A full version…with only a little bitching about the run course.
A long training day. That is how I looked at this race. Woefully underprepared due to a crazy work schedule in May, I decided to drive down for this only a few days before the race. But I figured for two hundred big ones, I’d better at least show up and collect my t-shirt.
Got down to Ensenada on Saturday around noon and attended the pre-race meeting….they talked about the usual stuff, no drafting, some gotchas with the course (a couple sharp downhill turns on the bike), how the run course would be marked (this was ominous, more on this later). After the meeting, I had a $20 plate of watery pasta at the hotel restaurant, met up with my friend Norm and then checked in my bike. Made the obligatory visit to the expo (one of the smallest race expos I’ve ever seen at a race, especially an M-dot race) to get some unbelievably overpriced salt tablets. Met Dave from Blackwell Research at their booth and proceeded to drool all over their wheels and other super-aero toys (his bike is SICK). Then I went for a short swim in the harbor. It had been a while since I had swum in open water, so I wanted to get the feel of swimming in my wetsuit. The water was a bit on the chilly side, maybe 60 degrees? I was going to ask someone, but have I have no idea how Celsius converts to Faherenheit.
After navigating the downtown Ensenada traffic, I found the hotel. Next up, dinner. We found a pizza joint, had a couple slices of pepperoni pizza, salad and a beer. Then onto the standard night-before stuff: check the gear, get the nutrition bottles ready and in the rack by 9:30.
Race morning - up at 4:30, coffee, two breakfast bars, water. Got to the transition area at 5:30, got my gear set up, hit the porta-potty and then off to the swim start.
Swim ~ I was in the 3rd swim wave, behind the pro men and pro women. Something like 25% of the entire field was 30-39 men, so there were probably 200+ people in the wave. I decided to be a little more aggressive than normal and I lined up right in the front center. When the gun went off, I swam hard for the first 100 strokes, eased off and found myself behind one guy. I dropped my pace a little bit and some guys caught me from behind so I ended up swimming most of the way in a front pack of maybe 4 or 5 guys. We all seemed to work well together, there was very little contact. The course started in the marina, we made the exit thru an opening in the breakwater and then did a counter-clockwise loop in the harbor before swimming back into the marina to the finish. The water quality was nasty….particularly exiting the marina, there was a lot of boat fuel in the water. Not pleasant at all. At one point, I swam through a mass of seaweed, I took a stroke and my arm came up with a bunch of seaweed hanging off of it. This amused me for some reason. Felt solid thoughout and hit the swim finish in 28:56.
It was a long run up to a hill to the transition area, roughly 400 meters. Got my gear on and then out on the bike. T1 - 4:10. Sounds slow, but including the long run, it actually wasn’t too bad.
Bike ~ The first 15k of the bike went south for a short loop than followed Hwy 1 north up the coast. This section was slightly rollling to uphill. I drank a bunch of Cytomax in an effort to get the nasty taste of the harbor out of my mouth. At the 15K mark, the route turned inland. This is where the course really begins as the road tilts up quickly, with 1300 ft of elevation change in the next 15k (sorry for mixing up metric and imperial units!). With my mediocre bike training of late, I was very conservative and tried to spin this as much as possible. Got passed by a fair number of guys on this section. From there, it was rolling hills than down a fun fast descent down to the turnaround in a little town called El Tigre. Then it was back up the same hill, the toughest climb of the day… an 800 ft climb in just 2 or 3k. Very challenging. The last 20k was pretty much downhill or flat, so I managed to recover and focus on getting in some nutrition for the run. At some point in the last 20k or so, I realized that the course was short….the markers every 5K were coming too quickly based on my clock time. I later found out that the actual bike distance was about 52.2 miles (or roughly 84k). All in all, a very challenging bike course, much harder than the Oceanside course. Bike split - 2:44:42, 19.0 mph avg.
Once into transition, I got my running shoes on (with socks!) and headed out. T2 time - 2:24
Run ~ My cautious approach on the bike paid off and I felt pretty fresh. No cramping issues, which I typically struggle with (the 10 salt tablets during the bike seemed to work!) The course was marked every kilometer (not miles) so I quickly have to convert my normal pacing goals to metric. I didn’t think about this before the race! I know the course is 21k. My sluggish brain eventually figures out that 30 minutes per 7K will give me a 1:30 run split. And 30 divided by 7 is roughly 4:15/kilometer. Ok, now I have something to work with! Focus. Hit the 7K in 29 and change. Felt great. Saw Macca and Craig Walton battling it out up close at a couple points on the course…man they can run! Later found out that Macca ran 1:12. What a friggin’ stud. Anyway, the sun finally came out and it started to get hot. The aid stations were providing water in little plastic bags, so every chance I got, I tore open the bag with my teeth, sucked a couple gulps down my throat and poured the rest over my head. Hit the 14k in just under 59 minutes. Now things started to hurt. The last 7k simply sucked…I just focused on getting to the next marker. Hit 20k right at 1:25. Only 5 minutes to run 1000 meters! Fortunately, it was downhill. Hit the tape with a run split of 1:29:26.
Total time: 4:49:40. 9th AG, 51st OA placing based on swim/bike only, see below.
Some thoughts on the race itself ~ Terrible race management. The 2-loop run course was a debacle. It was poorly explained and terribly marked. So a huge number of athletes ended up running the wrong course, either missing one of the out and back sections or missing a loop entirely. The volunteers had no idea what was going on. I felt very fortunate that I did most of the first loop before the crowds got very thick, which made it a lot easier to figure out. I also was running near another athlete pretty much all of the first 10k, he seemed to know the course. Once I knew the first loop, it was easy to repeat it for the second loop. The end result was I managed to hit all 21k markers in the correct order. Most were not so lucky…in fact, only one person that I talked to after the race believes they ran the correct course. Things were so FD up that the race organizers actually threw out the run results entirely and awarded 70.3 World Championship (Clearwater) spots based on swim/bike splits. If I was interested in getting one of those spots, I would be infuriated. Its a shame and a black eye for the WTC and the Ironman brand that a race of this stature could be so poorly run.
For me and my day, I actually am pretty happy. Swim was solid, bike was as good as I could have expected given my training and the run exceeded my expectations. Running sub 1:30 was a breakthrough for me (assuming that the course was measured correctly of course).
All in all, I’m glad I went down there for the race. I gained some valuable experience I can leverage for future races and definately more confidence that I can continue to get faster.
