On Sunday, I raced the Shawnigan Lake Triathlon half iron tri, which is part of the Subaru West Coast Triathlon series. It was essentially a part of my build towards CdA in late June and was 3 weeks into a four week build before my taper kicks in. As such, it was a moderately heavy week although I’d had three light days leading up to the race.  I had two public goals and one less public: have three solid events regardless of my time in any specific one of them, nail nutrition given historical issues there, and, unmentioned to anyone, get a big PR based on training and learnings I’ve had over the past 8 months since my last half. 

We got to Lake Shawnigan on Friday, and spent Saturday from around 2pm to 4pm doing stuff around race site – registering, having the kids participate in the kids race, listening to another boring race briefing etc. All things considered, this was an extremely family friendly race. They had bouncy castles, a clown doing face painting & balloons, a kids race with great schwag and it generally felt like they were catering to the triathlon community, not just the tri dorks in the clan (unlike Lake Stevens).

The day before, Karen asked me what time I’d be done.  Well, in truth, she asked if we could book a 2pm whale watching tour, which would require us leaving the house at 1:15.  I thought it was feasible, although worse case scenario I told her she’d need to be at the race site at 1:15 (which would be a 6:15 half) with a change of clothes for me.  Realistically, I thought I could make it home, shower & get out on time, although I warned her that I probably wouldn’t be the most dynamic I’ve been.  That was probably a bonus to her. :)

The morning of the race, I had to get to a nearby community center at 5 am, where I would take a bus to the race site (there was no parking there and I didn’t want to take the car anyway as it would strand Karen & the kids). I opted to run the 1.5 miles to the center carrying a backpack with my gear as a warmup; because of that, I carried my bottles with nutrition powder in them but decided to fill them there. That was stupid. There was no water to be found anywhere, which is pretty much my only gripe with the race – who doesn’t have water at the start?!?! I begged & borrowed some from the volunteers, knowing it would get me to the first bottle exchange where I could then start using on-course water to replenish.

By 7am, I’d gotten in a little practice swim right before the Canadian army fired the largest gun I’ve ever heard to start the race.  It was a “waist water” start, but I noticed that there were a fair number of people standing on the shore waiting for the gun to go off; I figured folks in the water were fast so I positioned myself in the water towards the back.  That was stupid; the people on the shore may have been Sprint/Oly people waiting for their race and I didn’t realize it. 

It was the worst swim start I’ve done in five halves even though there were only 117 people; total blender and folks in front just weren’t moving fast enough.  (Considering I came out of the water last in my first half, I never thought I’d ever say that…)  I got drilled in the head twice pretty hard by feet as I tried to find open water, each time filling my goggles, and I likely ended up swimming over a couple people in the mêlée, which I wasn’t thrilled to do.  I sighted early & often and was dead on course the entire time.  34:47, which is a 3 minute PR for me  (56 out of 117).  Most importantly, I came out feeling good; I’d swum smooth once I found open water and tried to keep the pace honest, but I wasn’t shellacked coming out, which was a first.

Then I realized that I couldn’t feel my feet or my hands.  The water was freezing.  I heard estimates from 55 to 60 degrees; all I know is I got a headache when I put my head in the water the first time & had two swim caps on.  I had trouble grabbing the wetsuit zipper line when I got out since my hands were frozen, and I opted to put on arm warmers for the bike.  I don’t have a T1-time, but between the a relatively long run to bike exit and being a popsicle, there’s no way it was less than 3-4 minutes. 

The bike was four laps and was completely uneventful.  There was occasional rain which made the visor on my helmet extremely helpful.  Personally, I found it pretty hilly – no big climbs, but there was never a flat out pound-a-gear-miles section; my Garmin registered an elevation corrected 2,000 feet of climbing.  I went through the first section pretty much alone – there were a lot of gaps between riders – thinking crap, I have to do this three more times.  Laps 2 & 3 were more crowded with the Sprint & Oly guys – some of whom were ludicrously fast – coming through, but the course never felt very crowded.  Lap four was completely desolate again with the occasional Oly or Sprint straggler.  Here’s the elevation chart (the scale makes it look worse than it was… but not a ton of flat there…):

I tried to keep the pace honest, my legs were definitely working, but my avg HR was in the low/mid-140s; by comparison, Lake Stevens had an avg HR in the low/mid 150s.  Whenever I’d start to fade, I’d start repeating “Don’t miss the Orcas, don’t miss the Orcas…” and I’d repeat that on the run as well – as Karen would later say, fear is apparently a pretty good motivator…   Based on my Garmin (since they weren’t tracking transitions), I rode a 2:46 with virtually identical splits each lap.  At this point, I was feeling pretty good; two solid legs completed and 17 minutes ahead of my PR, excluding transitions.    Nutrition was pretty good, although I knew I’d need to hit a porta potty in T2; I’m just going to start assuming this is part of the race routine from now on.  I only gained one spot on the bike; it was that spread out on the half iron course.

