13 June 2012

Race Report - 26.3 Boise

Well well well…  The race formerly known as 70.3 Boise is in the books, for better or worse.  Mostly worse.  Definitely not the experience I was hoping to have at my “home” race, as I maneuvered my frozen ass around the course about as fast as an emperor penguin can waddle around in a tight huddle while simultaneously incubating an egg underneath his layers of blubber.
These guys would have challenged me on the run course.
But I can’t say it was a total bust, because I kept my head in the game and gained some valuable perspective.  I like to break a mental sweat too, when possible, and this one definitely pushed my limits in that arena.
I guess I’ll start with an outline.  Here is the brief thematic summary of my thoughts on this weekend’s race, in the order in which they occurred (details to follow):

  1. Oh hell.
  2. HEY!
  3. Woof.
  4. Thank God.
  5. Whatever.
  6. Puppies.
  7. Yikes.
  8. Mark?
  9. Help.
  10. Stay on it.
  11. Well shit.
  12. Ok.

“Oh hell.”
We woke up around 8:00 am on Saturday morning to temps in the low 40s, a steady drizzle, and gusting winds.  Monte Still (accomplished pro and former owner of my famous wheelset) had come to town for the race as well and was staying with me at my house.  We both agreed: this was less than ideal.  Monte’s good friend Clark had come along to be the self-proclaimed “tri-bitch,” and he confirmed our assessment.  (But don’t let the tri-bitch moniker fool you – Clark has done over 25 Ironmans.)  The entire time I was eating a big breakfast, getting my things together, loading up the car and driving out to the swim site, I was hoping things might blow over.  Either that or we would get out to the reservoir and find nobody else there, and the whole race was just a funny joke.  We’d turn right around and drive to a coffee shop or something instead.  Sadly, neither of those happened.
“HEY!”
A few of my best friends were volunteering at body marking, and no sooner had I shown up then one of them ran right up to me wearing a huge black garbage bag and gave me a hug.  “KELLY! HEY!”  So I got marked by my friends Kelly, Lynsey and Lisa, which was sweet, and we talked in the rain for a bit.  I don’t really know who had it worse, the athletes or the volunteers who had to stand around in the cold all day.
“Woof.”
Monte and I freezing our arses off before the race.
When I finally wheeled my bike into T1 the place was pretty much in an uproar.  I saw dozens of recognizable pros trying to make peace with the weather.  Local favorite Kevin Everett looked focused and serious.  Lynsey Corbin, fresh off her record-setting win at Honu the previous weekend, grimaced and huddled with friends.  I ran into Portland pro Chris Bagg who only shrugged his shoulders with a smile and went about his preparations.  I laughed and tried not to think about the 2+ hours I’d have to spend battling the freezing wind and rain on my bike.  Wasn’t going to be fun, but we were all racing in the same conditions, right?  I tried to amp myself up.  It was difficult.
“Thank God.”
Then, when I was at the mechanical support tent having my tires deflated a bit, they made the announcement: snow on the roads south of the airport, 30+ mph wind gusts, hypothermic conditions coming off the reservoir.  The bike would be shortened to a 12 mile sprint, basically straight back into town.  While I’m not proud to admit it, I was relieved at this decision, which shows my head wasn’t in the right place at all.  Rather than bracing for the task at hand – the task we all had trained for – my mind eagerly accepted this enormous comfort.
