2013 Eagleman Aquabike: Almost Perfect till I Pulled a "Lightning McQueen"

Here's the scene from yesterday.  I'm a bit under a mile away from the finish line for the 2013 Eagleman Aquabike.  I've been leading for about the last 40 miles and haven't seen anyone apart from riders going the other way for 10 to 15 miles and haven't seen any hint of anyone behind me when seemingly out of nowhere a guy blows past.  I try to respond and manage to keep the gap from growing too big.  On the home stretch I try to get up out of the saddle, but I have nothing.  I watch from about 10 feet back as my fellow competitor crosses the line first, breaking the ribbon and gets congratulated on first place.  I slog myself through the muddy finish line, coming in second by 11 seconds after almost three hours of racing and collapse in a heap on the ground to rest.  As I'm lying there all I can think is that I was so close to having a perfect day and somehow it slipped through my fingers...

Driving home from the race, I told my kids that I took a gamble and lost, much like Lightning McQueen in the first race of the movie "Cars" that they are very familiar with.  Just like Lightning kept refusing new tires at pit stops, I kept refusing to take on hydration at the water exchanges.  And just like Lightning almost made in to the finish line before his tires blew and almost limped in to win even after that, I almost made it.  Still, I can't help thinking that I should have been a lot smarter than a kids cartoon car who is the example of racing stupidly!  This one may sting for a while, especially since I made a mental error to lose this race the last time I did it in 2011 by a similarly slim 12 seconds.

Setup for a Perfect Day

The night before the race I was really excited about this race.  The weather conditions were shaping up to be ideal.  The water temperature was comfortably in wetsuit legal range so that I didn't have to prepare for two different contingencies.  Race morning was forecast to be high 60s to mid 70s be mid morning with light winds.  On a flat course like Eagleman it was ideal conditions for a fast race.  Finally, the race organizers put the Aquabike wave right at the beginning in the wave immediately after the pro waves.  That would mean instead of having to fight through crowds on the bike I would get a wide open course with the potential of tracking down a few of the back of the pack pro women.  The timing on race morning was ideal.  After my family dropped me off, I walked to transition, setup my bike in transition, made my way over to the bathroom line, put my wetsuit on and walked over to the swim start just in time to see my family and get in the water.  No time wasted, no need to wait around.  It was great.

Swim: 32:22

As we waited between the start buoys, it was evident the swim was going to be a bit longer than average.  Whenever you would start to tread water, you would notice that the current was slowly pulling you back away from the start.  The course is shaped with a long outbound leg and then a short inbound leg bringing you back to a different spot, this meant we would be fighting the current for most of the swim.  As the swim started, I tried to find a comfortable pace and a group to latch onto.  I found myself with a pack of four or five who all seemed to be doing about the same pace and latched myself on to the back.  After a few minutes and a couple of buoys, I settled into a comfortable third slot behind two other guys.  We swam the entire outbound leg to the first turn buoy that way and I was feeling good about my positioning and strategy so far.  A bit after we turned, things broke up a bit and I ended up having to find some new feet, bridging a small gap to a guy going at a slightly faster clip.  That worked well until the next turn where he started breast stroking while trying to find the next buoy to swim toward.  At that point I swam past him and found myself swimming solo for a bit.  I could see a swim cap about 10-15 yards away and a few more beyond that and put in a little bit of effort to see if I could bridge that gap.  After seeing that I wasn't making up ground fast enough, I just tried to find my own pace and a good line back to the swim finish.  Toward the very end of the swim, a couple guys who I assume were on my feet started to come around and I latched on one last time to get pulled into the swim finish.  While the weather on race day was perfect, it had rained a lot the days before, so the transition area was a wet muddy sloppy mess.  Given that, my plan was to walk or very slowly jog in transition to avoid problems.  This gave me a bit more time to spot my family and have my wife yell out that there were five or six guys ahead of me so that I would know how much ground I needed to make up on the bike.

T1: 1:52

My transition from swim to bike went smoothly if not lightning fast.  I walked or gently jogged through the slog and found my bike without any problems.  I had to sit to take off my wetsuit and took a moment to chat with a fellow competitor who came out right with me.  After putting my helmet on and grabbing my bike I trotted off to the bike start.

