Cohasset Tri 2012

We combined a family visit with a race this past weekend. My son and I flew to Boston Thursday and took the ferry to Hull where my sister picked us up. My daughter and mother flew out Friday to meet us. It was really nice to catch up with my sister, BIL, niece and nephews. We spent a lot of time at a beautiful local beach, playing games, and just hanging out. We also spent a lot of time around the tri. Further proof triathlon is a selfish sport.

View of Boston from the ferry

In preparation for the tri, my sis and I ran the run course Friday morning, then drove the bike course a couple times. Later in the day, my BIL took me to the Bike Barn in Whitman MA to borrow a test bike that happened to be nicer than my normal bike. They let me test ride a Specialized Allez. The guys at the shop were super nice and spent time helping me get it set up properly. I brought my saddle and pedals and the bike guy (John I think) put it on the trainer and got things dialed in for me. The bike was fabulous and I never once thought about racing on a bike I had only ridden once. Thanks guys, you rock! If you are in the Boston area, go check out the Bike Barn, these guys know what they are doing.

Start of the run course

Saturday morning I met up with a friend from BT, his swimming instructor and her friend to ride the bike course. It was a beautiful morning and beautiful course. Mid morning, my sis and I went to packet pick up and got my race numbers applied. The woman applying the numbers mentioned I had nice muscular hairless upper arms, so the tats went on easy :-).

Packet pick up

 

Saturday afternoon was more beach time for the family while I went for a practice swim. The kids thought the wetsuit was pretty funny (which it was), then we went back to my sisters place for a cookout. During the cookout, a big storm blew in and knocked out power. We ate, then everyone played Apples To Apples but me. I get a little edgy the night before a race so I said I was on a team, then proceeded to finish reading Chrissie Wellington's book before going to bed really early. I was starting to worry I wouldn't have hot coffee in the morning, but power came back on about 11 pm. I tried something new for this race. I woke up at 4 am and ate, did my business and went back to bed. The idea was to digest breakfast before leaving for the race site to avoid 4-5 trips to the nasty Porto potties. Woke back up at 5:30, did some more business, then my sis drove me to the race site at 6 so she could drop me off, then get my cheering section up and moving. It worked! I only had to hit the portable potties once.

 

Beach time

 

Once at the race site, I got my timing chip, set up my transition area, then chatted with Mike_D from BT and a few other athletes. Despite this being my first ocean swim in a tri, racing on a borrowed bike, and knowing going all out hurts, I was pretty calm. I went for a warm up jog then swim and just hung out until my HUGE (for me) cheering section arrived. The kids got busy making signs and I just chilled with them. It was awesome.

My bike still had a price tag and said testbike

My transition area

My peeps making signs

 

My kids before they colored in the sign

Me and my sis (not a chobani commercial :-))

Me and my mom

Chillin with my nephew

I felt like a rock star!

Just about game time

I was in the third wave with 92 of my closest friends. I lined up near the back since I'm a slow swimmer and really don't like lots of contact. Once the horn went off, we ran down the beach and into the water. The water wasn't as calm as it was Saturday. I swallowed three or four full mouth fulls of water. I didn't panic or even stop and tread water, I just kept swimming. I think this was the first swim I didn't stop and tread water during the swim (except when rounding the buoys), I felt strong and just kept going. Once we got out of the water, we had to run several hundred yards up to the transition area. This time was added to the swim time.

 

Once in T1, it was wetsuit off, socks, shoes, glasses, and helmet on, then run out. No trouble at all.

Once out on the course, my goal was to keep breathing hard the entire ride. I had no hr, cadence, or speed sensor, so it was all by feel. I'm a relatively slow swimmer, which gave me plenty of people to pass on the bike. I passed a bunch of people and played leap frog with a couple guys in my age group. We joked around as we passed each other which was kind of fun. The course was rolling and beautiful with some fun turns.

Once off the bike, I ran into T2. Racked the bike, helmet off, shoes off, run shoes on, visor, number belt and I was out of there. To quote my nephew, it was time to "embrace the pain" :-). The course was hilly (for me) and absolutely beautiful. The crowd was great and there were kids spraying runners with hoses which was nice since the temp was moving into the 80's (I think, I never really looked). I was happy with the run given I'm not very use to hills. The rest of the run was uneventful. I was able to chat with some other runners, so I think my cardio is currently outpacing my leg strength/speed.

