Since the triathlon two Sundays ago, I haven't done a whole lot. I swam the Monday night after the race (May 18th), and went biking for 14.76 miles on Tuesday the 19th, and I swam on Wednesday the 20th and Saturday the 23rd, then ran 3.1 miles tonight, Wednesday, May 27th. I also played golf with my dad on Memorial Day, but that doesn't really count as "training." Ironically, though, it'd been so long since I played golf that the repetitive swing motion made me sore the next day.
The reason for my reduction in training is due to the simple fact that I've been very sore recently. Mainly saddle sore. I'm not used to all the miles I've been putting in on the bike. Part of it has to do with my ride on the 19th. 14.76 miles is the longest I've ever been on the bike, and come the Thursday after, I could tell I'd likely been biking a bit too much. The back of my thighs ached constantly, likely from all the time in the saddle, and that ache continued thru Memorial Day. It was far less than pleasant, and I decided to back off a bit and let my body recover from the race and the extra miles I've been doing so as to prevent sickness or injury.
That said, the bike ride on the 19th went very well. I met up with a local triathlon group at the downtown airport to ride, and did four laps around the complex. Not only was this the longest I've ever done, it was a new record for average speed - 15.7 MPH. My goal is to get my average speed up to around 17 or 18 MPH for the half Ironman (HIM) in October, so this is a step in the right direction. I'll grant that this course is mostly flat (two short, but steep, hills), but I'm hoping if I train well here it will translate come race day. I'm also glad I met with the group - had I been on my own, I likely would have stopped after three laps instead of getting the extra 3.7 miles in.
I don't have much to say about the swimming workouts. I did the yardage and felt OK doing it.
Tonight's run went well, however. I did 3.1 miles in 39:19, which is a new record for me. I ran .5 miles and walked .1 to rest for the entire run, and it worked out well. When I first started running last summer, I was doing .1/.1 splits, so to come back after a long layoff and still manage a .5/.1 split for 3 miles felt good. I'm confident that after a few more weeks, maybe a month, I'll be back to running upwards of 5 miles without walking at all.
Overall, I'm glad I scaled back the training a bit. I'm in the beginning of my HIM training plan (it's a twenty week plan) and I think that for my current fitness level it's a bit ambitious. My plan currently is to do what I can, sticking to the plan as closely as I can, and hopefully eventually do all the workouts it's calling for. Even if I never get there, I'm firmly in the "You have a HIM coming up, it's time to train for it" mindset, so I should be able to work up to the distances needed by October and be ready for this race, even if my progress to those distances is slower than my plan would like.
My main focus now is the HIM. I'm planning on doing a 5K on the 4th of July, and I have the Matt Mason Tri at the beginning of August, but both of these are pretty minor races for me right now. I'm doing the 5K mainly because it's going to be a cool, patriotic race, and the Matt Mason tri will really just be a tune-up for the HIM, giving me one more chance to practice my transitions and open water swim skills for real before the big day in October. Of course, the Matt Mason tri will also be really patriotic, which really appeals to me (it's a memorial race for a fallen Navy SEAL, who was killed when the helicopter he was in was shot down in Afghanistan on a mission). In fact, the race's patriotism is what inspired me to sign up for it last year. I'm looking forward to actually experiencing it this year, provided Mother Nature doesn't have other plans again.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Kansas City Triathlon Race Report
Fair warning: this is a long entry. The race was last Sunday, but I purposely took a few days to get this up here because I wanted to let the entire experience sink in a bit before trying to write about it.
This past Sunday, I participated in the Kansas City Triathlon. It was my first outdoor triathlon, and I spent the entire week before the race obsessively checking the weather, hoping that we wouldn't have a repeat of the Matt Mason tri last August and end up with another rain-out. The rain came down in torrents on Saturday, and Sunday dawned cloudy, but the weather did not actually do anything on Sunday.
They offered both a Sprint and Olympic distance at this race. I chose to do the Sprint distance, the shorter of the two. The Sprint consists of 500 meters of swimming, 12.4 miles of biking and 3.1 miles of running.
I got out of bed at 3:30 am to make sure I had enough time to get to the lake. The transition area was set to open at 5:00, and I wanted to leave by 4:15 to get down there. I'd packed most of my stuff in my car the previous night, so all I had to do this morning was get dressed, air up my tires and put my bike rack and bike on the car. We ended up leaving right on time, and got down there and parked almost right at 5:00.
