2012 Half Full Triathlon Race Report

Yesterday, I competed in the 2012 Half Full Triathlon in the "HalfRev Aquabike" division (I personally like when they call it aquavelo) and won 1st place!  I will give the caveat that the aquabike division is usually small and this year seemed especially small, but I was still pretty happy and proud of my performance.  The race benefits the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults and after two years where it was a relatively smallish local race underwent some changes.  The organizers brought in Rev3 triathlon to help run things, which I believe increased the races exposure and added a pro field for the Olympic race and made the race the mid-Atlantic Collegiate championship.  Then a few weeks ago announced that Lance Armstrong would race in the survivor wave, which really increased the race exposure.  The race was held at Centennial Park, which is close to home and makes the logistics relatively easy for me.  The "HalfRev" is a distance pretty similar to a half Ironman, but with a slightly shorter swim.  It consists of a .9 mi swim, a 56 mile bike and a 13.1 mile run (which I fortunately didn't have to do).  The pros and the college folks were all doing the shorter "Olympic" version, which was the same swim, but only a single lap of each of the bike and run courses.

Crash Preparation

Over the past few years, I've been very fortunate that my preparation has generally only been limited by my ability to plan and schedule workouts and find the time and desire to do them.  I haven't spent any extended period sick or injured.  About a month back, this lucky streak looked like it was coming to an end.  I crashed my TT bike at 33mph when the front wheel hit something I didn't see (crack/pothole?) and slid down the road on my back for what seemed like forever.  For those who think 33mph is an exaggeration, I point you at the GPS data: http://app.strava.com/activities/20499576.  I feel very fortunate that I just slid and didn't get run over or collide with anything solid, but the accident definitely left its mark.  I had road rash/gash on both shoulders and spots of road rash on various other places (hip, back, etc).  After getting some awesome care from my wife (and some liberal use of tegaderm) I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was ready to ride again six days after the crash and swim again nine days after the crash. This left me a bit less than a month to try to get back on track with my training, which seemed to go well after this hiccup.

Joe the Roadie?

One other change that I made this year was to start riding my road bike a lot more often instead of the TT bike.  In the past few years, I would guess I put in 90% of my miles on the TT bike.  This spring I tried a crit, which involved training more on the road bike.  Then this summer, I discovered a group ride called TMR (the morning ride) that fit nicely into my schedule and made riding the road bike seem like a lot more fun.  This meant that I was usually doing two rides a week on the road bike and then maybe some weekend riding on the TT bike.  Finally, add into this being a bit gunshy on the TT bike after the crash, where I think the inherently less stable setup of the TT bike was a contributing factor.  Going into the race, I had some minor concern that all the time on the road bike might not translate to a good ride on the TT bike.  On the other hand, I do all this to have fun and riding the road bike over the summer has been a blast.

Mileage

I'll admit this section is mainly notes for myself, although it may be of passing interest.  Last year for this race I posted my "performance manager" chart and total miles.  For comparison purposes, here are this years charts.

This chart shows less of a drop during the summer than last year where I took time off after my spring races; I was more consistent this year.  You can see the sizable dip in the blue line (ATL, or short term training load) while recovering from the crash, but notice that it didn't end up making a big difference in the green line which represents CTL, the long term training load metric.

This chart shows mileage and total TSS (training stress score) over the last few years.  What is interesting is that while I have done fewer miles this year, my TSS, which takes into account intensity is slightly higher.  I think this is mainly due to my focus early in the year on shorter races where I focused less on total training volume and more on higher intensity training.

What to Wear?

After a beautiful week of weather, the forecast for race day was pretty miserable.  The high for the day was predicted to be about 50 degrees with rain on and off all morning.  This meant there was some hand wringing about what to wear for the race.  Last year, we had similar weather, it was about as cold, but didn't end up being rainy during the race.  I was not 100% happy with how cold I got last year, especially my hands.  I had chosen not to wear gloves and could barely feel my hands at some points on the bike.  This year, I decided I would at least bring a pair of full fingered gloves and see how I felt race morning.  This kind of hand wringing about <50 degree weather may sound wimpy to some, but it is worth noting that during the race I saw three or four ambulances go by.  While racing I assumed that this was due to crashes, but after the race talked with some race organization staff and they said about a dozen people were pulled for hypothermia and the ambulances were all for hypothermia.  It may not have been arctic, but poor clothing decisions had consequences.

Race Morning/Setup

I got a good night sleep the night before and woke up around 5:30.  My routine of morning rides over the summer has started to make that feel like a pretty normal time to wake up, so I felt pretty good.  I made myself some coffee and headed over to the race.  As usual, I parked in my super secret parking spot and walked the 5-10 minutes to transition in the dark.  I got to transition and did my usual setup, pumping up tires, clipping my shoes in, etc.  Through this setup the weather seemed quite nice and I was optimistic that we were in for a better weather day than I had expected.  Still, I set out my "optional" gear of socks and gloves to be ready in transition.  Right as they were closing transition at 7am, it started to rain and I started to doubt the weather.  Next came the challenge of the waiting game.  We left transition at 7am and wouldn't start the race till 8:45am.  I hung out with my friend Dave who was starting in the wave right before mine and we managed to kill off 1:45.  I wisely brought two drinks and some snacks to nibble on as we waited around.  I think the per-hydrating helped (especially the coke).  At 8:30, we watched Lance walk up with his entourage and start swimming.

