Columbia Triathlon 2014: Aquabike (minus the Aqua)

 Yesterday morning, I participated in the 31st Columbia Triathlon, winning the Aquabike category.  Since I am restricted from running, I was pleased to discover when I signed up in the fall that they had added Aquabike category (in the past I have always done relays), but that ended up being just the tip of the iceberg as far as changes.  The Columbia Triathlon Association ended up folding, with the race looking like it might even be cancelled until just a few weeks ago the Ulman Cancer Foundation took over the race.  Then a few days before race day, they cancelled the swim for the first time ever for this race due to unsafe water conditions; I gather that the huge amounts of rain created high toxin levels in the water.  This turned the race into a bike/run for most of the participants and just a bike for the Aquabike division.  While that suited my training just fine, like everyone I was a bit sad not to swim.

 Training

As far as race preparation, I have focused almost exclusively on cycling for the past year, including significantly more total miles and more road racing.  Up until about 6 weeks ago, I hadn't been in the pool for a workout since racing last summer.  While the first couple of masters swim practices were painful and slow, I was surprised how quickly I was able to ramp up my swim speed with very little volume.  I was certainly a bit scared going into the race that my ~10 total swim practices were going to leave me hurting, but was also eager to see if I could be within a couple minutes of my previous times.  For the bike portion, I was confident that my higher volume of training would payoff and thought I might even be faster overall for the bike focus.  Of course once the swim was cancelled this seemed like a genius move.

Race Morning/Setup

The forecast for the day was colder than normal for this race at high 40s for the start and low 50s for the race itself.  With a swim, that would normally mean some hand wringing about what to wear on the bike since putting on clothes in transition is slow, especially when wet.  Without a swim, it was easy, just pile on as much as you need ahead of time; I went with a full sleeve skinsuit and leg warmers for full coverage.  The lack of swim also meant a simpler race morning setup.  I woke up, drove over to the race with a small bag containing my helmet, bike pump, shoes and some drinks and was pretty much good to go.  After checking over my bike, pumping up tires, etc, I left the transition area to wait for the race to start.  The plan for the race start was a "time trial" start where competitors ran two at a time from what would have been the swim exit to transition and then started the bike.  I cleverly decided that rather than sit around for an hour in my bike gear, I would wear light pants and a jacket and put them in a bag right before starting.  I then ran in with my bag held like a football, put it down in transition, grabbed my bike and went.

 T1: 100m dash

Perhaps for everyone else it was a "dash".  For me, given my injury history, and the fact that I was running in my cycling shoes, it was a very light jog.  I'm not sure how often I'll get to run with an aero helmet, cycling shoes and a bag of clothes, but it went off without a hitch.  I had intentionally lined up as the last person in my wave, hoping to get a better idea of where my fellow competitors were as I hopefully passed them.

 Bike Leg

In a normal race, this is the point at which I complain about how hard it is to do a flying mount, get my feet into shoes while riding, get over feeling crappy from finishing this swim, etc.  None of that applied here.  This was just a bike ride.  The only struggle was that for some reason my power meter wasn't picking up, so I was going to have to pace myself without (which is fine) and frustratingly not be able to look back at the numbers later.

I had relatively high hopes for doing a fast time.  I was in good bike shape and I didn't swim right before, so I figured I should do a best time (my previous best was about 1:02).  As my home course, I am very familiar with the ride and generally divide the course into roughly equal thirds.  There is a slightly net uphill starting third, a "lollipop" loop third and then the finishing slightly net downhill return third that reverses the first third.  My PR for the lollipop is ~20 minutes and the return third is also ~20 minutes.  The first third felt a bit slow; the forecast had there being a head wind for that section and it felt that way.  I got to the lollipop in 21:46, which was a minute or two slower than I was hoping for, but I thought with a good lollipop section and hopefully a tail wind on the return I might still break 1:02.  The lollipop section went ok, but also not as fast as I was hoping at 20:38; my legs didn't really have much "pop" and even though it is a loop I don't remember having a tail wind.  Still, I was vaguely hoping that if there was a whipping tail wind on the way back I had a chance.  I could tell that wasn't going to happen when going down the usually fast section the wind didn't seem to be helping much.  Looking at the post race weather, it seems to have picked up a bit and changed directions to more of a cross wind for the return leg instead of a tail wind.  I still tried to give it my all and ended up doing the last section in 20:09, for a total time of just over 1:02:33 by my watch.

When I got back to transition, it was empty of bikes in my section, making it pretty clear that I had won.  The relay teams were racked in the same area, so I actually ended up chatting with my former running teammate from the 2013 HalfFull relay that we won.  

Post Race

After finishing up, I met up with my family and we went over to the finish line to return my timing chip, collect a finisher medal and collect some food for my kids.  They had a nice time eating chips and cookies courtesy of the race organizers and we considered waiting for the awards. 

Who so Blue?

After the race, I had a bit of the blues, which seems strange for a race that I won.  Friends I saw later asked how the race went, and I basically told them "Fine".  I wasn't sure why I felt off, but I have some theories.  Certainly not swimming was a bit sad.  This was also the first year at Columbia where I didn't improve on my previous times.  I think I had setup expectations for myself that I would be faster.  I can look back and make some plausible excuses.  The conditions were cold, windy, with a non-favorable change in wind direction.  The nerd in me can calculate that higher air density in the cold  plus the wind slow you down by a couple of minutes vs. favorable conditions in a time trial.  Still, those feel like lame excuses.  Perhaps if my power meter had been working I would be able to get some satisfaction in achieving my target power numbers, but because it didn't work I have no idea.  In most races, you can say you just race the conditions of the day and try to beat whoever shows up, but realistically in this race the other racers in my division were not serious cyclists, so I was just racing the clock and my own goals.  Guess its time to move on and get some new goals...