Race Report: Black Diamond Long Course Triathlon

Wayne and the kids decided not to come with me this time, the weather looked too dicey for camping and we've had a really busy few weeks. So it was just me, myself, and NPR toodling up the freeway. Getting to listen to several hours of uninterrupted NPR and music is a joy in and of itself:  an open treasury, from programs on the Nile river to interviews with Wall Street tycoons, it's like an Ironman for your mind.

Arriving in Washington, I was struck by the fact that it was Fall with a capital "F". Back home in Orygun, there's a few leaves drifting off of the trees and temperatures are still in the 80's. But here there were great drifts of leaves on the ground, crunching piles underfoot. All was gold and red in the hills and the evening air had a serious briskness about it. Luckily, the forecast for race day was clear skies and a high of 72.

The transition area was open for check-in in the afternoon/evening, so I unloaded my bike and covered it against the dew with my handy trash bags (if you've ever wondered why they're on my triathlon checklist, this is only one of many reasons!). All around me, triathletes were debating the possible weather combinations for race morning, and what to wear. In some areas of the country and at some times of the year, that's not really much of an issue. But fall in Western Washington for a race as long as a half-Iron distance, and you really have to think about how cold, wet, or overheated you want to be. I've worn a rainjacket in this race before, and I've gone without. This time I brought arm warmers and a waterproof vest, just to cover all of my bases, but I wasn't sure yet what I would be putting on in the race.

Race morning dawned very chilly, so I laid out the transition area with my arm warmers as an option. I met Teresa, a fellow Eugenean there, someone I had just talked with in the pool the other day and started getting to know. She's such a positive person, it was great fun to see her there. She had a Queen Jane water bottle, and I commented on it, which sent us both into a round of tears and hugs. Although it's been almost five years since we lost friend, mentor, and uber-triathlete Jane Higdon from our midst, sometimes it feels like yesterday. Sometimes I still can't believe she's gone. She would be just there (probably telling us to stop whining about the weather and get going already), racking up her bike and getting ready to put some serious speed onto the course. Theresa and I headed out on our bikes to warm up together (warm up being the operative word, it was very very chilly!), and then crawled into wetsuits and headed toward the water.

SWIM: 29:57  (Goal: under :30)

Brrrrrrrrr! The water felt chilly. Much colder than last year. My thermometer the evening before the race said 59 degrees. But the small lake was beautiful in the morning sunlight with all of the fall colors in the trees around. Soon enough the waves of men were launched and we women were swimming for the first buoy. I set in a steady pace and enjoyed the swim. Caught up to the first of the men at the 2nd buoy and from there on out it was a bit of dodge'em but otherwise uneventful. I think this swim is always a bit longer than others, but that's okay by me. I was happy to come in under 30 minutes.

T1: 2:34  (-21 seconds from last year)


In T1 I decided I didn't need the arm warmers after all, just put on my helmet and biking shoes and off I went. I had hoped to shave some time off of my transitions this year, and ended up shaving off about 20 seconds from T1, so that's a good start!

BIKE: 2:50:12  (Goal: 2:51 or better)

This is such a nice bike course, you really can't help but enjoy yourself. The hills are mostly rolling, the fall foliage is lovely, and in the bottom part of the course you are treated to some really stupendous views of Mt. Rainier. Still, my first loop on the course, my muscles felt tight and sore. I think because it was just so damned cold. Coming out wet from a 59 degree lake into 40-something degree air and adding in the wind chill of the bike, I felt like it took my legs a long time to get warm. It wasn't until the second loop that I really started to feel like I was in my groove.  The other monkeywrench in the day was that I had to stop and use the porta-potty for some womanly issues. Bad timing of the month! I've never had that coincide on a half-Iron before, so that kinda sucked. Still, I knew I was the second woman out onto the bike course from the swim, and only one woman passed me in the 56 miles (and she rocketed on to a 4:54 finish time), so I was feeling pretty good about my bike split overall. My split was over 3 minutes faster than last year. Not bad! I felt really good about staying on my nutrition plan too, checking my watch to take in a gel or part of  a bar every 20 minutes. I went into the run feeling like I had plenty of energy.

T2: 1:55 (+5 seconds from last year)

I have no idea how my T2 managed to actually be slower than last year. I didn't even change socks this time! This one's a mystery.