Swim: 22:57

I remember from last year that the swim was the warmest part of the race.  This year didn't disappoint.  The swim felt great.  The slightly cool water was just the right temperature for a wetsuit swim.  My stroke felt smooth and comfortable the entire way; I felt pretty efficient, relatively fast without using a lot of energy.  For some reason, I had a bit more traffic trouble than usual; for the first couple hundred yards I kept jostling with some other guy who was going about my pace but kept changing lines.  I even had my goggles slightly knocked off, which was a first time for me.  After considering slowing and drafting off the guy, I instead picked up the pace for a short stretch and dropped him.  I then had another minor run in or two near a couple other buoys as the traffic pinched together and I passed people in waves ahead of me.  My sighting went smoothly, so I think I didn't wander too much.  After the jostling at various points, I made the decision to stay further left after the last turn buoy, avoid the crowd headed directly to the next buoy and take what I hoped was a pretty direct line to the finish.  Its hard to say whether this helped or hurt, but certainly made for less traffic.

My results are pretty similar to last year, where I went 23:05.  It is hard to compare open water swims (the setups can be different and the conditions can be different), but dropping a little time still feels good, even if it was just a few second.  When I first looked at the results from the race, I was surprised to see that my swim time was better than Lance's (he is a very good swimmer), but subsequently, they corrected his time and he as expected beat me by a good margin (19:50).  The current results make it a bit hard to search the overall results, they only show my place within my small division, so I'm not certain where my swim placed overall.

T1: 2:38

As I got out of the water, I had the happy surprise of seeing my family cheering me on.  We had discussed that if it was cold and rainy they would skip the spectating.  The run from the water to the transition area is a pretty long uphill run, which right after swimming feels like a mountain.  I ran in the grass as much as I could to preserve my feet.  During the swim, I had felt so warm and comfortable and the sky had looked ok-ish that I was considering going with the faster but less warm equipment options for the bike.  When I got to my bike, I took off my wetsuit, considered getting my socks on, but decided not to, grabbed my gloves and stuffed them down the front of my tri-suit, put on helmet and sunglasses and took off.  This made for a pretty fast transition.  For comparison, Lance took 3:57, the winning relay team took 2:27 and all they have to do is hand off their chip.

My wife tried to catch a picture of me running out of the water, but I was apparently going so fast it was hard to focus.  That's me with the bald head:

Bike: 2:38:05 (http://app.strava.com/rides/24288887)

Last year, my bike goal was 1st overall, which I achieved (remember, it was still a small local race last year).  This year, with Lance doing the race, that seemed like a bit of a stretch!  I had vague hopes of Lance+20min and had the more concrete goal of winning my division.

Things started off a little dicey, my flying mount went so so, I had a hard time getting my feet on top of the shoes (that has never happened before).  Once I got past that point, things started going more smoothly.  I got my feet into the shoes without any problem and started trying to settle into a good pace.  My glove free hands felt fine at this point and I was optimistic that conditions would be good.  After about 30 minutes, I had changed my mind.  By that point, it had started to rain and I guess the warmth of the swim was wearing off.  I was starting to have a hard time feeling the shifters and my hands were starting to go numb.  I decided it was time to put on the gloves.  That may have been the most challenging part of the race.  My gloves are small and tight (by design) and when wet were really hard to get on.  Add to this that I was determined to do it while in my aerobars so as not to lose time.  After a heroic struggle, I finally won out and got the gloves on and faced the horrifying reality that they were wet and didn't really add that much warmth initially.  In the end, I think they did help, especially when it stopped raining a bit and they dried out slightly, but it was a bit depressing at first.

The first loop ends with a fast long net downhill section.  When I hit this point, I had to deal with a crowd of sketchy bikers, a few cars blocking the road because they weren't sure what to do, and the hardest rain of the day all at speeds that were 30+ mph at times.  Since it was net downhill and I often couldn't pass, I was barely working at all and started getting really cold and for the first time (of what would be many) in the day started shivering, with my teeth even chattering a bit.  It was quite the relief when I turned for the second lap and saw that the road was empty of both cyclists and cars.  Unlike last year, where the longer race went first, the Olympic went first this year, meaning that the only people ahead of me on the second lap were people I hadn't yet caught doing the 70mile distance race.  By this point, there weren't many left and it was often a few minutes between seeing people.  I tried to warm up a bit on the first climb of the second lap (Mt. Albert) and realized that my upper legs were actually cold and way less responsive than I am used to.  I am used to my hands or feet getting cold, but I can never remember my legs actually feeling cold while cycling.  

