3 hours and two beatings!

Heading into this race, two things had been causing me enough grief that I really wanted to not even show up.  Thank you coach for not letting me back out!

This would be my first race that wasn’t wetsuit legal, and I had yet to swim even half that distance non-stop in open water.  The last time I’d tried, I allowed myself to get overwhelmed with thoughts of what could happen and chickened out of doing the swim.

Like everyone else, I’ve also been fighting the heat, only I’d let my struggles get into my head and diminish my confidence.  Heat and dehydration has already crushed one race this year (or at least been a large contributing factor) and cut short many runs.

So, I really didn’t want to do this race, and hinted several times to coach that she should have me pull out.  If she picked up on my hints, she never acknowledged them.  I knew that if I did well it would be a huge confidence boost, but doing poorly would deepen my doubts.  Race day I focused on keeping busy with the details, so I wouldn’t freak myself out.  I found stuff to do right up to start time , even giving other obviously new racers pep talks.

So here is what happened:

The swim:

It was another deep water start.  Since I don’t float so well, I opted to stand on the shore 20-30 yards behind the starting line.  I’d rather swim the extra distance than burn up all that energy trying to stay afloat.  This put me way back in the swim pack, a place I’ve learned to avoid because that is where the bad swimmers are.  The first 250 yards were a battle trying to get around people who can’t swim straight, or breast strokers who will kick you in the head or stomach and not even notice.  Several times I stopped swimming long enough to search out clear water, which would never last because I was swimming faster than most of those around me.

Once I got going it was just routine; stroke and breath, look up every now and then to make sure I was on course.  I did lose the seal on one goggle, but smacked it with my hand and kept going without hardly breaking stride!  The only real problem arose because of how the race organizers had scheduled the races.  I was the in the last wave of the Olympic distance.  Behind me was the sprint distance racers.  The course was an out and back, which meant that halfway through my “back” I ran smack into a bunch of sprint racers.  There were bodies all over the place and I couldn’t find any room to swim.  I got kicked in the head and stomach MANY times, and felt like I almost ripped the shorts off of one swimmer!  Normally I would have tried to accelerate through the crowd into open space, but no wetsuit meant less buoyancy, and less buoyancy meant less risk taking.

I finally made it to the end and was able to stand up.  Because there were only two volunteers helping people out of the water, we were pretty backed up.  I think that helped me, because once out of the water I didn’t experience any of my normal disorientation.  I took off, running around people trying to get to my bike.  I quickly changed into my bike gear, and ran past people to start the bike leg.

Beating #1:  that darn gorilla hanging on my back telling me I couldn’t do the swim.  It was an unofficial new PR for the swim split by 3 minutes.  I know I can do this, and he won’t be hanging around me any more!

The bike:

The first thing I did once I got going was to take a GU and drink some water.  I’d forgotten to bring an extra GU for race start, and I wanted to wash the salt water taste out of my mouth.  I was now out of the water and on track!

It’s been a while since I rode this distance (all of my recent rides have been longer), so I wasn’t sure how hard I could ride.  I wanted to go easier than my last race at this distance so I could have more left for the run.  This time I didn’t have any problems with my bike computer and I was able to monitor my activity the entire race.  I was in the 20 mph range and passing a lot of people.  Having started in the last wave I knew that each person I passed moved me up in the finishing order.  However, if people passed me it didn’t necessarily move me down because they could have started before me.  This really worked to my advantage.

I was doing most of the passing, until we hit the Kemah bridge.  I still passed people, but was passed myself by a couple of riders.  I checked my speed, and I was flying.  I was averaging speeds of 20-23 and didn’t feel like I was working that hard.  I know now that there was a bit of a tail wind helping me out as my speed dropped a bit in the other direction.  I had checked the route on paper, but wasn’t that familiar with this area and didn’t really know where I was other than my trip odometer.  It didn’t matter though, this was a flat and fast course.

With less than 5 miles left I was passed by one of my racing friends.  He is a much stronger biker than I, and since I hadn’t seen him yet I figured he had also beat me out of the water.  As he passed me I briefly thought about picking up my pace to try and stay close, but decided to stick with my original strategy:  save some for the run!

The run:

I started my run at close to 9 am, which meant I wouldn’t be running in the brutal heat of the day.  My plan for the run was to do the second half faster than the first.  While that is easy for me to do in a simple running race, coming off the bike I tend to start off faster than I can maintain.  I forced myself to hold the pack back, even though I was being passed.  I kept telling myself these people were going to run out of gas and I would pass them later on.  I also hoped to run the entire distance, that was my final battle of the day.

100 yards from the turnaround point I again saw my friend, coming towards me.  I walked long enough to down another GU, drink some water, and douse my head with cold water.  I succeeded with the first two objectives, but the water they were handing out was room temperature and didn’t do a lot to cool me down.  I had my own water I was carrying that was cool, but was trying to save that in case I started to overheat.  I started running again, only 3 miles to go!

