July is almost upon us which means the return of the Lazyman Triathlon and the Cville International Tri.
Lazyman
I've participated the last two years in a Lazyman Triathlon put on by some friends at work. The goal is to do the entire distance of the Ironman Triathlon but instead of doing it all in one day, you have all of July to do it. That means 2.4 miles swimming, 112 miles biking, and 26.2 miles running.
The last two years I have successfully completed both the swim and the run with miles to spare in both of them. I have not yet successfully completed the bike portion during the timeframe. Therefore this year I have created a plan in which I do a short bike (10ish miles) once a week and a long bike ride (30+ miles) on Sunday morning (except the last Sunday... more on that in a second). This plan allows a little flexibility in weather conditions and routes, but it is a much more solid plan for getting the miles done.
For swimming I'll probably knock it out fairly quickly since it is only 3863 meters and once a week I try to do 1500+ meters (working on distance) and another time in the week do 750+ meters (working on power/speed).
Since my marathon training program starts the last week in July with runs of 3 miles, 4 miles, 3 miles, and 5 miles all in that first week I need to make sure I'm in shape for it. Thus my plan for the rest of July is to do two 3 mile runs during the week and a 3-5 mile run on the weekend (starting with 3 and working up). Even if I low end the weekend run, that is still three 3 mile runs in a week, so I'll be done with the run portion in 3 weeks.
Cville International Triathlon
Once again I'm part of a relay team for the Cville International Triathlon. This year my team members are my coworkers David & Will. I will once again be doing the swim which is ~1500m (thus why my long swims start at 1500m and get longer). I really want to improve on my time over last year and give my team a fighting chance.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Sprint Triathlon Analysis
I like numbers. So here are the fun comparisons to last year's race stats.
Swim
This year - 11:10. 63rd out of 108.
Last year - 13:18. 81st out of 109.
This is the area I did the most consistent work on through out the year. I focused on getting more power out of my strokes.
Transition 1
This year - 1:56. 46th out of 108.
Last year - 2:50. 85th out of 109.
Being in the mentality of wanting to win instead of just finish I pushed harder to get through transitions quickly.
Bike
This year - 1:13:20. 78th out of 108.
Last year - 1:13:52. 88th out of 109.
I practiced on the course a lot more and got a professional bike fit to make it possible to get more power out. While the time did not increase, my relative placement improved so that is the equalizer of the course having extra gravel.
Transition 2
This year - 1:32. 73rd out of 108.
Last year - 2:09. 93rd out of 108.
Like T1, I knowingly tried to speed this up.
Run
This year - 40:14. 93rd out of 108.
Last year - 32:17. 77th out of 109.
Last year I routinely ran multiple times a week but this year I just didn't have that same commitment to the run. I clearly paid for it.
Overall
This year - 2:08:14. 86th out of 108.
Last year - 2:04:26. 87th out of 109.
So despite the longer time, I was in the same relative position as last year. I am happy with decreasing my swim, bike, and transition times.
Swim
This year - 11:10. 63rd out of 108.
Last year - 13:18. 81st out of 109.
This is the area I did the most consistent work on through out the year. I focused on getting more power out of my strokes.
Transition 1
This year - 1:56. 46th out of 108.
Last year - 2:50. 85th out of 109.
Being in the mentality of wanting to win instead of just finish I pushed harder to get through transitions quickly.
Bike
This year - 1:13:20. 78th out of 108.
Last year - 1:13:52. 88th out of 109.
I practiced on the course a lot more and got a professional bike fit to make it possible to get more power out. While the time did not increase, my relative placement improved so that is the equalizer of the course having extra gravel.
Transition 2
This year - 1:32. 73rd out of 108.
Last year - 2:09. 93rd out of 108.
Like T1, I knowingly tried to speed this up.
Run
This year - 40:14. 93rd out of 108.
Last year - 32:17. 77th out of 109.
Last year I routinely ran multiple times a week but this year I just didn't have that same commitment to the run. I clearly paid for it.
Overall
This year - 2:08:14. 86th out of 108.
Last year - 2:04:26. 87th out of 109.
So despite the longer time, I was in the same relative position as last year. I am happy with decreasing my swim, bike, and transition times.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Race Report
Woohoo! I took first in my category!
Now to the full face report.
Prerace
I arrived at 5:50am to Walnut Creek Park. Took my bike, a towel, and my race number down. Saved my rack spot with my bike and towel, then went to get body marked. After that I went to get the rest of my stuff. Got all of that done by 6:10. Transition didn't close until 7:10 which meant I had a lot of time to kill. Took a short run, did a short bike ride (which was good because I was in the wrong gear initially).
Swim
I was in the 6th swim wave since I was racing in the Athena Category. The prerace camaraderie was great. We were just joking around, supporting each other with Q/A, and cheering for each other. It was great.