The rest of the second lap was pretty uneventful, with the minor exception of a section right after passing a bus that was stopped right in the middle of my lane on a narrow back stretch of the course.  After slowing down quite a bit to safely pass the stopped bus, I got passed by someone.  I haven't been passed in a triathlon in a couple years (not because I'm the fastest guy in the race, but because I always start in the last wave) and the ego kicked in.  After dropping back to satisfy the passing rules, I let ego take over and put in a nice hard effort to drop the guy.  It actually felt pretty good to get working a bit harder and when I checked back, he wasn't anywhere to be found.  I believe when I looked up his results that he was a relay with a swimmer who swam slower than I did, so he actually had made up a couple of minutes on me by that point and in the end finished with about a 1 minute better bike split.  He also appeared to have been wearing much more appropriate cold weather gear (and advantage to not having to swim first I guess).  The last major hurdle was the same fast long net downhill section that I had found so cold and scary on the first lap.  This time was a bit better since there were no other cyclists, no cars (lucky) and it had stopped raining.  It was still cold and shiver inducing, but at least it wasn't quite as scary. 

Given the conditions, I was happy with my results.  For comparison, Lance's split was 2:25, so I beat my vague goal of Lance+20 (I suspect Lance took it easy due to the conditions, not wanting to crash, etc).  It looks like my bike split was 4th overall, behind Lance, the relay guy I mentioned earlier (2:37:03), and the 2nd place overall guy who did a 2:36:50 (I might have missed someone, the results don't make this easy to search for). 

Post Race and Award Ceremony

After the race, I packed up my stuff, got some of my clothes on (stored in a plastic bag so they were dry!) and walked over to the finish area to collect my medal, shirt and some food.  While waiting in line for the food, it was pretty clear I was still cold.  Thirty minutes or so after finishing while standing in line waiting for food, I was still shivering, my teeth were chattering and some girls in front of me in line asked if I was ok.  I felt fine, relieved that it was done and glad I was in warm clothes and knew I was only going to get warmer.  I also checked my results at the result tent and saw that I was the only finisher listed so far for my division, so I was pretty sure I had won.  I called home to see if everything was cool at home for me to stay for the awards and then checked in to find out what time they would be.  The info desk admitted they were running behind and that the awards would be sometime after 2:30.  At that point it was about 12:15, so I decided to just bail and go home.  I've never stayed for an award ceremony and it looked like I wouldn't see this one either.  I went to transition, grabbed my stuff and started walking back to my car.  On the walk back to my car, I walked along the finishing stretch of the run course and cheered on folks as they went by, including the fairly famous dude who won the race (but was stone cold serious looking when he went by). 

After getting home, showering, helping take care of the kids a bit, etc, I talked over with my wife going back to the race.  This turned out to work pretty well with our schedule, one of my kids was at a birthday party, the two younger were napping, and the fourth was excited to come along and take pictures.  So my daughter and I headed back over to the race to catch the award ceremony.  After a fair bit of waiting around, I got to participate in my first awards.

Conclusion

It was a tough day, but a great race for me.  I had some good splits for each of the legs, won my division, raced with Lance, etc.  As usual, I like to compare my times up to the run to play pretend about how I would do if I could run (yes, it is a fantasy that will never happen and doesn't take into account saving energy for the run).  Lance's total time up to the run was 2:48:59.  The next fastest guy's total time was 3:02:38, and then my time of 3:03:39 would have been next.  So even though my division was small, my times were pretty decent.

Also worth noting that the race was very well run and organized.  The swag was good and I thought everything ran smoothly and professionally.  Much thanks goes to all the volunteers and race organizers who dealt with the tough conditions and made the race possible.

EDIT: Some photos of Lance

A friend showed me some pictures he got of Lance climbing "Mt. Albert", a short but steep climb on the course.  I currently have the Strava KOM on that climb, but Lance doesn't appear to have uploaded his ride yet.  I'll admit it, I'm a bit worried...

 

Seven Days, Two Time Trials

After not having raced in quite a while, I ended up scheduling two consecutive weeks of time trials, although apart from being time trials, the two races couldn't be more different.  I was really targeting the second race as my "A" race, but the first one is a local one where some bragging rights are on the line...

Highway to Heaven TT

The first of the two races was a short local hill climb time trial up the steepest local hill in the area.  The race is only about a mile long and should take under 5 minutes, but is absolutely no joke.  If done at full effort, it should hurt as bad as any long race.  My story for this race is fairly short and not particularly satisfying.  I decided to do the race on my TT bike since I had to have that all setup for the second TT and my TT bike is about the same weight as my road bike.  This was pretty unusual; almost every one does this race on a road bike.  On this particular day, this choice was probably a bad one.  Overnight, there had been a bit of rain and the course was still pretty wet in spots.  I quickly found out that traction was going to be a big problem as my back wheel spun out like crazy on the first steep pitch when I tried to stand and hammer.  I think this was probably a bit of a problem for everyone, but on my TT bike the weight is shifted forward of where it would be on a road bike, making my traction issues really bad.  I ended up placing a disappointing 5th in my category (Cat 5) with a time of 4:27 and was beaten by a large margin by a local Strava friend.  I wasn't even able to get a best personal time, which was also disappointing.  It was still a fun little race and will definitely give me some motivation for next year!

