Getting there… White Lake Half Ironman Race Report
May 5th, 2007
After Oceanside Half IM I was excited to train some more and hopefully gain extra fitness for White Lake Half, but I guess on the redeye flight home from CA after the race I caught a virus that put me out of commission for almost a week. It was a weird sort of cold/allergy. Then a week later I went for a run and my right knee started to hurt. The second time it really bothered me a lot, so I scheduled a deep tissue massage with our good friend Raquel. Who always knows how to fix everything! J Mariana and I had the GW Parkway 10 miler race scheduled…about 3 weeks after the race. I was not sure if I should do the race, as I had only run 2 times since Oceanside and Raquel had left me real sore from the massage, which didn’t allow me to run for other 2-3 days. I was thinking about not doing the race, as I did not really train for it. My coach Olaf Sabastchus always as cool as he is told me not to worry about it. That I had a good base, and I wouldn’t lose a lot of fitness over 1-2 weeks of not training. So if my knee was not bothering me any longer I could go ahead and do the race, and just enjoy the day and have fun. So I decided to go to the race, and had a great time and ended doing 1:09h with a 165bpm HR which it was a low HR for this distance. It was a 6mins PR from last year …umm so I guess I am fitter than last year. It just felt good to run pain free. After that I started get excited again about training, even though there was not a lot of time until White Lake.
For my taper week unfortunately I had to travel for work and spent it most of the time in Boston. I was back home Thursday night and Friday morning we drove for about 6 hours North Carolina. I generally like to take the taper of most of my races very serious. Mariana would say that is just an excuse for me to sleep more than I generally do…but what can I say? I love to sleep and I love taper! So I was not too happy about the fact that the week before I didn’t get to rest and eat as I normally do…but what can we do? Just do the best we can with our normal work/life schedule.
We got to White Lake around 3pm registered, did a very short workout and had dinner like at 5:30pm and basically were ready to go bed around 6:30-7pm... which I was looking forward to…But then we were sharing the house with more people(about 10-12) . It was nice to see Kathy and her family…and they kind of laughed when they got to the house at 6ish pm and we were already on pajamas. We went to bed around 8pm but people kept coming to the house and they were talking until eleven or so, I felt asleep around 9pm and was gone until next morning at 4:30am when it was time to get up…and then it was our turn to not let the other people sleep. I told Mariana the night before I was looking forward to that. SO I made sure I made lot of noise in the morning! J
We got to transition early, sure not as early as Mariana would have like…but yes it was early! We had PLENTY of time to do everything that we had to do and even get to see other people start before us. We got in the water 5mins before our wave…I was relaxed…The swim is not my thing…I generally get very anxious and can not wait to be over. I learnt how to swim about 3 years ago, so up to last year my goal was just to get it done so I could get to the ride/run. But this year, I finally started to enjoy swimming in the pool, and started to be more consistent about swimming, took few more private lessons. And overall felt stronger (not necessarily faster) but more comfortable and strong in the water. (And I know “strong” is very relative here) So the swim started, I was trying to follow some feet, but they all left! ;-( And I was left to swim with a girl on my left who was doing breast stroke the whole time and another on my right who would do freestyle and every now and then would flip on her back and seemed like she was just floating. I couldn’t believe these people were keeping up with my beautiful freestyle. Maybe Mariana was lying to me saying that I looked stronger and my stroke looked so nice and relaxed. Maybe I was too relaxed and that is why these people were keeping up with me. So I tried to go harder but they would just seemed not to go away. Argh! So annoying! I kept thinking…Man when I finish this race I am going to swim and swim until my arms fall off! I am sick of this crap! It was easy to sight, the only thing is that at the end I went right to the finish buoy, and was thinking…why are all these people going to that buoy on the left…don’t we have to go to the one that is directly in front of me and then pass that one??? Well, I will keep going. I am sure they must be EVEN SLOWER swimmers than me…as hard to believe as that can be… When I was getting closer to the buoy I realized that we had to keep the buoys to our right so all those people were right and I had to go there first and then head to the finish buoy… Man, was I pissed again going the wrong way… I was really kicking myself for thinking… what was I thinking?!!!! The swim seemed it was taking forever…I was getting pissed at the idea that my swim was going to be slower than Oceanside which I already thought was not showing the times I was seeing in the pool.. Argh! Anyways, let’s get going…let’s just remember to pee before I get out of the water and think about have a “fast” transition (for me). Finally the end came, and there were 4-5 people in front of me going up the few steps that we had to climb to get out of the water. They did not seem to be in a rush…and that was just adding to my frustration! Finally out of the freaking water and had to run few meters to get to the timing mat. Swim time: 46:54mins with an avg HR 169 I suck! I suck! I kept thinking… but then I started to shift to “whatever just shut up and keep going otherwise you are going to suck at T1, T2 and the rest of the race”. How could I be so slow and have such a high HR? Still a mystery to me, as I really don’t think I was panicking or anything as it used to happened last year and before…
