Lonestar Qtr Iron Triathlon - Gavleston, TX

Everything about the build up to this race was weird, and then the gun went off and it was very calm. Strange.

I was actually writing this blog post in my head with the title, "What Not to do Before a Race." Except, the race didn't match my expectations, but went surprising smooth. Strange.

I'm going to try to keep it brief, so we're going to jump around a bunch. Stay with me.

We'll start in the 4 weeks leading up to the race. I really haven't been training at all. I have been in the water once (3/1) and logged a total of 1800 yds in the pool, 129 miles on the bike, and 36.5 on the run. About 4 hours of training a week. Not enough.

I decided to drive down to Houston on Sat morning. I was going down by myself and wanted to minimize the time away from my family. I'd jump in the car, make the 310 mile trip to packet pickup, and then head to my brothers where there was a couch waiting for me to sleep on.

As I packed up the car, I realized that I didn't have my shoes or HR monitor. It was in the back of our other car, which my wife had. No problem, figure out where they are, and head over to pick them up. 30 minute set back, but no big deal.

Off I go, but 90 minutes into my trip, I get a frantic call from Ingrid saying I'd left my wet suit, suit case, and tri shorts in the laundry room. I turned around, she jumped in the car, and 45 minutes later, we met in a liquor store parking lot in South Dallas, a rough part of town.

I figured that was 2 mishaps, and one more would be a sign, and I'd turn around and head back home.

I was afraid packet pickup closed at 5p, and according to my GPS, I would arrive at 5:20. I had to make up some time, which meant no time for lunch. Not smart the day before a big race.

So I made it to packet pickup, headed back up to Houston to grab food, and settle in at my brothers. I knew sleeping on a couch the night before a race wasn't conducive to strong performances, but then again, neither is not training.

We played some Wii that night, and I found myself breaking a sweat while playing Tennis on the Wii. This was going to go in the "what not to do the night before a race" section of my blog post.

Off to bed, so-so sleep, and up the next morning to head down to the race venue.

This race is a quarter iron distance race. So .6 mi swim, 28 mi bike, 6.55 mile swim. Similar to an Olympic distance, but a bit longer.

Turns out there were a few well known pros at the race. Simon Lessing, Andrea Fisher, Michael and Amanda Lovato to name a few. I'm a fan of all sports. I follow the teams, the players, etc. Triathlon is no different. I follow these guys like I do my players on the Dodgers. So I still get a kick seeing these guys.

Just prior to the gun going off, my wave (M30-34 + pros and elites) made its way to the end of the peir, but the race director said it might be a while, so we could get in if we wanted. Two people jumped in, me and Simon Lessing. Turned out we waited about 10 minutes before the rest of our wave jumped in the water. So Simon and I talked. It was great, we talked about his race schedule, his health, my goggles. He talked about him doing the new Muskoka 70.3 race, which will be the first time he's raced up there since the ITU World Championships in 1992 (a race Simon won!). This is what is great about Endurance Sports, you are on the same course, sometimes in the same swim wave as the best in the world.

So everyone entered the water, and Andrea Fisher quickly came over to get next to Simon so he could pull her around the course. I think she decided I had a better spot to draft off of Simon than she did, because she was all up in my personal space. I backed off, but it was humorous. She was all business. So it was Simon, Andrea, and some other guy and me in a group waiting for the gun to go off. Simon is telling jokes and stories about racing in France, etc., and I'm just soaking it all in.

The gun goes off, and away we go. I hung with this group to the first turn, but they were moving real fast, and I had 1 workout under my belt in the past month. I was expecting to blow up, but wanted to wait another 5 minutes before doing so if possible.

Another group of 3 moved up and through me, and I let them go. For the rest of the swim there were no feet to be found. I could see people behind me out of the corner of my eye, but didn't feel as if I was pulling more than 1-2 others around the course, and was okay with that.

At the last turn, I see one of my drafters try to come around me. I cut her off as I round the buoy and she drops back for a bit before coming around just yards from the swim finish. We stand up to exit, and I realize the swimmer who benefited from my draft was none other than Amanda Lovato. She ended up being the 2nd woman overall.

Swim 15:15 (1:25/100 pace)

This is the third time I've done this race, and one thing I was banking on was a terrible headwind for the first 14 miles of the out and back bike course along the Galveston Seawall. Last year, the delta between my pace into the wind versus with it was 12 mph. It can be just brutal.

