Yesterday, I competed in the 2011 Half Full Triathlon as the first two legs
of a relay. This is the second year they have held this triathlon and it is a little
bit different from my other races this year. The race benefits the Ulman Cancer
Fund for Young Adults and is a bit smaller, more low key and more relaxed than
the other triathlons I did this year. It was held at Centennial Park, the same place
as Columbia and Celebration, and was nice and close to home. The distance is
pretty similar to a half IronMan, but is a little unusual, the swim is .9 mi, the bike
is supposed to be 56 mi, but was a bit short due to road construction rerouting and
the run is 13.1 mi. This year, they did a ~40mi race as well as the ~70mi race. It
went on at the same time as the 70mi race and was identical except that it was
a single lap of both the bike and run course instead of two laps.
Preparation
After my last race in June, I mostly relaxed as far as cycling for the month of July
and then started training again in August. This is pretty clear from looking at my
cycling performance manager graph. The green line tracks long term stress (or fitness);
clearly it took a nice big hit in July before I started ramping back up. It was also a
bit of a challenge over much of September to get outside to ride due to the almost
continuous rain. I'm glad I have a better trainer setup this year than previous years;
even if it isn't as good as riding outside, it is far better than nothing.
I think a picture makes it pretty clear that my overall bike training was better than
in the past. Here's a summary of my yearly mileage over the last three years (with
3 months left this year):
As for swimming, I started doing an online course called Finding Freestyle. It is a
pretty cool 12-week course designed to help people improve their freestyle. The basic
course includes a few weekly workouts with drills designed to teach your body various
components of the stroke and the correct timing for things like kicking. The instructors
provide feedback over an online discussion group and encourage members to post
videos to make the feedback more accurate. I actually haven't completed the entire
12-week course yet; I got to about week 8 and picked up with doing mostly Master's
workouts instead. But in those 8 weeks, I actually learned how to kick while swimming.
It sounds pretty basic, but effective kick timing is not trivial and I was frankly a bit
lost in the past. Like a lot of triathletes, I was notably faster with a pull buoy than I
was swimming regularly. Now that I'm done with my race season, I plan to pick up
and finish the rest of the course. I also continued working out with my Masters group
and got some nice feedback about my positioning in the water.
Race Morning
As I do more of these races, the race day prep seems to have gotten much easier.
I had a prepacked bag of race day tools and goodies (things like tape and scissors).
I actually slept a good 7 hours without tossing and turning. Since the race is close
to home, I didn't have to wake up super early. I got up around 5:45, got dressed,
made some coffee and a bagel, and drove to my usual super secret parking spot.
It was dark and cold as I walked in the 5-10 minute walk to transition, but I was
nice and warm and relaxed. I got to transition and was a busy bee for about a
half hour as I setup my stuff. Its amazing how much little stuff there is to do to
setup, but by now I'm pretty used to it and just settle into pumping up tires,
checking brakes, clipping in the shoes, getting on the wetsuit, etc.
Swim: 23:05, 10th(?) place overall
My family showed up right before the swim start, which was great.
A big change at this race was that I wasn't going to start last! The organizers
setup the waves so that the racers in the longer distance event all went first.
So while I was technically in the last wave of the 70mi distance race, I was
actually about half way overall. Since the race was a bit smaller as well, this
meant a lot less waiting around, which was a welcome change. The swim
started with a time-trial start, which meant two people go in the water every
5-10 seconds or so. I'm fine in mass starts, so this wasn't particularly helpful
to me. It did make it a bit weird in that you don't quite know where you stand
relative to your competition. For example, I was first out of the water of my
wave, but was actually beaten by a few seconds by two swimmers who started
a few minutes after me.
As for the swim itself, it went great. On an otherwise cold day, the water was
very comfortable in a wetsuit. I now feel confident in my open water technique;
I have a good pattern for sighting and can easily hold my line without a lot of
extra effort. The relatively new 2-beat kick that I have been practicing felt
pretty natural and seemed effective. I didn't manage to do any drafting; I was
passing folks the entire time and generally just tried to avoid others in the water.
Looking at the online results, it looks like I had the 10th overall swim time out
of about 300 people who did the 70mi race. My time was also almost 4 minutes
faster than last year (26:54). While it is hard to compare apples to apples with
swim courses since they can be setup slightly different year to year, that still
seems like a very substantial improvement.
