Onionman Oly RR

Triathlon Forum
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Six months ago I set out training for my first Olympic distance Tri. The goal was 2:26. Training started over the winter on the trainer, and by February I realized that 2:26 might have been a little optimistic. The goal changed to 2:30. I had just seen a chiropractor, and my knee problems were relieved.By April however, the goal changed to 2:40. I was on pace to make that goal --until May came. May brought on a 2 week sickness, in which I didn’t get any training in. So that being said, here is the actual race report:

I got to the race site in plenty of time, but everything seemed to go wrong. My wife ended up making numerous trips to the truck to retrieve things I had forgotten. I ended up running down to the lake and waded into the water about 30 seconds before the gun went off. My 1500 meter swim started out with me getting kicked in the goggles. I felt strong on the swim though, but couldn’t hold a straight line. I ended up swimming probably 2000 meters instead. I came out of the water dizzy, but not last. Swim time was 33:05. Training times indicated that I would finish in 30 minutes, so I wasn’t too far off considering.

I hopped on the bike, and took off out of the park. 1 mile into the ride, we turned into a headwind. The bike route was an out and back, that was slightly uphill on the way out. I was discouraged by my lack of speed, but looked forward to turning around and flying back the second half. About five miles before the turnaround, the leaders flew by the other way. I figured I was 5 miles from the turnaround, and couldn’t believe I was that close to them. Then reality set in and I realized that duh, they were in turn 5 miles past the turnaround, and I was 10 miles behind. I got to the turnaround, shifted into my big gear, and popped my chain off. After putting it back on I got up to speed. It was then that I felt something hit my head. A bee had gotten into my helmet, and proceeded to sting me. I happen to be very allergic to bees, and panicked, ripping my helmet off my head at 30 miles an hour, and trying to make sure he was gone. I didn’t fall, and managed to get my helmet back on. My chest tightened up though, and breathing became a little more difficult. I decided that if things got any worse, I was going to flag down the first volunteer I saw and pull out of the race. Things didn’t get much worse though, and I continued on - albeit slower than I would like. I finished the bike leg in 1:27.36. My training had hinted to me that I would do the bike in 1:10, so now I was way behind. I hopped off at the transition, and ran my bike into the transition area. Things couldn’t get worse could they? I shouldn’t have thought that. I put my bike up on the rack, lost my balance a little - put my hand on the rack to steady myself, and knocked the rack of bikes over. The flags that were indicating the transition area were tied to all the racks, so like dominoes, 4 racks of bicycles hit the ground. My wife, being opportunistic, managed to get plenty of pictures of that. Volunteers came running, and cleaned up my mess as I headed out to the run.

I was now starting the run at about 2:06, after two slow transistions. I was about 16 minutes behind schedule to make the 2:40. 34 minutes wasn’t going to happen on the run, as my fastest ever 10K is about 48 minutes. I was surprised at how easy the run was coming for me. The first mile went by in a little over 8 minutes, and the 2nd and 3rd were just under eight. I hit the turnaround in about 24 minutes, and started calculating the time I could finish in. 2:54 was a possibility, and I was feeling strong. Then the knee pain returned. Mile 4 was logged in around 10 minutes, and despite my determination, mile 5 was slower. I told myself that I wasn’t going to walk regardless, but at the 5.5 mile area, I gave in. I walked for a couple of minutes, and then took up running again, and hobbled across the finish line. My run time was 1:00.45. My last 3.1 miles took 36 minutes.

My final time was 3:07.01. I had trouble hiding my dissapointment as I went through the post race festivities, but then I remembered the reason this race was held. It was a fundraiser for Melonoma cancer, and a tribute to a local lady that had died from it. Suddenly my swollen head, and wretched knee/hip/upper leg paled in comparison. I still have the ability to swim, run and bike. I finished the race, and had my wife and best friend waiting for me at the finish. There will be plenty more opportunities to accomplish my goals.

PS. To anyone who raced this race, sorry about your bike.

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Hey, great race, thanks for the report. Going strong through setbacks is always laudable in my book.

Can you tell me where this race was? I used to live in one of the onion capitals of the country (before I did tri).

-Colin

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It was in Walla Walla, WA.

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Hey Hey, what’s what I figured! I went to Whitman, now I’m a grad student in Illinois. Do you live there or around there?

-Colin

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I don’t live there, but my best friend graduated from Walla Walla, an SDA college, and now lives in Pasco. I decided to visit him, and race all in one vacation. He was planning to do it as his first, but bailed out days before. He feared doing no training whatsoever may have a negative impact on his results.

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Jerrodg, I was also at the race. I was surprised by the headwind. . . in both directions!

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Sorry to hear about your incident with the bee; I’ve got the same reaction to a few other things and the appearance of the first symptoms (along with “how bad will it get this time?”) is a bit frightening. I did the race as well and while I had a few issues, nothing potentially life-threatening.

The swim start was chaotic. The audio system used by the announcer couldn’t be heard by many people down in the water so we didn’t know how long it was until the race start. Suddenly people around me start to swim so I started as well. What we weren’t told was that an aquatic kickboxing event was about to take place in the very same lake :-). It was as bruising a mass start as I have been in - I was kicked in both eyes and kicked in the head several times, twice hard enough I had to stop to catch my breath and clear my head. Nothing personal about it, just very crowded. It took 2/3 of the first lap for the pack to spread out enough that I didn’t have to stop because of repeated walls of bodies in front of me. There’s something asymmetric about my open water stroke - every time I attempted to push the pace I would swim to the left and since I wasn’t doing a great job of sighting, I went off course a few times, costing me a few minutes. I finished the 1500 in 31 minutes.