Interlude: Beach Riding Snafus

In between my two races, we had a week planned at Rehoboth on the eastern shore of Maryland.  It was a very relaxing fun vacation, with some good terrain for practicing for the flat 40K TT I had coming up at the end of the week.  It turned out to be quite the eventful week on my bike.  On my first ride of the week, I was about 20 minutes in to the ride when I heard the sound no cyclist likes to hear.  I got my first flat ever on tubular tires.  I was also embarrassingly unprepared; apart from my cell phone, I had no flat kit or spare.  I called home and was told I was walking (the kids were napping).  After walking a bit, I bit the bullet and decided to try out riding the flat tire; one minor advantage of tubular over clincher is you can ride it flat.  Fortunately, I was riding my "training" race wheel, my rear Hed 3 and had brought a disc to the beach as well.  I did end up gluing on a new tire over the course of a few nights at the beach house, which is quite the fun ordeal.  On my second ride at the beach, my power meter stopped registering mid ride.  After replacing the battery in the unit, I realized when it still didn't work that the little magnet near the bottom bracket had fallen off (after more than a year).  I was again fortunate that I had the spare gear necessary to make the fix, an extra battery and some of the tubular tire glue fixed me right up.  

Church Creek TT

My second of the two races was a 40K TT at Church Creek, MD.  This race overlaps somewhat with the Eagleman course and is similarly flat, but can be challenging due to the winds.  For this race, I had my family along (we stopped at the race on the way back from the beach), so I had some nice photo documentarians helping out.

Here's me at the school where we registered.

We then had to go about 5 miles from the registration to the race start.  My wife took these shots while driving next to me (and scaring me that she was going to drive into head on traffic with my four kids).

Here I am waiting near the start line with the kids (and prizes from boardwalk games at the beach):

 Here's me at the start line and sprinting away:

Check out the guns on that guy!  Swimming may not make me faster, but it does pay off in little ways.

Goals

Going in to the race, I had some vague goals.  From my power testing, I think my FTP is 260+ watts, so I was hoping to average 260+.  I also was hoping I might be in the ballpark of 57 minutes.  Neither of those things happened.  My power meter says I averaged 237 watts and I finished in ~58:30.  On the other hand, I felt appropriately sore afterward and felt like I gave my best effort that day, so I am not upset with the result.  Based on my heart rate average, I don't think I could have given much more, so maybe my power meter was reading low (I didn't zero it or calibrate it that morning; just forgot). 

On Your Left

In my spring TT, I was one of the first to start and ran out of targets to try to pass, which made the motivation in the last half of the race hard.  In contrast, for this race I was one of the last to start and had plenty of opportunity to pass other riders.  At the starting gate, the starter commented something like, "good luck catching that guy" since I had a minute man instead of 30 second man (there were a few no shows that thinned the group of riders who started right ahead of me).  I dead panned that I'd see him shortly.  Five minutes later I had my first pass. Roughly another five minutes and I caught the next guy.  That's how it went for the first half of the race; a pass every few minutes to help keep the motivation going.  Toward the end, it got a bit more bunched up and I could see my next target immediately after passing the previous one.  Maybe its juvenile of me, but I still find that nothing is more fun than passing people. 

Darn Rumble Strips

On the car ride to the race, I pointed out to my wife how many of these roads have these annoying rumble strips on the shoulder right where a cyclist would normally want to ride.  I told her how they come and go and can really surprise you and shake you like crazy on your bike.  Turns out this was ironically prescient.  About 5 miles from the finish, after there hadn't been rumble strips since the first couple miles, I got surprised by a rumble strip (head was probably down looking at the bike computer).  I barely managed to save myself from crashing, with my elbows getting knocked out of the aero bars and my chest hitting the bars.  On the download from my bike computer, you can see a bump where my speed falls and my heart rate skyrockets. That was the rumble strip!

Gotta Go

I was very grateful to my wife and kids for letting me do this race, so the last thing they needed was to stick around bored waiting to see the results of my race.  I met them right after the finish, packed up my gear, dropped off my race timing chip and headed out.  So at this point, I have no idea how I placed in my category.  I assume I'll find out at some point.  There is a chance I won, but it depends quite a lot on who else showed up; there are plenty of folks in the area who have done faster times as a Cat 5 than I did.

EDIT: The race results were published and I came in 3rd place.

Aero Field Testing: Is DZ Nutz?

For the first time this year I had a nice opportunity to do some aerodynamic field testing.  My bike was all setup from a race on Sunday and the weather finally was forecasting a calm day.  I also had a simple position change that I wanted to test out.  As I mentioned in my blog about my race on Sunday, I decided to try out DZs stacked hand position, guessing that it seemed faster.  So I tried a simple A/B/A/B protocol with two laps each on my half-pipe.  I believe I executed all my lessons from last year, never shifting gears, soft peddling, good turnarounds, good settings on my head unit, etc.  My bike setup was much like last year, except I was using a disc wheel this year (which actually made magnet setup easier).  Maybe at some point I'll document photos of the two positions, but for now I'll just describe them.  Position A is my "standard" setup, fairly narrow elbows with my forearms resting on my water bottle and my hands gripping the shifters.  Position B is my "stacked hands" version where I hold my left hand on the top of the water bottle and stack the right on top of that with my forearms essentially touching each other.  For reference I put a picture of my bike and front end at the end of this post.