Once we got in the water I placed myself in the middle of the pack figuring I wasn't a terrible swimmer but definitely not great. It seemed longer than 500m, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. I actually felt better about it this year than last and I came out of the water with still quite a few women behind me so that felt good.
Bike
Coming out of the swim I was more tired than I expected which I attribute mostly from running through the shallow part of the water to get out. So by the time I got out on the bike I was already breathing hard which is just a great place to start when the first mile is 90% uphill and a rather steep one at that. Thankfully I had trained on it and new I was getting a nice downhill once I got to the top.
The first major downhill I just blew down. I was in my top gear possible and still felt like I could've pushed more. I've really learned to enjoy the speed I can get from that and how far it'll carry me up the next one. Once I got to the first turn on major roads I had to slow down more than I wanted for two reasons. First as I stated yesterday, they had just laid fresh gravel down so it was a bit more treacherous and that means the road isn't as smooth to just crank it. Second, I had managed to catch up to a whole group of people ahead of me and just didn't have the speed to pass. Since we can't draft I had to stay 3 bike lengths behind the person in front of me. I did eventually pass a whole group of them but it was still not as quick as I would've liked.
When I got to the halfway point it is the only relatively flat road and I normally crank hard on it. I pushed hard, but I felt like I could've given it a little more but my energy was starting to drag. I did make sure I pushed hard enough so that if the notorious dogs came after me that I could get out fast since at that point I was pretty much all alone (as far as seeing folks ahead of me, not sure about behind me).
The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. I did use a powergel on the ride back so I could hope that I had enough energy for the run.
Run
I got back from the bike and had promised myself Gatoraid so I guzzled (mistake #1) more than I should have especially since I had not had positive experiences in the past while running with fluids sloshing in my stomach.
This year we did a slightly modified start to the run so that we wouldn't have to run over wet, slippery, uneven rocks and instead extend the path a bit to use a new bike path they had put in to address the issue of bikers trying to go over those same rocks.
The run time will not be good this year. The gatoraid caused my stomach to cramp and lack of enough trail running caused me to walk a large portion of it. I ran off and on passing Lance who I met on Thursday at a tri-club meeting. Eventually I was only walking and he caught up with me and said "come run with me." So I did. It was great to have someone to run with and he had the same opinions about up-hills that I did... they should be walked. Probably around mile 2.5 my stomach was just getting worse so I told him to go ahead and I would catch up. I finished probably about 20 seconds afterwards.
Overall
I crossed the mat at clock time of 2:27ish. Given that I was in wave six that put me 20 minutes behind the clock time, so I did it in 2:07-2:08ish depending on how the chip time comes out. Which means this year I was slower than last year. It could depend on many things... was the swim course actually longer this year (it felt it), did the gravel roads slow everyone down and thus my relative placement isn't as bad, just how much worse was my run since I think my bike was better. In the end, I'll look at all the pieces and see how I did and compare my relative ranking to the other women.
Placing
This year I competed in the Athena category (women over 150 pounds and opt-in to this category). In the past 3 years there have been 6-8 women who have finished each year. I figured I stood a much better chance placing in that then in my age group which had almost 30 women. As of race day there were only two of us. I raced the entire thing not being sure where the other woman was so I needed to either catch her or not let her catch me. In the end, she didn't end up racing. Thus I took first place by default! I still raced hard and given that when I signed up I did expect 6-8 other women, it's still a victory.
Epilogue: Nutrition is the 4th Sport
As mentioned in the run portion mistake #1 happened when I guzzled gatoraid before going out on the run. This was compounded with mistake #2 that I drank an ice cold gatoraid as soon as I finished. I both chugged it and was not used to drink ice cold water or gatoraid. Mistake #3 was eating about a full orange in a rather ravenous manner. Mistake #4 for drinking another ice cold gatoraid. Can you see where this is leading?
If not, let me guide you. In my cube I have a photocopy of a shoe ad that has the slogon "In triathlons, victory and defeat often taste the same" and a picture of a female triathlete on the side of the road curled up and clearly looking like she lost breakfast. Yep, that was me. Expect instead of losing breakfast I lost all that lovely gatoraid and orange pieces. I ended up doing it twice in two separate locations since I was dumb and tried to eat part of banana and water to calm my nerves. Nope, that just came up too.
This left my body in an extreme sugar low (which I already have issues with) and unable to eat. Thankfully the triathlon community is very supportive and so I had many offers of help to either take me to a hospital for IV fluids, take me home so I could rest, or just get me anything I needed. I appreciated it all.
Lesson learned: be careful about both pre-race and post-race nutrition.
Now to the full face report.
Prerace
I arrived at 5:50am to Walnut Creek Park. Took my bike, a towel, and my race number down. Saved my rack spot with my bike and towel, then went to get body marked. After that I went to get the rest of my stuff. Got all of that done by 6:10. Transition didn't close until 7:10 which meant I had a lot of time to kill. Took a short run, did a short bike ride (which was good because I was in the wrong gear initially).
