“I’ve been working on my stabilizer muscles in the
offseason”
Last weekend I capped off my season with the Pumpkinman
Triathlon in Las Vegas/Henderson/Boulder City (not sure really how to label the
location for this race). This race holds a special place in my heart because it
was my first Olympic distance race and it is an epic hard course. If GCN made
triathlon videos, there would probably be one about this race because it’s
pretty dang cool.
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I had some great training leading up to this race, including
a high altitude training camp in Flagstaff with the ASU Tri team (it was epic). You can stalk my training from that weekend here. There was no reason for me to count myself out as a player in the race. My goal was to
prove to myself, and my competitors, that I belong towards the front part (not
necessarily off the front) of the race with a really competitive field and can
be consistent across the board in a swim-bike-run exercise contest.
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| Squad about to crush Snowbowl |
Swimming with the ASU Tri team, biking with power and using
it to push myself, and running with Andrew (4:25 mile pr) have really helped me
step my game up. After reading Lionel Sanders’ blog on kona lessons, I learned quite a bit about the importance of variance within training. The main lesson being that you
don’t need to simulate races every freaking workout.
I do it way too much, and eventually the body doesn’t want
to adapt to that stress and it hits limbo. I’m gearing towards instead of going
at “race effort” or “race watts” or “race pace” all the time that I just start
letting myself go crazy in training when I want to, then seeing what happens,
then applying what I know my body is capable of doing during a race instead of
trying to calculate values I’m supposed to train at. Obviously there is a
general baseline I can go off of that I have already established, but instead
of limiting myself in training sometimes I need to go crazy, and that’s what
has been great about having training buddies these past few months. They push
me even when the clock says I’m going fast enough, and at the end of the day
that’s what makes me go faster.
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| blah blah blah trainer road blah blah blah |
Using a power meter coupled with trainerroad has probably
been my biggest weapon, and it’s always motivating to have something tell you
to go harder, which is probably one of the reasons my cycling has improved (and
I can hold aero for like 19 billion hours now too). I still have a ton of room for improvement on the bike, and until I can bike well under 56 minutes for a 40k I won't be satisfied. Next year, as my season
progresses, my goal is to not limit myself and hold back during training. I think
that a shift in mindset away from being uber calculated in training and racing
into using my data instruments as tools for improvement and measurement will
bring me a lot more enjoyment from the sport and let me push my limits more. I
will still train hard, but with more varied intensities as opposed to “Race
intensity” or “easy” so that I can develop all the ranges of speed necessary to
be a well-rounded triathlete and compete at a much higher level.
Now to the fun part: Vegas!
We left Tempe on Friday at around 12, and arrived at the
hotel just before 5. After a quick run, Andrew and I headed to packet pickup,
very inconveniently located 15 miles from our hotel (which was right next to
the swim start… thx BBSC). After that, we got some food from Teryaki Madness,
then dropped our run gear off at T2 since it’s a point to point race. I made a
last minute decision not to wear a visor or hat. In previous races I felt like
I was melting alive under it, and I had just cut my hair on Tuesday, so I
figured it was time to give the bald running look a try. More aero.
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We had a quick team meeting going over all the basics for
the newbies and then went to bed.
Race morning:
When I woke up I was freaking excited. Like way more jacked
up then I was for Tempe when I felt like I could have just gone back to bed and
forgot entirely about the race. I was excited to test myself on one of the
toughest Olympic courses and see what my body could do. I had a quick run, ate
some rice cakes with peanut butter/banana and a picky bar with some Gatorade.
The weather was literally perfect. mid 60s with no wind. I can handle that J
Equipment: blueseventy fusion, brand new mirrored goggles,
Troy’s swim cap (sorry dude), and a bunch of rocks embedded in the bottom of my
feet.
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This was without a doubt the most violent swim of my life. I
think people were practicing their mashpit skills for the Vegas clubs on
Saturday night during the start. I got kicked, punched, hit in the nuts, you
name it, it probably happened to me (but my goggles somehow stayed on). Within
a few hundred meters I started to get past the cloud of blue caps and made my
way towards the main pack. The buoys were like three feet tall, so it was
pretty much impossible to sight. Which sucked.
Honestly, I was trying so hard
but they were so dang small! Within 8 minutes I was sure that I had absolutely
screwed my race, having redlined it for that whole period, but I carried on,
stopping a few times to try and find buoys. Eventually I got to the halfway
point and told myself “yep, I’m swimming a 25 today”. I made it through to the
end, and got out and heard Nic yell that I had a great swim. I looked down at
my watch and saw 21:30ish. I was pretty psyched, given that I though it had
gone awful, but I knew that I had to start preventing the lead swimmers from
putting any time into me on the bike so I could hopefully run some of them
down.