After the race, I had a couple bottles of water then waited around to pack up. After a big lunch and a big nap, I was pretty much back to normal. We all went out for an early nice seafood dinner then back to play Apples to Apples. I played this time and we all had fun. Seeing that it was supposed to storm all day Monday starting early and I had a 2 hour run scheduled for this weekend, I went to bed early again and got up early again (what kind of vacation is this?) Checked the hour by hour weather at 3:30 am to see if I needed to leave at 4, 5, or 6 am. I was happy to see the storm wasn't coming as early as expected and went back to bed until 5:30. Then at six, I ran the bike route from the race and felt pretty good. If things go well tomorrow, I'll get my long ride in when we get home.

Overall it was a great weekend visiting with family. If my sister and/BIL sign up next year, we might just have to come back :-).

The numbers

Overall rank 220/801

Age group rank 30/92

1/4 mile Swim - 10:34 (352/801)

T1 - 1:44

12 mile ride - 35:35 (167/801 20.2 mph)

T2 - 1:11

3.2 mile run - 27:20 (319/801 8:33 min/mile)

Total - 1:16:21

 

Season Opener

My first race of the year was a repeat of the first tri I ever did.  The event is May Madness in Effingham Illinois run by Cutting Edge Events.  The folks at Cutting Edge do a nice job so if you are in the area and want an early season tri to get the season started, check it out.  This year the weather was perfect, upper 50's to start, sunny and calm, nothing like it was two years ago at my first tri. This year I also got to meet up with a friend from work, his wife, and a BT friend, so it was much more fun than racing alone.

Race day, I got up at 4 am (for the third time in four days).  It's about an hour and a half drive, but with no traffic at 4 am, I was able to make it a little lot faster :-).  It was pitch black when I left, but drove into a nice sunrise to start the day.

nice start to the day

Once at the race site, I quickly registered, got body marked, and started setting up.  I was set up in no time, and just hung out and visited.  Ran into a super fast guy from my fitness class and chatted with him and his wife for a while.  Chatting with friends does wonders to limit the pre-race anxiety I feel.

The water was a nice 66 degrees (with a wetsuit) and smooth.  I started near the back since I'm a slow swimmer and didn't have much contact.  I felt pretty good on the swim and sighted better than normal.  I'm just not a real strong swimmer.

beautiful morning

distance looks longer in open water to me

The bike route was a flat out and back with a couple little rollers at the beginning.  My goal was to make sure I was breathing hard the whole time. I managed to do that most of the right until my knees started feeling bad so I backed off a tad.

The run is also a flat out and back and I had the same goal as the bike, keep pushing it.  I ran as fast as I could and just tried to hang on.  I passed a woman with a Garmin at about half way and asked her our pace.  7:42, yikes! No wonder it was hard, that's fast for me.

My goal going into the race was to shave three minutes off my time from two years ago.

	2010	2012
swim	10:53	10:03
T1	2:00	1:23
bike	41:10	39:23
T2	1:00	0:51
run	26:53	24:35
total	1:21:54	1:16:14

I'm a little bummed my bike average was below 20mph but it doesn't surprise me given my knee issues.  I was pleasantly surprised I was able to run under 8 minute miles, actually more like ecstatic!  I haven't run a 5k that fast in 20 years.

I did manage to take home some hardware.  3rd in my age group! Don't tell anyone that there were only three in my age group, that would make it an attendance prize :-).

The TYR tri top almost hides the 8 pounds I'm trying to lose :-)

Looks like I need some spray on tan and to work on my guns :-)

Sprint tris are a lot of work for a short race.  I probably spent two hours packing my gear, racking my bike, etc, an hour and a half driving there, an hour and a half driving back, then another hour cleaning up my mess all for a little over an hour of pain. I think I like the Olympic distance the best.

back seat mess

front seat mess

Overall, it was a great start to the season.  My first Oly is next week and I'm dreading the swim.

Resetting Expectations

My first tri of the season is less than four weeks away and I find myself having to adjust my expectations. This tri is the same venue as my very first tri two years ago.  I signed up since some people from work signed up and decided it was a B, maybe even C race.  I'm trying to keep my A races as my 70.3 in July and 13.1 in October though if the 70.3 goes well I have a secret goal of sneaking in a late season 140.6, but I digress.....