I caught up to my friend, asked how he was doing, gave him words of encouragement, and then left him in the dust.  I stopped briefly at mile 5 for water to drink and my head, this time it was cold!  As we got closer to the finish I caught up to a taller and younger runner.  I stayed behind him to draft as there was a nice breeze coming off the water.  I tried to pass him a couple of times, but each time I drew close he would speed up and I would pull in behind him again.  Right at the end he found another gear I couldn’t match and he pulled away.  I wish I could have caught up to him to thank him as he made me work harder than I would have on my own.

Beating #2:  I beat my fear of the heat.  It wasn’t 90+ degrees, and I did walk through two aid stations, but for the most part I held my own today.  I also knocked several minutes off of my previous best run split.

Conclusion:

This was a huge race and mental victory for me.  Not only did I record new PR splits for the swim and run (and maybe the bike), but I knocked almost 10 minutes off my overall time.  I’m waiting to see the official results, but I think I’m within 15 minutes of the podium.  This was almost 30 minutes faster than my first Olympic race 10 months ago!

Finally, some swim help

I’ve been swimming for about a year now, and trying that entire time to find someone to help me with my swimming.  I had one lesson many months ago, and then the instructor never showed up again.  I tried to get lessons from the coach of the local swim team, and she chickened out at the last minute.  One of the lifeguards said he would help, but we never seemed to catch up with each other.  Keith at the gym said he teaches TI (Total Immersion), but seems too hung up on his experiences of 12+ years ago.

I found another swim coach, who also teaches TI, but he lives in Dallas which isn’t all that convenient to swing by for a swim lesson.  He said he would contact me when he came in town, maybe in September.

Then last weekend I went for an open water swim with the Bike Barn Tri Club.  As I was leaving the property owner mentioned that he had someone who taught swimming that came out every Friday afternoon to help people just like me.  I showed up promptly at 3, only to be informed he didn’t usually show up until 4 or later.  I waited about as long as I could before giving up and going out for a short swim of my own.  As I was toweling off to leave, here came Richard.

I only had a few minutes to work with him, but they were very productive minutes.  He showed me three things, two of which I could actually try to use in the race the next day.  The third was a drill and will have to wait for pool work (if I even try to implement it).  I figured a long open water swim was the perfect place to try out these two new techniques, as long as they didn’t get me too winded.  Nothing causes me more anxiety than the thought of getting winded in a deep open water swim, where maybe the lifeguards won’t spot me!

Either way, I have some stuff to work on that he says will fix my problem of swimming uphill, and I cannot wait to get after it!  I might even make it a habit of heading out there to swim several more times on Fridays for more help and open water practice.  It is a nice place to swim after all, even if it is 40 miles away!

It is just 3 hours!

With 20 minutes until I must leave for my next race what better to do than blog.  It should be a better use of time than pacing!

I must confess that I haven’t written much lately because I’ve been a bit down on myself.  I didn’t want to spend my energy thinking about my condition, but I also didn’t find a constructive use for said energy.  Finally, after speaking to coach about how I was feeling she thought I was a bit burnt out, and had worked myself into a mental hole.  A mini-break was due!

I took several days off, with my only workout an open swim.  It was the swim that I think did the trick.  I felt comfortable in the water, which removed much of my anxiety over the upcoming swim (scheduled to be too warm for wetsuits).  I’m still a bit concerned, and probably will be until I finish the swim without too much trouble.  But it is better!

My other concern has been the temperature.  It has been so hot in Houston, that the thought of a three hour race just wasn’t very exciting.  It hasn’t gotten any more exciting since my swim, but I am resigned to deal with it.  What the heck, everyone else will be running in the same heat!  The best news I’ve gotten in days was that it was only 85 today at 10:30, and I hope to be finished around that time.

The second best news?  I signed up for another similar race next weekend!  My first back-to-back races since I learned better!  Oh well, next weekend should be wetsuit legal (and much hillier and hotter!)

As I wrap up this entry, I get a chuckle out of what I caught myself thinking:  it is just a 3 hour race!

Questioning myself

It happened about 8:30 yesterday morning.  I was at mile 5 1/2 of a scheduled 12-13 mile run.  I’d been running for close to an hour, and I remember thinking how hot and humid it was, and how I’d already sweat so much that my socks were squishing with each step.  I hadn’t started pouring water over my head yet, so that was all sweat.

I had just started my second of three loops.  At the end of the first loop I’d changed out my water bottle for a larger one, and taken a GU.  I was set for another 8 miles.

The day before I’d ridden about 65 miles, followed by a 2 mile run.  It had been a tough workout, but I think I had recovered as best as I could.  My legs were a bit tired, but it wasn’t so much the running muscles and I had done this back-to-back workout many times before.