It turns out the wind was shifted a bit, coming in from the SE, which made for a nearly perfect crosswind for both directions of the bike. Still frustrating, but not demoralizing.

The ride was rather uneventful save for me realizing I put my aero bottle on backwards and had to really stretch to reach the straw, and for the plethora of road kill out there, both in terms of quantity and variety. Dog, Cat, Possum, Rabbit, Bird, Raccoon, Miscellaneous. Easily 3 kills per mile. Easily!

Something strange was happening however. I wasn't really too uncomfortable. I was laying down good power, which was equating to decent speed, and I never really faded.

Bike 1:24.11 (avg 20.0 mph)

I haven't run more than 4.5 miles at once since Feb 23rd, so I figured this is where I would unravel. As I hit the transition, my buddy Tim gave me a high five and I was on my way. Didn't feel great, but wasn't hurting too bad. I could go, but just didn't have much speed. I had my Garmin 205 on and was running between 9:05s and 9:30 for most of the way. In the mile 5 range, I started to hurt as the heat was catching up to me, and my legs were starting to feel loaded. I began to slow to around 10:10s and wondered if I was coming apart with 1.5 to go.

One reality about my abilities is that my best discipline is the swim, and my worst is the run. With that combo, I pretty much start off the race near the top of the field, and get passed all day long until I cross the line. It doesn't matter if I finish in the top third or the bottom half of the field, I get passed. So I rarely catch runners on the run, only people who have bonked and are walking.

During my race today, I passed 2 people on the run. The first was someone who had bonked and was walking, the second provided for a decent story.

As I was going through that slow spot around mile 5, I looked ahead and realized someone in a PlayTri jersey (Playtri is a North Dallas Tri Team) was coming back to me, and he was running. I kicked my pace up about 30-40 secs per mile back into 9:20 range and began to bring him in. He was about 100 yards ahead when I first spotted him, so it took a while to close the gap, but I made up about half of it at the last aid station as he took a few steps to drink while I ran through. I ran up to him with about .75 mi to go, and went around him. About .2 miles later, my pace slowed a bit, and he came back around me. I hitched on to the guy and matched him stride for stride for about another .2 mi. We've got about a third of a mile to go, and we passed a spectator who said, "Dallas Athletes vs PlayTri, battle for Dallas, who's it going to be" and I new it was going to be on with this guy. With about a minute to go, I put on a surge and came around him again for good.

My HR was 185 in the finish shute, which is about as high as it gets.

Run 1:00.37 (9:19 pace)

Transitions were pretty fast and uneventful.

Total time was 2:43.47. A 5 minute improvement over my PR on the course. Not sure how I managed to keep it together, but I did, and am glad I made the trip.

I finished:
192 out of 616 overall
150 out of 363 for men
26 out of 69 in my age group

My hopes were that this would motivate me to train a bit more, and I think it will.

Tour of California

So I recorded all of the TOC stages on my tivo I have upstairs in the room I do all of my rides on the trainer in. I'd carefully sequestered myself so that I didn't have a clue as to what the results of the stages were despite the race being over for a couple of weeks now.

The plan was to have some motivational stuff to watch while logging some hours on the trainer this late winter/early spring.

So far I've watched the prologue which Fabian Cancellara won, and stage #1 which J.J. Haedo took in a bunch sprint. As luck would have it, something happened to the DVR and I lost all of the remaining stages I'd recorded.

I'm torn as to whether I just go ahead and see what ultimately happened, or if I hang on a bit longer incase their is a re-airing. I don't think it is likely.

At least I have the stage wrap-ups from the Fredcast that I can listen to. I had been saving those and was listening to them only after watching the stage.

In Loving Memory of our Sweet Dog Maggie

Our Favorite Maggie Memories:

· The day I came home from work and Ingrid had our new puppy Maggie who had just flown to us from Connecticut waiting for me at the door. She was as excited to meet me as I was to meet her.

· Taking her to St. Petersburg, FL for the St. Anthony’s triathlon. We stayed in a seedy hotel that allowed dogs, and it was the only time we ever let her climb into bed with us. She had a blast mingling with other spectators while on leash at the race.

· Maggie’s infatuation with Christmas ornaments.

· 4 Years of Monday to Thursday evening companionship while Ingrid was on the road for work.

· Trips to the dog park by Buffalo Bayou in Houston

· Wrestling Maggie into her crate in the ticket area of Hartsfield Airport, and giving the sky cap a $20 to be sure she got on the plane.

· Maggie first meeting Reagan and Jake.

