Life As It Comes

Austin Tri Race Report3 Comments

I accomplished one of my goals for this year, a couple weeks ago, and I wanted to share about it with you. I competed in an Olympic-distance triathlon on September 1, here in Austin, Texas. Here is my recap of the race:

As previously mentioned in several posts, I began training with T3 in June, following a training plan toward Austin Tri as my “A” race. I followed the plan pretty closely, with the exception of the long-runs since they are on Sundays (I still need to figure out a time for that to fit).

Leading up to the race, I competed in two sprint-distance tris (with slightly different distances on a couple of the legs).

The first was Couples Tri, which I wrote about here. I finished with these stats:

The second was Jack’s Generic Tri, which I previewed here. I finished with these stats:

I trained through both of those races (no tapering), and it felt good seeing some improvement (after accounting for the differences in distances). Heading into Jack’s Generic, I had done a difficult bike the day before, and my legs were suffering. However, my bike pace showed solid improvement, so I was happy with it.

After Jack’s, I declared August, “run month.” I altered my weekly rhythm of when I was fitting in my workouts to coincide with what I posted here:

Monday: Specialty Run
Tuesday: Spin
Wednesday: Swim in the morning; Track Workout at night
Friday: Swim in the morning
Saturday: Long Ride + Brick (+ swim sometimes)

Note: still no long run.

I worked diligently on my running at the shorter workouts though, and people kept telling me I really seemed to be improving. Sometime in August (I need to start keeping a training log), I PR‘ed my mile time down around 9:30 or so, so I thought to myself, “If I can PR around 9:30, then surely I can run a 10k - even if I have to hold a 10:00 mile. We do around 4-5 miles most of the time in the short run workouts - what’s another mile or two?”

Approaching race day, I was thinking the following: swim → 30 minutes or less; bike → S Mopac loops take me around 20-25 minutes, so we’ll say 1.5 hrs; run → 10:00 over 6 mi is 60 minutes. I should be able to get under 3 hours! Meanwhile, I was telling my potential fans on race-day (including my mom, people from small-group, etc) to expect me around 3+ hours, but probably not as long as 3.5.

Race Day:

I was up, dressed, and downtown (all the way from G-town) at like 4:48am. Transition didn’t open until 5am. I had met up with a few friends (non-T3ers) doing the sprint distance the day before to check our bikes into transition, so there really wasn’t much need to be there that early. That’s me though - early to a fault!

When I arrived, I said hi to Michelle. Then, I got body-marked (bib number 339), set up transition, and was really sort of standing around for a bit. I saw coaches Mo and Chrissie arrive and helped them set up a tent for a bit. I had a clif bar and let Mom take a few pictures of me in my T3 racing gear:

I went back into transition shortly before it closed to give everything the once twice thrice-over, and then it was time to head down to Town Lake (now Ladybird Lake) for the start.

Tom told me he was expecting a big day out of me and for me to finish under 3 hours. A few days before, Erin and Kevin Babb had each written me some encouraging emails. Friends and family were in attendance. It was time to start!

I hopped into town lake, which you can see me do in the race video, and my wave was off. The swim went pretty well. I had one lapse in sighting and ended up slightly off course for a bit, but the mile swim felt both longer and shorter than I expected it to feel. We made a big loop down toward the Lamar bridge and back. Swimming has long been my event though, so I wasn’t feeling too much pressure and was trying to conserve energy. I was figuring 25 minutes or so for the swim, and I finished around 26:49 - pretty on target. The run to transition was long and rocky, but I had some good fan support cheering me up the ramp:

My feet gathered a lot of dirt in transition, and I tried to clean them off before sliding on my socks and getting on the bike. I got my gear on, grabbed my nutrition, and headed out. The path to the bike start seemed like it was longer than it needed to be too, but such is life. I looped under the South First Street bridge and was under-way on the bike. The bike course was nice and pretty flat, compared to what we’re usually training on — someone described it as a “user-friendly” course. I had approximately two GUs while on the bike and gave and received some encouragement to teammates as they passed by or I passed them. I felt pretty strong on the bike as well. Here’s a picture of me on South Congress. I passed Lindsey on the course at one point. I was sad to see her have to drop out, but she’s got bigger races in mind for next year, so it was a wise call. I also saw Danny and Christin out cheering for me, and that gave me a boost. The bike finished right where I wanted it to be: 1:23:10 (maybe even a little faster than I had dared to hope).

Transition again; then the run. The first 5k was right where I wanted it to be. I was on-pace and everything. Almost as soon as I started the second half of the run, I started noticing that my head was really hot and that I wasn’t absorbing much of the water I was drinking (it was sitting in my stomach). I wasn’t sure about what to do with the overheating, but I thought I could walk for a minute and take-stock of how I was feeling. I walked for about 30 seconds and then got going again. I felt mostly ok, but then about another quarter of a mile or so later, I started feeling bad again and walked for a bit. My friend Chris Vasiliotis passed me and I ran with him for a bit (he was doing the sprint distance), but after a while, I let him go so I could try to cool off with a couple cups of water over-the-head at the J & A water-stop. This worked for a bit, and I was feeling better, but then suddenly cold as the water evaporated off a bit. I was remembering what Logan said a couple times at practice about feeling cold when it’s hot and feeling light-headed, and I talked myself into another few seconds to walk. Courtney passed me. Jess passed me. I was starting to bonk. I picked it up again for a bit and ran past the crowd of friends and then took it easy for a bit around the last water stop — walking through and pouring water and squeezing a sponge over my head. I thought to myself a couple times, “You’re blowing your chances to finish under 3 by walking.” I was pretty mad at myself at that point, but then I saw some paramedics carrying off a guy who had passed out on the course, and I let up on myself a little bit. I didn’t want to pass out and not finish. I wasn’t sure if there was risk of that, because I wasn’t really sure what my body was feeling. (Tom later told me I was probably way under on my race nutrition, and Kevin Babb told me later that I probably should have woken up even earlier to have a light breakfast for some base calories, instead of having that clif bar be the only thing I ate before the start of the race. I also later realized the lack of water absorption was probably due to not having electrolytes during the bike stage at all. I hadn’t needed them yet at any of the sprints, so it was maybe a little naive of me to think I could do without them in the Olympic distance.) Eventually, I made it around the South First loop of the bridge and was running the home stretch. I had heard Tracy and Chris V finish while I was on the bridge and then saw the passed-out guy, but decided to run the last of it pretty hard.

Dionn was working the finish, and she got so excited and started cheering for me when I came into view. I really picked up my legs those last few yards and finished at what I thought was 3:07 something. A day later, I realized I had forgotten to subtract the 5 minutes difference, since I was in the second wave. I could have kicked myself! That put me at 3:01:58.70 - so close to finishing under 3! Here is the final break-down:

Wrap-Up

I’ve come to terms with missing getting under 3, and I’ve learned a lot about race nutrition and how my body feels at the Olympic distance. Overall, I’m really satisfied with how things turned out and what I was able to accomplish.

It seems like I’m always gushing about T3, but it’s an amazingly supportive group of impressive athletes and coaches. What more could you want? They prepared me for the race with amazing results. So, what am I doing now? I’m still training. I PR’ed my run time the Wednesday after the race (8:49!), and I’m still improving. To what end?

People say triathlon gets in your blood.

I’m planning to work up to Vineman next year, so I guess they’re right!