September was a busy month. I’d started off with only one scheduled race. Then at the last minute I added another, shorter one, to help ease my jitters. When that went ok, I jumped in with both feet and decided to take on a new challenge: two races in one weekend on back to back days.
My coach “allowed” me to register for both with the understanding that I would race the sprint (the Saturday race), and then use the longer Sunday race as a training day. The trick would be proper recovery in between the races, and then good pacing on Sunday to avoid a blow-up.
Saturday went off exactly as planned, minus a slight problem removing my wetsuit after the swim. I actually finished a couple of minutes faster than I’d projected and ended up winning second place. I thought I’d done fairly well on the swim, and never saw anyone else in my age group the rest of the race. I honestly thought I might have won. Unfortunately someone snuck by me somewhere on the run and I missed the top prize by 20 seconds. I’m still very happy with my results. It’s worth noting that my time was only 2 minutes off my pace from 2 years ago when I was in top form, and most of that time was lost in the swim. This is a very good sign for things to come!
The problem was that now I stuck around at the finish line to cheer on the rest of my clan (we had four more family members racing) and then for the awards. What I was supposed to do was get my stuff and get home to eat, rest and get ready for Sunday. It was probably noon before I got home – not good considering I’d finished at 9. Then I felt sluggish the rest of the day. I was exhausted and my legs were tired, I just had no energy.
Sunday morning I was a bit better but certainly didn’t feel as fresh as I had on Saturday. To make it worse it was cold, windy, wet and drizzling outside. I’d decided to wear my short sleeved wetsuit to avoid the problems from Saturday and regretted it. I even checked the time to see if I had time to rush back home and get the other one.
The closer it got to my wave start the less I wanted to be there. I thought about packing up my stuff and going home, that’s how much I wasn’t into it. When they called my wave I told my wife bye and just did the motions to get started. In hindsight it felt like going to a swim workout: if I could just get in the water and get going everything would be fine.
Because this was just supposed to be a workout I started at the back of my swim group. That was a bit of a problem because I had to fight my way through and around the slower swimmers. I tried to draft some but felt badly when I kept hitting the feet of the guy in front of me and moved around. I wished the guy behind me would have done the same instead of pounding my calves! I finally found some space and then tried to work on my stroke (remembering it was just a workout). I found out that if I slowed my cadence I could hold form better and actually thought I was going faster. I wish I could have unconsciously kept that going, alas every time my mind wandered my stroke reverted to the old style.
I came out of the swim actually feeling pretty good about where I was, thinking I might be near the front of my age group. I quickly jumped on my bike (I did have the best transitions!) and started pounding it. It was sort of an out and back, and the previous day there was a headwind on the outbound leg. That thrilled me as I was going pretty fast and hard. Despite looking I never saw any wind signs, making me think I was just having a great day, not that there was a tail wind pushing me along. Also, I passed so many people I just knew I was having a good day. Until we turned around and ran into the wind. I focused on keeping myself small and pushing through it. Before long I was trading my bike for my running shoes.
Heading out on the run I saw my Dad who told me I was ahead of schedule. Well, I thought, no need to rush out there for my next training leg. I stopped and made a smart remark about taking a break, only to get weird looks from other people standing around. For the first 4 miles things went just like they had the previous day: run to the aid stations and walk briefly while I dumped water over my head, repeat. About that time I just ran out of gas. I allowed myself to walk, but only long enough to get my HR down a bit and slow my breathing before I’d start it up again. I think I walked 4 extra times in those last 2.5 miles, only on the flats though. I forced myself to run up and down the hills. I should add that when I was just going out on my second loop of the run I heard them announce a 50 year old finishing. While I thought that maybe I was near the front, that told me I really wasn’t.
I was really tired when I was done. I‘d gone harder than I expected I’d be able to, and while I’d been forced to walk several times, they weren’t an endless walk like I’ve done before. They were walk to that sign and then you have to run again. I was really pleased with my workout, but too tired to find out how I did. I sent my wife to check it out and almost died when she told me I’d gotten third! I’m more proud of that third place than I am of my second place the previous day.
I think this weekend bodes well for what might be next year! After 4 races in 5 weeks I’m a bit worn down and ready for some down time and then to get back at it. No more races for a month!
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