RUN: 2:12:12 (Goal: 2:05)

The run felt pretty good. I hit my goal paces for most of the first 8 miles (9:15 - 9:45). It did start to get pretty hot (comparatively) on the run. Not a lot of shade and although it only topped out at 78 degrees, that felt unusually warm after the cold morning. I definitely regretted wearing a black shirt!! I kept up with my nutrition plan though, and felt really good energy-wise through the run course. I had to use the porta-potty again and this time I had to wait for someone else to get out (it was either that or wait another 2 miles to use the next one: Not An Option). The run time on my watch says 2:09:47 (I paused it during the stop), so although I didn't hit my goal of 2:05, that's the fastest HIM run I've done in the last 15 years. At the end of the run my legs started cramping up somewhat. I was not alone as it seems like a LOT of athletes had leg cramps, more than the normal "walking wounded" of the last few miles of a 70.3. Lots of athletes in the massage tent afterwards too, some of them with screaming knots in their legs. I think it might've been the combo of a very cold morning (biking hard to warm up with legs that were too cold and stiff), possibly not drinking enough early on (harder to make yourself drink when it's cold), and then the weather turning warmer quickly. Luckily, mine didn't seize up at all, just got a little stiff.  After walking around for a few minutes I got back to the finish line just in time to cheer in Teresa who won her age group!

OVERALL: 5:36:50  4th in AG, 12th OA Woman

This is a PKPR for me at the distance (that stands for post-kids PR, so it's my fastest HIM in the last 15 years). It was also a PKPR in each of the three disciplines for this distance, so I'm very happy with that. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't pull in a faster run time. My biking has gotten much much better in the last few years, but running continues to be my big limiter. If I had the money, a run coach would be in my future for sure! Still, I am extremely happy to still be able to chip away at my times and to find little ways to improve my performance. As always, this is a beautiful race with some very amiable triathletes in a lovely little corner of the earth. I got to make a new friend in the sport, and share some memories of an old friend who is gone. I got to be reminded of how good it is to be alive and have a body that can do such amazing things.

That's a good way to end the season!

Ironman Dream #4 and My Cheap Attempt at Freudian Analysis

The Dream

I am competing in my 2nd Ironman, I'm so excited. The swim has gone very well, I'm through the changing tents in under an hour, right on my goal time. It's obviously Cozumel because I'm on an island with the sea on my right as I'm bicycling along. I go past a lagoon and Asa is swimming there with her friends. But I don't see Wayne anywhere, and I can tell that the tide is coming in and big waves are threatening to wash over the seawall into the lagoon. Any kids in there when that happens will be drug out to sea. I throw my bike down on the side of the road and go get her out of the water. Of course she wants to keep swimming and starts arguing with me (sometimes dreams are SO realistic!) I finally get her to see the danger and move to a safe place, get Wayne on the phone and make sure he's headed over to keep an eye on her. I get back on my bike and start pedaling, noticing that on my watch I've already lost twenty minutes to all of this.

Once I rack my bike and head out on the run course, I'm feeling good. The weather is warm and the glimpses of the ocean are beautiful. My finish time goal has been compromised though and I feel sad about that. I had hoped to be in the running for a Kona slot and I think that might be out of the question now. As I'm running along, I see an athlete on the side of the road. He's having leg cramps and is hollering and curled up in a ball. I know if I stop again, my whole race plan will have gone out the window, but I can't leave him lying there. I stop running. There's no one around. I give him some of my water and electrolytes and move him into the shade. I massage his calf until it unknots and he is able to sit up and drink some more water. I leave the water bottle with him and promise to send help back.

Now the run course takes a strange turn onto some old residential streets. The houses are brightly colored Victorians with peeling paint. It looks a lot like Key West Florida. The run course goes into a house, we have to run upstairs and down these hallways. We do this through multiple big old three-story houses. There are all kinds of things in the way like kids toys, dogs, and the people who live in the houses. I keep saying "excuse me!" and "I'm sorry" every time I am in someone's way. I think what an inconvenience it must be to these people to have all these athletes running through their house. Now I'm at the run turnaround, I see that it's already eleven hours into the race, and I still have half of the marathon to go. Because of all the stairs and the crazy race course, I'm way off the pace I wanted to run. I know I won't finish in under thirteen hours, way slower than my last Ironman. I feel like I've failed all of my goals for the race. I wake up feeling disappointed and sad.

The Cheap Analysis

I know I don't usually start having dreams about a race until I'm a few months or weeks out. I'm guessing I had this dream for two reasons. One is that I do have a half-Ironman coming up in a few weeks, and the Ironman in this dream could be a stand-in for that race. I could be worried about accomplishing my goals for that race. Also, if I'm going to do an Ironman like Cozumel in 2011, I'll have to sign up in a couple of months. I know that if I sign up, I'll be making big sacrifices again in the year to come.

