcore Type I's recently, so be sure to peruse that forum as well to gain further insight into diabetes and endurance racing.

BTW I'm leading a team for the Houston ADA Tour de Cure in September if you're interested in joining a team.

Cheers,

Eric

Eric,

  sound like you're managing it very well!  I don't have nearly the complications you have at the moment since I'm not on insulin.  I just have a CGM to monitor my BG and if it goes too low I take a gel or two.  I mainly use that for longer endurance races though, not so much for sprints/olys.

I'll be at the Houston TdC as well, riding with TT2.  Next weekend I'll be at the Dallas TdC as well.  Already did the SA and Austin events, they were great.  I heard next year there will be one in Corpus Christi as well.  I really enjoy the TdCs, they are some of my favorite rides.

I hope to see you at both MF and Houston TdC!

Dave