docfuel
Oct 6, 08 7:34
Post #1 of 1
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Last race RR. Time to heal from a crappy year
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Well, I finally got better enough from my chronic calf injuries to do a couple of local Olys--last week at OC INtl Tri and this week at Bonelli. Neither were very big.
OC had ~700 and Bonelli had ~400, but half were doing the sprint. For those of you who don't recall, this course was, at least in part, set up by Monty in the 80s.
I'm not sure how smart it was to do two Olys in consecutive weeks, but that was all I had, so I went with it. My calves were pretty sore after OC, due to being undertrained, especially for hill running, so I let them rest and aquajogged all week. They felt better by Thursday, but I let them rest anyway. I mostly rested with a couple of short rides and swims and aquaruns. I felt pretty good on my short saturday workout.
The prediction for race day was for mid 50s at race start, upper 50s out of the water and mid 60s by the finish and mostly cloudy. I thought that sounded chilly, so I wore a deSoto base layer singlet under one of their polypro long sleeve jerseys, that I figured I could ditch after the bike.
I was on-call on Friday night, so not the greatest sleep and I had to take the Mrs. out to dinner on Saturday night, to keep the peace. (She doens't like my racing.) So, I woke up feeling a little sluggish on Sunday. When I got the the venue, the line to get into the park was long and not moving. Apparently, the guy who was supposed to open the park and take out money overslept. This caused a ripple effect. Registration was late getting set up and was more disorganized than usual. When I got to my bike, I found that there was no chip in my bag, so back to registration. The line took over 20 minutes. They were checking in each number one at a time in their computer system. This left 25 until race start, so back I went to T1 to get into my wetsuit. Along the way, all of the bathrooms had a line for the hole. Was this due to the lateness of getting chips?
I noticed that it seemed warmer than predicted, so I ditched the polypro and just wore the baselayer singlet. (glad I brought that thing--I would have died without it.)
After donning the wetsuit I headed for the restroom. Damn! there was still a line and only one hole at the one nearest T1. I got out right at scheduled race time. I had had zero time to warm up. I double checked my rear der to be sure I was in my lowest gear, as there is a little steep hump just past the mount line. Off I went to the start, which they had realized would have to be late.
I was able to swim about 100 m and just moved my legs around underwater when the anthem began while I was out there. AS an aside, the anthem was well sung by the mom of some of my former patients, who had moved out near there, and who, with her husband and kids volunteer out there every year.
The swim was a big unequal triangle, with a long first leg, slightly shorter 2nd and a little shorter 3rd leg (I think). I had my worst swim since pendelton 4 years ago. I did a poor job of drafting off the faster guys, when I could find someone I seemed to zig zag all around. Or, they zigged when I zagged. I felt a little wheezy, which occurs when I don't get a proper warm up. I seemed to degenerate into short stroking and dropping my elbow a lot. NOT GOOD. I was doing a lousy job of sighting and was stuck in between the faster group and the slower ones out in no man's land (or water.) The second leg was worse. I seemed to find a shallow weed patch to swim over. For most of that leg my arms were in the weeds. Luckily, I didn't run aground before finally reaching the second buoy.
Getting out of water I was a little dizzy and struggled with my wesuit top and my goggles went flying, which is a problem when your myopic and your corrective goggles are clear. I gathered them up and up the beach I ran. Swim 29:XX counting the misadventure with the goggles. DAMN! More lost time. (Usually, I'm around 24-26 min and the fastest time of the day was 24:24, so I suspect that the swim was over length. Most of the swims of the faster people were in the high 20s.)
In T1, everyone had set their bikes up going in the same direction that I had set mine when I got there, instead of alternating directions. That left no room next to my bike to get at my stuff. (I had seem that on returning from getting my chip, but there was no time to find another spot.) My helmet fell down and the corrective insert for my sunglasses fell out and had to be repositioned. Finally I mamged to get eveything one and ran over to the mount line. I stepped on my left shoe, swung my leg over and up the little hiil I went.
"Damn! this hill is steeper than I remember." I must have had a cadence under 20 as I muscled up that thing. When I got to the top, I looked down and my chain wwas on my 19 cog. The shifter must have been bumped in the mayhem of getting started. Not a good start.
After the start one rides about a quarter mile, through the parking lot, past registration and out onto the road, where you have a nice steep climb for a few hundred yards. I hear the guy next to me say, "They sure like to get you warmed up in a hurry, don't they." as he muscled up the hill past me. Damn! Already passed.
The bike was a lot like the swim. I just didn't have a lot of oomph in my legs and, while I was passing a lot of the sprint people and some of the slower folks from the previous wave, I hardly saw any of my wave people the whole time. I had no clue how I was doing, but I could tell that I wasn't burning things up. The bike is a 3 lap course with mild long climbs which got steep in spots where the speeds were down to 10-13 mph (under 8 for one short stretch), some fast downhills (~40) and one false flat that had a head wind all morning. I finally made it back to the parking lot and into T2. Again, I struggled to get on my shoes. MY wetsuit had fallen on top of my running shoes. My towel had gotten soaked from the wet ground and I couldn't clean off my feet, so I just sat down to put them on. CRAP! I was totally incompetent in transition. 1:16:xx for the bike!!! So much slower than 2 years ago, when I won my AG.
Finally, I was out on the run. I felt good right off the bat. A couple of hundred yards after the start is a half mile mild uphill. There my calves began to talk to me. Not a good day at the races. I just tried my best to be easy on them, but that's hard gong uphill. From there on it was just a matter of trying to save those babies. The run is mostly rolling with a few flatter areas in the middle. The last 2 miles begin with a slightly steeper climb, some rollers and then a half mile climb of only 3-4% for the first 1/4 mile, then less inclined. This is followed by some rollers. My calves definitely didn't like the uphills. I was sure they would cramp up on me, so I could go with the faster young dudes who passed me on these hills. Finally, the finish was in sight and the last 100y is downhill across some grass. I did my finishing sprint, which felt like the best running I had done, but probably looked like a waddle. Run time 47:48. Total time was 2:38:XX. My slowest Oly since my rookie year.
After walking for a while, I headed over to see the times. They were all slow. The fastest time was 1:58, but that guy turned out to have a bike time of 47 minutes (speed 31+ mph) with a 28 min swim and 41 or so run. I don't think so. I think he missed a lap on the bike. Everyone else was over 2:16. Granted, the fast guys must have stayed home, but this was a slow course. The other fastest bike time was 1:03. (Well...ok! there was one bike time of 00:01:00,but....his T2 time was 1:16:XX)
Then a worker came up with a new time sheet for us old farts. There I was....first in AG (55-59) (and first for 50's and (I forget) first for the 45s.) That was definitely my ugliest win. I admit, it was not deserved. The guy who I beat by 15 seconds 2 years ago would have pasted my butt, had he been there, but what the hey.
My calves aren't very happy today, but not as bad as last monday. They've had a tough year. Now, they need a rest, recovery and then some serious strengthening.
_________________
Dick
Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I know nothing.
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