I tried a few new things in T1 - no gloves, talcum power in the shoes instead of socks, and had sprayed vegetable oil on my ankles and wrists to make the wetsuit come off easier. This worked quite well. I made a rare mistake and completely forgot to take my electrolytes but did get a Hammer gel. My plan was to get a couple hundred additional calories and 24 oz of fluid on the bike.

I had just installed a new Profile Design aerodrink bottle on the bike, but my next mistake was not riding it in training first, but how badly can a water bottle go wrong? The lake access road at the start and end of the bike course had 6 pretty nasty speed bumps in about 3/4 mile. Since I was out of the water farther back than I expected I was pushing the pace at the start and hit the bumps pretty hard. The first one bounced out the yellow sponge and the next two bounced out most of the contents of the bottle. I frantically drank the remaining few ounces immediately since that was the only hydration / nutrition I would get until the run and I didn’t want to lose it. Things would go badly later as a result of this. For almost the entire bike course things were going very well and at mile 22 I was feeling great and on track to go between 1:09 and 1:10 for the 40K. About then my mouth went dry and fatigue hit hard, as if I had just run out of gas. I wound up finishing in 1:15, which was about 50th of 200 bike splits. Not bad, but not the top 20 that a 1:09 would have given me.

I took the time in T2 to dig out some spare Hammer gel because I was feeling a bit empty and stopped at the first several run aid stations to drink water and gatorade. A slow 9:30 pace was the best I could manage until about mile 4.5 when I felt a bit better and managed to outsprint someone in the last few yards, finishing in 58 minutes, several minutes slower than I have done in training. I wound up 8th of 13 in my age group, finishing in 2:50 which is about 15 minutes faster than the Oly I did last August.

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Congrats on the finish. It was a tough day out there (long swim, cold water, wet roads, headwind, muddy run path), but you pulled through. If my parents weren’t there to watch us, Jenn and I might have simply looked out the window and went back to bed when the alarm went off. That course is more challenging than people give it credit. You need to be in good riding shape to push the pace on the first half of bike course. Going sub-1:10 on the ride would have been an accomplishment anyone could be proud of. I’m a fairly accomplished racer and after driving the course on Saturday, I was fairly certain that I would not get there either.

One thought for you, do with it what you will – whenever you step up to race a longer distance, I always think it is wise to go in without any preset timing goal. While time related goals have a purpose in the grand scheme of things, I think it is more valuable to simply race, focus on having fun and executing a good HR/RPE/Watts and nutrition game plan. If you do that, you can never find yourself “altering” you plan mid race trying to get yourself back into a time window. I think that drove a lot of your decision making during the race and impacted your overall outlook/mood and therefore your performance. The reality is you need to race within yourself based on your abilities. When we try to make up time in one area that we gave away in another more often than not bad things happen.

Enjoy the rest of your race season, chances are the weather will be better than this weekend.

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Holy crap - you knocked over 4 bike racks!!! Well mine was still sitting where I left it after T2 so no need to come to my house and knock it over now.

When I racked my bike before the race the whole rack shifted and knocked over the two bikes on the end - oops!

It was some tougher weather than in the past - the wet roads where messy and the swim course had to be long (at least a few hundred yards than the last couple of years) and the muddy section was a mess, but overall another great race.

Nice job - was that your first oly? The trick with the yellow sponge is to spread it out and jam it down in the bottle. It won’t fly out that way! You might still get splashed a little but at least you won’t have to dodge the sponge!

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Weather for me was perfect that day, didn’t find it that tough. Of course, I raced this one 3 years ago. :slight_smile:

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Nice reports. Fun race, huh? The swim was definitely crowded at the start and long, like 150-200 yards long. There were 19-minute guys swimming 22 minutes, so keep that in mind … It was my second time there and I love the ride: Always a real struggle going out up those rollers (18 mph: Ughh!) but such a blast going back! I averaged like 28 for 9-10 miles going back and I bet the winner averaged better than 30 for those same miles … And the run was not as muddy as it could have been had it kept raining! Both of you can drop 15-20 minutes this summer in a flatter, easier race, no problem.

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I skipped that one this year as it’s just too far to drive for me for an Oly race, but I did it last year and one other time a few years before that… It’s a tough course; my times there are easily several minutes slower than any of the other Oly distances I’ve done recently. A few issues, some of which you noted:

Unless they just changed it for '08, the swim was/is one mass start, which is a lot of bodies. Every other open-water tri I’ve done that has a comparable number of entrants goes off in waves by AG, so you’re only in a scrum w/ maybe 20% of the other goofballs hitting you in the face. With auto chip timing, there’s really no excuse not to go in waves, unless it’s just a much smaller # of racers total.

The bike course is tough with the long, gradual uphill going out. Psychologically, it’d be much easier if you just gained all the elevation in one shorter, steeper climb and got it out of the way, rather than grinding along for half an hour at about 85-90% of the speed you think you should be able to maintain on the flats. Last year was also windy as hell; hard to hold a steady line with the gusts crossing all the deep-section aero gear at bad angles. The other thing that killed me was the speed bumps heading out the access road from the boat ramp… my gel flask got launched on one of them, which I knew would eventually end up costing me on the run with the loss of fuel.

The run is also a teaser, losing elevation as you head out along the canal path, only to have to gain it back on the return, plus the short “cross-country” section near the end as your legs are already toast. I went from doing 7:00s to over 9:00s between miles 2 and 5 last year. The blowing dust was also miserable (I think i’d gladly trade it for mud, although rain on the bike would suck even worse).

So, congrats on getting through it. Chances are, any other one you do will likely yield that faster time you were looking for.