I walked down to Monte, who was hob-nobbing with fellow Salt Lake City pro Malaika Homo (who ended up coming 2nd in the women’s race) and Matty Reed (ended up tying for 1st in the men’s).  Reed told us he was planning on riding in his wetsuit.  I laughed and wondered if I should do the same thing.  (Later on, in his victory speech, Reed confessed these were the cruelest conditions he’d ever raced in!  That means something coming from a hardened 21-year veteran and all-around champion.)
This isn't Matty Reed, although he did end up riding in his wetsuit, along with
this guy and about 8 other pros.  I should have.
“Whatever.”
As I scrambled to adapt my race and nutrition plans to this sudden change of terms – and continued to shiver in the driving rain – I let go of my worries and embraced whatever was to come.  This is how it would be, so let’s get on with it.  I could sense the same attitude in the air around me as stood at the bottom of the boat ramp, surrounded by the men’s and women’s fields, all of us cold, tense, and oddly amused.  I looked around at all the red cheeks, framed by neoprene caps, straps velcroed under the chin.  Honestly, this was one of my favorite moments of the race, and one of the few that was anything close to fun.  I was exhilarated by the camaraderie and couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot.  After all, this is the stuff you tell stories about.  The dozens of nameless races under blue skies begin to run together, but I will always remember Boise 2012.
“Puppies.”
Treading water at the line, they delayed us a good 10 minutes to allow the run course volunteers to get in position.  After all, we would be there about 2 hours ahead of schedule.  So we all just floated there and our core temperatures dropped and dropped (did I mention water temp was in the mid-50s?)  On a positive note, I had plenty of time to look through foggy goggles at all the bobbing heads and orange caps of my fellow pros, and back over the icy waves to the somber hillside where several thousand athletes stood under a cloudy grey sky.  It was pretty memorable.
All that lasted about 2 minutes.  I spent the other 8 trying to think about things that make me happy, like my dog Charlie, and hot chocolate and baked goods.
(EDIT: Whoa, looks like I got a little carried away with the descriptive language there…  I hope y’all are into that.  If not, my apologies, I’m not trying to turn this blog into yet another online showcase for a misunderstood artist with a chip on his shoulder.  I get it: more witty commentary, less romantic imagery. END EDIT)
“Yikes”
Finally the gun went off!  Hoping to build off my solid swim at Florida, I came off the line well in the hopes of grabbing a faster pack.  Several hundred meters in things chilled out and I was right in the middle of an enormous chase pack, booyah!  I settled in and felt really good… for about 5 minutes.  Then we hit the first turn (the swim course was a triangle) and all of a sudden the waves that had been helping us were coming at us perpendicularly.  I swallowed a few good mouthfuls that tasted like I was eating snow, coughed a bunch, and began to lose my line.  I took more and more sighting strokes as I struggled to stay with the bunch, but things were going to hell.  The bunch disintegrated and we all ended up swimming alone as we were tossed sideways by the rollers.
I hit the second turn and now was swimming directly into the waves, which definitely wasn’t any better.  By this time my fingers had frozen into individual claws and I could feel water slipping between them.  I felt like Captain Hook thrown overboard.  After what seemed like an eternity, I eventually I funneled into the swim exit, got my feet under me, stumbled out of the reservoir and looked down at my watch.  Despite swimming alone, I had pushed the pace hard so I was pretty bummed out to see a high 29 swim.  Of course I understand now that conditions were mostly to blame for that, but at the time it was pretty discouraging.

