This past Sunday I raced the Pacific Crest triathlon in Sunriver, Oregon (about 15 minutes from Bend). The event was put
on by AA sports and they did an awesome job hosting the race. It might
be one of the coolest point to point races out there. The festival begins with
a few grand fondo style races on Friday, then a ½ distance tri/du on Saturday
that loops around bachelor, and a Olympic distance race on Sunday. But before I
dive too deep on this I just want to give a basic update on how life #inbend is
going.
Picky Bars:
Picky Bars has been great. The Feed a massive
sports nutrition site is consistently listing Picky Bars on their picks
of the week. We’re getting new customers all over the place, and we have had a
solid month of selling bars to people. It has been a blast so
far, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the summer.
Training:
Training has been going well too. I read Matt Dixon’s book,
The Well Built Triathlete (Featuring Jesse Thomas – some random dude that
happens to be a pro triathlete and the co-ceo of Picky Bars – on the cover). I
have been getting a lot of high quality swims, rides, and runs in because of
the books emphasis on key sessions and supporting sessions. Basically it
explains how everyone is unique, and you shouldn’t judge your training based on
how many hours you put in drowning, falling off your bike at stoplights, or
tripping over rocks while “trail running”. This has helped me dial in my focus
on racing hard/smart and really hit the stuff I need to hit.
So now on to the fun part: Pacific Crest
Friday: Packet pickup and Expo + open water swim
Jonah (Other Picky Bar intern Cam's roommate- who doubles as a triathlete) and I headed down to packet pickup and the expo on
Friday morning. We got all our stuff and checked out all the cool
toys/products. Athletes lounge had a sweet booth and some awesome deals ($40 aero helmets).
After that, we headed up to Paulina Lake for a nice open water swim. It was
super beautiful, and really good to get some practice in a wetsuit before the
race.
Saturday: Bike setup
We headed down to T1 and set up our bikes, nothing too
crazy, just racking bikes at a race.
There were a few discs, but not as many as Sunday.
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| Jealous of all the fancy wheels |
Sunday: Race
I headed out for a quick run at around 545 and it was really
hot out. Our race didn’t start till 9,
so I knew heat was going to play a major factor. Along with that, hydration
also matters a ton. I ran into Steve’s EMJ Teammate Brian O’Neil (whose brother
used to work at Picky Bars) and got some bike course description from him.
Swim:
After a nice warm up, we got in the water, ready to go. The
swim course was two loops of a diamond. Right away, as expected, people went
nuts. I found myself in the middle, swimming right next to Jonah. After the
first buoy, I made a critical mistake that took me away from the lead pack: I
messed up sighting. I tend to be used to making left turns when siting, or
having very frequent buoys to use as targets. This course only had 4 buoys, and
they were all pretty far apart. This meant that your really need to know your
stroke. Think of a 3-4-5 triangle. You want to take the shortest route to the
next buoy, but instead of swimming the 5, I decided to swim the 3-4. I got
dropped. The rest of the swim was spent playing catchup. I swam hard, but
didn’t get too exhausted. The fastest swim split was around 21 minutes, and I
was around 24 minutes. Normally I’m about 4-5 minutes behind the fastest
swimmers, but I was more concerned (and to be honest, pissed) about the time. A
24 is unacceptable, I thought when getting out of the water, so I figured well, gotta make up some time on
the bike.
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Bike:
I actually nailed the flying mount, which was probably the high point of the bike portion for me. Almost immediately, I decided to drop the hammer. I went off on a rage,
going by duathletes like I was Lionel Sanders (newsflash: Turns out I’m not
Lionel Sanders). My heart rate was definitely through the roof (check out the strava here), and instead of trying
to pace off it like I should have, I decided to skip to the next screen, which
only shows cadence and time. Literally 5 minutes into the bike and I was
feeling brutal. Instead of waiting for my legs to come to me I was forcing them
to go too hard too soon. If I had started out easier than I had wanted to,
chances are I’d be on pace with how I need to ride for the distance.
After 30 minutes of pure adrenaline and overusing my legs, I
realized how screwed I was for the remainder of the bike and the 10k. I should
have built into my effort, just like I normally do during training. I caught up
to Brian, who came out of the water at least 2:30 ahead of me, within
about 25-30 minutes. I know he rides with a power meter, so I figured it’d be
smart to pace with him. He’s a fast dude, and even was top 20 at
Collegiate Nationals, so I knew he can hold his own in all three sports. I then made the dumb
mistake of deciding that he was going too slow on a hill, and went for the pass. This is
the part where I imploded. After about 1 or 2 minutes on the hill, I knew I
was done. He passed me, dropped me, and left me wondering what the heck just happened. The 2 minute deficit I made up ended up
killing me because I couldn’t put out power on the downhills. It was really tough. I
tried to catch up to him, but just couldn’t. I spent the rest of my bike trying
to recover for the run and keeping my cadence high.
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| Trying to salvage whatever was left in my legs at this point |
T2: This took place in a football stadium. Heading in to the
technical section I heard a split: 4:50 back from 1st place. I knew
I wasn’t going to be able to make up that much time on the run, but definitely
could do some damage. My legs felt like… but It was cool having tons of fans
cheering as I ran the bike up into transition. Once I got there I heard another
split 4:05 on first, which means I made up a little bit of time. I got in and saw two bikes
on my rack: an older dude (had a disc wheel - obviously), Jonah's, and one on a further down (Brian's). Just off the podium, but too mentally fatigued to realize it
or think about it.