Swim
I was in the 6th swim wave since I was racing in the Athena Category. The prerace camaraderie was great. We were just joking around, supporting each other with Q/A, and cheering for each other. It was great.
Once we got in the water I placed myself in the middle of the pack figuring I wasn't a terrible swimmer but definitely not great. It seemed longer than 500m, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. I actually felt better about it this year than last and I came out of the water with still quite a few women behind me so that felt good.
Bike
Coming out of the swim I was more tired than I expected which I attribute mostly from running through the shallow part of the water to get out. So by the time I got out on the bike I was already breathing hard which is just a great place to start when the first mile is 90% uphill and a rather steep one at that. Thankfully I had trained on it and new I was getting a nice downhill once I got to the top.
The first major downhill I just blew down. I was in my top gear possible and still felt like I could've pushed more. I've really learned to enjoy the speed I can get from that and how far it'll carry me up the next one. Once I got to the first turn on major roads I had to slow down more than I wanted for two reasons. First as I stated yesterday, they had just laid fresh gravel down so it was a bit more treacherous and that means the road isn't as smooth to just crank it. Second, I had managed to catch up to a whole group of people ahead of me and just didn't have the speed to pass. Since we can't draft I had to stay 3 bike lengths behind the person in front of me. I did eventually pass a whole group of them but it was still not as quick as I would've liked.
When I got to the halfway point it is the only relatively flat road and I normally crank hard on it. I pushed hard, but I felt like I could've given it a little more but my energy was starting to drag. I did make sure I pushed hard enough so that if the notorious dogs came after me that I could get out fast since at that point I was pretty much all alone (as far as seeing folks ahead of me, not sure about behind me).
The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. I did use a powergel on the ride back so I could hope that I had enough energy for the run.
Run
I got back from the bike and had promised myself Gatoraid so I guzzled (mistake #1) more than I should have especially since I had not had positive experiences in the past while running with fluids sloshing in my stomach.
This year we did a slightly modified start to the run so that we wouldn't have to run over wet, slippery, uneven rocks and instead extend the path a bit to use a new bike path they had put in to address the issue of bikers trying to go over those same rocks.
The run time will not be good this year. The gatoraid caused my stomach to cramp and lack of enough trail running caused me to walk a large portion of it. I ran off and on passing Lance who I met on Thursday at a tri-club meeting. Eventually I was only walking and he caught up with me and said "come run with me." So I did. It was great to have someone to run with and he had the same opinions about up-hills that I did... they should be walked. Probably around mile 2.5 my stomach was just getting worse so I told him to go ahead and I would catch up. I finished probably about 20 seconds afterwards.
Overall
I crossed the mat at clock time of 2:27ish. Given that I was in wave six that put me 20 minutes behind the clock time, so I did it in 2:07-2:08ish depending on how the chip time comes out. Which means this year I was slower than last year. It could depend on many things... was the swim course actually longer this year (it felt it), did the gravel roads slow everyone down and thus my relative placement isn't as bad, just how much worse was my run since I think my bike was better. In the end, I'll look at all the pieces and see how I did and compare my relative ranking to the other women.
Placing
This year I competed in the Athena category (women over 150 pounds and opt-in to this category). In the past 3 years there have been 6-8 women who have finished each year. I figured I stood a much better chance placing in that then in my age group which had almost 30 women. As of race day there were only two of us. I raced the entire thing not being sure where the other woman was so I needed to either catch her or not let her catch me. In the end, she didn't end up racing. Thus I took first place by default! I still raced hard and given that when I signed up I did expect 6-8 other women, it's still a victory.
Epilogue: Nutrition is the 4th Sport
As mentioned in the run portion mistake #1 happened when I guzzled gatoraid before going out on the run. This was compounded with mistake #2 that I drank an ice cold gatoraid as soon as I finished. I both chugged it and was not used to drink ice cold water or gatoraid. Mistake #3 was eating about a full orange in a rather ravenous manner. Mistake #4 for drinking another ice cold gatoraid. Can you see where this is leading?
If not, let me guide you. In my cube I have a photocopy of a shoe ad that has the slogon "In triathlons, victory and defeat often taste the same" and a picture of a female triathlete on the side of the road curled up and clearly looking like she lost breakfast. Yep, that was me. Expect instead of losing breakfast I lost all that lovely gatoraid and orange pieces. I ended up doing it twice in two separate locations since I was dumb and tried to eat part of banana and water to calm my nerves. Nope, that just came up too.
This left my body in an extreme sugar low (which I already have issues with) and unable to eat. Thankfully the triathlon community is very supportive and so I had many offers of help to either take me to a hospital for IV fluids, take me home so I could rest, or just get me anything I needed. I appreciated it all.
