Today I raced in the 2013 Columbia Triathlon as a relay with my friend James as my pinch runner. The last two years my wife has been my runner, but after injuring herself last year she decided to opt out. James graciously volunteered to join me and was a great teammate! We won first place relay with a finishing time of 2:07:38, with an almost two minute margin over the second place relay team.
Back Surgery Bounce Back
I wrote about my surgery at length in a blog post in January The short summary is that I had my third back surgery in January, this time to deal with a herniated L4/L5 disc and the associated pain and loss of dorsiflection muscle function in my right foot. I discussed my recovery a bit in an earlier post about a bike race I did last month. I was able to get on my indoor trainer a few days after surgery for some very light spinning of the legs and very gradually worked back up to 8-10 hours a week of cycling. The swimming was a bit harder since my surgeon wanted me to stay out of the pool entirely until six weeks after surgery. Six weeks felt like a long time and it took quite a long time before I started to feel like I was swimming anywhere near the times I swam before the injury. I was very happy that over the last two weeks I finally started to still feel strong at the end of masters practices instead of feeling like I was dying by the end. This meant that going into the race I felt fairly good about both my swimming and cycling form despite being just four months post surgery. I still have some minor impairment in my right foot dorsiflection, but that has continued to improve and no longer is an issue with day to day activities and doesn't seem to impact my swimming or cycling.
For cycling training, I have continued to enjoy group rides on my road bike instead of spending all my time solo on a TT bike. I ride regularly with a group called TMR that rides early morning year round. During the winter this involves riding in the dark with lights in temperatures well below freezing. I credit those guys with toughening me up to deal with just about any conditions! I've also joined a cycling team, AFC , a group of very positive and inspirational fellow endurance athletes. Riding with and interacting with other teammates has been a uniformly positive experience.
Equipment Changes
I decided to make a couple of minor equipment changes for this race. I happened across a really good deal on a new helmet, the Giro Selector, that has an integrated visor. I'm not 100% sure it is faster, it was not obviously so in my brief field testing, but I liked the idea of a visor since I've had trouble with sunglasses before and it was definitely no slower. I also thought it looks cooler. I was also in the market for new race wheels; dealing with tubulars was not something I was enjoying. So when I came across someone selling a Hed Jet 9 front and Hed Jet disc for a good price I grabbed it. I think that when I sell my old wheels the net cost will be minimal and the new wheels should both be a bit faster and a whole lot simpler to deal with. The helmet showed up at the house this Tuesday and the wheels this Wednesday, so I was pushing my luck a little bit with new gear right before a race, but neither seemed like an especially big risk. The last minor equipment change was to wear my new team's skinsuit instead of my old trisuit. I was a bit worried that the skinsuit was going to be slower, but when I field tested them it actually tested faster. With that pleasant surprise, I was all ready to go sporting the dots.
Race Morning
I've lost track a bit, but I think this is around my 10th race at Centennial Park, so I've got the routine down pat. The only minor change was that I was going to pick up my teammate James, who actually lives even closer to the course than I do. After some coffee and half a bagel at home, I drove over to James' place at 6am sharp and we got to the park shortly afterward and walked into transition. The weather forecast had been dreary, 60ish degrees, foggy, with a good chance of light rain. I then went through the usual process of getting body marked, pumping tires, getting my swim stuff organized, etc. We took the opportunity to snap a couple of team photos and then headed over to the swim start together at around 6:40. Unlike many previous years, my wave was not last. It was scheduled for 7:50, giving us just over an hour to kill. As is traditional, much of that hour is killed going to the porta potti some unbelievable number of times.
Swim Leg: 22:46
At the swim starting pen, I searched for and quickly found my fish like friend Reg. I still had vague ambitions of drafting off of him; if I could do that I knew I would be in for a good race. Reg claimed he wasn't on good form and implied that I would be able to hang with with him today. Then the race started. I managed to go with Reg for maybe a minute or two before I felt like I was fighting for his feet with two or three other bigger guys. Then much to my surprise we started getting hit by a few swells. This is a calm wind protected lake, so I'd never experienced anything other than pristine flat water here. I'm not 100% sure about the source of the waves. I would guess it might have been a boat going to retrieve a struggling swimmer. This same thing happened a couple more times during the swim. After being momentarily thrown off (and taking a gulp of water), Reg was gone, but there were plenty of other folks around. I got a bit lucky and found some feet that seemed to be going at a good pace and who's owner seemed to be doing a good job navigating. I decided to stick with those feet for a while and ended up swimming almost the entire time in a nice draft. I'm sure by the end of the swim the guy was sick of me periodically lightly brushing his feet with my hands as I got momentarily too close. If you are out there reading this, I'm sorry if that got annoying.
