Disco Triathlon

The Disco Triathlon is in the bag. This was my 3rd time doing this race, ('05, and '07) and the 3rd time taking on this course out at Lake Ray Roberts in North Denton (the '05 Disco was in Grapevine, but the '07 Texas Man was on the current Disco course).

This course has owned me in the past, and while my goal was to prevent that from happening this time, I'd give myself a "B" in my efforts today. I've come to understand I have a pacing problem. I can't hold back and I absolutely wilt on the run. This course is not the place you want to be wilting on the run. It is undulating the entire time, and is usually very hot.

The swim went as well as possible from a time perspective. I was in a wave with 39 and under men, and while I was the 4th guy out of the water, I was out first for my age group. I paid for it though. I was gunning it from the start and by the time I realized I was trashing myself, I couldn't settle down.

The swim started off right into the sun, so we couldn't see the buoy until we were right on top of it. Other than that, it was a fairly normal swim. I was on my own for a bit, with a guy for a bit, then got dropped by that guy in the last 400 yards or so.

Swim: 19:23, 1st AG (out of 27), 8th overall (out of 273 men and women)

T1 was brutal. I was so tired running up the beach, along a path, and into transition. I thought I was going to pass out. More evidence that I blew my wad in the swim. I took my time trying to settle down in there, put my bike jersey on inside out (on accident) and was off.

T1: 2:45

The bike was alright. I've decided now that this bike course is deceivingly difficult. It never really is flat with many rollers, lots of chip seal roads, and a few chewed up roads that slow you down a bit. No one ended up putting up a blazing time, and I just managed to hold better than 20 mph out there, a little off from my last few efforts. I tried to keep it calm on the bike, and was favoring my right leg injury from the bike crash the week before just a bit choosing to stay in the saddle when there were a couple of climbs and accelerations I'd have preferred to stand up on.

Only 3 guys in my age group passed me on the ride.

We got lucky with the weather today. There was cloud cover for the first half of the ride, and the highs are a good 10 degrees off the mid 100s we had earlier in the week.

Bike: 1:08.47 10th AG, 83rd overall

T2 was quick and easy 1:01

The run was the part of this race I anticipated the most. As I said, I've run terrible on this course in the past. Early on off the bike I could tell that I'd probably already been anaerobic a bit too much earlier in the day, and that it was going to be lactate buildup in my legs that was going to be the limiter on the day, not HR, and probably not heat.

I tried to settle in to a decent pace. The course is out and back, part on paved paths in tree cover, and part out on an open road with no shade. I was really trying to hold back on the out thinking best case, I could negative split the run, but the more likely scenario was that it would be conserving energy to keep me from walking later (a problem every time I run out there)

I believe I was able to average around 8:50 miles on the way out (the way out is a little longer than the way in). On the way back, it was a struggle. I hung in there pretty tough, walked some aid stations, and literally shuffled up the big hill on the paths, and average around 9:35 back home.

I got passed by 4-5 guys in my age group in the last 10 minutes of the run which was disappointing, but tried to hang in there as best I could.

Run: 56:36 18th AG, 122 overall

Time: 2:28:29, 13th AG, 72nd overall

I believe this is the first time I've been under 2:30 in an Olympic race, but the bike was 1.8mi short of an official Oly distance race, and I actually think my 2:32 in Galveston this year on a 450 yard shorter swim, but 5 mi bike, and 0.3 mile longer run is a better time. It was much cooler then, and a much easier course than Lake Ray Roberts, so I think it is a solid effort today.

The family came up to the State Park to watch the race, and got to enjoy a really cool beach on the lake. My kids and the McClain kids had a blast swimming around, though no one brought suits so we had to improvise a bit.

Here are a few photos our friends the McClain's took. Katie (the photographer) is one of Ingrid's girl friends, our kids play together several times each week, and Patrick did the race with me (and did quite well in his 2nd tri ever, and 1st Oly ever)

Truck'n it into the finish shoot

Family photo, Jake and his dong

This has me Fired Up!

