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USAT Age Group Nationals Race Report

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

After a nice easy real week filled with massage, stretching, fruits and veggies and extra sleep, I could actally feel my quads again and was feeling like I might actually be able to have a solid race. And I didn’t go crazy or get sick either!

Sam and I drove up to Vermont early on Friday morning, hit up registration, some free samples at the vendor booths and made or way to our hotel. I decided to skip the host hotel and go for one MUCH closer to the actual race. We didn’t need our car all weekend and I could see the whole swim course from my window. It was pretty sweet.

The swim course and the Adirondack mountains on the other side of Lake Champlain.

And yes, the sun looked EXACTLY like that streaming through the clouds in real life. Pretty cool, eh?

RACE MORNING
I was up and at ‘em at 5:30. I dressed, drank some EFS and took down a banana and some yogurt before heading over to transition. My swim wave went off an hour after the first wave and transition didn’t close until late, so I was in no rush. There was a lot of waiting around and sitting on the dock with Sam as we watched the other waves go off, but no real stress.

The minutes leading up to my swim wave is usually when the butterflies start kicking in, but nother this time. Despite being my biggest and last triathlon of the year, I was pretty relaxed. We watched about 5 or 10 waves go off before I even put on my wetsuit. I drank a flask of First Endurance Pre Race then lubed up my neck, shoulders, arms and legs with Tri Slide and I gathered with the rest of my age group to dive on in.

SWIM

We only had a few minutes to warm up in the water before our wave went off. Just enough to get the shoulders loose and do any last minute wetsuit adjustments before lining up for the gun. I warmed up the interior of my wetsuit, and just floated until they sent us off. Despite being in a pretty wide start line where our group was probably only 2-3 people deep at any one point, it was a pretty aggressive start. Elbows and feet were flying everywhere. I did my best to push through ‘em and keep on some fast feet without taking a heel to my eye or fist to the back of my head.

It worked, I managed to stay out of any brawls with other adrenaline fueled athletes and still push the pace. The course made a hard right turn. Due east and right into the sun. UGH. I couldn’t see a damn thing except for a group of splashing feet and elbows about 25 meters ahead of me. I followed them until they realized they were WAY off course and took a hard turn to get back on. Frustrating. While the water was pretty calm in the protected harbor, I think some of the waves in one section where there was a gap in the barriers helped throw me off course too. After some more diligent sighting, I was back on course, hugging the buoys and out of the water.

Going into the race, I knew that I had the fitness to set an Oly swim course PR as long as I stayed on course. I was right. Poor sighting and no PR. Frustrating. Oh well. Onward and upward.

Time: 28:27

Pace: 1:54/100m

Bike

After a respectable, but not blazing fast T1 (1:33) I was off on the bike. The first third of the bike had some decent (short) climbs and was into a headwind. I kept pushing to try to catch up to some faster swimmers, but going uphill into a headwinds S-U-C-K-S. I felt like my brakes were dragging or something. If it wasn’t for catching up to people in earlier waves, it would have been easy to get down on myself, but everyone was stuck facing the same conditions.

Fortunately, on the back half was treating me much better and I fell into a good rhythm. Nice rollers, pushing hard and a little tail wind sent me home 3.5 minutes faster than my last bike course PR. Big smile on my face. Nutrition wise, I just took one 2oo calorie bottle of EFS.

Time: 1:07:39 (22 mph)

Run

What I did NOT know is that they were live streaming video from the race. My mom, Rachelle and Jill were all watching and cheering for me as one of the cameras caught me coming into T2. If I had known, maybe I would have picked it up a little because they were NOT very impressed with my speediness through transition. Then Jill and Rachelle proceed to heckle me over Twitter. Gotta love teammate support.

Out of transition and onto the course was the only real hill on the whole course, but it was a biggie. Half of the people were walking! Seriously people? Walking in the first 1/4 mile of Nationals? Let’s get this thing done!

I had a pretty slow first mile because of the hill (around 8:00) but after that I kept ticking off each mile at around 7:25-7:35. I kept chugging along and feeding off of everyone’s energy. People were laying it all out there and destroying their bodies just to get to the finish line, way more than any other race I’d been in. It was awesome to be around.

My final time was 46:19, which was 40 seconds faster than the stand alone 10k that I did at Beach to Beacon two weeks ago! Not too shabby, eh?

Edit: Rumor is that the run course may have been a little short, but I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear that.

Total Time: 2:25:28

Yes people, that is a HUGE 15 minute PR. I had never even broken 2:40 before. A good day, eh? I feel like this was the race where I was finally able to pull off the race performance that I was capable off. Other than a little zig zagging on the swim, it was just the race I wanted.

And I had expected some fierce competition, but NOTHING like what actually showed up. If I had been lucky enough to PR by only 8 minutes, I would have been dead last. I lucked out big time with not ending up DFL!

The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying local beers, burritos the size of my face, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sundaes and laying in my hotel bed with Sam watching awful movies on TV. I can’t imagine a better weekend.

Enjoying the post-race beer garden. Cheap beers AND they didn’t need my ID. They just looked at my calf. Kinda awesome.