· Maggie roaming the shores of Richland Chambers Reservoir with Duke and Dakoda

· Chasing the sun spot to sit in across the room all day long

· Dog Socialization school in Atlanta

· Watching her run all out on the beach at Kiawah

· Road trips with her in the back seat of the civic

· Her white squirrel on her chest

· Her rarely heard but impressive bark

· Her velvet soft ears

· Unconditional love, always

Solo Swim Workouts

There is nothing I enjoy more than a swim workout with a group of people of equal ability, and a touch of machismo. I get so much more out of it compared to a workout I come up with on my own, and do by myself.

That is why the swimming has not been going all that well this year. While I'm getting in okay yardage, I'd describe most of the yards as garbage yardage. Logging yards with no real agenda. I put in 14,700 yards in Jan, the 3rd most Jan yards I've logged since 2002 (24,450 in '02, and 22,450 in '05 being the two years with more yards). For you two "real" swimmers who read my blog, you'll laugh at what I've become. We recall the days when we'd do 18,000+ yards in a day. I'm soft, I know.

Ever since I've moved to Dallas, the swimming scene has been a struggle. I had a great masters team I swam with in Atlanta. While the faces on the fringe of the group would change with life's priorities, there was always a good core group of people you could count on showing up, and pushing you a bit.

As we moved to Houston for grad school, time was the biggest limiter to getting in the water regularly, but as the course load eased up, and the job search was finalized, I was able to train with the masters team at Rice University headed up by the school's varsity swim coaches. I was swimming 3 times a week, putting in about 3,500-4,000 yards per workout which typically lasted about 1:15 long, and my swimming blossomed.

When I came to Dallas, things changed. There were no masters teams with evening workouts that were within a reasonable drive of where I lived and worked. I could swim with the big masters club here in town which would involve a 4:30 am wakeup call, and me getting to work a good hour and a half before the rest of my team would show up (did I mention I am not a morning person any more?). Also not ideal!

So I've been swimming with my tri team, and the level of consistency between who shows up, and when the workouts are offered has made it a struggle to find an environment conducive to quality swimming.

I've been doing swimming largely on my own, writing all of my own workouts. I've never had a problem coming up with a workout, but in the end, I tend to have myself doing the same type of workout, and usually lose interest before I hit my planned yardage total for the session. I'm also swimming them by myself, and I've always needed someone else to push me to work harder. Plus, a workout partner always helps the yards fly by.

I did have one good workout last week. I've been swimming at a high school pool and just decided to do the workout the high school team left up on the dry erase board. The intervals prescribed were a bit more aggressive than I had been putting myself through lately, but I decided to give it a go. As I recall, the workout went something like this:

200 free on 3:00
4x50 kick on 1:00
200 free on 3:00
4x50 pull on :50
200 free on 3:00
4x50 swim on :45

4x400 on 6:00 descend effort 1-4. (I went 5:45, 5:35, 5:24, 5:13)

200 warm down

It felt good to get it going a bit, and the laps did pass quickly. But I was back in the water today, and the mojo was gone.

There is a masters team I swam with twice as part of a trial back in 2005. They swim in Irving which is about 25-30 mins from my house, but about 10 mins from my office. They swim at 6:00am, which would mean a 5:15 wake up call. Still not ideal, but I'm just not sure if my tri team workouts are going to pick up for a while.

Conflicted, Dinger!

On the Mend

I succumbed to the illness that had been making its rounds in my family this week. It started with a sore throat last Sat and blossomed in to a full blown cold by Tuesday night. I cut my workouts on Mon and Tues short, and took Wed-Fri off completely.

I actually was in such rough shape on Thursday that I stayed home from work, which was the first time I've done that in years.

Anyhow, I felt like I turned the corner on Friday and felt better today (Sat) when I got up, so I decided to go out and do my run with no agenda other than to cover the distance, and keep my HR under 160. I'm not fully recovered because keeping it under 160 forced me to back off my pace by about 20-25 seconds, but the weather was phenomenal today, and I enjoyed getting outside.

I don't recall a winter in which I've been sicker, but hope it is behind me for good. I need an uninterrupted stretch during this base period to lay down some good foundation.

Uninsured Motorist Coverage

As some of you who frequent Triscoop are well aware, but many of you aren't, our triathlon buddy Gusano from Diboll, TX was in a horrible bike accident last August. The good news is that Gusano is well on his way to recovery, and hopes to get back out there on the race course this March at the Lonestar Sprint Triathlon down in Galveston, TX.