T2 was awful.  I still couldn’t feel my toes – it was pretty painful to walk w/o shoes on after the dismount – and I was just really cold.  I kept my arm warmers on, got my socks & shoes on, hit the porta and ran out on the course.  Everyone must have been having crappy transitions because I apparently made up 6-7 spots in T2 despite being slow.  I’m not that worried about it; I usually have decent transitions and I’m just chalking these up to the weather.

The run was uneventful; a relatively flat course which frankly could have used one or two more aid stations.  I ran with a gel flask that I took a swig from before each of the first two aid stations (probably around mile 2.5/3 and maybe 4/5).  In hindsight, that was too much; I never run using that much gel and should have diluted it a ton in the flask.  My goal was to run comfortably for the first 7-8 miles and re-evaluate.  I ended up averaging 7:20-7:30s w/ an HR of 153 until then (except for lost time with another john stop and a snapped lock lace that needed to be resolved).  That’s a really low HR for a half marathon for me; I averaged 172 at the Mercer half in March, so I kinda felt like my HR wasn’t high enough, but my legs were definitely working.  That said, I’d intentionally held back at the beginning to keep things feeling relatively easy.  Around mile seven my stomach wasn’t great, so I stopped using the gel and just took water or Gatorade at the last couple aid stations.  And, it was so dang cold that I kept pulling down and pulling up my arm warmers depending on how I was feeling.  Heck, my feet didn’t regain their feeling from the swim until 5km into the run…

By mile 9 I started fading, pushing an 8:15; I slowed to regroup around mile 10 or 11 for the final push, at which point a guy passed me, said I looked like crap and asked if I was OK.  I said I was and just regrouping, so he suggested I run with him.  100 yards into it, I felt fine again to pick up the pace, but by then I found out that he was one of the lead nutritionists for the Canadian Elite triathlon team based in Victoria, was doing CdA and I was learning a fair amount from him.  I’ve learned the hard way to ask questions about who I’m with…

My HR was now down to mid-140s which is my easy long run HR; I must have looked better because he told me to go ahead, but I decided to start shutting things down and run it in with him.  I didn’t think I had much to gain by crushing the last mile or two given that I had hard week ahead of me in training and I was learning from him.  We came through in 1:41, which is my fastest half iron run and finished the course in 5:11, which is a 19 minute PR for me.  I passed 14 on the run, finishing in 39th out of 117 and 6 out of 10 in the 35-39 age group.

So… key things I got out of this race:

- I can pull together three sports without bombing spectacularly on any of them… this was a solid confidence booster in all of them heading to CdA

- My nutrition plan is 90% OK; I need to water down my gel flask a fair amount and maybe add some solids on the bike, but other than that it is what it is

- I think I’m close to a five hour half if I get the right taper, don’t dilly-dally in transitions and try not to snooze the last 10-15 minutes of the run

What surprises me the most about this race is just my HR.  I don’t know if it was something wrong with the Garmin (unlikely), but it was simply way to low for pace and RPE.  I’ve definitely been in situations where my HR was too high for where I am in a race, but never really looked at my HR and said, huh, why so low?  I’m definitely not one to over-analyze my workout data, so I’ll chalk it up to just plain weird, but it’s definitely not par for the course.

Oh, and we did make it to whale watching – showered and all – and had a great time watching a couple pods mess around in the water… and I can’t confirm or deny falling asleep on the boat for 15 minutes, largely because I have incriminating evidence about Karen doing (or not doing) the same thing on said boat trip….

In general, I seem to run two or three “pure” half marathons per year these days (as opposed to those in triathlons..).  The Seattle one is my traditional fall one, if only because it’s close to home and gives me a late fall goal.  I tend to race that one like a “real” one – train hard for running leading into it and taper before hand.  Then there’s Mercer.  It’s also close to home, so it’s easy to get to.  But… it’s in the throes of my build towards summer triathlon season, so my coach thinks of it as a training race.  This year, my weeklong “taper” included include two hour long hard runs, two hard swims, a trainer session and a four hour bike ride the day before the race.  Needless to say, I showed up worried I’d blow up mid race.