The first thing I did was take my bike off my car and went looking for chip pick-up. After getting my timing chip, I found my way to the entrance to the transition area. Upon finding it, I got my body marked by the volunteers there (my race number, 523, on my left arm and my age on my left calf) and entered transition.
Everyone in transition had an assigned rack based on the race number. Every rack had a range of race numbers, and where you placed your bike on that rack was a first-come-first-served system. I found the rack that contained my number and was lucky enough to get the spot right next to the center aisle (a very enviable position as it limits the distance you have to travel in transition and makes spotting your rack that much easier).
I'd brought a shopping bag with me to help me keep my stuff organized once the race started, and was planning on using it mainly as a place to stash my wet suit after the swim finished. I ended up being very glad I had it with me; it made finding my bike that much easier as all I had to look for on the ground was a grey rectangular bag.
I placed the bag and my towel behind my bike, put both pairs of shoes and my camelback in front of my bike, and placed my helmet directly beneath my bike. My helmet contained all the miscellaneous items I would need for the ride - my sunglasses, my cycling cap, my gloves and my spibelt which contained my cell phone.
Below are two photos of my transition area before the race started. I apologize for how dark they are; I took them before the sun rose and didn't think to take any more once it was light outside. Not shown here is my shirt - I ended up draping it over the aerobars before the swim.
After getting the transition area set up, I had a bit of downtime before the swim warm-ups started. I walked around and looked at some of the vendor tents, then got into my wet suit. I got into the water and did some warming up after they opened the beach, mainly to get accustomed to the water temperature, which was at a chilly 64 degrees.
The race start was done in waves, based on which race you were doing and your age group in your particular race. The Olympic race started first, followed by the Sprint.
As the Olympic triathletes took off, most of the Sprint racers gathered on the beach to await our turn to start. Watching them was very sobering. The water was very choppy and many of them were calling over the kayakers or the people in the pontoon boats and being pulled from the water as they were unable to complete the swim. Getting pulled out like this is a big deal - by asking to be pulled out (or just getting pulled out without asking), you're disqualified from the rest of the race. No bike, no run, no finisher medal. You're just done for the day, and seeing some of these athletes tapping out made me a bit nervous.
.
In no time at all my wave was next to start. We were called up to the corral and entered the water, moving out about five to ten feet from shore. I went in barefoot (I'd worn swim shoes in the warm up) and the cold water quickly infiltrated the ankles of my wet suit. As I stood there in the cold water for the fifteen to twenty seconds it took for the race director to blow the horn and send us on our way (if felt more like fifteen or twenty minutes), I was very nervous. I'd just seen a bunch of people get pulled from the water, and didn't really know what to expect since I'd never done an open water swim before. Thankfully, before I could think it over too much, the air horn sounded and off we went.
The first 100 to 200 yards of the swim went well. I was surrounded by people but had enough space to swim without being smacked in the face by someone's feet, and I was getting my sighting down and heading in a pretty good line for the first buoy. Then I turned to take a breath and sucked down a lungful of water instead of the air I'd been expecting. I, of course, stopped dead, coughing and sputtering and trying desperately to keep some form of forward movement going so I wouldn't be plowed over by the people behind me.
A few seconds later I'd recovered enough to resume mostly forward movement, but the effects of that one bad breath were telling. I couldn't confidently do freestyle. Every time I put my face under and tried to take a normal stroke, I felt like I was choking again. I resigned myself to doing breaststroke, a little bit of backstroke (which usually ended pretty quickly after waves splashed my upturned face), and a weird hybrid of the two where I was on my side, doing a breaststroke kick and pulling with my lower arm.
Overall, my swim was not what I wanted. I expected this to be my best event. After all, I swam competitively for almost a decade, and for four of those years my main event was the 500 yard freestyle (the swim here was roughly 550 yards). This should be a walk in the park, old hat, easy as pie. Never have I been so wrong.
The open water really got to me. I know that happened when I sucked in that water: I tried to take a breath at the exact instant a wave was in my face. Obviously this is never a problem in a pool, so I didn't think too much about it until it happened. Had I been more practiced at bi-lateral breathing, I would likely have been breathing on my left side at the beginning of the race (the side away from the wind). However, for my entire swimming career, I've always breathed on my right side, and undoing all those years of habit is just plain hard and exceedingly uncomfortable (it's akin to attempting to write with you non-dominant hand). But, now I have something I know I need to work on in training.