T1: 2:22
After the swim is a pretty long uphill run to the transition area. When I got to
transition, I had my relay partner help take off my wetsuit, got on my helmet,
a pair of socks, took a Tums (gotta keep the tummy happy) and took off. This
time I taped my sunglasses to my bars so they wouldn't fall off like they did
in the last race. It did mean I biked with tape on my glasses. I think my T1 was
pretty darn fast. It was a cold windy day, so most people were putting on a lot
of gear in T1. For example, the overall men's winner took about twice as long
as I did in T1. For comparison, my friend's relay transitioned in 2:02 where all
they had to do was hand off the timing chip. My wife and kids were waiting
to wave (and take this picture) right outside of T1. As you can see, I'm getting
on my glasses and my feet are still on top of my shoes after a well executed
flying mount.
Bike 2:29:44, 1st Overall
After being a little sketchy getting my feet in my shoes while riding in the past few
races, I spent a bit of time the previous Friday trying to iron out the kinks. I practiced
on the actual course and figured out that I needed to get to the first downhill to put
them on without losing too much momentum. This means riding for the first couple
minutes with my feet on top of the shoes, which turns out to be no big deal. My
execution in the race wasn't as good as my best practice attempt, but it was much
improved.
What to wear had been a bit of a dilemma. The forecast the night before was for
high 40s to low 50s with quite a bit of wind and a chance of light rain. That is
definitely not my idea of ideal weather for cycling. On the other hand, I'm a bit of
an aero-weenie and hate to give up "free" time. I settled on wearing socks, adding
toe-covers to my shoes, and wearing a long sleeve "tech" shirt under my tri-suit.
I had been debating about gloves and in the end decided to just go without.
The first 30 minutes or so on the bike went fine. I felt a little chilly, but wasn't in
too bad shape. There were still plenty of folks from the waves ahead of me to use
as motivation to overtake and I was trying to settle into a nice groove without
using too much energy early. After about 30 minutes, my hands were starting to
feel pretty cold. I found myself blowing on them and holding them together to
try to warm them up. I realized things were a bit dicey at the first water bottle
exchange. My plan was to ditch my one bottle and grab a gatorade without
slowing down too much. I pointed to the volunteer I wanted, rode up with my
hand out and bam, knocked it out of her hand without being able to grasp it.
Fortunately, there was a line of volunteers. Bam! Down goes the second volunteer's
bottle. Grab! Whew, I barely managed to hold onto the third volunteer's bottle.
Sure would have been easier if I could actually feel my hands! I also found that
when I tried to open the zipper on my bento box I could barely get it open. Hmm,
at this point I'm a bit worried about my no-glove choice.
Fortunately, things picked up. By the end of the first lap, I had passed most of
the people I was going to pass that were part of the 70mi race. The field had
thinned substantially and I was passing people less and less frequently. During
the second lap, we started to pick up the tail of the 40mi race, so I got to have
some more folks to use as motivation. I had taken it a bit conservative on the
first lap and was planning on trying to do the second lap faster than the first.
Last year in this race, I did just the opposite and it wasn't fun. It must have been
getting a bit warmer and the sun even peeked out briefly during the second lap
and I started to feel my hands again. Given how cold it was, I didn't lose that
much fluid, so I didn't bother trying to grab another water during the second lap,
so I didn't have a test of whether I could have improved my water grabbing.
The second lap was relatively uneventful; I managed to have some energy left
to push it during the last few miles and felt really good coming back to transition.
I realized that I had a good chance of making it in under 2:30 and used that as
motivation at the end of the ride. This ended up getting me the negative split
for the second half that I was shooting for.
Last year, my time was ~2:50 at a bit under 20mph. That was on a somewhat
longer course (I think it was off by 2-3 miles due to the construction) and
different conditions (probably better last year). My Garmin claims my avg
speed this year was ~21.5mph, which I'm pretty happy with given the difficulty
of the course and conditions. I had a vague goal of having the best bike split
in the entire race, and as far as I can tell from the online results that happened.
I beat the next fastest split by about 3 minutes (of course he had to save something
for the run).
T2: 0:37
Not surprisingly, the transition in a relay is pretty fast. I think I actually surprised
my partner by coming in under my estimated time. He was barely ready to go
and had apparently not warmed up yet. Still, we handed off the chip and he took
off.
Run: 2:13:50
My friend Vlad did the run for our relay team. He had some injury issues that
kept him from training the way that he would have liked, but he still toughed
out the run and seemed to have enjoyed the race a lot. It was great to have an
upbeat partner who was excited to be part of the race.
Conclusions
I had a great race. I was very happy with my times and the race was very well
organized and run. I'll admit that my primary motivation for the race isn't my
involvement with their benefit; it is because it is a nice race that is close to home.
Even so, it is hard not to be a bit inspired listening to the survivor stories being
told over the loud speakers during the race.