Normally, I run with my Garmin showing pace, HR, distance and time.  Given that I figured pace, HR and distance could really freak me out this time, I hid it all to only show time; this would be an RPE only race – to hell with second guessing myself if my HR went through the roof or if my pace was abysmally slow because of being shellacked.  That part went brilliantly – I didn’t worry about those details, but still had all the data to analyze after the race.  I drove to I-90 on the Seattle side w/ a buddy and we rode our bikes across the bridge to the race site.  A quick jog to warm-up and suddenly it was time to run.  Whatever you do, I told my friend, don’t go out too hard the first mile.  This race is all about the second half hills.

Uh-huh.  Whatever.  The gun went off, I spotted a hole to my right and took off like a complete noob.  Moron.  First three to four miles, I knew I was going too hard and slowed for the next four.  I would later learn that I had a) correctly read that my HR was too high and b) could marginally lower my HR w/o slowing too much (I’ve had trouble doing that in training). 

Now, the one reader of this blog (hi Abby!  Woof, I imagine her responding..), knows that I’ve had weird interactions with runners cutting me off in this race in the past.  I finally figured out why – there’s so many twists and turns in this race that if you don’t pay attention, you can add a ton of distance by not running the straightest line.  That said, it involves a fair amount of shifting side to side in the road and if you’re not aware of other runners (or don’t care), you can easily just cut one off.  Instead of explaining the concept here, check out this write-up on Slowtwitch the day after the race.  I’m printing it and handing it out at the race next year.  In particular, there was one putz who felt it was his prerogative to cut an angle about a foot in front of me.  The third time he did it, I finally snarled “OK, SERIOUSLY.  Pick a damn line and hold it; look before you change it.”  He (and the handful around me) looked startled, but he, he didn’t cut me off again.

Other than that, the race was uneventful.  I saw a friend cycling in the other direction at the bottom of the biggest hill, which gave me a boost.  I don’t think I passed a single person the entire race (a sure sign that I went out too hard at first) – there weren’t a flood passing me, but every once in a while someone would go by. 

I knew 1:30 would be close, but I was pretty much on fumes by mile 11 or 12.  My quad twitched around mile 9, which it never does, so I was worried that it would seize or cramp – it may just have been dehydration as I wasn’t drinking much given the exertion.  Regardless, I tried to keep it honest, but was struggling to hold pace, not accelerate. 

Ultimately, I crossed the line in 1:30:10, which is one second faster than Seattle, so I’ll definitely take it, although 11 seconds is a tough pill to swallow (there’s a world of difference between 1:29:59 and 1:30:00 in the running world).  It made me remember that running on tired legs is really hard, but hugely built my confidence in that I can hold a hard pace for me, even when cooked.  I also learned that the past 4-5 months of training have really started paying off.  Oh, final placement of 111th out of 2,141 entrants and 24 out of 207 in my division.

Next stop: cycling mini camp in Coeur d’Alene in April, where I expect to get the crap beat out of me, and a tinman in Victoria in May.

The Seattle marathon races – half & full – have sort of become a tradition for me, without really knowing it.  In five years here, I’ve tackled them three times.  First time, in 2005, I signed up for the full, training went to crap when our second kid was born and I changed my entry from the full marathon to the half, dragging my behind home in 1:54.  I had no business doing the half that year.  Last year, I opted attempt the full again and butchered my knee on a long run a couple weeks before the race – I went out well but walked off the course at mile 14, worried that I’d really injure it when it started to lock mid-race and hills hadn’t even started.  Suffice it to say that between my (lack of) performance at Grand Columbian two months prior and my history with this race, I had incentive to nail a solid race or just not do it.  The week of the race, it’s pretty much all I thought about and really tried to psych myself up for it.  I ran with my DNF shirt from Grand Columbian as a reminder not to screw this one up.

First challenge: our second car died on us a couple months ago and we decided to sell it instead of fix it and see how we’d do as a one car family (I barely drove it when we had it).  It’s worked brilliantly except for mornings like the race; my options were bus (not excited since I figured it’d get caught in traffic), taxi (good option) and a bike (good option; start is 4 miles from our house, although there’s a pretty big hill on the way there that I didn’t want to cook my legs on).  I didn’t want to take our car and leave Karen stranded with her parents & the kids.

