Getting Dunked on by the Sun

About a year ago I completed my first triathlon at Tempe Beach Park and it was probably one of the coolest things I’ve done. I was hooked. Last weekend I got to go back and do the Olympic distance race, and compete against some of the top athletes in our conference (CU wasn't there, though). I knew it would be a good test, but I also knew I had to pull out a solid race and defend our home territory since the race is literally on our campus. The swim is in the grosses body of water on the planet, the bike course is pretty technical, with 6 U turns on it and a bunch of corners that can make disaster come fairly easily when 8 billion people are doing their first triathlon ever (me last year), and the run course burns people to death.

So here’s how the lead up to the race and the race itself went down:

Training lead in:

After Lake Stevens in August, I took about a week to recover and get my bearings back. It sucked, but eventually I felt pretty solid again. I have been seeing steady improvements in my swim still, probably because our coach makes us swim fast all the time (so when you swim fast you go faster) so that’s always nice to see. My bike has been good, but I placed it on the back burner and kept it cooking, but moved my run up to the front. I have been doing around 2 track sessions per week, and have never been running this fast. One day is a hard bike run brick and one is just running.

These sessions always get the best of me

These bike-run sessions have helped me control myself when my heart rate skyrockets during a race, and I hope they can pay off big time come spring when I want another key set of improvements on the run. My bike has still shown progress, but not at the rate my run has in the past few weeks. That said, my focus heading into Tempe Tri was to stay a little conservative on the bike and then smash the run. In hindsight, I do some of my best running after absolutely ripping my legs off on the bike, so maybe this wasn’t my best idea, but I was still focused on nailing the plan.

Race morning:

I had struggled to get sleep all week, so getting up at 3:50 to go for a quick run and breakfast was not very easy. This was the first race I’ve ever been tired the morning of, which probably shows that I should have gotten more sleep leading up into it. My stomach also didn’t feel very good, and I prayed that I didn’t poop myself at any point during the race (thank god I didn’t!) I felt surprisingly good during my warm up, and then got tired again and my stomach started hurting. After setting up my transition, I went over and helped some of our new athletes set theirs up, and make sure everyone had enough pressure in their tires. Then some lady stole my pump, which made me angry, but I didn’t have much time to wait before my swim start.

Probably the funniest thing that happened all morning was getting a massive tear in the bottom of my swimskin (right in the butt). Sammy said “pull it up a little higher” then I heard a big ripping noise, and was like “crap that can’t be good” – wore it anyway, and it still probably made a difference in my swim. Thanks, Pedro (and check out ambitiontri.com).

Swim:

While I was peeing they decided to start the race… Cool guys, thanks for the 30 second/15/5 second count down! Really appreciate it! Honestly, it was brutal. I was in the second line of swimmers, and got quickly kicked in the face a bunch of times because I had no idea we were about to start and couldn’t get in position. I made one of the packs chasing down UA uber-swimmer Dmitry Baer (out front by about a minute, I was down 3.5 coming out of the water to him). I found some UA kids to swim by and just stuck to them. Sighting for the entire first half was a disaster. The sun was awful, but we managed to hold a pretty straight line. I thought I had burned too many matches at the swim start going out too hard, but I ended up hanging in just fine, and got out of the water with a decent size group. Two other ASU athletes got out of the water ahead of me, so that was pretty cool to see them in transition.

Heading out into transition

Bike:

I was able to get settled in fairly quick. I didn’t have a set nutrition plan (which I probably should have) and got going and kept it comfortable. The first lap Felt pretty easy, and I made a few catches within the first 10 minutes. After that, it got slightly harder, but nothing unmanageable at all. Looking back, I could have biked a lot harder, but then again my focus was to stay relatively conservative on the bike and make up for it in the run. I knew since I had worked pretty hard this week my legs would only be able to handle about 1 hour of max effort before I would die, so I tried to just keep it smart and smash the run.

Can't wait to get the new Rudy Project helmet!

I still have nightmares of the pac crest race, so I tried to be more conservative toward the beginning this time. The biggest mistake I made on the bike was my failure to hydrate. Normally in a  1 hour training session I will drink at least 1.5 bottles, but during the race I had about .5 bottle, which is not enough to keep up with my abnormally high sweat rate… If I had hydrated properly I probably could have not experienced what happened during the run…

Run:

Heading out on the run. Gotta start the garmin perfectly ;)

I freaking bolted out of transition (epic picture here) and held a really good pace for the first four miles. I caught everyone, and ran myself into 1^st place in the collegiate division within 4.5 miles. I had never ran this fast for this long, so it was sort of an experiment to see if I could hold it. At mile 5 my legs started to slow down a little, and my turnover dropped off a bit. I put my head down and told myself to suck it up. There was literally one mile left. Then I went through the last aid station, just before the only “hill” on the course. People were screaming, but I just wanted to lie down and take a nap. I ran up the hill, and got tunnel vision. I can vaguely remember hearing the slapping of my feet and thinking “this isn’t good. I’m probably going really slow right now”. I ran the last mile in around 6:30- way slower than my first 5, and shuffle-sprinted my way in.

I say shuffle sprint because apparently I was shuffling for like 10 seconds, then I would pick the pace up pretty good, then blank out again, repeatedly for like the last two minutes. I fell over at the finish line, and was escorted to the med tent (nothing unusual here). It got really hot out during the run, and I didn’t consume enough liquids on the bike to keep me going throughout the run at my desired pace, and I paid the price.

My stride didn't look this good 30 seconds ago, but i'll take it.

Post race:

I got my crocs stolen at Nationals last year (maybe they’ll read this and donate) so I was stuck wearing jorts and our sweet new QSW Tech tee for the awards ceremony. I want to thank everyone on the ASU Tri Team and all our sponsors for their support, and also say congrats to all the newbies who raced. They all did awesome!

Collegiate mens podium, see you at PMan Colin and Jeff!

Next up:

I’m racing Pumpkinman in Las Vegas. This is my target race for this falls Olympic build, so I’m excited to see what I can do if I nail my race plan (not be peeing when the gun goes off, go a little harder on the bike, actually drink enough, and go fast on the run). On a side note, if you are interested in one of our ASU Tri tech tees shoot me an email at emantell@asu.edu and we’ll get you all set up J

Catch ya at the races!