Results:
My run results looked very clean in aerolab and were quite consistent. Ideally I would have done another couple of runs, but the magnet fell off when I did a faster higher power pass.
  A1: CdA .229
  B1: CdA .218
  A2: CdA .225
  B2: CdA .215
Conclusion: DZ is not nutz!


AeroLab Pictures

Configuration A Run #1

Configuration B Run #1

Configuration A Run #2

Configuration B Run #2

Details:
Bike+Rider: 162.5 lbs/73.7 kg
Temp: 73 degrees F
Dew Point: 46.4
Rho: 1.1850
Barometric Pressure: 29.9 Hg
Wind: NE 3-4 mph
Quarq offsets: -150, -153, -148, -149

Position Pictures

 

 

Columbia Triathlon 2012: Race Report

Yesterday morning, I raced in the Columbia Triathlon as a relay with my wife for the second year in a row.  Just like last year, I took the swim and bike legs of the relay and my wife acted as the pinch runner.  We had a great time at the race and ended up improving our times in each of the three legs.  The field at this race is pretty competitive, so even with our improved times, we only improved a little in overall place and came 6th out of the mixed relays with a time of 2:31:28.

Swim Training/Prep
I've now discussed it in a couple blog entries, but I'll mention it one more time.  This winter I increased my swim volume by quite a lot and saw some nice gains in my pool times and a good result last week in an open water swim.  This last week, some online friends suggested experimenting with various breathing patterns to increase the amount of oxygen you get during the swim.  I tried this out a few times this week during swim workouts and planned to give it a shot during the race.

Cycling Training/Prep
Last year, my goal race was Eagleman Aquavelo, a distance that I had not done well on previously on the bike and thus felt the need to have a lot of cycling volume.  This year, I didn't sign up for Eagleman or any other longer races in the spring and was focusing on increasing my speed on shorter races.  For me, this meant working on my FTP (functional threshold power) during the early season.  The reading I've done on some online resources such as Slowtwitch and the wattage forums suggested some workout (e.g. 2x20s) that were fairly time efficient on the indoor trainer.  I also started using some workout videos from "Sufferfest", which helped tremendously with the motivation to go hard when training inside.  As I did last year, I continued to track my progress using my power meter and GoldenCheetah's performance manager which was again helpful for tracking fatigue and tapering for events.  The reduced volume meant a lower total CTL, but I did see some FTP gains and felt faster on less total bike training time.

Weight
First, a little background story.  After doing well last year, quite a number of people said to me something to the effect of, "Wow, if you could only run...".  This got me thinking that maybe after 15 years of not running and being pretty healthy that maybe a little running wouldn't hurt.  Perhaps I could do a sprint with a 5K run and limit my run training volume (aquarunning?).  If I was going to run, I decided I would try to get as light as I could to limit any stress on my back and picked a 140 lbs as a goal.  In the past I had always raced at about 150 lbs, but I'd been below 140 lbs back when I played soccer in college.  In parallel, I hunted down a good neurosurgeon and setup an appointment to ask a professional how dangerous it would be for me to run.  The busy appointment schedule for the neurosurgeon meant I would have some time to work on the weight before getting his opinion.  In my normal analytical style, I went to work losing the weight by using a spreadsheet to track daily calorie deficits based loosely on the Hacker's Diet.  Here's a nice little plot showing my progress:

As a sort of proof that the world has an ironic sense of humor, I hit my goal weight of 140 lbs on the morning I had the follow up appointment with my neurosurgeon after getting an MRI of my back.  The MRI showed that my L5-S1 disc that I had surgery on twice was probably in ok shape, but that L4-L5 had a minor tear in the annulus and a herniation.  Fortunately, I was asymptomatic, but was told I'd be a fool to run and that my previous regime of avoiding running had probably saved me from additional issues so far.  Oh well, guess I'm not going to run!  On the plus side, being lighter should help my cycling speed on hilly courses like the Columbia Triathlon course.

Race Morning
I'm happy to report that finally my wave didn't go last.  Thank you race organizers.  This year they decided to put the relay wave start roughly in the middle, behind most of the age group men and before the age group women.  I was looking forward to not having to wait so long between transition setup and getting into the water.  I had a pretty good night's sleep and got up at about 5:40, made a cup of coffee to go and drove over to my standard "secret" local spot and walked the couple minutes to transition.  I had the pleasure of seeing some pros run by doing their warmups and gave a little shout out to Yoder, asking if he was going to win again and telling him I was routing for him.  I got to the transition area with plenty of time and did my standard setup: pump up the tires, tape up the holes on the aero wheels, attach the shoes to the bike, etc.  Given my earlier start time, I went over to the swim start early and watched the pros start.  I then had the first of many trips to the portajohn.  I got a bit worried by the third trip, remembering that my son had some GI issues at a party the night before.  It took till about midway into the swim before my stomach had completely settled down.