Lesson learned: be careful about both pre-race and post-race nutrition.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
12 hours...
12 hours from now I will likely be on my way to the park. Yep, I'm planning on being there by 5:50 so I can set up my gear right when the transition area opens at 6. Then time to chill out for an hour, eat a banana, and relax.
Swim - A couple days ago I did my first open water lake swim for the year. I really had forgotten how murky the water is and how variable the temperature is. One section would be chilly and another would be warm. A report from earlier today said the water was around 77 degrees which would make it wetsuit legal, but given that it is over 90+ and direct sun out there right now it will probably get back up to the normal 80 degrees.
Bike - Rather concerned about this because %()*&#($*& VDOT decided that Friday would be a great day to tear up one of the main roads we use. It's only a couple miles torn up, but we use that portion twice (going out and coming back). What's worse is that I've really practiced getting up my speed on that portion so I feel like it has been a lot of wasted effort. I guess we'll see how it goes tomorrow morning.
Run - some folks today said that it wasn't nearly as muddy as we were fearing thanks to a lot of the heat in the last couple days. Like always, I'm more worried about my nutrition for that portion.
Race placement - I'm in the 6th and final wave which means I'll have a lot of folks to pass on the bike if I'm lucky. That being said, there will also already be people done with the race by the time I get back from the bike.
Race category - the best I can tell there are still only two Athenas. I know the number of the other woman so I should be able to spot her reasonably well and just make it my goal to get ahead of her and stay ahead of her.
Swim - A couple days ago I did my first open water lake swim for the year. I really had forgotten how murky the water is and how variable the temperature is. One section would be chilly and another would be warm. A report from earlier today said the water was around 77 degrees which would make it wetsuit legal, but given that it is over 90+ and direct sun out there right now it will probably get back up to the normal 80 degrees.
Bike - Rather concerned about this because %()*&#($*& VDOT decided that Friday would be a great day to tear up one of the main roads we use. It's only a couple miles torn up, but we use that portion twice (going out and coming back). What's worse is that I've really practiced getting up my speed on that portion so I feel like it has been a lot of wasted effort. I guess we'll see how it goes tomorrow morning.
Run - some folks today said that it wasn't nearly as muddy as we were fearing thanks to a lot of the heat in the last couple days. Like always, I'm more worried about my nutrition for that portion.
Race placement - I'm in the 6th and final wave which means I'll have a lot of folks to pass on the bike if I'm lucky. That being said, there will also already be people done with the race by the time I get back from the bike.
Race category - the best I can tell there are still only two Athenas. I know the number of the other woman so I should be able to spot her reasonably well and just make it my goal to get ahead of her and stay ahead of her.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Rename to Muddy Buddy?
Earlier in the year I was considering doing the Muddy Buddy which features a large mud pit at the end of the run/bike race. I may get my chance to get truly muddy anyways this weekend. It has been raining every night during the past week and the trail for the run portion was already fairly muddy and waterlogged on Sunday. The forecast continues to call for more rain through the rest of the week, thus the trail is going to be essentially 3 miles of muddy fun. And when I say fun, it really won't be. The trail isn't that wide and mountain bikers ride through it so there are deep gashes in the trail in many places. Therefore, I suspect I'll have to either walk a fair bit in order to not slip & fall, and/or just kick up a bunch of mud onto myself. I predict run times overall this year will be slower. That being said, I'm still going to try my best.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
1 Week!
The final stretch for the Cville Sprint Tri is upon us. In one week from today, the triathlon will take place. This week I'm going to focus on eating right, not injuring myself, and light exercise. Unlike school tasks, this cannot be crammed for. Infact, training hard the last week before the event can reduce performance since it wears you out and the muscles may not be optimally reseted. That being said, it is good to keep moving.
As for my competition... First and foremost I'm trying to improve on my personal recored from last year. It's the same course, but the conditions may not be the same. Temperature, wind, and how much the trail is will all affect things. So I will use both the time but also relative position to the other women. The second part of the competition is that I've stated I want to place in my category of Athena. Right now that won't be too hard, there are 273 people signed up but out of that there are only two of us in the Athena category. There are still 57 spots open so we could get more, but right now its a small field.
The whole thing feels rather surreal. I know it is 7 days away, but it still seems like months away.
As for my competition... First and foremost I'm trying to improve on my personal recored from last year. It's the same course, but the conditions may not be the same. Temperature, wind, and how much the trail is will all affect things. So I will use both the time but also relative position to the other women. The second part of the competition is that I've stated I want to place in my category of Athena. Right now that won't be too hard, there are 273 people signed up but out of that there are only two of us in the Athena category. There are still 57 spots open so we could get more, but right now its a small field.
The whole thing feels rather surreal. I know it is 7 days away, but it still seems like months away.
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