I'd read about his accident and later heard him interviewed on Tyler Darby's (aka Jetpack) podcast just days after the accident, but only learned recently that the person who hit Gusano wasn't insured. No problem right? It turns out, unbeknownst to Gusano, that he didn't have uninsured motorist protection which left him exposed to all of the medical bills his health insurance wouldn't cover.

I had Gusano send me a note giving me the details to post to my blog. My hopes are that everyone who gets out there on the roads to run or bike or into the lake to open water swim* will double check their auto insurance policies to be sure they have this coverage, and to add it if they don't. Here is Gusano's story:

On August 18, 2007 at 7:00pm after about 56 miles of riding, my sister and I were passing through a neighborhood to lead us back home. I was going down a hill when a suburban turned left onto a side street in front of me. I do not remember anything from about 15 minutes before the wreck to about 2 hours after the wreck. I am told that I smashed into the side of the suburban busting out the back seat passenger side window. My sister said when she rode up on me that I was lying down, holding my shoulder and saying it was hurting pretty bad. My arm was bleeding pretty badly so she took her cycling shirt and wrapped it around the open wounds. She said I kept asking what happened and where we were. The ambulance arrived and strapped me down onto a spine board and that’s when I mentioned that my neck hurt. We went to the local hospital and after many x-rays a CAT scan, and MRI they came in and said my neck was broken in three places and that they were sending me to Houston for surgery. This was the first I remember. I remember dying of thirst, but they couldn’t give me any water and the spine board was very uncomfortable. I laid in the ER in Houston on a Saturday night until around 6am Sunday morning. Hours later I had more x-rays and another MRI. This all showed that my neck was stable and I would not need surgery. The three broken vertebra turned into one and somehow two of the vertebra were already fused together. They had also slipped forward tearing all the ligaments and stuff holding them together. Without surgery I would wear a hard neck brace for about 12 weeks. They preformed surgery on my shoulder and removed tons of broken glass from beneath my skin. It would be weeks later until another doctor looked at my shoulder and determined that it had been fractured and separated. I was released from the hospital on Wednesday. I had many checkups on my neck and lots of physical therapy for my shoulder. It has been about 5 months since the accident and I feel about 90% healed. My scars remind me everyday and I feel grateful and very lucky.

During all this time I have talked to 3 different lawyers about this case. Turns out the guy that hit me did not have insurance on his vehicle but showed proof of insurance at the wreck. His excuse was that he was in the process of selling the vehicle. The officer did not ticket the guy for failure to yield and made excuses that I was hard to see. The man that hit me still says today that it was not his fault and I came out of nowhere. Luckily, I had medical insurance that pays 80%. But still when medical bills add up to about $100k and you’re still receiving them in the mail it can get expensive for you. So the guy doesn’t have insurance and no lawyer will want to take the case since they are not guaranteed any money. I could pay the lawyer up front for all the fees but in the end I would just be out more money. You can’t get anything from someone who has nothing. We looked into my car insurance for help. Turns out I don’t have Uninsured Motorist Coverage. This coverage would have paid for all my medical expenses and any other injury-related loss. We added it the day we found out. I have never known about this coverage and for a few bucks more it’s worth every penny. I did have PIP or Personal Injury Protection which was $2,500. Hey it covered my ambulance ride!!

Again, take a look at your coverage and make sure you all are in good shape.

Thanks for sharing the story with us Gus! Looking forward to reading your race report from Galveston!

*I had a masters swim teammate get chopped up by the prop of a drunk boater in Atlanta while doing a group swim

Triathlon Inflation

I signed up for the CapTex Tri today. I figured I'd try to cash in on the early bird savings. Much to my surprise, the all in costs after Active.com's ~$9 surcharge was $128!!! Is it me, or is that absolutely outrageous?

I first did this race in 2005, and while I can't find what I paid back then, I can tell that it cost $89 (with surcharge) in 2006, and I believe it was $100+active surcharge in 2007.

I just find this absurd, and yet, I still paid it. I guess I'm perpetuating the problem by handing over my hard earned dollars.

This is why ideas like self supported triathlons make some sense. If you haven't checked out 140dot6, give it a look. It is an online community that promotes the self supported triathlon.

For me, I prefer the social aspect of races so I can't see myself doing a self supported ironman like many at 140dot6 are preping for, but at $128 for an Olympic distance race, I'm starting to have doubts.

Off for a COLDDDDDDD run.