Swim: 21:34
I mentally had a stretch goal for the swim of 20:00, but thought that sub 21:00 was more realistic (last year I did 22:36).  My masters swimming friend Reg, who is a great open water swimmer, did about 20:00 last year, so my hope was to try to hang with him and see if I could do some drafting.  This worked great for the first few hundred yards.  We started the swim looking directly into the sun and I found sighting the buoys to be really difficult.  I somehow got confused for a short stretch and convinced myself that Reg was going offline.  No surprise, I was the one heading toward the wrong buoy and by the time I corrected, I had lost time and lost sight of Reg.  At that point I just got into a rhythm and tried to race at my own pace.  Once we hit the first turn and weren't looking into the sun, I managed to avoid any other navigation problems and swam the rest of the way uneventful.  I did make use of some of my new experimental breathing patterns (2:3 or 3:4 breathing) and felt pretty good by the end of the swim.  I didn't hit my goal time, but I was told that the course was probably a little longer this year, so it is more reasonable to look at overall place.   The online results don't make it especially easy to figure out, but I think I was roughly 70th out of 1700 vs 130th last year (and 5th out of the water for the relay teams).

T1: 1:39
I felt a little wobbly coming out of the water, but managed to trot over to my bike at a decent clip while taking off the top of my wetsuit.  As usual, I had to yell a bit at the crowd of people in transition to make some room, but this didn't really slow me down.  I had a touch of trouble getting the wetsuit off and had to sit down for a second.  Then I grabbed my helmet, put it on and ran off.

Bike: 1:03:20 (http://app.strava.com/rides/8931934)
The first minor challenge on the bike is to get my shoes on.  I admit that I didn't practice that much this year.  I practiced flying mounts with my shoes already clipped in four times the day before the race, even trying to pick the right spot on the course to start putting my feet in the shoes.  As usual, race day was slightly more difficult.  Maybe I should practice when my heart rate is 170+.  I waited for the first minor downhill section to start and managed to get my right foot in fine.  My left foot I managed to unclip my shoe with my foot barely in the shoe.  Fortunately, the shoe stayed with me and I managed to clip it back in and finally get the thing on my foot.  With that finally out of the way, I was ready to hammer.  I was feeling really good through the whole bike and feel like I made some improvements on my pacing.  In the past, I have had a habit of going too hard on the hills and "burning matches", which I've been advised is not the right strategy for even a hilly time trial.  While it makes sense to go a little harder up the steep sections, you want to keep your effort within a pretty narrow band.  I think this probably cost me a few strava KOMs up the climbs, but gave me a better overall time.  One other change I tried out was to use a hand over hand position based on DZ's position in the Tour of California time trial.  I had briefly experimented with this the day before the race and felt immediately comfortable doing it.  I'm sure I looked exactly like this:

I beat my previous year's time by about 1:30 and ended up with the 19th best bike split.  I was beaten by 12 of the 16 pro men, 5 of the 27 "open elite" division and one 40-44 age group athlete.  Not too shabby!

T2: 0:36
The bike to run transition is pretty easy for a relay.  I ran down the hill into transition, saw my wife waiting for me and ran to her.  She took the timing chip off my leg, put it on hers and ran off.

Fetching the Kids
My job after the bike is to go fetch my kids so we can all see my wife finish.  We live close enough to the race that this is a surprisingly easy thing to do.  I grabbed my backpack of our stuff so that we wouldn't have to come back to transition, walked my bike out of transition and hoped on for the short ride to our minivan parked just outside of the park.  I think I got to our house about 10 minutes after finishing the bike.  When I got home, I noticed two police cruisers parked outside the neighbor's house; apparently someone had tried to break into their place.  After a brief chit-chat about that, I took all my bike stuff inside, uploaded my ride to strava (KOM!), took a shower and gathered the kids into the car.  We drove the baby sitter home on the way to the park and made our way to the finish line with 10-15 minutes to spare!  With all that time to spare, I managed to forget the camera.

Run: 1:04:21
During my wife's training, she asked me one day to tell her a bit about "working through the pain".  I asked a bit more about what kind of pain; working through some muscle soreness or feeling a stitch in your side is what I assumed she was talking about.  Unfortunately, she said it was some knee and back pain.  We don't work through that kind of pain.  She was able to do some short or slower training runs without problems and thought she could make it through the race.  As we waited near the finish and she came into sight, I could see that she was in pain.  She had a grimace on her face and a limp to her stride that told me her knee was bothering her.  I was just hoping she hadn't hurt herself too badly.  Even with the injury issue, she managed to beat her time from last year by three minutes!

Post Race
After the race, we walked (my wife limped) up to the post race food and we found a nice shady spot to camp out for a bit while she recuperated.  I acted as gopher and got her and the kids food and drink.  As usual, the kids loved the treat of getting some chips and other snack food that they usually don't get.  After saying hello to a couple dozen friends who passed by, including an online friend who recognized me from my blog, I realized just how many friends I've made doing triathlons.  There was a variety of emotions, from the friends who were disappointed with their races,  to those who had placed in their divisions.  Overall, everyone seems to have enjoyed the beautiful weather we had and the well run race.