My time was about a minute slower than last year. With an open water swim comparing times year to year can be a bit misleading since the course may be a bit different. Looking at the overall results, the top few male pros were about a minute slower than their times from last year, so maybe the conditions were a touch harder. On the other hand, my time would have put me 121st overall in the swim vs around 70th last year, so I probably was a bit slower than last year. Still, I'm happy that I saved some energy drafting and got a good result in spite of logging significantly less time in the pool this winter and spring compared to last year.
T1: 1:44
I was a touch worried about transition. Running or even fast walking still feels a bit awkward with my foot issues. Fortunately, we got a bike rack slot close to the center isle, which made it relatively easy to get to my bike and get going. As is expected, I felt like crap as I lightly jogged in transition and was impatiently waiting for the blood to get out of my upper body from the swim and get into my legs. I got the wetsuit off with few problems, got my helmet on and got going. In the end, my T1 time was only a few seconds off of last year's time, so I guess it went well. I did notice that my new helmet's cool visor was all fogged up, an issue I had vaguely worried about earlier that morning and then discarded as unlikely to be a problem. I figured once I got up to speed the wind would clear it up.
Bike: 1:02:53
I get on my bike and within the first few minutes have to resolve three issues. Issue one is that I feel really tired. This is largely a mental thing. I always feel bad at the start of the bike after the swim. I just need to tell myself to settle in to a good pace and that it will get better and it usually does. Issue number two is getting my feet into the shoes at speed. I practiced that a few times during my pre-race ride and pulled it off without trouble. One difference on race day vs. my practice is that my feet are wet, making it all slightly harder. I guess I should practice with wet feet sometime. The third and more persistent issue was the visor fogging. It was foggy and drizzling the entire bike ride and the wind was not clearing the visor. I could see, but barely. It is good that I know this course really well. I did discover that a few quick strokes of my thumb would give me clarity for 30 seconds or so and made good use of that for the more dangerous sections of the course.
Apart from the foggy visor, I didn't find the wet roads to be too problematic. They had been soaked pretty well by the time I rode and my tires seemed to grip the road securely. A more challenging aspect of the ride was dealing with the other cyclists and cars. I suspect that the wet roads made people more cautious about riding close together which from my perspective meant that it seemed like people were constantly blocking the road. I lost track of how many times I screamed "on your left"; it was certainly a lot more than at previous races where I passed a similar number of people but the weather conditions were better. I also had a couple of annoying run ins with cars that were blocking large sections of the road. I played leap frog where I passed and was then overtaken by one particular car four or five times on the stretch back toward 108. Apart from slowing me down, this also felt unnecessarily dangerous.
After getting over the initial "I feel bad" part of the race, I managed to pace it relatively evenly. I went a bit harder on the uphills, but wasn't really redlining it at any point and only got out of the saddle two or three times mainly to stretch things out. I was happy to see that my time was on pace with my previous years time despite the conditions and thought I had a good chance to even beat last years time. I ended up 27 seconds faster which was very satisfying. My bike split was the 15th fastest split overall, including the 20+ professional triathletes in the field. Of course to be fair, they also have to run afterward while I get to just become a cheerleader after my bike ride is done.
T2: 0:32
There isn't much to say about the transition from my bike to James running. I run down the hill into transition after hoping off my bike. James takes the timing chip off me and puts it on his leg and runs off. I then get to go chat it up with the other relay folks and see that I'm the first biker to arrive and after waiting a bit minutes realize that I've given James a bit of a lead.
Run (James): 39:46
I only know a little about James' run based on what he said afterward (maybe he will write his own race report!). I do know that from my perspective he looked like he was really moving! Before the race we had guessed that he might run about 40 minutes in order to time when we should start looking for him at the finish line. I think he was quite pleased to break that 40 minute guess on such a tough hilly course. By the time he came sprinting by, I had a pretty good idea that we had won. My family and James' family had been waiting for him near the finish and we hadn't seen any other relay teams run past yet.
Post Race and Awards Ceremony
Thinking that we had probably won our division, we naturally wanted to stick around for the award ceremony. The only issue with that plan was that we had two wives and six children who were probably not quite as excited about our race and the potential for an award. Fortunately, they were very patient and ended up being well fed by the post race food that James and I brought them. We set ourselves up in front of where they would do awards at the 11:30 scheduled start and then waited. After it started a bit late, we then got to find out exactly how many awards are given at a triathlon because our category was darn close to dead last in the award order. Due to saintlike patience from our families we made it to the end and proudly collected our little plaques. We even got a spare in case we break one since they naturally had three plaques for each relay winner and we only had the two of us.
Summary
I couldn't have asked for a better race. My team mate was fun, fast and supportive. Our families cheered for us and patiently waited and supported us. My own results show that my recovery is going great and my back held up without the slightest hint of problems. All in all probably the best race I've ever had.
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