YouTube Link
Leah’s Race Recap:
Heart rate training is kinda the bomb. As much as I’ve really, really wanted to tear up my HR strap and stomp on it’s itty bitty little pieces in January, it provides someone like me (read: someone who tends to have unreasonably high expectations of myself) a tool to actually predict that I am actually performing where I should be with my CURRENT fitness, not my unicorns and rainbows wishlist fitness that I think I should be able to perform at with the drop of a hat. Even with last week being our first peak build week, culminating in an epic 3.5 hour session yesterday, ending with the spin class from he-double hockey sticks (you’re in the desert, in 4 feet of sand, it’s 117 degrees… yep) and very little speedwork and a small dose of feet tenderness, and exhaustion and yeah. Ready and primed to race (not at all).
So, my expectations:
- Killing it on the swim. Fast efficient fish. I have been kicking swim booty this year. Goal: 20 lengths in 10 mins (500m in 10 mins).
- Killing it on the bike. Last year I did 15.5, so more than that. Significantly.
- Doing what I could on the run. Recovering from the stupid heel and the fact that I’m just this week starting to do any sort of speedwork and I’ve spent a zillion months just running at m-pace or below, my only goal was to make myself hurt. I knew there was about a 1% chance I could beat my time from last year but I really just wanted to see those heart rate numbers climb to the 170s and stay there.
I’ll spoil the end and say things went pleasantly as expected.
Race Prep Grade: D-
I went to bed sore, hurting, hoping my legs and feet and body would hold out and perform. I think I actually slept badly because I was scared of waking up just broken. My alarm found me in one piece, so there’s that. I ate a bar in the morning (it was a pretty short race so I didn’t need 5000 calories) and we got ourselves to Lifetime in plenty of time to spare.
I “laid out my transition” in the locker, and got all the stuff in a bag to go upstairs for the cycle/run (bike shoes, run shoes, chomps, waterbottle, zune, garmin, etc). I was rocking my new earplugs (TYR) which are awesome (one of my other ones were MIA and didn’t want to futz with the swimp3 for 10 mins of pool time so I bought new ones). We were able to get in and do a bunch of warmup laps which was awesome for me, I got to go through the process of waking up my swim stroke like I normally do. Warmup was nice because the other pool was COLD. The countdown happened and then…
Swim Grade: A-
I was ready to hurt in the pool, but hurt smart. The two other gals in our wave just FLEW out of the gate and I wanted to try and swim them down, but I was like “WAIT FOR IT…”. Somehow I knew they went out too fast, and by lap 4, I overtook them just swimming consistently fast. I was trying to stay at 100m/2 mins. I made the first one no problemo, then just barely made the next, and I just kept slowing by a second or two a lap. I knew by 2 mins to go that a) I had won my heat by a lot and b) I would have to bust some major fish tail to get 20 full lengths. I increased my pace a bit and aimed for 19.5, and when the whistle blew, I got it. I’ll break that 2min/100m soon, but not today. I was just happy to execute on being a fast, efficient fish, and feel like I really pushed myself in the pool.
T1 Grade: C
Transitions like this suck for girls. Getting on a wet sports bra is NO FUN AT ALL. Next time, I will just throw caution to the wind, and wear it under my swim suit and drip all over the floor. I had to ask another girl (who was not part of the fun and games) to help me get it over my back and she looked crazy mortified (oh well).
I got up to the cycle studio with 2 mins to spare (aka, not much time to do ANYTHING). They helped me adjust the bike and get my clips in, but it took longer than go time to get me locked and loaded, not a fair start but whatevs.
Bike Grade: B
Finally, I got my music going, I had both clips in, things were good (minus the fact that my seat could have been a LITTLE lower to give me max pedal power but I wasn’t about to stop and fix it), and was HOLY CRAP GOING 50mph with not that much effort. Then I realized it was on KM so that was about 31 mph which sounds really fast, but since the computers were on bitty spin bike wheel and calibrated for regular, it’s not that awesome.
I got into a rhythm but the calculator was all over the place (40, 50, 60,70, 80, 0). I noticed when I messed with the resistance it gamed the system a little bit increasing the numbers so I did that a lot. I think I hurt a little less on the bike than anywhere else, but I rode steady at 155-170 BPM. I tried getting all zen and closing my eyes but when I opened them I found my pace was LOWER, so I just focused on those numbers and tried to maximize them. When we hopped off, I was probably about avg 165 HR and 29.3 km, which equated to 18.2 miles. Almost 3 more than last year, YEAH!
