My big epiphany today was that long course races, which I generally prefer (half and full IM) are very “uncomfortable”, but sprint races are downright painful. That’s the best way I can describe it. I think today was the closest I’ve come to drowning since getting nailed bodyboarding at Pipeline many, many years ago…and it was on the RUN!
I digress. The Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon is really one of the only sprint distance races I do each season (usually only do 1 or 2 a season). It’s relatively cheap ($60) and close to my house, and the Marines put on a good race out there. I spend most of my year preparing for half IM’s and one full IM, and maybe a couple of Olympics too, so most of my training involves tempo-paced stuff. I don’t do intervals or drills or anything like that, and to this point, it’s served me well for the races I do, giving me top 10% finishes in many of my races, but today, I felt woefully undertrained for the day after I crossed the finish line.
The race was a 500 yard swim in the ocean, 18-mile (30k) bike, and a 5K run. My basic plan? Go all out the entire race. Hey, it’s a “sprint” tri, right? So, I’ll “sprint” the entire thing.
The swim started out well. I’m very comfortable in the ocean and was able to get out in front of much of the pack, though there were still about 6 or 7 in front of me in my wave. Okay, I’ve got some players here! On the way in through the 2-4 foot surf, I was trying to bodysurf waves in, but I’d catch a wave and be so out of breath from swimming hard that I’d be unable to get a good enough breath while riding the wave and have to duck out of the wave just to get a breath. Damnit!
Okay, finally into the beach, I ran to T1 and looked at the watch. 13 minutes and change. WTF? Last year, I swam under 11 minutes! Of course I figured the swim course must have been long this year. Must have!!! Right? Yes, sure! Okay, onto the bike.
I started mowing people down right away and just gave it everything I had from start to finish. One of the very few races where I passed more than passed me. I think maybe 6 or 7 passed me on the bike, but I must have passed 50 people. Granted, there were plenty of newbies, dudes on rusty mountain bikes with walk shorts on, etc. Anyway, I was laying down a bike split that was 3 minutes faster than last year for this race, so it was going well, and I was getting tired toward the end, but a guy my age passed me in the last mile. I had to keep him in my crosshairs, hoping to catch him on the run. My initial though was, “oh shit, this is going to hurt trying to beat that guy!”.
I hopped off the bike and had a very fast T2 and came out with that guy about 25 yards in front of me. The first 1/4 mile or so is an uphill from the beach area up onto the tarmac for the hovercraft base there. I chugged up the hill and passed him before the end of that hill and hoped he either wouldn’t see my age written on my calf, or wouldn’t have anything in him to answer my charge. Wrong on both counts! He ramped it up and hung about 2 yards off my back and was hanging with me. Now, I was trying to mentally prepare for pure punishment for the next 20 minutes or so. My fastest training runs generally are in the 7:30/mile range. In last year’s race, I ran a 20:xx 5K, which of course is below 7 min/mile, so I was going to have to turn in another run of that calibur, and hold off this dude behind me. In the first 1/2 mile, I could feel my heart pounding out of my chest, and I was basically just gasping for air, so I ran the fastest I could possibly run without passing out or puking, knowing how long I’d have to hold the pace. It hurt! And the guy wasn’t letting up.
I was grabbing cups of water at the aid stations, not slowing down at all. I’d take one sip and dump the rest on my head. Once in a while, I’d change my stride trying to shake him, but there he was, breathing down my neck. By the final mile, I decided that he was going to try to kick past me in the final 100 yards of the race, so to try to demoralize him, I would lay into my kick with about 200 yards left. So, we came around the last bend and I unloaded everything I had left, hoping to gap this guy. To my dismay, I could almost feel his breath as he slid by me on the left. I was already in the middle of my kick, feeling like I was on the verge of drowning as I was barely able to get enough oxygen in my lungs for the effort I was putting out, and I had nothing left. I wanted to kick it in to catch him again, but it wasn’t there. Arrrrg. I looked behind me to make sure no one else was going to pass, and wrapped it up a few seconds behind me.
I congratulated him on biding his time behind me and throwing it down at the end. He told me he was just trying to keep up with me. Ultimately, he got 7th and me 8th in our AG, but he definitely made me run harder than I might have otherwise, and after winding down, I realized that my training, while it serves me well for the longer distances, left me feeling like an out-of-shape first-timer in a sprint race. Man that run was rough. I don’t have my run split yet, but believe it was 19 minutes for the 5K. We’ll see. If I ever do more sprint racing, I’ll have to actually…you know…SPRINT in training.
Hats off to you sprint racers. That is some painful shit!
FINISH TIME: 1:31:51
My finish time was like 3 minutes slower than last year’s, but in checking other racers’ times, that seemed to be across the board, backing up my excuse that the swim was longer. Really, it was, right? Sure!
Still, we had a great time and he started to figure it out by the end. Try to to that after a long-course event.