Trying to get sock #1 on while another pro takes off in his wetsuit.
“Mark?”
 

And still transitioning...
I was so mad I tried to eat my glove.

There I go.
Thanks for this humiliating sequence Kelly.
As I ran up the hill into transition I quickly noticed a strange feeling: I could not get my eyes to focus on anything more than about 10 yards away.  My body felt warm enough at this point, but my head felt like a frozen block of ice.  I was running disoriented, weaving around, not really able to focus on the bike racks.  When I got to my bike I was so discombobulated I had the slowest transition in the entire 37-year history of the sport of triathlon (they gave me a plaque for it at the finish line).  My friends even took the pictures to prove it.  I’m pretty sure the first prehistoric tetrapods transitioned from aquatic sea creatures with gills to land-dwelling mammals with lungs faster than I was able to come out of the water and get on my bike (nerd alert!)  I definitely should have just ridden with my wetsuit on.  Instead I fumbled around, trying to get my socks and shoes on, then a vest, arm warmers and gloves.  Of course I couldn’t feel any of those things with my fingers, nor could I grip them enough to pull them over my wet skin.  Yeah, it was pretty disgraceful.

The feeling persisted for the ENTIRE bike leg!  Granted, I was only on the shortened bike course for about 35 minutes, but I couldn’t see a damn thing.  I was straining to keep my eyes up the road, but it all looked like a mirage, so mostly I just stared at the pavement beneath me.  I gotta say, seeing visions that aren’t where they are supposed to be isn’t any fun… it’s like mind games.  A few times I thought I recognized a spectator, I even yelled a greeting to my friend Mark, but I was way off, and the guy just stared at me, nonplussed.

I rode up to Monte a few miles in and tried to express what I was feeling, but the sentences weren’t coming out very sensibly.  So not only wasn’t I seeing straight, but I wasn’t thinking that straight either.  And while I’m glad I didn’t put this together at the time, these are preliminary symptoms for hypothermia (no joke!)  So in hindsight, I shouldn’t beat up on myself too badly for this race, because I was in a bad, bad way.  But more on that later…
My trademark one-shoed dismount.
Thanks for the pic Clark.

“Help.”
The bike is funny.  I remember doing it, but I don’t remember feeling much.  I don’t know that I went necessarily hard, or easy, or anything.  I just went, and them it was over.  I started coming out of my shoes at my usual distance from T2 (about 100 meters out), but I fumbled around with my frozen fingers and only managed to get one off by the time I hit the dismount line.  So I ran in with one on and one off (no Clark, not my signature move or anything, ha.)  Got my run shoes on and stripped the vest off, but the helmet gave me a bit of difficulty.  After literally 30 seconds of trying to get it off a volunteer had to help me.  Pretty sure that’s not allowed, but I certainly didn’t care at that point.  Given the circumstances I’m really glad they did, because as they say in the old country, I could have been there until the cows came home.

“Stay on it.”
It was pretty strange to be running after hardly an hour of racing.  There were no crowds or spectators out yet, and things in downtown Boise were pretty quiet.  It was like I had made a wrong turn somewhere and was way out of the race.  In truth, I was way out of the race, with about 20 guys well ahead of me on the run.  The fact that I stuck with it and didn’t mail it in is perhaps the only aspect of my performance that I am proud of.  I kept telling myself “Just get to the line, finish this race as best you can.  It definitely isn’t your day, but you aren’t going to give up on this thing.”  Thankfully the sun had started to come out, and gradually my extremities began to heat up.  It was a pretty weird sensation, the thawing of my feet.  It took 5 miles, and started with my big toes, slowly extending to include the others, then finally my arch and heel.  Slowly I started to feel normal, my vision cleared, and I was able to soak up the experience of running in front of a growing home crowd.  That part was awesome, highlighted by my family and friends, who made up the best cheering section anywhere on the course!  Oh yeah!  Running by them was without a doubt the best part of my day.  Finally I came down the finishing shoot, and was happy just to be done.
Staying on it.  Sort of.
My cheering section.  Thanks you guys!
A couple of my bitterly disappointed fans (sister and dad)
“Well shit.”
In the minutes after crossing the line, I began to internalize my disappointing result and I felt pretty bummed out.  After my success down in Florida, this was hardly the race I wanted to back it up, especially here on my home turf.  Plus, all these people in the crowd that knew me, my friends following the race, and my family who had come out to watch.  I felt like I had let them down.  I didn’t want my name assigned to that 2:33:whatever finishing time.  There was some doubt thrown in there as well, as I questioned my preparation, my training in the previous weeks, my nutrition.  Maybe I overdid it?  Maybe I didn’t get enough rest?  Did my legs really feel bad?  Or were they just cold?  Third race in five weeks, maybe that is too much for my body?  I didn’t really know what to think about it all.