Summary
I managed to improve my swim, not quite to top 50 overall, but still clearly making strides, and I couldn't be happier with my bike.  As usual, I will compare myself with my 35-39 age group with the caveat that I didn't have to save anything for the run.  The guy who won my division (and has won the overall Celebration sprint that I had been targeting for my hypothetical run debut two years in a row) had the best swim+T1+bike time at about 1:27.  My swim+T1+bike time was about 1:26.  As one of my friends said post race (over and over), "...if only you could run...".

A friend who was describing his climbing adventure once told me a story about Ed Viesturs turning around within a few hundred meters of the peak of Everest because he had reached his turn around time limit for a safe decent.  My friend thought this was one of the bravest and smartest things he had ever heard about; to put off your year long goal within sight for safety sake.  I guess I have to be brave and smart like Ed and not do something stupid like run in a race just for some foolish pride...

EDIT: A Few Bike Shots
Someone asked about my bike setup, so here are a few shots, focusing a bit on the front end setup.

 

2012 Centennial Lake Mile Swim: Another 2nd!

 

This morning I did the Centennial Lake Mile Swim, an open water swim held at the same lake as the Columbia Triathlon swim.  This was part of my planned foray into trying out other types of races (bike, swim) than just triathlons which I can't actually complete.  While I've done a number of open water swims as part of triathlons, this was my first actual swimming race since my early elementary school days on the neighborhood swim team.  The long and short is that I had a great race, came in 2nd by .6 seconds, and came in 4th overall.  

Preperation

As I laid out in a previous blog entry, I've done a lot of work on my swimming.  For almost 6 months, with a few exceptions for travel, I've been swimming 5 times a week with my masters team and getting about 20K yards/week.  The previous year, my first doing masters at all, I had typically averaged 3 practices, so this was a substantial increase in volume. During that period I've seen my pool times come down pretty significantly and my swim form and fitness improve substantially.  This would be my first real test of just how much I'd actually improved.  Apart from fitness prep, I also upgraded my equipment in the form of a new wetsuit.  I got a good deal on a used Tyr Hurricane 5, a well regarded fast suit.  This replaced the original cheap previous model year wetsuit I got in 2005 when I didn't know if I would swim more than one time in open water.  I figure after 7 years and over a dozen events it was time to upgrade.  I practiced with the suit early this week and felt really fast.  I also like that it gives me a six-pack that I'll never get naturally.

Race Morning

I had commented in my previous entries on bike racing how much easier the logistics were than triathlon.  This swim was even easier.  The lake is about a 5 minute drive from home and the only equipment I needed was my wetsuit and goggles.  The organizers sent a timeline before the race and just wanted us there about an hour before the start.  This meant that I was able to do our normal weekend morning routine with the kids, which was especially good given that it was Mother's day and meant I didn't have to foist all the childcare work on my wife just to go race.  After helping make "mommy" breakfast in bed, we all had our own breakfast, played for a bit and headed over to the race.

Pre-Race Registration and Sand Play

After parking, the whole family walked down toward the registration tent near the swim entrance.  There was a bit of a line, so I got in line while my wife setup with the kids.  Fortunately, my kids decided that the little sandy area outside the registration tent was an ideal sandbox to play in.  Registration itself was a breeze, grab a little packet with my swim cap, get body marked, get a timing chip and I was good to go.

Swim Friends

The day before the race, the organizers sent out a list of the heats so that we would all know when we were going to start.  Looking at the list, I immediately recognized the names of three of the swimmers in the top few heats (I was assigned to heat four).  Two were swimmers from my masters team, Columbia Masters, and another was a frequent poster on online triathlon website Slowtwitch.  I introduced myself to the Slowtwitch guy (Kevin) and we had a nice little conversation.  Turns out he is coaching one of the other guys I swim with who is doing his first triathlon this year.  I then caught up with the masters team guys as well as a handful of other familiar faces from masters swim practice.  It appeared that Columbia Masters was well represented at this event.

 

Quick Warmup 

After registration, the organizers gave us a chance to get in a quick warmup in the water.  I jumped at the chance since I needed to sort out a bit of a goggle issue.  I had bought a brand new pair of goggles (same model I'd used for a while) on Friday, hoping to eliminate leaks and fog, but at practice found that the new goggles leaked and were foggy.  I managed to try out the new and old pair and figured out that the old pair was going to work better.  It was also nice to get a sense for the water temperature, which felt perfect in a wetsuit.