Finally I was on my beautiful bike and life was good! My HR was so high at the beginning 172…and went down to 166bpm…umm that is kind of higher than normal! I just figured that maybe there was something wrong with my HR monitor so I would just keep going by feeling. I had just hit a bad pot hole, and felt like my bike was not going as smooth as I it normally does. I was still going at an avg of 20mph, so I thought ,well maybe there is wind? Yes, a little but it is not so bad… I remember last year I avg’ed 23mph for the first hour. It was the fastest part of the bike, but this year I just couldn’t go as fast. My HR finally came down to 156bpm which was my goal for the bike ride, so I was on that high HR just for 10 mins or so. After 45mins I decided to stop and check to see if there was something wrong with my bike. Aha!! It seemed that when I hit the pot hole, something happened and my back wheel shifted and it made the breaks of my back wheel to rub and that was what was not letting me move. I opened the breaks totally and kept going. Oh! That felt GREAT!!! I felt like I was flying! I started to pass a lot of people. It was just good! Life was good! Finally at the last 10miles or so, my crouch was really sore and I just wanted to get out of the bike. But the finish of the bike came fast and I passed a ton of people, and I was able to catch the second person on my AG. Well I did not know she was the second person, generally when you are one of the last coming out the water…it gets a little challenging to know how many more people you have ahead. EVERYBODY is ahead! On the bike I knew I had to pass everybody and everything in front of me.
Bike time: 2:41:12 and avg HR 154bpm. It is what it is! On to T2, and Mariana made me promise I had to go under 2mins (generally I am so slow on transitions). It was 1:49mins J yes under 2mins baby!
Onto the run…My goal was to hold a 165-168bpm avg HR. Generally I can keep my HR and effort on the bike but have a hard time maintaining my HR where I want on the run.
First 2 miles my HR was already 160bpm…I promised myself I would push harder and try to bring it higher... but it was not happening…I felt I was running so slow…mile 2 came and it was an avg of 7:30min/mile. I was trying and trying to bring my HR higher, but sometimes I saw 157-157, an avg of 7:40-7:45min/mile pace. I saw Mariana at mile 3 or so and I was so happy to see how far ahead she was…but she looked very serious! I was yelling things at her but she was just in a mission! I kept going and missed some mile marks about 4 of them and since I saw that my HR was getting lower, and felt I was going so slow…Somehow the bad math that I was doing at the time was telling me that I started doing 8min/mile pace or higher…I did not want to look at my watch-HR anything any longer…Just concentrate on passing people…lets see who is the next victim? And kept going like that for some miles…There was a lady who would run very strong and pass me, but then took her time on the food stations, so I would just grab 2 caps of water, one to drink another to pour on my head to stay cool and pass her… I had 3 gels on the run as they did not have coke and I did not feel like trying the cytomax. I kept passing this lady in front of me, but then she would pass me again…we did that for about 3-4 miles…then finally about mile 10, I started to feel good and she never passed me again. I tried to catch another woman in front who looked strong, who had a guy right behind her pacing off of her…I caught up to them and then the guy picked up the pace…so I went with him, and the woman told me “Go get him, don’t let him go!” So I did, it was good to have a little rabbit in front of me…But then I don’t know what happened to my rabbit? He either slowed down or I felt better, but I passed him and I had nobody else to in front of me to follow for the last mile. Most of the people were still on the first loop. But at that point I was excited to be getting to the finish and was able to keep my HR higher (little late huh?), at least I was feeling good…and the last three miles were the best of the whole run. The last few meters before the finish line are always the best. I feel so happy and I get this amazing feeling that makes me want to come for more every time. All that training, and all the suffering on the swim, and those bad patches on the bike and the run were all worth for those few seconds of bliss just before the finish!
Total run time was 1:41:33h, a little slower than what I thought I could do…total time 5:14:00h It was a 24mins PR compared to the same race last year, and almost 10mins PR from Oceanside 5 weeks ago. I placed third on my AG, so all and all it was a good day out there. I am very happy! I will take that and look forward to many more…especially Roth and Ironman Canada this year.
It was so nice to finish and see Mariana waiting for me with a huge smile…I knew she had done great! I couldn’t believe when she told me she had done 4:51h. Finally all that hard work and many hours of training had paid off. I am so happy for her!
Thanks for reading!
PS: Anyone out there has a very high HR in the swim as well? I'm wondering if my 169 avg HR took a lot out of me and was what prevented me from being able to increase the HR on the run...