The swim ended up taking 16:31. Had I been in a pool, I could have completed this in about 10 minutes at my current level of fitness. When I exited the lake and looked at my watch, I wasn't really pleased with my time, but I was very pleased that the swim was behind me and that I was out of that cold water. I headed up the beach to transition just as fast as I could, stripping the wet suit off my upper body as I did so.
Once I reached the transition area, I found my bike easily, thanks to having that nice end spot on the race. I had to sit down to get the wet suit the rest of the way off, then threw it into the shopping bag and quickly toweled off, concentrating on my feet, trying to remove any sand and mud that might still be on them so that wouldn't be a factor once I got my socks and shoes on. I got my socks on as quickly as I could with wet feet, then got my shoes slipped on and threw my shirt on. After my shirt was on, I donned my sunglasses, biking cap, gloves and helmet, then took my bike off the rack and walked towards the bike out area. All told, I spent 6 minutes 59 seconds in T1, which is a little bit too long. This is an area to work on for next time.
The bike portion actually went pretty well. I've said before that swimming is my best event, but biking is my favorite. I really enjoyed the ride at this race. I went a bit past the bike mount line and got my right shoe clipped in and then took off, getting my left shoe clipped in fairly easily, which is not always a given. The bike course was very well marked in terms of where to turn and where to go, and there were plenty of volunteers (both civilians and police officers) to help direct you in the right direction.
There were some hills, but only two really stand out in my memory. The first really bad hill came at the worst time - right after a 180 degree turn. We headed down the hill, then had to slow to turn around at the bottom of it and go right back up it. Now, obviously, the main strategy for hills is to build up as much speed as you can on the downhill and then use the momentum going up the next hill so you don't have to work as hard. This doesn't work when you have to brake to turn at the bottom, but I made it back up the hill and pressed on.
The second killer hill came in around the ten mile mark or so (guesstimating here, not exactly sure what the mileage was). This time there were no gimmicks or tricks with turns - it was just a really steep, really long hill. As soon as you managed to climb it, you had another 180 degree turn to go right back down it. I will admit that the downhill here was fun, but also pretty scary. I reached a top speed of 39.8 MPH going down this hill, and more than once felt like I was going entirely too fast for comfort. I wish I could have gotten another 0.2 MPH, but I also think that extra little bit of speed would've ended with me laying the bike down. Not a good thing at that speed.
I was able to stay in the aero position for long periods of time on this ride, something I've been unable to do before now. I really like the aero position. I'm hunched down low over the handlebars and can get quite a bit more power to the pedals. I know I'll be using this position alot.
I finished the bike portion in 54 minutes 59 seconds with an average pace of 13.6 MPH. Heading into T2 after the bike portion I was feeling good. Tired, of course, but overall pretty good. Two thirds of this thing were down, and all I had left was a 3.1 mile run. I knew I could walk some of it if I needed to, and that there was no danger of either drowning or crashing, both of which would have likely ended my race. I hopped off my bike a bit before the dismount line and struggled to get my right foot unclipped, almost falling in the process, but I managed to get my foot disengaged from the pedal and planted firmly on the ground just in time.
I walked my bike back to my rack, using the grey shopping back to quickly identify where I needed to go. I quickly re-racked my bike, then removed my helmet and gloves and switched my biking shoes for my running shoes and headed towards the run out. T2 took me 2 minutes 39 seconds to complete.
The run was pretty typical for me. It's my least favorite event, and I ended up walking some of it, but I ran more than I walked, which was the goal. Nothing really special to say about the run; it was a run. I finished the run in 42 minutes 30 seconds, with an average pace of 13 minutes and 43 seconds per mile.
The next thing I knew I was across the finish line and a volunteer was hanging my medal around my neck. I felt elated that I'd finally accomplished my goal, and relieved that I was finally finished for the day. My first stop after finishing was at the Tri KC tent to get a cookie, then I sat down at a table and waited for my wife to find me. We found each other pretty easily (hooray for cell phones!) and both sat for a few minutes, talking about the race and taking it all in. After we sat for a few minutes, I went back to the transition area, packed up my stuff and took my bike to the car and headed for home.
This past Sunday, I participated in the Kansas City Triathlon. It was my first outdoor triathlon, and I spent the entire week before the race obsessively checking the weather, hoping that we wouldn't have a repeat of the Matt Mason tri last August and end up with another rain-out. The rain came down in torrents on Saturday, and Sunday dawned cloudy, but the weather did not actually do anything on Sunday.
They offered both a Sprint and Olympic distance at this race. I chose to do the Sprint distance, the shorter of the two. The Sprint consists of 500 meters of swimming, 12.4 miles of biking and 3.1 miles of running.
