race

For the second straight race, my preparation was less than ideal. Work was hectic and since I'm not a part of the .1% of triathletes that actually make money racing, training comes second to work. But instead of worrying, I just rolled with it trusting that my 38 year-old body could use the extra rest. After Wildflower where my mantra was race smarter, not harder, my original plan for this sprint tri was to race smarter AND harder. But given the less than ideal prep, I decided I would set a hard pace for each discipline and let my body naturally speed up rather than forcing it. I would let the race come to me. Waking up at 4:00 AM race morning, I had a bit of a bad attitude asking myself why am I doing this? Once I got to the race and started seeing old friends and my new teammates, it was game-on and the excitement kicked in. Putting on my Sailfish wetsuit, I was excited to test this suit again and see if indeed I would go fast like I did at WF. I've done this course 5 times in the span of 14 years and I have never dipped under 16 minutes for the 3/4 mile swim. I swam a PR of 15:53 and was second out of the water. Two swims, two PR's in the Sailfish. I've come to learn that this suit does a great job of compensating. In other words, I can swim about 4000 yards less per week and the Sailfish will compensate and make up the difference. I love this suit, I was out of the water before peeps that I've never outswam. Onto the bike, the legs felt a bit heavy and were slow in getting into race mode. Thus, I picked a pace and let the race come to me. Sure enough, I felt better as the ride went on and I naturally started speeding up without mentally pushing it. There were at least two guys in the race that I knew of that were capable of pulling me in on the bike. My goal was to split 42 minutes on the rolling 16-mile bike course. All my time checks indicated that I was on pace. With 3 miles to go, I was feeling happy that still nobody had passed me on the bike. I knew I was sitting in second and since the run was an out and back, I knew I would be able to see first place by the turn-around. I felt great starting the run and had good natural leg turnover, a bit shocking actually. I decided to continue letting the race come to me. Since emerging from the swim, nobody had yet to pass me. Since I was passing people on the run, combined with my somewhat laissez-faire race plan, I think I became a bit too content. Approaching the turn-around, I spotted the first place guy, did the math and figured I was a little over a minute behind with 2.5 miles to go. Somehow, my mind didn't comprehend the daunting task that this was and I unrealistically tried to chase him down. It was a good thing I sped up because after the turn-around, I realized that somebody was chasing me down. I've never outrun Tim Naylor and in fact, he usually catches me on the bike. With 2.5 miles to go, I realized that I had still held him off. Cool! In triathlons, rarely do you race head to head and side-by-side with someone. As I knew Tim was approaching, my cross country days came through and I started putting in surges. Wow, when was the last time I raced using surges? Though the surges failed and Tim caught me at the 3.5 mile mark, I have to say that me making surges was in itself a success. In my mind, I dreamed that when Tim passed me, I would react and stay with him and wear him out and outrun him for second place. In reality, he went by me, I surged to stay with him; and after 50 yards, my heart rate was so maxed I knew I was endangering myself from finishing or holding off the fourth place guy. So I dropped back but surprisingly, Tim stayed the same distance (about 20 yards) in front of me for the next mile. Had I been a true racer, I would have capitalized on this and start reeling him back in. But instead, I suffered from a bad case of contentment and I was already congratulating myself for finishing so close behind Tim. My finish time is my third fastest on this course and my fastest in over 10 years. For the second straight race, I didn't have a low point in the race where I mentally complained of the suffering. I know I can swim, bike, and run faster but not on this day and not with the training I've done. Now starts my next training block where I step onto the track and start doing some speedwork. A little over a month until my next race and I'm looking forward to a bit of a vacation next weekend.