May 5th, 2007
After Oceanside Half IM I was excited to train some more and hopefully gain extra fitness for White Lake Half, but I guess on the redeye flight home from CA after the race I caught a virus that put me out of commission for almost a week. It was a weird sort of cold/allergy. Then a week later I went for a run and my right knee started to hurt. The second time it really bothered me a lot, so I scheduled a deep tissue massage with our good friend Raquel. Who always knows how to fix everything! J Mariana and I had the GW Parkway 10 miler race scheduled…about 3 weeks after the race. I was not sure if I should do the race, as I had only run 2 times since Oceanside and Raquel had left me real sore from the massage, which didn’t allow me to run for other 2-3 days. I was thinking about not doing the race, as I did not really train for it. My coach Olaf Sabastchus always as cool as he is told me not to worry about it. That I had a good base, and I wouldn’t lose a lot of fitness over 1-2 weeks of not training. So if my knee was not bothering me any longer I could go ahead and do the race, and just enjoy the day and have fun. So I decided to go to the race, and had a great time and ended doing 1:09h with a 165bpm HR which it was a low HR for this distance. It was a 6mins PR from last year …umm so I guess I am fitter than last year. It just felt good to run pain free. After that I started get excited again about training, even though there was not a lot of time until White Lake.
For my taper week unfortunately I had to travel for work and spent it most of the time in Boston. I was back home Thursday night and Friday morning we drove for about 6 hours North Carolina. I generally like to take the taper of most of my races very serious. Mariana would say that is just an excuse for me to sleep more than I generally do…but what can I say? I love to sleep and I love taper! So I was not too happy about the fact that the week before I didn’t get to rest and eat as I normally do…but what can we do? Just do the best we can with our normal work/life schedule.
We got to White Lake around 3pm registered, did a very short workout and had dinner like at 5:30pm and basically were ready to go bed around 6:30-7pm... which I was looking forward to…But then we were sharing the house with more people(about 10-12) . It was nice to see Kathy and her family…and they kind of laughed when they got to the house at 6ish pm and we were already on pajamas. We went to bed around 8pm but people kept coming to the house and they were talking until eleven or so, I felt asleep around 9pm and was gone until next morning at 4:30am when it was time to get up…and then it was our turn to not let the other people sleep. I told Mariana the night before I was looking forward to that. SO I made sure I made lot of noise in the morning! J
We got to transition early, sure not as early as Mariana would have like…but yes it was early! We had PLENTY of time to do everything that we had to do and even get to see other people start before us. We got in the water 5mins before our wave…I was relaxed…The swim is not my thing…I generally get very anxious and can not wait to be over. I learnt how to swim about 3 years ago, so up to last year my goal was just to get it done so I could get to the ride/run. But this year, I finally started to enjoy swimming in the pool, and started to be more consistent about swimming, took few more private lessons. And overall felt stronger (not necessarily faster) but more comfortable and strong in the water. (And I know “strong” is very relative here) So the swim started, I was trying to follow some feet, but they all left! ;-( And I was left to swim with a girl on my left who was doing breast stroke the whole time and another on my right who would do freestyle and every now and then would flip on her back and seemed like she was just floating. I couldn’t believe these people were keeping up with my beautiful freestyle. Maybe Mariana was lying to me saying that I looked stronger and my stroke looked so nice and relaxed. Maybe I was too relaxed and that is why these people were keeping up with me. So I tried to go harder but they would just seemed not to go away. Argh! So annoying! I kept thinking…Man when I finish this race I am going to swim and swim until my arms fall off! I am sick of this crap! It was easy to sight, the only thing is that at the end I went right to the finish buoy, and was thinking…why are all these people going to that buoy on the left…don’t we have to go to the one that is directly in front of me and then pass that one??? Well, I will keep going. I am sure they must be EVEN SLOWER swimmers than me…as hard to believe as that can be… When I was getting closer to the buoy I realized that we had to keep the buoys to our right so all those people were right and I had to go there first and then head to the finish buoy… Man, was I pissed again going the wrong way… I was really kicking myself for thinking… what was I thinking?!!!! The swim seemed it was taking forever…I was getting pissed at the idea that my swim was going to be slower than Oceanside which I already thought was not showing the times I was seeing in the pool.. Argh! Anyways, let’s get going…let’s just remember to pee before I get out of the water and think about have a “fast” transition (for me). Finally the end came, and there were 4-5 people in front of me going up the few steps that we had to climb to get out of the water. They did not seem to be in a rush…and that was just adding to my frustration! Finally out of the freaking water and had to run few meters to get to the timing mat. Swim time: 46:54mins with an avg HR 169 I suck! I suck! I kept thinking… but then I started to shift to “whatever just shut up and keep going otherwise you are going to suck at T1, T2 and the rest of the race”. How could I be so slow and have such a high HR? Still a mystery to me, as I really don’t think I was panicking or anything as it used to happened last year and before…
