Beagle269’s BodyBlog

So, two weeks ago I had my "planned" peak triathlon of the summer event!  And it was a major success.  I say planned peak, because now I have to re-analyze and re-peak for 70.3 Ironman Clearwater championships in Florida!

My weekend started with my week prior, good planning, good placement of last hard workouts and the light workouts, good taper, and energy levels/blood glucose levels soaring!  Then the day before going to the race breifing. I could feel the pure energy, and adrenaline from everyone in the room.  And the breifing was a packed house, possibly 400 people, anxious and excited about the upcoming race for tomorrow morning.

Then, after checking my bike, I went for a light swim, and what do you know, theres a tracer line, about 6 feet under the buoys for following during the swim, and the water is ohh so smooth and cool.

Ok, ok, race morning, I was up about 4 am, cooking exactly what I had planned, after having a huge 3 meals prior, and a huge breakfast, with full time to digest it. And then to the race area after picking up a few friends who were carpooling/staying the night at my house. The transition area was a zoo, but I had plenty of time to stretch, and get everything perfectly ready.

And  onto swim start. I was the 3rd heat of racers, after the Pro Men, and the Pro women, then my heat 15-29 Men, upon entering the floating dock, it was almost fully submerged because of so many people in my heat, but as people jumped in the water, there was a bit more room, thank you for in the water swim starts!  And soon enough the whistle went off, I felt comfortable in the water, I didn’t start out too fast like everyone else, and after about 10-20 minutes I began passing people who had started out too fast, but shortly thereafter, people from heats behind me began passing me.  Holy cow, some of the top swimmers passing me from other heats as dang good swimmers, pretty much making a wake for me to try and catch!

Then after 40 something minutes, time to exit the water, I did perfect on this one, I usually try and put my feet down way too soon, then have to walk all slow until I can get grip with my feet, but this time I swam until I hands and almost chest were digging in the sand, got up, and jogged lightly into T1.

T1 went well, although it was rather slow, I did it on purpose.  In Moses Lake, my T1 heartrate was so high that it made it difficult to do things smoothly, let alone have a good start on the bike.  So nice and smooth, wetsuit off, bike shoes on, jersey on, helmet on, and onto bike start.

My bike start was perfect, This time I clipped in and strattled first, then jerked acceleration with one leg, while clipping in the other (difficulty with running starts previously)

So, my bike race went fairly well, at least the first half of the lap.  In 2006, I bonked during the run and blamed it on lack of energy/calorie consumption.  So I began eating almost instantly on the bike, consumed 2 Gu’s and a cliff bar gel.  Drank Zip fizz mixed with gatorade which was ok, and I had a bagel strapped to my handlebars, after 1/2 the bagel I felt ok, but after the 2nd half, I realized that it was going to cause a problem.

Upon passing the 10 mile marker, (before the bagel) I realized I was having an amazing bike, even with the hills, my heartrate was in control.  I passed mile 10 in 28 minutes.  Thats excess of 21 mph average, and feeling ok.  After the first lap, 29 miles my average bike pace was 19.8!  I was passing so many people on the up hills, I train on uphills and I am awesome at them!  I was riding my bike like a madman, but still felt in control of my energy level and heartrate. But then the stomach problems, I could feel a knot in my stomach from the density of the bagel, mixed with the intensity of my riding, (although still in heartrate "planned" range)  So, I decided to slow it up a bunch and try to get my bagel to digest, feeling a nasty knot in my stomach for the 2nd half of bike I finished with an average speed of 18.9 mph bike, (still good, but had to slow up a lot)

And into T2, went perfectly as planned, bike shoes off, running shoes on, Hammer gel, and then onto bike.

At first my legs felt heavy, even like wiggly wires hanging from my torso.  But after a mile or two, I felt better, I had a very fun run.  Talking to people is my favorite,  such a distraction, see how "un winded" I can be when talking to them, after the first double lap, I felt like I had extra energy, my sideaches went away that I was feeling from the extra intensity, and I was onto lap two.  Lap two went great, for the first few miles, then, I began to feel the craziness of the race.  Without too much slowing I finished to the last mile without too much problems.  Overall passing very many people, and very few passing me.  On the last mile, I picked up my pace, and stretched out my stride, and the last 800m a guy in my age group passed me, and he was going fast too.  I tailed him for 400 meters, then tried a pull past him.  He knew he was my age group, and he tried to pull away even faster.  In the last 200 meters, we were full on sprint to the race around the last 2 bends, and everyone was cheering.  I pulled away from him and finished a few seconds ahead!  What an accomplishment.  Looking at my time on the reader board I realized my time was very good, but borderline on my goals.  Then upon realizing it, my actual race time was like 6 minutes less that what read on the reader because the reader was the time for the "Pro" heat!

Final stats 5:37:58  swim, 44:21, T1, 2:56, Bike, 3:00:56, T2, 1:30, Run 1:48:18

Finishing in 337 place overall   34/69 age group, 280/580 men!

So, I was hanging out, meeting people chatting, whatever, and the awards cermony includes handing out and distributing the world qualifier Clearwater spots to be alloted.  And in my age group, there was 6 spots be given out.  And people went home before the awards ceromony, and because he got to like 15th place and still no one to take the last 2 spots, the announcer decided to save my age group until last.  So, after another hour of awards and such, he came back to my age group, he had 2 spots available, and what do you know, theres is only 4 people waiting in my age group for a spot, and I was the fastest out of the 4, so I automatically got a spot!  yay!  going to florida, so excited in November.  Gotta get travel plans, a bike box, maybe even a new time trial bike??  Would be cool.  Anyways, will type about my Seattle to Portland experience soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 7:42 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.