I got out of bed at 3:30 am to make sure I had enough time to get to the lake. The transition area was set to open at 5:00, and I wanted to leave by 4:15 to get down there. I'd packed most of my stuff in my car the previous night, so all I had to do this morning was get dressed, air up my tires and put my bike rack and bike on the car. We ended up leaving right on time, and got down there and parked almost right at 5:00.
The first thing I did was take my bike off my car and went looking for chip pick-up. After getting my timing chip, I found my way to the entrance to the transition area. Upon finding it, I got my body marked by the volunteers there (my race number, 523, on my left arm and my age on my left calf) and entered transition.
Everyone in transition had an assigned rack based on the race number. Every rack had a range of race numbers, and where you placed your bike on that rack was a first-come-first-served system. I found the rack that contained my number and was lucky enough to get the spot right next to the center aisle (a very enviable position as it limits the distance you have to travel in transition and makes spotting your rack that much easier).
I'd brought a shopping bag with me to help me keep my stuff organized once the race started, and was planning on using it mainly as a place to stash my wet suit after the swim finished. I ended up being very glad I had it with me; it made finding my bike that much easier as all I had to look for on the ground was a grey rectangular bag.
I placed the bag and my towel behind my bike, put both pairs of shoes and my camelback in front of my bike, and placed my helmet directly beneath my bike. My helmet contained all the miscellaneous items I would need for the ride - my sunglasses, my cycling cap, my gloves and my spibelt which contained my cell phone.
Below are two photos of my transition area before the race started. I apologize for how dark they are; I took them before the sun rose and didn't think to take any more once it was light outside. Not shown here is my shirt - I ended up draping it over the aerobars before the swim.
After getting the transition area set up, I had a bit of downtime before the swim warm-ups started. I walked around and looked at some of the vendor tents, then got into my wet suit. I got into the water and did some warming up after they opened the beach, mainly to get accustomed to the water temperature, which was at a chilly 64 degrees.
 |
| After warm-ups, ready to start the swim |
As the Olympic triathletes took off, most of the Sprint racers gathered on the beach to await our turn to start. Watching them was very sobering. The water was very choppy and many of them were calling over the kayakers or the people in the pontoon boats and being pulled from the water as they were unable to complete the swim. Getting pulled out like this is a big deal - by asking to be pulled out (or just getting pulled out without asking), you're disqualified from the rest of the race. No bike, no run, no finisher medal. You're just done for the day, and seeing some of these athletes tapping out made me a bit nervous.
.
In no time at all my wave was next to start. We were called up to the corral and entered the water, moving out about five to ten feet from shore. I went in barefoot (I'd worn swim shoes in the warm up) and the cold water quickly infiltrated the ankles of my wet suit. As I stood there in the cold water for the fifteen to twenty seconds it took for the race director to blow the horn and send us on our way (if felt more like fifteen or twenty minutes), I was very nervous. I'd just seen a bunch of people get pulled from the water, and didn't really know what to expect since I'd never done an open water swim before. Thankfully, before I could think it over too much, the air horn sounded and off we went.
 |
| My wave (I'm the one in the black wet suit and green swim cap) |
A few seconds later I'd recovered enough to resume mostly forward movement, but the effects of that one bad breath were telling. I couldn't confidently do freestyle. Every time I put my face under and tried to take a normal stroke, I felt like I was choking again. I resigned myself to doing breaststroke, a little bit of backstroke (which usually ended pretty quickly after waves splashed my upturned face), and a weird hybrid of the two where I was on my side, doing a breaststroke kick and pulling with my lower arm.
Overall, my swim was not what I wanted. I expected this to be my best event. After all, I swam competitively for almost a decade, and for four of those years my main event was the 500 yard freestyle (the swim here was roughly 550 yards). This should be a walk in the park, old hat, easy as pie. Never have I been so wrong.
The open water really got to me. I know that happened when I sucked in that water: I tried to take a breath at the exact instant a wave was in my face. Obviously this is never a problem in a pool, so I didn't think too much about it until it happened. Had I been more practiced at bi-lateral breathing, I would likely have been breathing on my left side at the beginning of the race (the side away from the wind). However, for my entire swimming career, I've always breathed on my right side, and undoing all those years of habit is just plain hard and exceedingly uncomfortable (it's akin to attempting to write with you non-dominant hand). But, now I have something I know I need to work on in training.