Equpiment: Salsa el gogo, Zipp 404’s, quarq power meter, and
rudy wing 57.
As usual, people were absolutely redlining it on the climb
out of transition. I kept my power steady and just relaxed. Pumpkinman is a
really hard course, and I knew from my experience at Pac Crest this summer that
redlining it out of transition is like lighting your matchbook on fire. I
swapped a few times with some athletes, but I found that most of my time make
ups were coming from the downhills. Being able to push consistent power kept my
breathing steady, and let my legs get used to the rhythm they’d have to
maintain for the run.
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| They didn't even get a bike pic of me in the race so this'll do |
Instead of crushing souls on the little hills I tried to just maintain a smooth pedal stroke, drink,
stretch, stand, and keep consistent power. It’s a lot easier to put out more
power going up a hill, so instead of focusing on crushing it I let my body do
the work and stayed as mentally relaxed as possible, reminding myself that
there was still a 6 mile climb at the end. By the turnaround I knew I was
having a great ride. I had a brief lull from 45-1 hour where my power dropped.
I just got a little tired, told myself to harden up, then kept going. Seeing
all the ASU kits out on the course made me realize how much our team has grown
this year. My bike split was pretty good by my standards (until I saw some of
the others– holy crap). I put a gap into a lot of the people behind me, but
still made up very little lost time to the race leaders (all except
Dmitry were from CU).
Gear: ASU Sunglasses, NB 1400s, garmin 910, custom back
zipper.
I know that my body tends to like to overheat, so I needed a
cooling plan for the race on the run even though the weather was in the 60s. At
each aid station I grabbed three cups of water. One down the pants, one to the
face, and one down the back. This helped a ton. I did my best to keep my Crowie
face, and just maintain the rhythm as long as I could. About 1.5 miles in Jesse
Frank, a solid runner from CU came by me. He put about a 15 second gap on me,
but I was determined to make it stick right at that. I felt great up until the
turnaround aside from some slight ab cramps that went away after one mile.
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| Doing my best Crowie "Terminator" impression |
I hit the turnaround and realized just how uphill the rest
of the race was. I put together a solid pace for miles 4 and 5, and was
beginning to fatigue a lot, but was determined to finish strong. At mile 6 I
started to get dizzy. Once I hit about 500m to go I hit a wall. I just couldn’t
go fast anymore. I tried to sprint the last 500 in and speed up but my body
wouldn’t let me. I ended up coming in 12th overall in a pretty dang
fast field. I am happy with the result, but more happy with how the entire
season went as a whole.
Being able to cap a season off with a pr swim by over a minute, pr power on the bike (15 minutes longer, and 15 watts higher than LT Tempe), and a PR Run that could have been even faster if I could have closed better was pretty cool and not something that many people get to experience. So I decided to celebrate by laying on the grass while everything was spinning in circles and pouring water on myself (there was no med tent). Special thanks to Jesse Frank for stopping my garmin and carrying me off the railing on to the grass, you’re a classy dude, and had a great race!
Being able to cap a season off with a pr swim by over a minute, pr power on the bike (15 minutes longer, and 15 watts higher than LT Tempe), and a PR Run that could have been even faster if I could have closed better was pretty cool and not something that many people get to experience. So I decided to celebrate by laying on the grass while everything was spinning in circles and pouring water on myself (there was no med tent). Special thanks to Jesse Frank for stopping my garmin and carrying me off the railing on to the grass, you’re a classy dude, and had a great race!
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After waiting for all our members to finish, we got some chipotle and went down to our hotel (the Venetian) and celebrated a great finish to the season in Las Vegas. Next up: I’m going to be taking at least two weeks super
easy, with minimal running. From what I’ve heard/seen from creeping on pros
stravas this is necessary in order to maintain resilience and not burnout. I’ll
be volunteering at IMAZ (Run aid station!) so come give the ASU Tri team a
shout. If you’re interested in winning a $500 gift card to Destination Kona Tri
Store you can sign up right here - message me for payment info if you have questions. Also - if you're interested in buying an ASU Tri shirt or kit or whatever check out our shopify page. It should be updated shortly J
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| We brought out quite a few people this year :) |
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| Lake Mary in Flagstaff |
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| Met an olympian and world champ in the same day! |
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A few of us went to the pool
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