Then it happened, I was tired.  I really wanted to walk.  If I walk once, it becomes easier to walk again, so I really try to push off walking or avoid it all together.  I figured I would push off doing anything at all until mile 6, and hope I could then push it off again.  Mile 6 came, and I couldn’t push it off.  It wasn’t that my legs were shot, I was over breathing, my heart was racing (although it was probably beating harder than I would have liked); I was just really tired.  I walked for a bit in the shade, poured some water over my head and back, and then started running again.

It was now a real mental and physical battle to keep running.  I backed off of the pace some, kept using water to cool me off and fought the urge to walk.  I lost the battle twice more before I hit mile 9. 

Fighting through that second loop, I was also fighting another battle:  the thought of another 4 mile loop after this one.  I was calculating alternate, shorter loops, trying to figure out something I felt I could do that made sense.

I had to stop at mile 9 to get more water.  That extra break time, on top of my current mental state, was the kiss of death as I never got going again.  I’d like to say I’d made a rational decision that even a 1.5 mile loop made no sense if I was going to end up walking one or more times, but that wasn’t it.  I was just done and I knew it.  I knew it a couple of miles back and forced myself to continue.

That was all that ‘it’ was, in fact that wasn’t it at all.  It:  I started to question whether I have what it takes.  If I can’t finish a weekend run, how will I be able to finish a longer race?  If I can’t do the race, then why should I do these runs.  I wasn’t particularly enjoying this run, and if it isn’t fun why am I doing it.  The problem with these mental battles, is that if I lose them on the field, I struggle with my loss for days or weeks.

If there is a silver lining to my latest loss, it was in an email from coach.  Her exact words were:  “You ‘cracked’ at the end of a 3 week build cycle…  Perfect!”  I agree that I cracked, and I also agree that it was at the end of a 3 week build cycle.  Perfect?  I’m not so sure about that.

Here’s the funny part.  I almost just wrote “Why does this have to be so hard”, when that is exactly why I do it.  If it was easy everyone would do it and it would hold no allure for me.

So today I relax and recover and get ready to start up another week tomorrow!

I’m Baaack!

I feel like I haven’t written in a while, and I guess that’s because I haven’t!  I subscribe to other bloggers, some regular, and others who are worse than I about keeping current.  I don’t know how Fatty manages to come up with daily content worth reading, because I cannot.  I figure if I don’t have something worth saying I’ll just keep quiet.  So here’s what’s been going on.

I took a much deserved break after my last race, and my wife and I took a mini-vacation to Detroit to visit our babies.  Seeing the kids was nice, and minimal or no training for a few days was even nicer.

That lasted a week, and then coach threw me back into the deep end.  For a lot of triathletes, what I’m doing isn’t that hard.  For me, 12 hours a week of training IS a lot.  When I consider that my easy day consists of 1.5 hour bike ride, and a 5-6 mile run, it’s a tough week!

While the training has been tough, it hasn’t been back to my normal yet.  One weekend I did a long brick with the Bike Barn triathlon club, and last weekend I went to Austin to train.  When I hit the roads Saturday it will be the first day back on my normal bike route in 5 or so weeks!

Austin was fun and very different.  The ride was much hillier, and there weren’t a lot of other riders out there.  I did see one couple I wanted to catch/pass, but with 50 yards left they turned off onto another road.  Not being that familiar with the roads there, I keep my route simple – an out and back.  The last 10-15 minutes of the out were the best with the hardest hills.  I need to do some longer rides (longer than 3.5 hours) so I can get further into those hills.

I ran at Town Lake.  I tried that once before:  I ended up taking a wrong turn and wound up running down Loop 1.  This time I decided to follow someone to make sure I didn’t get messed up.  I jumped in behind a couple of older looking ladies.  Let me clarify what I mean by older.  They were younger than I, but older than the 29+ freaks of nature that frequent that area and run like Amazon women!  Seriously, there are some really fast people that run out there!

Anyway, I pulled in behind these women thinking I could easily keep up, only before I knew it I was sucking air and working hard to keep up.  Call it stubborn, or male ego, or whatever, but I wasn’t going to let those ladies drop me.  Fortunately they pulled off to end their run after about 3 miles.  Knowing where I was, how I got there, and how to get back to the start, I was able to do another 7 miles at my own pace; faster than some, and slower than many others.

I’ve got two and a half weeks to my next race, an Olympic distance and probably my first swim without a wetsuit.  The best part is that I’m hardly thinking about the race.  I’ve got this distance, it might even be my best.  The only thing that has be a bit concerned is the lack of a wetsuit.  I know I’ll be slower, so I just need to start a bit further back, relax, and just get through the swim.  The plan is to push a little bit on the bike but not as hard as the last Olympic so that I have more gas left for the run.  I think that is where I can make up some real time.

Let’s get it on!