The first thing that will be compromised is some of the time I spend with the kids and my husband. I think the dream shows that I'm worried about putting more of the family burden onto his shoulders again like I did the last time, and that I worry that without my constant care and attention, disaster may strike my family (as if my vigilance alone holds it off, LOL).

The second thing I worry about is that the Ironman is essentially a selfish goal. The man by the side of the road says I will be forced to choose between being selfish (focusing on my own goals) and being selfless and helping others around me. Friends, family, and strangers will be by the side of the road and I will have to choose to put my own goals first and run on by, or to set my goals aside to help them.

The last thing I worry about is disappointing myself and others if I don't fulfill my goals for the race. If I spend all this time, energy, and money training, and then I fall short of what I set out to do, I worry that it will all be for nothing. Of course, I know that the journey is really the destination and all of that, but you can't fool your subconscious and I know my dream is telling me that my goals for the race will be important to me and there's no getting around that.

Well, that's my cheap analysis of the dream. Unlike my friend Jody Mace, a professional writer who draws her own dreams and puts them on Facebook, regularly causing me to spew tea on my monitor (well, Jody is that kind of funny person anyways), I don't dream a lot lately. Some of that may have to do with the half-Ironman training which is reaching its peak this week. Mostly I fall into something akin to a coma when my head hits the pillow. Luckily, I've been getting a steady eight hours lately, which is probably why I finally got to do some dreaming.

They're Baaacckkkkkk

Just a quick update before I hit the hay... we got back from our weekend of tri-ing. Hubby did great in his 1st Oly distance triathlon (with a time of 2:46, awesome!), and also celebrated his 46th birthday over the weekend. I had much more fun than expected in my half-Iron distance race, placing 2nd in my age group and 15th overall female. Race Reports to follow....

Moonrise

I've come around on my slingshot ride of orbit and am now entering the taper. Sheesh, no wonder I feel so tired. I finished updating my workout log for last week. 21.5 hours. Insanity. I never trained that many hours for the Ironman! Five of those hours were karate (no slacking for us brown belts) and one was Crossfit (meant to do two this week but there was just no way to slot it in). The other 14.5 were all tri training.

And now that it's over, I've spent a few minutes wondering if it was the right way to go about this. It's a bass-ackward way to train for a HIM - do all of your sprint and high intensity work for 4 months, then go back and try to add in a base. Still, I can't help but feel a little bit hopeful that it actually worked. My last long bike ride on Friday was 65 miles and it felt pretty decent for the first 55. That's a long cry from the horrible 35-miler I put in just a month ago. So the endurance has definitely snapped back, if not all of the way at least part of it. And I did a 6-mile tempo run this week that actually felt semi-decent.

So, I'm hoping that this all adds up to a half-Iron that's not half-bad. If anything, I'll be happy if I nail my nutrition and don't end up with a bonk midway through the run like last time. I would be really ecstatic not to repeat that nightmare, at the very least. Repeat to self: Must not forget gels on run. Must not forget gels on the run.

For now, it's taper, rest, let those muscles absorb all of those hours of training and snap back strong and sure. And I tell myself also to enjoy the fact that at 43 I can throw a 21+ hour week of training at my body and still take it. That in and of itself is a victory of sorts, just as standing at the starting line healthy and whole always is, to me.

Black Diamond Half-Iron Race Report: Nutrition Lessons

Black Diamond Half-Iron Distance: First up, the good news: I set a PKPR (post-kids PR) for this distance at 5:39:42, and an all-time PR at this distance on the bike course at 2:52:11. I also had the 2nd fastest women's swim split. Given that I had very low expectations going in, with only two bike rides over 50 miles this summer, and one long run of 12 miles or over, I am extremely happy with my overall performance. I'm especially excited about my continued improvement on the bike in every race this year. The bad news: other than my lack of training, I was really held back by poor race day execution (transitions and details) which led to a nutritional crisis and almost my first DNF ever. You would think after 21 years in the sport, I'd be above these stupid little mistakes, but you would be wrong on that one.