“Ok.”
Since reflecting a bit more on the experience, and talking with some other guys who went through the same race, I have accepted that it was just a rough day.  Nobody I’ve talked to really felt good.  Nobody had a “great” race.  Clearly, the conditions (and how we all dealt with them) were the biggest factor on the day.  As a general trend, it seems the more experienced athletes did better than those with less experience, which makes a lot of sense.  So the biggest take-away for me is a mental one.  Yes it was wet, and cold, and windy.  Yes, I think my body handles heat much better than it does cold, as I was borderline-hypothermic on the bike and in transition.  But the truth is we weren’t all racing in the same conditions, because some of us made things much worse in our own minds.  In these races mental toughness is a skill every bit as important as swimming ability or run fitness.  And while I’ve always viewed my mind as an asset, something that gives me an edge on the competition, this isn’t the minor league anymore.  These are the pro ranks.  Everyone here knows how to suffer.  Everyone can push their bodies to the limit.  And turns out, many are far better than I am at dealing with adverse conditions, at convincing themselves it is their day despite a numbing cold, at thriving on crap weather and using it to their advantage.  So I need to get better at that.
A tie!?  As if this race didn't have enough drama.
Here are two guys who mastered the weather, by the way.
A few more take-aways
Trying to take away a few positives…
The first part of the swim went pretty well, as I hung with a faster pack for awhile, so that was good.  I can feel my water awareness developing as well, and felt like I sort of knew what was going on around me.
I got nothing more to say about the bike.
The run is coming along.  My pace didn’t drop off as significantly this time, although I’m still a long way from holding 5:45s (my season goal).  A few more weeks of longer tempo runs and more intervals at race pace should help me improve even more.
And I already feel recovered, which is encouraging (although I’m sure the fact that they chopped 44 miles off the bike contributed to my rapid return to training).  I think my preparation and rest leading in were just fine, and I don’t think I have raced too much.  After all, I’m still young, right?  Racing every second or third week isn’t out of the question.
Lastly, I am going to avoid eggs for breakfast in the future.  Just stick with PB&Js I think.
Yeah… that’s all I got.
Thank Yous!
Finally some thank yous.  And this time I have a lot of people to thank.
First and foremost, all of the volunteers for coming out and helping, and the Boise community for always rallying behind this event.  It makes me proud to be a Boisean!
Three volunteers in particular, my friends Kelly, Lynsey, and Lisa!  Thanks so much for marking me up, keeping me company at the swim start, standing around in garbage bags, waiting for hours on the volunteer bus, and meeting me for beers afterwards.  Sorry it wasn’t a better day, but the weather was outside of my control, so lay off.
Clark for tri-bitching.  Was really nice to have a bonafide bike mechanic and tri-expert on staff this weekend.  I felt very well taken care of before, during and after the race.  Thanks again dude, hope to see you later this summer but if not, good luck at IM Arizona!
Heather and the fine folks at WTC for being accommodating to my adjusted travel plans (seems to be a theme for me).  I ended up having to miss the pro meeting again, but you guys made check-in a breeze and handled it all with grace.  And of course, you always put on a fantastic race.  Thanks also to race director and Boise endurance-fixture Mike Cooley.  Was a hard call to make, with the shortened course and everything, but I think it was the right one.
(As an aside, here is a link to a funny argument that developed on slowtwitch.com concerning precisely that topic. Basically, a bunch of armchair quarterbacks who weren’t there rant and rave about what a bad call it was to shorten the race.  Then a bunch of people who were actually there argue about what a good, safe decision it was.  This is quality entertainment in my book.)
And last but certainly not least, thanks to all of my friends and family in Boise who came out to cheer!  Was so great to see all of you, and who knows when I would have finished if not for your support.  You made it a wonderful weekend, and I’m bummed it went so quickly.
How can you not be happy in this company?
sister, cousin, cousin, dead-beat triathlete, cousin, cousin, girlfriend
So in the end it wasn’t my day, but they can’t all be perfect, and I’m now stronger for it.  Time to refocus and build to Rev3 Portland on July 8th!  If you’re lucky, I have another exciting blog topic I’m hoping to reveal before then.  Stay tuned!
Thanks Idaho Statesman for making me look way better than I felt.

07 June 2012

Days Since Florida / 70.3 Boise Preview

What’s up y’all!?  I realized it had been awhile since the insane 70.3 Florida race weekend, so I figured I should put something else up here before you waves of news-hungry fans start to loiter, scratch your heads aimlessly and cast about for a better blog to follow.