The run: Deathmarch.
After reading Lionel Sanders blog on how he really wanted to
push it on the run in Tromblant and came out on top, I decided it was also my
goal to see how far I could go mentally. I wasn’t physically as concerned about
the time because it was 95 degrees out at this point, so everyone would be
slowed down by at least 2-3 minutes form their normal times for a 10k. I was no
exception, and was really suffering since I had already blown up on the bike. I booked it out of
transition and went as fast as I could possibly go. It felt (and was) really slow.
At one point I was so focused on just surviving that I
missed a left turn and ran an extra 20-30 seconds before someone yelled and
turned around. That sucked. I was seriously in the pain cave deeper than I have
ever been. I knew it was 100% to do with me going out too hard in the first ½
of the bike, and I was paying the price. I passed the guy in 3rd
place at the mile 5 marker, and ended up coming in 3rd overall, but
I had no idea what I got at the time. When I crossed the line I made sure my
chip made it over the timing line, then pretty much fell over. I made my first trip to the med tent. It wasn’t a pr split, but I went
harder than I ever have before in a triathlon, which was my goal. The run was
uphill mostly (physically and mentally), and the temperature and humidity had a beat me up pretty bad. I was dehydrated, under-fueled, but happy I pushed
it despite all of these serious risks. Obviously, it isn’t ideal to end it in
the med tent, but it’s good to know that I can dig super deep and do well in a
race even when I’m suffering beyond normal race-suffering.
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| Running hills is hard |
Post race: I decided to start getting
some calories back in my system with the awesome post race buffet (take notes lifetime tri). I had like 4 electrolyte drinks, 3 cookies, a
couple donut holes, and a peanut butter sandwich. Oh yeah, and like 5 jamba
juices. AA did a sweet job with all the food and recovery modalities available.
They let me use the normatec recovery boots after the
race, which was super cool. They actually made my legs feel somewhat better,
and I could walk again as opposed to limping around. I’m super psyched for Jonah on getting the W. He crushed it, even
without an aero helmet or a disc wheel (or a shirt). Brian also did really well and was wearing
some sweet EMJ swag (those hats are sick). Picky Bars also got some free
marketing ;). It was cool seeing how many people at the race were eating picky
bars (without me even having to give them away)!
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| 20-24 age group podium = overall podium. Take that, 43 year olds with disc wheels (and full time jobs) :) |
Post race analysis:
Here are my takeaways from the race:
The good
- There was nothing left out on the course.
- I had a good swim, aside from a poor siting mistake and felt strong getting out of the water
- I had good transition times, and nailed the flying mount
- I stayed in aero the whole time other than to loosen my back a few time.
- Even with brutal conditions and blown legs on a hilly course I managed to run a 41, which isn’t great, but was still consistent and my pace didn’t drop off.
- I met a ton of people at the race and it was a really positive atmosphere and I had a lot of fun.
- I learned from my mistakes during race that I need to have a pacing plan (even if it’s just an Olympic distance) and need to race smart and listen to my body.
The bad
- I didn’t set myself up for success in this race. My training leading into the race was on point, and I was hitting all the targets I wanted to hit to get a fast time. But two nights before I ate a bunch of junk food at Crux (6 or probably more greasy tacos) and stayed out late. I tried not to stress too much about it, but it certainly didn’t positively impact my results. But now I know that its not a good idea to do that!
- The day before the race I didn’t eat enough. I just didn’t have enough time to consume all the calories I needed the day before. I was busy the whole time, and I paid the price by not having enough energy on race day. But now I know that I need to make sure to get enough food in.
- I didn’t get a good nights sleep for 3 nights before the race. It was hot, and my tiny fan didn’t do enough to cool me down. I need to invest in a bigger one so that I can have my room at a cooler temperature and can actually fall asleep! Sleep is critical for recovery, so I know that 4-6 hours of real sleep before a race isn’t enough (granted nerves definitely played a part in this – and that’s ok).
- I didn’t have a pacing plan. From now on, I’m going to spend the first 5-7 minutes going easier than I think I should. Then once my body adjusts to being on a bike, I’ll start building up my pace. if I build my effort throughout the bike and run I can pull off a smart, fast race
- This race ended in the med tent because I ignored everything telling me to be smart when I began the bike leg. I treated it like a 30 minute time trial, when in reality it was a 2+ hour race because of the conditions, course, and longer bike section (~29 miles as opposed to 24-25).
Overall, I’m going to take away more from this race than I
have in previous races, so I think it’s really important. Even though the end
result was “good”, I still think I could have done better and been smarter
about how I went about achieving that result. Im glad I really pushed it the
entire race and made these mistakes so that going forward I can hopefully avoid
them!
Next up is: Learning how to do a swim-bike brick session, and
maybe the Rolf Prima tri at the grove. After that is Lake Stevens 70.3, where I
hope to put to
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| I <3 my GoPro |
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| look ma, no hands |
