Leading Up
My "A" Race for the first half of the season is Ironman Texas. Therefore I've been putting in a lot of longer workouts. More concerned about increasing my endurance and not focusing as much on speed. I have also been battling tendonitis in my right ankle. This nasty little injury flares up every time I run, though is perfectly fine for biking and swimming. I just started going to Multisport Health Center a week before Kemah. They were optimistic in getting me entirely better a week or two after this race. They also gave me the go ahead to compete assuming the pain in my ankle doesn't get too bad on the run. As annoying as its been not being able to run, which is by far my best sport, it has given me the opportunity to focus on swimming and biking. If you gave me a grade on each sport I am quite confident my running would get a B, cycling a C, and swimming an Incomplete... its really that bad. That being said, having the ability to focus on swimming the past few months has really helped my stroke. I think I am getting a lot faster (or should I simply say less horrible).
Swim - 29:06
As hundreds of triathletes are sitting cramped on this big boat heading out to sea, the captain comes on the loudspeaker... "I hope everyone is ready to swim back in because this ferry is heading to Galveston."
Most swims you start treading water next to a buoy. For this race we started the swim by jumping off a big boat about a mile offshore. Was a very cool experience. I was a little concerned about my goggles falling off or my body reacting badly with the cold water, but the swim went off without a glitch. As I said before, I was really hoping my swim was improving from all the work I'd been putting in. So, when I hit this big red buoy after what felt like a good amount of time I get really excited. Figured I must have missed the first 500M buoy and this must be the 1000M buoy. I held onto this feeling of accomplishment right up until I hit the 1000M buoy a little while later... Damn, maybe I'm not getting faster after all... The swim was actually very choppy. Made for a tough day in the water. I came out of the water and got to transition and to my surprise... I saw my friends in transition! This sounds like no big deal, but everyone I saw is normally WAY ahead of me after the swim. One of my friends (who ended up to go onto get 3rd in age group) actually came into T1 after me. We saw each other at the same time and he "what the f are you doing here" look on his face. Was priceless.
Bike - 1:07:23 - 22.1 MPH
So I got a new toy about 2 months ago...
This was my first race with the new Quintana Roo CD0.1. I love this bike. The course for the race is very flat. I don't think there was one hill. What we did not have a shortage of was wind. It was incredibly windy. The first 15 miles we were battling different levels of cross winds. This was followed by 5 miles of a very nasty straight headwind. After those 5 miles of hell were over we got to ride the awesome tailwind back to transition. I was feeling pretty good on the bike but decided not to press. I think this was for two reasons. The first was that this was not an "A" race and I had not been doing much in the realm of speed work (stupid reason, this was me probably rationalizing being lazy). The second reason (more legitimate) was that I had not run more than 5 miles at one time since Houston Marathon (3 moths ago). I had no idea how my body and ankle were going to react to 6.2 miles of racing. I could envision my body simply laughing at this attempt to run, then only allowing me to string together 8 minute miles over the 10k. All this being said I still put up a good bike time, I just think it could (and should) have been better.
One of the best parts of the day happened at the beginning of the bike course. About 4 miles in I saw two of the pros I very much look up to: Terenzo Bozzone and Chris Lieto. They were on their ridiculous bikes just flying by on their way back in. I definitely say said screw being aero and watched as they went by. How many sports can you compete in where you literally get to compete with and at the same time as the professionals you emulate?
Run - 42:17 - 6:49 min/miles
So I decided to run without my Garmin. This is the first time I have run a race without the watch. The reasoning for this is that if my body was not letting me run the pace I wanted I did not want to freak out, run faster, and blow myself up. Figured better to just keep as fast a pace as I could for as long as I could and hope for the best. This worked to perfection. I think I ran the first 5 miles at or around a 6:30 pace. All I know that this time off running did not do much damage. I past one of my friends (who put a lot of time into me on the bike) around mile 4. At mile 5 I saw another of my buddies. He had about a minute on me going into the Kemah Bridge (we go over this fairly tall bridge twice). I slowed down a little, but still held a respectable pace over the bridge the first time, but bad news when I hit the bottom. With a little less than a mile to go I had not gained more than 5 seconds on my friend. He surged on the quarter mile section before we went back up the bridge and my legs wouldn't let me respond. This was where more running may have helped me out a bit more. I struggled up the bridge the second time at a much slower pace. Once I hit the bottom I was still able to finish the last quarter mile of the run strong. I considered this run a huge success considering no pain in my ankle and I was only 20 seconds away from my 10k PR.
Total Time - 2:22:32
Very pleased with the end result. I know I've greatly improved the swim and my run hasn't suffered much even with the time off. Ended up coming in 8th in my age group and 32nd overall (out of 516). Not a bad showing for my first race of the year.
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