I know its a bit unfair to compare my times up to T2 to the field since they have
to run 13.1 miles still, but I do it anyway. Looking over the online results, it looks
like my time up to T2 would have been 1st by about 6 minutes!
of a relay. This is the second year they have held this triathlon and it is a little
bit different from my other races this year. The race benefits the Ulman Cancer
Fund for Young Adults and is a bit smaller, more low key and more relaxed than
the other triathlons I did this year. It was held at Centennial Park, the same place
as Columbia and Celebration, and was nice and close to home. The distance is
pretty similar to a half IronMan, but is a little unusual, the swim is .9 mi, the bike
is supposed to be 56 mi, but was a bit short due to road construction rerouting and
the run is 13.1 mi. This year, they did a ~40mi race as well as the ~70mi race. It
went on at the same time as the 70mi race and was identical except that it was
a single lap of both the bike and run course instead of two laps.
Preparation
After my last race in June, I mostly relaxed as far as cycling for the month of July
and then started training again in August. This is pretty clear from looking at my
cycling performance manager graph. The green line tracks long term stress (or fitness);
clearly it took a nice big hit in July before I started ramping back up. It was also a
bit of a challenge over much of September to get outside to ride due to the almost
continuous rain. I'm glad I have a better trainer setup this year than previous years;
even if it isn't as good as riding outside, it is far better than nothing.
I think a picture makes it pretty clear that my overall bike training was better than
in the past. Here's a summary of my yearly mileage over the last three years (with
3 months left this year):
As for swimming, I started doing an online course called Finding Freestyle. It is a
pretty cool 12-week course designed to help people improve their freestyle. The basic
course includes a few weekly workouts with drills designed to teach your body various
components of the stroke and the correct timing for things like kicking. The instructors
provide feedback over an online discussion group and encourage members to post
videos to make the feedback more accurate. I actually haven't completed the entire
12-week course yet; I got to about week 8 and picked up with doing mostly Master's
workouts instead. But in those 8 weeks, I actually learned how to kick while swimming.
It sounds pretty basic, but effective kick timing is not trivial and I was frankly a bit
lost in the past. Like a lot of triathletes, I was notably faster with a pull buoy than I
was swimming regularly. Now that I'm done with my race season, I plan to pick up
and finish the rest of the course. I also continued working out with my Masters group
and got some nice feedback about my positioning in the water.
Race Morning
As I do more of these races, the race day prep seems to have gotten much easier.
I had a prepacked bag of race day tools and goodies (things like tape and scissors).
I actually slept a good 7 hours without tossing and turning. Since the race is close
to home, I didn't have to wake up super early. I got up around 5:45, got dressed,
made some coffee and a bagel, and drove to my usual super secret parking spot.
It was dark and cold as I walked in the 5-10 minute walk to transition, but I was
nice and warm and relaxed. I got to transition and was a busy bee for about a
half hour as I setup my stuff. Its amazing how much little stuff there is to do to
setup, but by now I'm pretty used to it and just settle into pumping up tires,
checking brakes, clipping in the shoes, getting on the wetsuit, etc.
Swim: 23:05, 10th(?) place overall
My family showed up right before the swim start, which was great.
setup the waves so that the racers in the longer distance event all went first.
So while I was technically in the last wave of the 70mi distance race, I was
actually about half way overall. Since the race was a bit smaller as well, this
meant a lot less waiting around, which was a welcome change. The swim
started with a time-trial start, which meant two people go in the water every
5-10 seconds or so. I'm fine in mass starts, so this wasn't particularly helpful
to me. It did make it a bit weird in that you don't quite know where you stand
relative to your competition. For example, I was first out of the water of my
wave, but was actually beaten by a few seconds by two swimmers who started
a few minutes after me.
As for the swim itself, it went great. On an otherwise cold day, the water was
very comfortable in a wetsuit. I now feel confident in my open water technique;
I have a good pattern for sighting and can easily hold my line without a lot of
extra effort. The relatively new 2-beat kick that I have been practicing felt
pretty natural and seemed effective. I didn't manage to do any drafting; I was
passing folks the entire time and generally just tried to avoid others in the water.
Looking at the online results, it looks like I had the 10th overall swim time out
of about 300 people who did the 70mi race. My time was also almost 4 minutes
faster than last year (26:54). While it is hard to compare apples to apples with
swim courses since they can be setup slightly different year to year, that still
seems like a very substantial improvement.