Preseason matches have commenced. Talk of a Peter Crouch signing has me intrigued. This clip is gas on the fire.



I hope this doesn't jinx it!

Ouch Still

I'm still pretty beat up from the bike crash. I've tried to stick with the training plan, but I've still got some internal bleeding going on in my leg.

When I woke up the day after the crash, my bruise had about tripled in size on my right leg, and I had a matching bruise though not as bad on my left side. My abs and ankle were sore too.

I can run okay on my legs, but cycling still is hard. I am not able to lift my leg very well, especially if the lift includes an internal rotation on the hip. So putting on socks or shorts while standing is nearly impossible, however running isn't bad. Cycling is odd. If I'm pulling up on the pedal, it hurts, so I think I'm sort of free loading on my right side when I ride. I can tell because my power numbers have been off. And after I cycle, I can tell my bruise has changed color with a new dark spot at the point where the joint/muscle underneath the skin is most painful.

The bruise is migrating down my leg and now runs down the inner half of my leg halfway down to my knee. I suppose where gravity takes the blood from either sitting or standing.

I'm going to race this weekend, but don't expect much. I can't get down on the aero bars due to the scrape on my forearm, but hope that a couple of days off the bike might help. I just don't want to throw away $100 that I spent on this entry fee when I'm sure I can get out there and at least use the race as a catered training day.

Here is what the bruise looks like now. It is a little muted in color since I just pulled an ice pack off of it.

Man vs Pavement

After what my records say is 12,101 miles of mostly event free riding since I got my first road bike in 2002, my number came up today and I put the bike sideways.

I was making a left hand turn at a 3 way intersection (I didn't have a stop sign) and looked over my shoulder heading into the turn and saw a guy on a hog with a chick on the back. I was far enough ahead to where I didn't think he'd try to come around me, and started to make the turn. As I was about a qtr of the way into the turn, I heard him twist the throttle and it sounded like he was speeding up. As I looked over my shoulder, I saw him coming pretty close, and heard him yell something at me. It all startled me a bit and I'm not sure if I touched the breaks, or if it caused me to swerve a bit in the apex of the turn, but as I looked back to the road in front of me, the bike was coming out from under me and I went over on my left side, forearm to pavement. The pavement won - the biker and his chick rode on. Thanks asshole!

The worst of it all was that somewhere in the crash, I took the handle bars or elbow pad to the aero bar to my right leg, right at the hip flexor/groin, about 2 inches from my man business. I have got a deep bruise there, and can't lift my leg at the waist much higher than is necessary to walk. The left hip has very minor road rash, my shorts didn't even rip. It was my forearm that took the brunt of the fall, and it is scraped up with road rash pretty good. About 6 inches starting near the elbow running about 2/3 of the way up to the wrist.

I was 40 minutes into a 3 hr ride, so I'm not happy about the training volume shortfall that resulted from the crash. The bike was not rideable, but should be fine with a new front brake cable, set of bar tape, and a trued front wheel. The front brake cable and bar tape are only a week old having been replaced last weekend. Bad luck there.

I downloaded the ride data to see what my HR did during the crash. I was cruising along on a flat stretch at around 18.0 mph and a 136 HR. As best I can tell, I crashed between 39:00 mins and 39:02 mins and was going 15.8 mph at 135 bpm. My HR peaked at 39:09 at 150 bpm and stayed there until 39:16 before it began to drop. The data stopped recording at 39:19. Pretty interesting.

I'm sure I can't run right now, but wonder how long it will last. I'm icing my leg as I type, and it feels better now than it did before I iced it the first time, but I expect to be very sore tomorrow morning.

I do have a race on the calendar a week from today that I'd really like to do, but we'll just have to play it slow and see how it goes. I'm going to skip my swim planned for tomorrow morning and will see about a light jog tomorrow night. If that goes well, I'll jump back on the schedule come Tuesday. If not, I'll just continue to play it day by day. Next week is supposed to be 12.5 hour week with much of the work front loaded to give me a day of recovery before the race, but that plan appears to be in jeopardy.

Be careful out there.