T2 Grade: B-
Got to the treadmill, put my shoes on, and commented to Zliten that I hoped I could run. On the bike, the last 15 mins kinda hurt my achilies on my right, to add to the questionable nature of my left heel after my longest run in months yesterday. I was not about to end the season on a 20 minute treadmill run, so if it didn’t get better, I was planning on walking out the tri and being fine with that. They said 3,2,1 go…. and it’s been so long since I’ve ran on a treadmill I forgot how to start it. 10 second penalty. Another graceful start.
Run: B+
I started at 6.0 (10 min/miles) and figured I’d hold there if I couldn’t do anything else, but then my pain eased and I bumped it up 0.1 each 2 mins. I got up to the pain cave at about 10 mins in and my feet were feeling ok, so I just did what I could to stay there.
Zliten was on the treadmill next to mine pacing me, and he was about .01 to .02 ahead of me the whole time, so at 15 mins I descended further into the cave and, surprise surprise, he matched me every step of the way. I finally got equal at 1 min to go, busting treadmill at 8.0 to 8.5 and we both finished at 2.13. About 9:20s. After reflection, sort of disappointing for both of us, but it’s what we had in us that day. And again, careful was the goal of the day here for me. No ending my season on a stupid 20 minute treadmill run. B is for the effort, the plus is for being smart about my feet.
Results:
19.5 swim lengths (487m) in 10 min , 18.2 bike “miles” in 30 mins, 2.13 mile run in 20 mins.
Parting Thoughts:
For me, that was actually good enough to take home the overall win for the ladies (out of 10 participants)!!!! I was #1 on the swim, tied for #1 on the run, and #7 on the bike. Oddly enough, I placed #1 on the bike last year and #5 and #6 on the swim and the run. I really can only say that’s indicative of who decided to show up that day, and not my abilities. I should have been beaten on the run.
In conclusion, HR training helped me accurately predict what I would do that day, and a clear head and my garmin helped me execute pretty solidly (minus the transition snafus). I know where I need to put in the work for the next two months, but for now, I’ll relish stepback week, celebrate the win, and get ready for Build 2 in March!
Joel’s recap here.
So if you asked me Friday before the race how I was going to do, I would have said I was going to crush last years times like a bug! Then we did our Saturday workouts. Just an insane amount of leg, arm and lung work. I was not going to go into this with anything left in the tank. I used it all up. The only oomph I had is only what I could get in sleep, and that brings us to the second part of fail. According to the FitBit, I woke up over 35 times that night and got about 6 hours of sleep total, while being “in bed” 9 hours. I just could not relax. For some reason I was just full of doubt about the race and the quality of my body at the time. Also I was so sore from that spin class it was hard to even lay down 🙂
So the morning happens, and we get our race on! Glad we got there as early as we did, but I feel like we should have been there even earlier. I had a few caffeinated chews, where normally before a race I have a full Monster energy drink or the like.
Swim: I got in 10 warm up laps before we started. Maybe that wasn’t the best idea since I only did 14 for the race. I have been questioning myself about this one all week. I didn’t need that much of a warm up, but I wanted to feel loose. Where is the middle ground so I don’t use any of that precious fuel before the race? Swam solidly. Thought I did better than last year. I mean, heck, last year I didn’t even know how to properly swim.
Same as last year.
Bike: We had over 25 miles in the day before, lets see if I can match the 22.1 miles in 30 min I did last year. (Mind you the 22.2 was on a spin bike that was not calibrated to real world miles last year.) New bikes and new pedals, that’s awesome! We had taken a few minutes out of the day before and bought spd cleats and I put them on our own tri shoes. Awesome, we get to use our own shoes on the spin bike for the race! As for the race, I did ok, but somehow not as good as last year. Makes sense when I looked at the results, they didn’t calibrate any of the bikes so each one was off slightly. Oh well. 21.1 miles on the bike, only slightly worse than last year.
Run: Oh yeah I feel great! Ran my butt off, and got to run next to Leah. I did my best to stay 0.01 or 0.02 ahead of her the whole time. She only caught up in the last few seconds. Woohoo! I must have nailed this one. It must have been the best run I have ever run. 2.13 miles in 20 min….
Same as last year.
Results: 14 swim lengths (350m) in 10 mins, 21.1 bike “miles” in 30 mins, 2.13 mile run in 20 mins.
So that’s it. I was 1 mile worse on the bike than last year. It felt great to do a “race” but at the same time I was worn out, un-prepared, and did not do nearly as well as I should have.
At least this was just a prep race, just a C or D race, and there are a few months before tri season starts for reals.
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