Random running pic to get you all in the right state of mind.
This is actually from 2008, but I still wear that same cute onesy.
I’ll start with what I’ve been up to lately.
After four straight weekends of traveling and racing back in April/May, it has been really nice to have two consecutive weekends here in Portland.  I’ve done my best to put this nice little three-week window to good use, taking a few solid steps forward (although I may have also taken one or two backward).  In an effort to be totally transparent to my constituents, here is what I’ve done with the 18 days since getting my ass kicked all over Florida by a Tour de France winner:
Day 1: Long journey home, with lots of quality time spent in the Orlando, Albuquerque, and Vegas airports; some of you might worry that I developed a gambling problem while in Vegas, but that wasn’t really an issue because slot machines really bum me out.
Days 2-5: Back to my desk job, some easy swimming and recovery workouts, watched that “Harvard Baseball Team covers Call Me Maybe” youtube video way too many times.

Days 6-7: Cousin’s bachelor party! Hardly got any sleep and had way, way too much fun; only exercise was 18 holes of golf, unless you want to count exercising my liver.  Yeah, solid step backward.

Dan the Man's getting married! (center)
I'm the only one who actually struck an offensive pose (guess)
Days 8-12: Another work week, and squeezed a good block of training in between the Florida-recovery and Boise-taper weeks, oh yeah!
Day 13: Longest ride of the year to date, pre-rode Rev3 Portland bike course from my house, and it is so bomb!  Pristine roads, punchy climbs, an all-around tough test.  Didn’t take enough food, bonked hard, crawled home, that part sucked.


Day 14: And on Sunday, this stooge rested.
Days 15-18: Just finishing up another work week here, eating a lot of enchiladas in the evenings, and have a fantastic mini-taper going in the lead-up to Boise 70.3 this Saturday!
Plans for the next couple days include brewing beer, driving to Boise, eating, and sleeping.  I don’t mind any of those activities, let me tell you.

You have no idea how good this sort of thing smells.
Unless, of course, you've ever been to a brewery.
Chances are you actually have a very good idea, sorry.
So that’s what a three-week block between races looks like for this triathlete.  Hope I didn’t overdo it on that long ride last weekend, because I’m still feeling pretty depleted.  But it could also just be symptomatic of this little taper week.  Counter-intuitively, restful weeks before races often make the body feel exhausted and sleepy, because it’s so busy rebuilding and replenishing.  I sure hope so anyway, or else Saturday is going to be a long day at the office.
70.3 Boise Preview
I consider this to be my “home race,” so it definitely holds a special place in my heart.  I’m a little bummed, actually, to be racing this year as an Oregonian (it says “Portland, OR” next to my name on the start list).  I may live in Oregon, but I’m definitely an Idahoan for life.  These are my home roads.  I’ll have lots of friends in the crowd, volunteering at the swim start, and lining the run course.  And when it’s all over I get to relax on my patio with my family, eat some meat and drink my favorite beer in the whole wide world (Sockeye Brewery’s Dagger Falls IPA, Idaho’s standard-bearing IPA!  Booyah!)
Good Will Hunting?  Anybody?  Anyone at all?
At least I know my sibs will get it.
It’s also really going to hurt.  The forecast is for wind, but that’s hardly new for the desert south of Boise.  More significantly, the men’s start list is at 30 right now, including Tim O’Donnell, Paul Matthews, Matt Lieto, Kevin Everett, Chris Bagg, and about 25 other extremely fast dudes.  As always, I hope to perform to my potential, to grow from my first two outings, and maybe achieve some personal bests on my home course.  Actually... truth be told, I'd really like to uncork a screaming fast run.  Been feeling good in training lately, so if I'm well rested this may be the (crossing my fingers and knocking on wood) race I finally hit my stride.  Beyond that I can’t control much else, so we’ll see how it all comes together.  Tune in next week for another race report.  Until that time, as Ben Affleck would say, keep your ear to the grindstone.
Andrew