When my training looked solid like this in February, I started thinking about crushing my Sprint PR.

After all, I have a couple years of training and racing under my belt.  Should be a piece of cake, a painful piece of cake, but you know what I mean. Then life happened and my consistency went down hill.  Adding the weeks since the end of February and my chart now looks like this.

First a dip at the end of February, beginning of March for my trip to China.  Then a "normal" week, then three weeks of low volume due to knee problems.  The big spike in April was hiking and skiing, hardly any sbr.  Now I'm building back up and happen to be traveling this week and next as well as taking it easy on the knees.  I'm trying to reset my expectations to a "C" race for fun.  In some ways, that takes the pressure off.  In another way, I know I'm going to try to crush it anyway if I'm feeling good.

In other news, my first Oly of the season is the following weekend and it's at the same venue as my first Oly last year.  Let the season begin!

My First Tri

Well I finally did it. Thirteen months after setting the goal of doing a tri, I did my first one yesterday. It was a sprint tri in Effingham, IL. When I first set the goal, it was just to finish. As time went by, I set a goal time and reduced it a couple times during the year of getting in better shape.

Cheryl was able to go to the race too, so that was nice. The day before we checked out the race site, drove the course, went out to dinner and watched a movie. I got up at five in the morning to get ready. I was a bit nervous so I ate less breakfast than normal. The weather wasn't perfect (53 degrees and raining) so I missed out on some pre-race comaraderie, but I had a blast anyway.

I racked my bike, set up my gear then covered it all with trash bags. There were a lot of really sweet tri bikes there. Lots of wheel sets that were easily twice what my bike cost. I was hopeful I would pass at least one of these $5k+ bikes. I figured someone had to have more money than fitness, but I was wrong. Well, I did pass one Cervelo, because they had a mechanical problem :-).

About 15 minutes before the race, I put my wetsuit on. My hands and feet were cold, but the wetsuit kept everything else nice and warm. My feet got ice cream head aches walking down to the lake. It was a mass start and I stayed back for about 15 seconds to let most of crowd pass since it was my first OWS in a crowd. The first 25 yards or so had really thick seaweed. It felt like the seaweed was grabbing me and trying to pull me under like in a horror movie, but I didn't panic. In fact, I was very comfortable with the swim. I stopped a couple times to get my bearings and just look around and enjoy it. I had some trouble sighting and definitely got my money's worth out of the swim course. I easily got an extra 100 yards out of it :-).

Once out of the water, I ran up to the transition area. I had a water bottle to wash the sand of my feet, but it was so wet and muddy, I didn't bother. I could have been a little faster in T1, but I was enjoying it. Cheryl was on the other side of the fence asking if I was having fun so I chatted with her while I stripped off the wetsuit and put on socks and bike shoes.




Nice pic of me chatting in T1. Probably why my time was almost two minutes. Then I was off.








Everything was fine on the bike but my fingers. My speedometer got messed up so I had no idea how fast I was going, but I felt good. At one point I noticed I wasn't breathing very hard, so I picked it up a little. It was an out and back (which was nice since there were only three turns on the whole course and me having not biked much in the rain) and I felt great on the way out. The way back was West to East so I thought I would be even faster on the way back. Nope! The wind was coming straight from the East (note to self, check the wind next time). No big deal. It's only a sprint.

Back to the transition area, no fancy flying dismounts or anything, keep it simple. This transition was faster (under a minute). I had dry socks but didn't bother. Everything was wet and muddy and my toes were numb. They always go numb when I ride and the cold made it worse.

Off to the run.

I felt pretty good and was having fun. Two of my numb toes felt like something was jammed in between them so I stopped about a half mile into it and took off my shoe. Nothing jammed in the shoe, just numb toes. They finally stopped being numb in the last mile.

I could have pushed it a little harder on the run, but not much. Overall I missed my goal time by two minutes. If I had taken a slightly less scenic swim, I would have hit that easily.

Overall, it was a great experience and I had a huge smile on my face the whole time. If I had to sum up the experience in one word, it would be "alive". I read several blogs from triathletes and I always think, wow, they seem so alive and enjoying life. Doing my first tri made me feel that way too.