I opted for the bike and it worked really well.  I gave myself plenty of time, rode Karen’s city bike and made sure I was in a ludicrously easy gear.  Weaving through the millions of folks (10,000+ people raced that morning) stuck in traffic was awesome and I got myself to the start doorstep.  After getting there, I dropped my gear back off (just a change of clothes) and went for a short warm-up run.  A quick stop at the porta-potties, a gel and it was time to hit the start.  Unlike this year, it was relatively easy to get to the semi-front of the race, ahead of the gazelle-wannabees-who-are-actually-hippos.  It never ceases to amaze me to see someone who PLANS TO RUN 10-minute miles place themselves at the FRONT of the race.  It’s a recipe for disaster for everyone involved.

I put myself about 10 rows behind the 1:30 pace group (I wanted to dip under 1:30), figuring I’d follow them for the first 4-5 miles then try to pick it up.  First mile was crowded and I expected it to thin out by the second, but it didn’t.  Turns out everyone and their dog was tracking the 1:30 pace group and they were blocking the course for everyone else.  I found it annoying to be behind a ton of folks who would never make that time, so I made the strategic decision to get ahead of that group and basically use them as my benchmark if I fell behind (i.e., if they pulled up to me, I’d have to keep up with them).  I hammered past them, running the second mile in 6:12, which was way too fast (but downhill) to create some separation (my HR was still in a reasonable zone, so wasn’t too worried). 

The rest of the race was uneventful.  I passed a lot of people, played frogger with a fair number of them and nothing crazy happened until around mile 6-7, where the hills really started coming.  Per plan, I started to work really hard; my HR started climbing pretty consistently until the end of the race even though my pace didn’t always.  I knew things were working, however, as separation between runners became very real on the hills.The last three miles, I just thought of it as the back-half of what’s become a weekly tempo workout where I truly suffer, and tried to pick up the pace.  The race allows folks to run with music, so I borrowed Karen’s iPod for the race; probably the only notable thing from that was that Linkin Park’s In the End came on at the top of Madison, exactly the same place as when I ran the 2005 half, which gave me something else to think about for a split second.

This was probably my best paced race to date; ignoring my 6:12 idiocy at the front, I managed to lower pace in the second half despite brutal hills the last six miles.  If you believe the Seattle marathon pacing report (they had a pace mat on the alleged 10km mark), I ran the first 10km at 7:12 pace (my garmin contests that) and the last 6.9 miles at 6:38 pace (garmin contests that as well…).

Ultimately, I crossed the mat in 1:30.10, which was 11 seconds shy of my goal.  I’m annoyed at not dipping under 1.30, but definitely felt I ran it tactically well and will take 14th in my AG out of 430 (top 3%) and 117th out of 3,045 male finishers (top 4%). Hell, I doubt a ton of folks run PRs on the Seattle course, so I’ll take a 12 year PR there, particularly since I’ve dropped 5 1/2 minutes in a little over a year from a very easy course (Jock ‘n Jill Half) to this brutal one.  Definitely wasn’t a fluke to sign up for Mike’s coaching services again this year.  Oh, as for the bike ride home, it wasn’t fast, but it did the job and I think kept the soreness at bay for a couple hours…

I went to Eastern Washington to do the Grand Columbian half iron a couple of weekends ago.   My goal was to string together a solid effort in the swim/bike/run w/o any issues; wasn’t expecting a PR in anything, but was hoping to do well in all three sports, which was something that had eluded me in the other two halves this summer.  This would be the second triathlon my family would see me participate in (the other one being my first one last year); we took the opportunity to stay on a houseboat with the whole clan (“Mom, can you go cheer daddy on while Grandma & Grandpa watch us?” was what my four year old asked when he saw the houseboat with the hot tub and slide into the lake, both on the roof of the boat). 

Poor planning 101: We arrived at the houseboat around 6:30 in the evening expecting to be able to buy food at a store there.  Nope, they were closing for the winter next week, so the store literally had nothing except a bag of pasta.  It was also a solid 45 minutes away from the race start, so I hauled out to register & drop my bike off before they closed at 8 pm.  Bought some bread, peanut butter & jelly at a gas station on the way home…  So, dinner was 600 calories of pasta.  Next morning, I woke up, had two pieces of toast & a bag of Shot Blocks and was out by the course early.  15 minutes before race start, I had a GU.