The swim ended up taking 16:31. Had I been in a pool, I could have completed this in about 10 minutes at my current level of fitness. When I exited the lake and looked at my watch, I wasn't really pleased with my time, but I was very pleased that the swim was behind me and that I was out of that cold water. I headed up the beach to transition just as fast as I could, stripping the wet suit off my upper body as I did so.
Once I reached the transition area, I found my bike easily, thanks to having that nice end spot on the race. I had to sit down to get the wet suit the rest of the way off, then threw it into the shopping bag and quickly toweled off, concentrating on my feet, trying to remove any sand and mud that might still be on them so that wouldn't be a factor once I got my socks and shoes on. I got my socks on as quickly as I could with wet feet, then got my shoes slipped on and threw my shirt on. After my shirt was on, I donned my sunglasses, biking cap, gloves and helmet, then took my bike off the rack and walked towards the bike out area. All told, I spent 6 minutes 59 seconds in T1, which is a little bit too long. This is an area to work on for next time.
 |
| Exiting T1 |
The bike portion actually went pretty well. I've said before that swimming is my best event, but biking is my favorite. I really enjoyed the ride at this race. I went a bit past the bike mount line and got my right shoe clipped in and then took off, getting my left shoe clipped in fairly easily, which is not always a given. The bike course was very well marked in terms of where to turn and where to go, and there were plenty of volunteers (both civilians and police officers) to help direct you in the right direction.
There were some hills, but only two really stand out in my memory. The first really bad hill came at the worst time - right after a 180 degree turn. We headed down the hill, then had to slow to turn around at the bottom of it and go right back up it. Now, obviously, the main strategy for hills is to build up as much speed as you can on the downhill and then use the momentum going up the next hill so you don't have to work as hard. This doesn't work when you have to brake to turn at the bottom, but I made it back up the hill and pressed on.
The second killer hill came in around the ten mile mark or so (guesstimating here, not exactly sure what the mileage was). This time there were no gimmicks or tricks with turns - it was just a really steep, really long hill. As soon as you managed to climb it, you had another 180 degree turn to go right back down it. I will admit that the downhill here was fun, but also pretty scary. I reached a top speed of 39.8 MPH going down this hill, and more than once felt like I was going entirely too fast for comfort. I wish I could have gotten another 0.2 MPH, but I also think that extra little bit of speed would've ended with me laying the bike down. Not a good thing at that speed.
I was able to stay in the aero position for long periods of time on this ride, something I've been unable to do before now. I really like the aero position. I'm hunched down low over the handlebars and can get quite a bit more power to the pedals. I know I'll be using this position alot.
I finished the bike portion in 54 minutes 59 seconds with an average pace of 13.6 MPH. Heading into T2 after the bike portion I was feeling good. Tired, of course, but overall pretty good. Two thirds of this thing were down, and all I had left was a 3.1 mile run. I knew I could walk some of it if I needed to, and that there was no danger of either drowning or crashing, both of which would have likely ended my race. I hopped off my bike a bit before the dismount line and struggled to get my right foot unclipped, almost falling in the process, but I managed to get my foot disengaged from the pedal and planted firmly on the ground just in time.
I walked my bike back to my rack, using the grey shopping back to quickly identify where I needed to go. I quickly re-racked my bike, then removed my helmet and gloves and switched my biking shoes for my running shoes and headed towards the run out. T2 took me 2 minutes 39 seconds to complete.
The run was pretty typical for me. It's my least favorite event, and I ended up walking some of it, but I ran more than I walked, which was the goal. Nothing really special to say about the run; it was a run. I finished the run in 42 minutes 30 seconds, with an average pace of 13 minutes and 43 seconds per mile.
 |
| Heading towards the finish line |
 |
| Almost there! |
 |
| Finished! |
Overall, the race was great. I had a really good time doing it, and never once thought "I don't know if I can make it," The race itself was very well organized and executed. From talking to some of the other triathletes, I understand that this is one of the tougher tris in the K.C. area, mainly due to the cold, choppy water and some of the hills on the bike leg. Everyone I talked to agreed that the swim this year was the roughest they've experienced at any tri in the area for the past half decade, so I don't feel so bad about my swim time now as I did right after I finished. I should have realized it would be a rough swim beforehand based on how many people were pulled out of the water, but I didn't think about it that way then.
Still, a great first tri for me. If I can do one of the toughest tris in the area for my first tri, I'm confident that I can do my next tri without issue.
I'm now proud to call myself a triathlete.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)