Finally I was on my beautiful bike and life was good! My HR was so high at the beginning 172…and went down to 166bpm…umm that is kind of higher than normal! I just figured that maybe there was something wrong with my HR monitor so I would just keep going by feeling. I had just hit a bad pot hole, and felt like my bike was not going as smooth as I it normally does. I was still going at an avg of 20mph, so I thought ,well maybe there is wind? Yes, a little but it is not so bad… I remember last year I avg’ed 23mph for the first hour. It was the fastest part of the bike, but this year I just couldn’t go as fast. My HR finally came down to 156bpm which was my goal for the bike ride, so I was on that high HR just for 10 mins or so. After 45mins I decided to stop and check to see if there was something wrong with my bike. Aha!! It seemed that when I hit the pot hole, something happened and my back wheel shifted and it made the breaks of my back wheel to rub and that was what was not letting me move. I opened the breaks totally and kept going. Oh! That felt GREAT!!! I felt like I was flying! I started to pass a lot of people. It was just good! Life was good! Finally at the last 10miles or so, my crouch was really sore and I just wanted to get out of the bike. But the finish of the bike came fast and I passed a ton of people, and I was able to catch the second person on my AG. Well I did not know she was the second person, generally when you are one of the last coming out the water…it gets a little challenging to know how many more people you have ahead. EVERYBODY is ahead! On the bike I knew I had to pass everybody and everything in front of me.
Bike time: 2:41:12 and avg HR 154bpm. It is what it is! On to T2, and Mariana made me promise I had to go under 2mins (generally I am so slow on transitions). It was 1:49mins J yes under 2mins baby!
Onto the run…My goal was to hold a 165-168bpm avg HR. Generally I can keep my HR and effort on the bike but have a hard time maintaining my HR where I want on the run.
First 2 miles my HR was already 160bpm…I promised myself I would push harder and try to bring it higher... but it was not happening…I felt I was running so slow…mile 2 came and it was an avg of 7:30min/mile. I was trying and trying to bring my HR higher, but sometimes I saw 157-157, an avg of 7:40-7:45min/mile pace. I saw Mariana at mile 3 or so and I was so happy to see how far ahead she was…but she looked very serious! I was yelling things at her but she was just in a mission! I kept going and missed some mile marks about 4 of them and since I saw that my HR was getting lower, and felt I was going so slow…Somehow the bad math that I was doing at the time was telling me that I started doing 8min/mile pace or higher…I did not want to look at my watch-HR anything any longer…Just concentrate on passing people…lets see who is the next victim? And kept going like that for some miles…There was a lady who would run very strong and pass me, but then took her time on the food stations, so I would just grab 2 caps of water, one to drink another to pour on my head to stay cool and pass her… I had 3 gels on the run as they did not have coke and I did not feel like trying the cytomax. I kept passing this lady in front of me, but then she would pass me again…we did that for about 3-4 miles…then finally about mile 10, I started to feel good and she never passed me again. I tried to catch another woman in front who looked strong, who had a guy right behind her pacing off of her…I caught up to them and then the guy picked up the pace…so I went with him, and the woman told me “Go get him, don’t let him go!” So I did, it was good to have a little rabbit in front of me…But then I don’t know what happened to my rabbit? He either slowed down or I felt better, but I passed him and I had nobody else to in front of me to follow for the last mile. Most of the people were still on the first loop. But at that point I was excited to be getting to the finish and was able to keep my HR higher (little late huh?), at least I was feeling good…and the last three miles were the best of the whole run. The last few meters before the finish line are always the best. I feel so happy and I get this amazing feeling that makes me want to come for more every time. All that training, and all the suffering on the swim, and those bad patches on the bike and the run were all worth for those few seconds of bliss just before the finish!
Total run time was 1:41:33h, a little slower than what I thought I could do…total time 5:14:00h It was a 24mins PR compared to the same race last year, and almost 10mins PR from Oceanside 5 weeks ago. I placed third on my AG, so all and all it was a good day out there. I am very happy! I will take that and look forward to many more…especially Roth and Ironman Canada this year.
It was so nice to finish and see Mariana waiting for me with a huge smile…I knew she had done great! I couldn’t believe when she told me she had done 4:51h. Finally all that hard work and many hours of training had paid off. I am so happy for her!
Thanks for reading!
PS: Anyone out there has a very high HR in the swim as well? I'm wondering if my 169 avg HR took a lot out of me and was what prevented me from being able to increase the HR on the run...