Swim

The swim course was OK; I was expecting the lake to be clearer, although it may just be because it was really overcast that it was tough to see anything.  We did a triangle; the first leg, I felt awesome (which is usually the worst) and actually stayed on feet the entire time and definitely felt the drafting advantage.  I took the buoy wide (I’m still creeped out about being pushed under it) and discovered why I always end up off course.  Instead of turning 90+ degrees to the next buoy, I tend to turn 45  degrees & head to the great blue yonder.  By the time I sight again, I’m off.  I did it again off the last buoy.  Came out of the water in 40:24, which is awful for me, particularly given the calmness of the lake & the sight rope.  I didn’t worry about it because I figure 3-4 minutes over the day wouldn’t kill me.  I also felt really good during the swim with none of my usual “I should just quit” moments, even though there were a couple of fairly awkward moments when I wanted to burp pretty heavily and my head was underwater.  Unlike my wife, I never burp. :) 

T1

I got out of the water, realized I didn’t feel great, so walked up the grassy incline.  Made it to the top, bent over and hurled GU, water and a lot of air (made a less than pleasant sound) near some spectators.  I entered the bag pick-up area, realized something was coming up again, so walked out of it to avoid knarfing on someone’s bag; made it out, bent over and dry heaved a couple times near some Olympic guys waiting for their race.  Commentary ranged from “You OK?” to “Oh, that’s gotta suck” and “And they said the bike was hard.” An EMT and a race official asked if I was OK, which I was, and a volunteer took pity on me and brought me my empty bag (everything was on the bike already).  Plan was to take a GU before getting on the bike; yeah, that didn’t happen.

Bike

Got onto the bike, put my shoes on and shifted into the big ring as there was a slight decline to the first hill.  Off went the chain.  #&)*$ #*() – what’s the point of having your shoes clipped in as you ride off if you’ll need to unclip to reset your chain 1 minute in.  The bike ride was spectacularly brutal.  Immediately noticed that I was already pretty hungry.  I can’t believe they used to host an ironman out here.  My HR spiked to 178 at the top of the first climb, which has points with grades of 14%-17%.  The hills were non-stop the first 40 miles (4,000 feet of elevation gain), with only one longish downhill to recover; the last 10-15 were a screamfest downhill (where I’ve learned that I max out at 41 mph on my bike; I had plenty of time to experiment with aero positions J).  Realized that I’ll take hills any day over a flat course; it was tough but the effort changes made it fun.  I must have banged my front derailleur at some point because every time I shifted from small to large, my chain came off.  By the third time, there was serious cursing involved; 4^th-6^th time I monkeyed with it while riding and managed to get it back on w/o stopping.  It was doubly annoying because I got gun shy on the rollers were I knew there was big climb right after, so I’d stay in the little ring on the downhill to avoid dealing with it.  Oh, my big goal was to sip – not  gulp – my nutrition to avoid stomach issues, and that worked well, although I only made it through about half my bottle.  3:13, which I’m not tickled with, but I’ll gladly take given the chain & food issue.  We hit some very light rain around mile 20 for a couple minutes and I don’t remember the wind being bad at all; we were slammed with a wind storm that night.

Nothing crazy in T2; felt OK getting off the bike and was anxious to run.  I’m usually so amped to get off the bike that it’s hard for me not to feel excited to start running.

Run

The goal was to hit 7:30s on the predominantly flat course.  I went out in 7:42 and didn’t worry about it; my first mile is usually not my best one.  Realized that I wasn’t feeling so hot, though, which is a problem if it’s the first mile.  Second mile in 8:09 and I was pretty confident I was in trouble; I was hungry but didn’t want anything to do with solid foods or gels, so tried Gatorade & burped it back up, so stuck to water.  By mile three, I’d started walking and decided I’d do one lap and see if things improved.  At the turn-around, I saw the Mile 10 marker and it totally broke me when I realized I had 7 miles to go before I would even see that sign and have three miles left.  I knew my race was over and just needed to make it to the start; a walking half marathon would have accomplished nothing and a med-tent visit wasn’t a good start to the rest of the weekend with the clan.  I saw them for the first time around mile five and walked off the course.  Bummed that things didn’t go so great, but I was happy to have done the bike after T1.

If pictures tell a thousand words…. Grandpa definitely had the right idea.