T1: 2:22
After the swim is a pretty long uphill run to the transition area. When I got to
transition, I had my relay partner help take off my wetsuit, got on my helmet,
a pair of socks, took a Tums (gotta keep the tummy happy) and took off. This
time I taped my sunglasses to my bars so they wouldn't fall off like they did
in the last race. It did mean I biked with tape on my glasses. I think my T1 was
pretty darn fast. It was a cold windy day, so most people were putting on a lot
of gear in T1. For example, the overall men's winner took about twice as long
as I did in T1. For comparison, my friend's relay transitioned in 2:02 where all
they had to do was hand off the timing chip. My wife and kids were waiting
to wave (and take this picture) right outside of T1. As you can see, I'm getting
on my glasses and my feet are still on top of my shoes after a well executed
flying mount.
Bike 2:29:44, 1st Overall
After being a little sketchy getting my feet in my shoes while riding in the past few
races, I spent a bit of time the previous Friday trying to iron out the kinks. I practiced
on the actual course and figured out that I needed to get to the first downhill to put
them on without losing too much momentum. This means riding for the first couple
minutes with my feet on top of the shoes, which turns out to be no big deal. My
execution in the race wasn't as good as my best practice attempt, but it was much
improved.
What to wear had been a bit of a dilemma. The forecast the night before was for
high 40s to low 50s with quite a bit of wind and a chance of light rain. That is
definitely not my idea of ideal weather for cycling. On the other hand, I'm a bit of
an aero-weenie and hate to give up "free" time. I settled on wearing socks, adding
toe-covers to my shoes, and wearing a long sleeve "tech" shirt under my tri-suit.
I had been debating about gloves and in the end decided to just go without.
The first 30 minutes or so on the bike went fine. I felt a little chilly, but wasn't in
too bad shape. There were still plenty of folks from the waves ahead of me to use
as motivation to overtake and I was trying to settle into a nice groove without
using too much energy early. After about 30 minutes, my hands were starting to
feel pretty cold. I found myself blowing on them and holding them together to
try to warm them up. I realized things were a bit dicey at the first water bottle
exchange. My plan was to ditch my one bottle and grab a gatorade without
slowing down too much. I pointed to the volunteer I wanted, rode up with my
hand out and bam, knocked it out of her hand without being able to grasp it.
Fortunately, there was a line of volunteers. Bam! Down goes the second volunteer's
bottle. Grab! Whew, I barely managed to hold onto the third volunteer's bottle.
Sure would have been easier if I could actually feel my hands! I also found that
when I tried to open the zipper on my bento box I could barely get it open. Hmm,
at this point I'm a bit worried about my no-glove choice.
Fortunately, things picked up. By the end of the first lap, I had passed most of
the people I was going to pass that were part of the 70mi race. The field had
thinned substantially and I was passing people less and less frequently. During
the second lap, we started to pick up the tail of the 40mi race, so I got to have
some more folks to use as motivation. I had taken it a bit conservative on the
first lap and was planning on trying to do the second lap faster than the first.
Last year in this race, I did just the opposite and it wasn't fun. It must have been
getting a bit warmer and the sun even peeked out briefly during the second lap
and I started to feel my hands again. Given how cold it was, I didn't lose that
much fluid, so I didn't bother trying to grab another water during the second lap,
so I didn't have a test of whether I could have improved my water grabbing.
The second lap was relatively uneventful; I managed to have some energy left
to push it during the last few miles and felt really good coming back to transition.
I realized that I had a good chance of making it in under 2:30 and used that as
motivation at the end of the ride. This ended up getting me the negative split
for the second half that I was shooting for.
Last year, my time was ~2:50 at a bit under 20mph. That was on a somewhat
longer course (I think it was off by 2-3 miles due to the construction) and
different conditions (probably better last year). My Garmin claims my avg
speed this year was ~21.5mph, which I'm pretty happy with given the difficulty
of the course and conditions. I had a vague goal of having the best bike split
in the entire race, and as far as I can tell from the online results that happened.
I beat the next fastest split by about 3 minutes (of course he had to save something
for the run).
T2: 0:37
Not surprisingly, the transition in a relay is pretty fast. I think I actually surprised
my partner by coming in under my estimated time. He was barely ready to go
and had apparently not warmed up yet. Still, we handed off the chip and he took
off.
Run: 2:13:50
My friend Vlad did the run for our relay team. He had some injury issues that
kept him from training the way that he would have liked, but he still toughed
out the run and seemed to have enjoyed the race a lot. It was great to have an
upbeat partner who was excited to be part of the race.
Conclusions
I had a great race. I was very happy with my times and the race was very well
organized and run. I'll admit that my primary motivation for the race isn't my
involvement with their benefit; it is because it is a nice race that is close to home.
Even so, it is hard not to be a bit inspired listening to the survivor stories being
told over the loud speakers during the race.
I know its a bit unfair to compare my times up to T2 to the field since they have
to run 13.1 miles still, but I do it anyway. Looking over the online results, it looks
like my time up to T2 would have been 1st by about 6 minutes!