Strategy

In my last two bike races, there were two distinct strategies.  For one, you wanted to stay in a group so that you could draft and save energy.  In the other, you were started staggered and it was illegal to draft, so you needed to meter your effort exactly.  An open water swim like this can be a little bit of a combination.  It was a time trial start, with heats seeded with faster times first going every 15 seconds or so, which should prevent large groups.  On the other hand, it is both legal and beneficial to draft, so if you can catch up with someone ahead or if you get passed, you can save some energy by swimming right on their feet.  I wasn't sure how accurate my relatively high seeding was; they asked for pool 1650 times and I guessed 20:00.  So I didn't really know if I would be able to catch anyone or get passed, but I planned to try to draft if the opportunity arose.  In terms of effort, I figured that it was much like the bike time trial, try to give the highest even effort that you can hold for the whole race.  Unlike my triathlon swims in this lake, I wouldn't need to bike after, so there is no excuse to hold back at the end.

Start

The swim start was a time trial start done in heats of three swimmers at a time.  I was in the fourth heat, which looked like it was going to be just me for a little while till another woman showed up.  Being early but not first was nice, I got to watch the first heats run in, but didn't have to wait long myself to make the plunge.

What Happened in the Water? 22:43

Racing in open water is a little bit of a weird experience in terms of understanding what is happening during the race.  You essentially live in a little sensory bubble that doesn't extend very far around you with periodic sighting ahead that you try to limit because it takes extra energy and can slow you down.  So you are aware of any swimmers that are within about an arms length to the side or ahead and might be able to tell who they are if they are particularly distinctive (size, suit, etc).  You can also make out where the splashing is ahead of you and make a reasonable guess how far ahead they are and whether you are losing or gaining ground.

After we ran into the water, I was focused on trying to catch up to the swimmers ahead and never saw what happened to the woman who started in my heat.  Based on my result, I assume I got and stayed ahead of her, but I certainly wasn't sure of that while in the water.  By the first turn buoy a hundred yards or so into the race, I could tell I was gaining ground on one swimmer and tried to catch up to him.  A few hundred yards more into the outbound straightaway I caught and passed a non-wetsuit swimmer who I realized post-race must have been my friend Reg.  This was a good sign for me since Reg is a great open water swimmer (at a big speed disadvantage without a wetsuit, but at least in a distinct division).  By the last buoy before the turn around point, I think I had caught one other swimmer, but don't remember clearly.  In both cases of passing, I didn't stay in the draft much since I wanted to do my own faster pace.  At that point, ahead I could see what looked like a pack of splashing that I wasn't making up much ground on.

A key point in the race came when I noticed that the pack ahead was swimming to the wrong turn buoy.  The course went clockwise around two turn buoys at the far end of the course.  The group was headed toward the right most buoy.  I've done a number of other races on this lake with similar layouts, so I knew the course and figured out pretty quickly that they weren't going the right way.  I could see that there was at least one person ahead going to the correct buoy and concentrated on trying to track that person down.  The turn and the backstretch were pretty uneventful. I could see that the group had finally figured out they went the wrong way, but at this point they were going to get to the right turn buoy after me.  I was able to keep the swimmer ahead in sight, but didn't make up or lose any significant ground as far as I could tell.

A final key bit of the race came right near the final turn back to the finish.  The course goes around a small island and then back to the start.  As we got to the island, I saw my new Slowtwitch friend going by on the left.  He started ahead and must have been in the group that went the wrong way.  I finally got the opportunity to draft for a little bit and managed to stay pretty tight onto his feet.  I then noticed that he wasn't taking a good line to the finish going to the far side of a buoy that we didn't need to go around.  I hesitated a little since I didn't want to get DQ'd right at the end, but eventually decided to try to peel off and go the more direct route.  This proved slightly harder than I thought since there was another guy right behind who I almost turned into.  After avoiding him, I headed to the finish.  In the end it probably didn't matter much since I got out of the water just after those two swimmers.  I guess I should have trusted my knowledge of the course, but it can be tough to make those calls quickly on the fly, especially when you think your getting a good draft. Here's the video of me coming into the finish.

Post Race

I had been a bit concerned about how long my kids would last post race and whether I would have to leave before they announced the results.  Fortunately, the organizers had provided a nice little buffet of snacks for the racers and my kids were entertained by trying the different snacks and playing in the sand.  This gave a nice chance to chat with my friends about how the race had gone.

Awards Ceremony
I knew that I had done well, especially by making up some ground on stronger swimmers with some good navigation.  Since there were awards given for two categories, wetsuit and non-wetsuit in each age group, I'll admit that I was expecting to win.  When the announcer called my age group and said a different name for first, I was a little surprised.  While I walked over to get the second place ribbon, it registered that he announced the first and second place times as a second apart!  As I walked away and commented to my friends about how close it was, the announcer said something to the effect that it was actually just .6 seconds.  I guess my 2nd place karma is very strong.

  

Post Race Thoughts
I am extremely happy with the race.  It was low key, easy to do logistically and I had a great time.  I feel like I swam well and definitely can see the hard work paying off.   4th place overall is higher than I had any right to expect.  And 2nd place by small margins seems to be my fate.  In the last year, I have four second places in various races by a grand total of less than a minute (11 seconds, 27 seconds, 15 seconds and .6 seconds).  Next week I get to swim in the same lake as part of the Columbia Triathlon.  Maybe my relay will get 2nd place?