Race Report: NE Season Opener Sprint - May 8th, 2011

Well, that was interesting! 

It turned out to be a beautiful day with sun breaking through puffy, scattered clouds by start time - which event organizers pushed back to 9:00am so the air temperatures could rise. It ended up being 50F by the start. 

The event was spectacularly well organized with a great sound system and D.J. spinning tunes so you could hear it all across the lake. It had sold out weeks in advance with 370 Triathletes and another 330 for the Duathlon. Copious instructions, route maps, race packs, email bulletins and updates were sent out to all competitors during the weeks before, so even though I had never done this event before, I felt pretty comfortable with all the logistics. Kudos to Tim Richmond and his team at Max Performance.

I arrived in the area early enough Saturday to drive the bike course before dark. That turned out to be a good thing to do. I had already studied the course,
but the drive gave me a better idea about where I could stand and power up certain hills, where I could pour on the speed and where I was really going to have to brake to corner. There was one steep downhill that had some bad frost heaves in it. I decided I could probably take those at top speed as long as I came out of the saddle.

I went to a nice restaurant and ate a small portion of mac & cheese. Good high-carbs call except for the cheese, probably. Next time, a small pasta marinara should do. I checked in to the hotel, brought the bike up, cleaned the chaining and rings, and lubed it back up again. Then, even though it was getting late and I was tired, I ran through my transition routines again. Yes, I actually set up a mock transition area, laid everything out, put on the wetsuit and went through all the motions. Three times.

I slept well, having mentally converted a really loud ice machine across the hall into a white noise machine.  At 5:30am when I got up, I shaved and sipped one of those fruit smoothies in a bottle. By 6:10, I was at Dunkin D. sipping a small coffee and ate half a small egg-white omelet. All pretty easy to digest and should be out of the stomach by 9:00am start.

The short drive to the State Park on local roads that morning was quiet, with a broken overcast and sunlight poking through once in a while. Sunday morning 6:45am. Not too much traffic. Until I turned into the park. Suddenly there were police and volunteers telling you which way to go and people all over the place wheeling their bikes and gear to the starting area.

With 700 athletes and their families, race organizers, volunteers, police cars, it was turning into quite an energetic and sensational little morning.

Transition opened at 7:00am and I was all checked-in, body-marked and set up by 7:40. I had stretched out at the hotel, so I went for a little run to warm-up.

At 8:45, after a few last minute announcements over the loudspeakers, we were all zipped into our wetsuits and herded over to the swim-start area by the boathouse. The starting waves were organized by swim-cap colors: blue and yellow for men and women under 35, red for older men, and white for the older women. Like foreign tourists we followed guides holding aloft colored signs according to the color of our swim caps. I tucked in to my huddle of red-swim-capped brethren. Man, there were a lot of us - like over 100. 

We watched and cheered as the 220 competitors in the first two waves started, five minutes apart, and then waded into the 60F lake. We swam out to form a starting line in the water. A little light chatter while we treaded water. Some laughing about hands going numb already. By the starting gun, I had worked my way up to the front row. 

In the week before, I hadn't been at all sure how I would deal with the water temperature in my shorty wetsuit.  Michael wasn't thrilled that I didn't have a full-length suit. He said they're simply faster in all situations. But had been too late to get one now, so to prepare, on Friday I swam in the Long Island Sound. Water temperature: 52F. It was shockingly cold and it took me three tries to actually stay in the water and stroke it out. But I did, so I figured I'd be okay in the lake. 

The race packet had said booties were allowed, so I had gotten a pair of thin neoprene kayaking booties. They fit tightly and seemed to work okay. They did collect a little water though, and they were a bitch to get off - so there was a T1 cost there, but I wanted to make sure my feet weren't numb coming out of the water, so I made the call to wear them.

Even so, I was distracted with the cold, and the darkness of the lake water. With your head in the water, daylight penetrated only a few inches deep and was cast red by some kind of algae. Spooky. My arms were really cold and I rubbed them in the water to no effect. Even with the warning of a ten second announcement, when the gun went off, I was a little startled and looked quickly over toward the shore for a moment. Seeing everyone else starting off, I snapped-to and got down to business. 

Short story on the swim: this was supposed to be my strong suit but I fell apart. I was behind right from the beginning, kept lifting my head up for breath, swallowing water, getting kicked by the guy in front of me. At least lake water tastes pretty good. I was out of breath during most of the first 200 yards. Swimming with those booties started to feel like swimming with little sea anchors on my feet. I had simply lost my cool, and that's a bad feeling in the water. I wasn't used to it. I'm a water rat by nature.

About halfway across, I remember thinking this was a lot longer than I had thought it would be. I breast stroked for about 20 seconds, caught my breath. Took a look in front of me: lots of red caps. Took a look in back: lots of red caps. Could be worse. I settled down and put some good strong strokes in to the finish, scrambled out of the water and onto the beach at a trot.

I was tired to the point of being dazed coming out of the water. But I knew once I got my breath back in a few minutes, I'd be fine.

As it turned out, the timing mat was all the way up and across the beach, and the actual distance through the water (according to Google Maps distance tool) was a bit more than the advertised 1/4 mile, so my predicted swim time of 7'40" was very aggressive. The 14th guy out of the water came in at 7'40". I was #170 overall coming out of the water.

Although I had predicted I might finish the swim in 7'20", I crossed the timing mat at 11:00, but still #3 in my age group. I knew I hadn't done as well as I could have, but I didn't dwell on it, or let it bother me. The spectators were screaming and making all kinds of encouraging sounds. High pitched rock and roll was echoing out over the lake. The sun was out. Lots of reasons to have good attitude and energy coming into T1.