Chipotle burrito from Bueno y Sano

Big B&J Sundae

One of my favorite beers: Switchback Ale

And It only took me about 12 hours to think “Damn that was a fast race! I wonder how much faster I can go next year?!”

I think I already have a goal for the 2012 season…

Tags: burlington vermont, Triathlon, usat age group nationals | Posted in Race Reports, Triathlon, Videos | 9 Comments »

Beach to Beacon 10k Pictures

Monday, August 8th, 2011

In my rush to hit the publish button on my race report, I left some awesome pictures of my first Beach2 Beacon. I say “first” because it was a ton of fun and I’ll definitely be back for more next time. Click on the pictures if you want a bigger version.

The Starting Line: Can you see me? I’m the one in green.

Photo Credit: Kevin Morris

The Finish Line: The “Beacon” – Portland Head LightPhoto Credit: Kevin Morris

The Finish Line: From The Other Side

Photo Credit: Kevin Morris

The Awards Ceremony

And one of my favorites… Some shirtless Mainer with nipple rings and a crab hat inside a mini lighthouse on wheels. The results say he ran it in under an hour. I hope he ran it from inside the lighthouse! That would have been AWESOME. He flashed me a double shaka just after I took this picture once he saw me with my camera. Wished I got that on film.

And of course I hit up Wild Willy’s for a BBQ bacon cheeseburger, onion rings and a lime rickey before I headed back home. I showed self restraint and only at about 1/4 of the onion rings.

Tags: beach 2 beacon, beach 2 beacon 10k, beach to beacon, beach to beacon 10k | Posted in Race Reports, Running, Triathlon | No Comments »

Beach to Beacon 10k Race Report

Sunday, August 7th, 2011

Yesterday I crawled out of bed at 4am and was on the road at 4:30 to drive 2 hours up to Cape Elizabeth Maine for a 10k. Seems like a lot for a 6.2 mile race? Yeah. It is. Let’s just say s*it happens. What was supposed to be a weekend spent up in Portland enjoying lobster, beer and some time in the ocean, turned into a short visit without any lobster or beer. There was a little time spent floating in the ocean tho.

I rolled into Cape Elizabeth around 6:30, and hopped on a bus from one of the remote parking lots to take me to the race start. The bus driver had the heat BLASTING which only made the bus full of nasty nervous pre-race farts even worse! The bus was like I was in a giant fart oven. Not an awesome way to start the morning.

The only reason I’m smiling in this picture is because it is BEFORE everyone’s pre-race farts started.

A 2 hour drive, a bus ride, and a half mile walk to the start line and I was finally there. I grabbed my number, ran into some old friends that were racing and moved out of Boston, warmed up, peed in the woods and waited for the gun to go off.

Waiting at the starting line

The race itself was fun pretty uneventful. I lined up somewhere just behind the 7:00 minute pace marker and waited for the gun to go off. I didn’t taper for this and the plan was just to train through it and test out my pacing strategy for nationals.

In the end, I was REALLY happy with how consistent my pacing was. Except for a hilly second mile, I held pretty steady 7:30 miles. I would have liked to be a little faster, but since my legs weren’t 100% fresh, I was fine with it. One thing I did notice is that compared to the average runner that was holding a 7:30 pace, I’m WAY better at running hills. At the start of even the slightest hill, every pack that I was running with seemed to slowly fade back as I kept a steady effort. I don’t think this is unique to me, but probably a triathlete thing. Looks like my cycling quads aren’t just dead weight on the run after all!

Does anyone else notice this when doing stand alone running races?

My final time was 47:03. Since I can’t remember the last time I did a stand alone 10k (at least 10 years ago?) I’m calling this a PR. Here are my mile splits:

Splits:
1 – 7:27
2 – 8:03
3 – 7:38
4 – 7:33
5 – 7:30
6 -7:23

After the race, I headed through through the food tent to suck down some chocolate milk, watermelon, and a fist full of mini snickers bars. They were hiding all the good stuff (chocolate and candy) at the END of the food line! Very sneaky.Then I hit up the massage tent, something I’ve never done post-race. Usually I’m busy regrouping with Sam after she spent the morning cheering me on. Since I was flying solo this time around, I took advantage of it and made some friends in the massage line before getting my butt rubbed.

Then, it was on to the beach for a soak! There was a little rocky beach just passed the finish line and only a few other runners took advantage of it for a cold soak. I was surprised more people didn’t dive in for a little cool down, but was happy to have it (almost) to myself.

I tried doing a video race report, and almost got got knocked over by a ninja wave that came out of nowhere….

As for the race itself, I was a little hesitant because I usually hate gigantic races. This one had more than 5,000 runners and sold out in seven minutes. In MARCH. For a TEN K! Fortunately, it was super casual and really well run. There were a TON of spectators lining the course and you can tell how proud the locals were of the race. Super well run, GREAT volunteers, aid stations and finisher’s area. If you can get in, I’d definitely recommend this race. Plus, Portland is a pretty cool little city to hang out in if you’ve got some time to kill after the race.

One more week of hard training then it is time to taper for what I’ve been building my whole season around – Age Group Nationals!