Bike: 2:17:58

I had high hopes and expectations for my bike at Eagleman.  I had done a lot of preparation and felt like I was in great shape with my equipment and physically.  The weather as we started was perfect, a bit overcast and probably low 70s with no significant wind.  I was expecting that I would ride a time significantly faster than my time from two years ago and had vague hopes of averaging 25+ mph.  That all seemed to be coming true for most of the race.  I knew from what my wife told me after the swim that there were probably just a half dozen or so guys from my wave in front.  As I mentioned previously, ahead of them by ten minutes or so would be the pro women and then the pro men.  This meant that in sharp contrast to previous years when I probably passed 500 people on the bike, I would be lucky to see ten.  As I settled in to the bike, I concentrated on keeping a good aero position and putting out power numbers that I thought I could sustain.  Whenever I looked down at my cycling computer it would show 24-26 mph which seemed right on target.  By 15 miles in to the ride, I had comfortably passed all the guys in my Aquabike wave and was still feeling great.  By around the halfway point, I caught and passed the first pro female and noted that I was just about on target for hitting my 25 mph goal.  

Let me take a brief break from the narrative to discuss nutrition/hydration.  My plan at Eagleman in 2011 was to ride with one bottle of gatorade and to exchange at the on course support stations (I think there are three or four).  In 2011 that worked fine and nutrition was not a major issue despite it being a fairly warm day.  This year I had the same rough plan, but for some reason I convinced myself that I was doing fine without any exchanges.  I was figuring that I had been plenty hydrated at the beginning of the race and that it wasn't that hot.  I've done plenty of two hour plus rides this year where all I drank was a single water bottle.  So I went the entire race waving off the support station staff.  In retrospect, I can't believe I didn't just go with my original plan.  I could have just grabbed a water or gatorade, drank some and thrown it away without exchanging at no risk/overhead, but I guess I wasn't thinking straight.

Miles 25 to 45 or so were still going pretty well, although in retrospect, I think I was starting to feel the effect of dehydration.  By that point, I had passed a few more pro women and was trying to talk myself into upping or at least maintaining the pace for just 10 more miles.  The only eventful bit was when I noticed as the course turned that a pro that I had passed a couple minutes before and had assumed was long gone was sitting about two or three bike lengths back.  I don't know how long she had been there or how close she had been, but I yelled at her to get off my wheel and tried to up my pace a bit to drop her.  I had a pro women friend in the race up ahead and the last thing I wanted was to drag one of her competitors up to her, especially someone who didn't appear to be following the letter of the rules.  I was happy to see that the next time I checked she was no where to be seen.

The last ten miles was hard both mentally and physically.  My glutes started to hurt, making sitting on my seat quite painful.  This wasn't the usual my saddle is bothering me sort of issue, it was that those muscles were getting very unhappy.  I also started getting some cramps in my right hip flexors.  I suppose I could have seen the signs earlier, but it became obvious over the course of a short span of time that I was suffering from some combination of bad pacing and/or dehydration.  Every time I looked down at my cycling computer, I would see that my speed wasn't what it should be and my wattage output was very low for my perceived level of effort.  I was well past the last aid station, so I knew I had to just try to hold on till the finish.  Still, I figured I could hang on to the lead for the last ten miles.  I might not hit my best time, but I should still win.  It was a bad sign over those last ten miles that I wasn't catching up to racers ahead of me anymore; that was a sure sign that my pace had dropped off substantially. 

As I mentioned in the opening, the pass happened within the last mile or so of the race.  The guy did a good job of making a strong pass and quickly had a big gap.  At that point I didn't see how I had a chance and was kicking myself for blowing it.  I tried to up my pace to match his and managed to keep him in sight.  I knew my family would be waiting to watch me go by on the finish stretch and wanted to look good and show some appreciation for their support by finishing strong.  I managed to stand and give one last effort and narrowed the gap a bit, but it was too little too late and was only enough to give me a great view of him crossing the finish first.  I crossed the line and went to congratulate the winner.  I then collapsed into a pile in the mud and hoped I would be able to get up after.  I could feel my glutes crying out and could see my calves twitching as they were preparing to cramp.  Everyone at the finish was super supportive and congratulated both of us on a great close race.  The winner told me he was shocked when he passed me; I had been flying at the beginning of the race and he assumed he had no chance.  Yup, me too!  

It hurt to be so close to both a win and a well executed race.  But at the end of the day I still had a good time and was grateful to be healthy enough to race and to have my family come support me.  I found out afterward that they had a fun morning at the race and were excited to come back next year and try again!