I had run through transition routines on Friday at our local beach, and again on Saturday at the hotel. I didn't figure to be blazingly fast (I will rethink this for next time for reasons I'll talk about below), but I didn't want to be just stupid slow. I was out of T1 and onto the bike in 2'30". Not bad, but 1'30" is eminently doable. 

Again I took Michael's advice and didn't take the time to change into a dry shirt. I had thought about it just because it was supposed to be so cold that morning and I didn't want to be wet and freezing cold on the bike. I just wore my sleeveless compression top soaking wet. I was fine and never once thought about being too cold on the bike.

In the quest for shorter T1, some leave their shoes on the pedals and run out of T1 bare footed. Then they hop on the bike and start pedaling with their feet on top of the shoes. Gradually, they work their feet into the shoes -no socks - and then close the Velcro straps. I didn't have the right shoes for it - hadn't rehearsed it - and didn't do it this time. I decided to keep it simple and just put my regular bike shoes on in T1.

On the immediate shallow climb out of transition, I passed a guy struggling to get his feet into his bike shoes and keep pedaling at the same time. Note to self: putting shoes on before getting on bike is a good thing. I never saw him again. I was moving well and passing people all the way out of the park. Just before the park exit, a guy passed me going just a little faster. 1/4 mile later on the next shallow hill, I climbed past him and never saw him again.

For the rest of the bike ride, I was passing everyone in sight. This meant that either I was really fast on the bike, or I had been so slow on the swim that all the fast guys were in front of me. It turned out to be a little of both. Many of the people I was passing had gone out on the two waves in front of me.

There was one guy who passed me at about mile three, wearing a teardrop helmet and going really fast. I paced him for 1/2 mile but couldn't hang on. He was obviously a pretty good athlete but must have practically drowned in the lake to have been that far behind. He was the only guy that passed me for-keeps during the whole ride. 

At about mile 6, I remembered that I hadn't taken so much as a sip from the water bottle. It was cool, and I was hitting it pretty hard - there hadn't really been much of a lull. I grabbed down, hauled the bottle up and squeezed out a quick shot of water. I was breathing so hard I couldn't drink very easily, but at least I got a small sip. Without looking, I did what I had done a thousand times before, reached down and replaced the bottle in its cage. Missed it by that much! I heard the sound of the bottle hitting the pavement and skittering away behind me. Good thing it's a sprint. I didn't have time to worry about it and I wasn't going to dehydrate during a 60-odd minute event.

Amazingly, I ended up finishing just three seconds over my prediction at 32:03, with an overall rank of 76, and second in my age group. At an average just shy of 19 mph, I was pleased with the performance on the ride. The fast guys had not been as fast as I expected: only the top two exceeded 22mph and everybody after #26 was under 20mph.

The bike times were extremely competitive. There were groups of ten riders who came in within the same tenth of a second.

Coming back in to the transition area, the music was turned up loud, the spectators were cheering and ringing bells, it was awesome. I fist pumped the crowd as I trotted my bike down the entry chute and over to the rack. A minute and ten seconds later, I was out of the gate and on the run.

Michael had suggested I run fast out of transition, to get the legs going, and then taper to race pace. I did that, and then took it down a notch to go up the first hill. I was looking to establish a 7'30" pace but just didn't seem to have it in my legs, even after a few minutes of running when I expected them to come back to me. My heart was hammering and the breath was tight and percussive. 

There were plenty of people passing me on the run. I had expected that. There are a lot of sub-seven minute milers on the Sprint course. But at about mile one, I saw my competition run by me. He was shorter by a good bit, and smaller, but looked my age. I confirmed it, glancing down at his right calf as he went by (as part of body marking, they write your age on the back of your right calf specifically for this reason). I paced him for a couple hundred yards but just couldn't hang on. He was booking a 7:15 pace and I had already been pushing to stay up at 8:00. He didn't look like he was going to slow down or blow up, and I never did catch up to him. 

As it turned out, as miserable as my swim was, I had beaten that guy in the water, and on the bike, but when he ran by me, he edged me off the podium into a fourth place for my age group. He ended up two minutes faster than me for overall time. Kudos to Michael Doyle and score one for the runners!

On the run I finished at 25:09, just nine seconds over my prediction, ranked 189th overall, and fifth in my age group.

A the end of the day, my total time of 1:11:56 was exactly 1 minute, 56 seconds over my predicted finish time, and gave me 119th place overall. I was in the top third of all competitors, with plenty of competitors of all age groups, including five in my own, behind me. For the first event in my first real Triathlon season, it was a solid performance, save the swim, and will provide me with some focus areas for improvement for the rest of the season.

And now for that note on transition time. The first place finisher in my age group, Scott Mellecker, was slower than the second place guy, Charles Tillett, on the combined swim, bike and run time, but beat him by a minute and a half: all transition time. Lesson learned: Ya gotta be fast in the T!

Happy Monday and Thank You for reading. Sorry for the long post, but I just have SO MUCH TO SAY!!! Please comment if you are so inspired - what you have to say couldn't possibly be as stupid as the things I've already admitted to in this post.

More training banter, installments to the ongoing story, and nervous chatter leading up to the next event of the season ("Escape the Cape" on Onset, MA on June 4th) to come!

Reminders to self for next time:

• screw the booties 
• get a full length wetsuit, stupid
• eat lighter the night before and Gu up 20 minutes before the start
• trim total transition time from 3:45 to 2:30
• do a 200 yard swim warm-up before the start