Tags: beach 2 beacon, beach to beacon, cape elizabeth, maine | Posted in Race Reports, Running, Training Log, Triathlon, Videos | 5 Comments »

Fairlee Race Camping

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

This weekend was the Fairlee Olympic up in Vermont, and I got to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

RACE CAMPING!

I convinced Sam and a bunch of friends to head up into the mountains to spend some time in the woods. We spent Saturday afternoon playing cornhole, grilling and enjoying some cold beers.

Sam hanging out at the camp site.

Our cozy pre-race accommodations.

Once the sun went down, we started up the fire and roasted up my new favorite pre-race snack. SMORES!

(I love the way the fire is lighting up Sam’s face in this pic.)

Sunday morning came and the birds and the sun were our alarm clock. We broke down our campsite and headed up the road to the race.

I went through my morning nutrition plan with no major changes. The one new tip that I took was my teammate Jill – a flask of my power juice. Some First Endurance PreRace to chug as I am in transition and getting ready to head to the swim. This is my secret weapon.

The most underrated triathlon supplement.

Team Trakkers Pride

The view of the mountains over the swim start.

Suited up in my TYR Hurricane. I freaking LOVE this wetsuit.

Fairlee Triathlon Swim Start

Walking with my wave to the starting line.

Coach gave me a different plan (compared to my usual protocol). Kill the first 200m of the swim. One of my biggest mistakes at Quassy was lining up in the way back of the swim wave and playing it super conservative. This time around I worked my up to the very front and got amped up to try to hold on to some fishie feet. It seemed like a lot of other guys in my swim wave were playing it pretty conservative, so I had plenty of room up front. I didn’t even have to fight my way through the pack once the gun went off.

You probably can’t tell from the pic above, the swim course was kind of a disaster. There was a dock right in the middle of our route and one of the buoys drifted away (but we couldn’t even see it from the beach because a boat was in the way. The RD told us to skip the second buoy that floated away, but unfortunately, I couldn’t tell where the hell it was. I couldn’t see any of the damn buoys because my wave’s caps were yellow and so were the buoys. A yellow swim cap at 20m and a big yellow buoy at 200m look absolutely identacle.

Frustrating, but who doesn’t like a challenge? Right? Unfortunately, just about everyone around my wave didn’t skip the second buoy (because we couldn’t see the third) and ended up making the course a LOT longer. So much for that swim course PR I was hoping for….

Swim Time: 30:51 (75/236)

Entering transition.

Taking off my wetsuit/showing off my assets.

Putting on my socks. Riveting, eh?

The bike course was AWESOME. Riding through the green mountains with some great scenery on either side. The route was a pretty simple out and back, but had some nice smooth flats with some light rollers and a few steep out-of-the-saddle climbs. I was feeling really strong and kept attacking, hunting down other guys ahead of me. A few other guys got the best of me, but overall I was climbing up the standings.

Then I looked down and realized I was averaging over 21mph and still felt great. I have never even averaged over 20mph in a training ride… I went with it. God DAMN I love riding my bike.

Side note, does anyone else get some extra satisfaction when passing someone on a disc wheel when you are rocking vanilla training wheels and no aero helmet? Cuz I do.

Bike: 1:10:53 – 21mph (36/236)

The run started off HOT and only got hotter. I dumped the rest of the water from my bike over my head before I even left transition!

I tried to keep my pace in check for the first half, so I could unleash whatever was left for the back half. Despite the heat, I was actually feeling pretty good. I even passed a girl who complimented me on my turnover. Does that mean my running is actually coming back and improving this year?!

It heated up to 95 degrees and when the course wasn’t shaded, it was a freaking nightmare. I just kept running as fast as I could so I could get myself into the shade. And the hills were WAY more than I was expecting. I had to mentally dig deep and think back to some of the really hard hill repeat workouts I’ve knocked out lately to keep my pace up.

In the end, my time definitely suffered because of the heat and the hills, but everyone was suffering from the same course. We were all in it together. It hurt and I couldn’t take in enough water to keep my body cold, but I kept moving forward.

Run: 50:09 (8:02 min/mile) – 60/236
Total Time: 2:36:30 (4/8 in my AG)
So despite a long swim course and a hella hot run course, I managed a 5 minute PR!
A good weekend and my first race camping trip was a big success. I was only 1:40 off of a podium finish! Grrrr…
I still couldn’t be happier. Thanks for reading!
Next up: Beach To Beacon 10k.
And of course, thanks to my awesome sponsors who help me do this triathlon thing every day. I love you all. Rev3, Trakkers, Avia, First Endurance, SBR Sports, All3Sports, TYR, Canari, Recovery Pump and CycleOps.

But more importantly, thanks to my awesome bride-to-be for supporting me me, sleeping on the ground, taking awesome race pictures, cheering me on and hanging out in the sun all day just so I’ll have the motivation of seeing her at the finish line as some extra motivation to keep me going.

I love her the most.

Tags: camping, fairlee triathlon, fairlee vermont, team trakkers, Triathlon | Posted in Race Reports, Triathlon | 3 Comments »