So, on to the race. It was very cold on race day morning. I had expected it to be cold, but somehow it felt a lot colder to me than I had even expected. So after heading out on the bike to warm up before the race, I second-guessed my original plan of wearing my cycling jersey and arm warmers and instead decided to wear a jacket. I don't have any really good tight-fitting cycling jackets, so this was a painful decision for me, knowing I was sacrificing aerodynamics for comfort. I definitely think I need to get some cold-weather gear if I'm going to race longer distances this late in the season again, especially in the fickle Northwest. This jacket decision had consequences that rippled out later in the day. Since I was wearing a jacket and not my jersey on the bike, I decided to pin my race number onto my running shirt and not wear the race belt to hold my number. I've always raced with a race belt, so this was a departure for me (mistake #1). It would also mean I'd have to grab some gels for the run and hold them in my hand instead of having them in my belt. I made sure to put them by my running shoes so I wouldn't forget them.

I was worried about the swim being too cold, as the lake was 61 degrees on race morning. That turned out to be a non-issue though, and my new Blue70 long-sleeved wetsuit worked like a charm. I added a neoprene cap and was toasty and felt smooth and fast. With only one woman out ahead of me, I wove through the slower men from the preceding heat to a very nice swim split. It was slower than I estimated (30:47, when I predicted :28), but since everyone's splits were slow I think that was a swim course issue and not my personal speed. I was the 2nd woman and 13th overall swimmer.

On to the transition. Pulling on my jacket proved to be ridiculously difficult. Should've practiced it with wet arms, I had practiced arm warmers over and over, but again it was a last-minute decision to change. This left me with a very slow T1 of 3:37. On the other hand, I felt toasty warm and comfortable on the bike, even if I looked ridiculous in floppy jacket and aero helmet. However, the helmet kept my ears nice and warm as I had hoped. The bike course was really lovely. Smooth roads over most of the course, and the rolling hills that make me feel right at home. I felt powerful and kept a nice steady pace, rolling into a 2:52 bike split, which was 3 minutes faster than my estimated time. My nutrition felt spot on, and I was well hydrated and (here comes some TMI) even managed to pee on the bike, eliminating the bothersome porta-potty stops that slowed down my Ironman and last HIM bike splits.

T2 was not especially fast as I did change socks, but 2:11 was reasonable given the distance through the transition area that I had to run my bike. It was worth it to have comfortable feet on the run. I started out the run by keeping to my goal pace of 9:30. I didn't overamp the first couple of miles like I did last time at this distance, and was very happy with how my run course was going. There were some short, steep hills that were definitely a bitch, but I felt okay. At 30 minutes into the run however, I reached for my first gel and realized I forgot to grab them and I wasn't wearing a belt. There were no gels on the run course at the aid stations, only Heed (made by Hammer) and water. I decided to walk through the aid stations and try and drink more Heed than I normally would to keep my carbs up and blood sugar stable. This worked really well through mile 8, and I was having a pretty nice run. My first 6 miles was spot on a 9:30 pace at 57:03. After mile 8 however, the aid station (you pass it multiple times on this course) ran out of Heed and only had water. I still had almost 50 minutes to go and this worried me. Mile 9 went okay, but by mile 10 I was feeling slightly queasy and shaky. After that, I could definitely feel the low blood sugar taking hold and I hit the wall hard. I felt so shaky and my heart was hammering very hard, so I walked for awhile and tried to determine whether or not it was healthy to keep on or whether I should quit.

I've never DNF'd in a triathlon once in over two decades. But my pounding heartbeat and headache worried me. Passing out after the Ironman last year with such low blood pressure and dehydration had given me a good scare and worried me that I was able to push on for so long in that race with my body obviously failing. This is what was going through my mind on the Half-Iron course. Should I go on? I finally came to the conclusion that I was experiencing low blood sugar and not dehydration or anything life-threatening. So I started running again. Although the last two miles were very scenic, ending up on a lovely trail around the lake, they seemed to stretch out in a sort of miserable haze. I passed a couple of people who were experiencing very similar things and were walking, so I know I wasn't the only one caught by surprise when the aid stations ran out of carb drink.

In the end, I finished with a run split (2:10:56) only a bit faster than my last HIM run (2:12). I know I'm faster overall now, so this was pretty disappointing, and although I didn't have a lot of mileage under my belt, I think I could've done better if I hadn't messed up my nutrition. It's a good lesson to re-learn though, don't change things up on race day. If you remember nothing else, keeping your nutrition going in a long race is paramount.

Overall, I'm happy with my race. As always, the longer courses teach you a lot about racing, the importance of strong strategy and consistancy, and how tough you can really be. This one hurt worse than it should've, and I know I won't forget those lessons anytime soon! But on the bright side, I'm faster at 41 than I was at 38 and that's nothing to sneeze at. I'm also only a few minutes away from my all-time PR at this distance that I set at age 25. Maybe next time...