Last Sunday I raced Escape Surf City in Huntington beach. It
was my first experience racing in the pro field, and it was a great experience.
Although I didn’t have the race I was hoping to have (As you can probably tell
from the results - emphasis on the swim) I did manage to learn a lot about myself and how pro racing
works in the process, which is probably more important than crushing it at age
22 (almost 23 OMG).
But first, I owe you guys a life update, since you probably
care about that ;). Since my last blog in October, quite a bit has happened. In
December I went up to Minnesota for a week for Christmas, and then headed down
to Tucson for a few weeks of training with my coach Elliot and friend Conrad.
We hopped in to some workouts with the MCTC winter training camp, which
featured some athletes from CSU, ASU, and of course, U of A. There was a speech
from Hoff (idol), and some good meals.
On the way home, I began writing a blog so I could fold my
tray down on the plane in my battle for legroom with a dude who was at least
6-7 and decided it was OK for his knees to spill in to my personal space. Training
camp went smoothly, and my run build was going pretty well. I was starting to
get pretty fit, and I was feeling really strong in all three sports in
February.
In March, I suffered an injury scare. I immediately called
my doctor, and saw her within 48 hours. She believed it was a stress fracture
in my 5th metatarsal (outside of foot) based on how it felt and, but
wanted a bone scan to be 100% sure. I took my anger out on the Source Endurance
cycling camp, riding 420 miles in 4 days with some really good bike riders, and
it was super fun. Within a few days, my foot didn’t hurt at all. When I had the
bone scan done, it showed absolutely no damage. I celebrated by having to
completely build my run back three weeks before the race J. Being injured sucks.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider just quitting triathlon and getting a
job or trying to get good at bike racing. Nobody wants to talk about this stuff
and how hard it is when you are just struggling to get to a start line, and
it’s very hard to find the motivation to train. Fortunately, I didn’t quit, and
I committed to doing my best at Surf City, even though I would be in over my
head with the competition (both literally and figuratively).
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| Super proud of myself here |
Before I write about the race, though, I think it’s
important (and relatively funny) how much of a shit show I was heading in to
it, and all the dumb mistakes I made along the way so that hopefully you don’t
do these too. I did my best to cover it on my instagram story, but there were
certainly a lot of things I left off for my ego’s sake. I also want to say
thank you to the UCLA Tri Team (specifically Hannah Grubbs – good luck at
Nationals next weekend!), Matt Stewart (UCLA tri alumni), and Cory Schillz
(Wattslayer69 operator, full time sender, part time student, legend, and SDSU
stud also good luck at nationals next weekend), and Cory’s parents Patrick and
Glenda for helping me navigate LA/Huntington. They fed, clothed, and sherpa’d
for me all weekend long, and I didn’t spend a single dollar eating out at a
restaurants with the exception of using a whole foods gift card for lunch one
day.
I originally planned on being picked up from the airport by
Cory on Thursday, but he wasn’t able to get out of class, so I ended up Staying
at Matt’s apartment near UCLA on Thursday. I rode my full race setup (not
advised) to the UCLA pool, arrived only 30 minutes late to practice. After the
swim, I realized I only had a cycling jersey, so I got a UCLA TRI “breakfast
burrito club” shirt, and then was guest swiped in to the dining hall. It was
fantastic. That evening I realized I wasn’t going to be getting picked up the
next day, so I began to look up how expensive renting a car was so I could get
down to Huntington – about an hour drive. Luckily, AAA members receive 15% off
on hertz rentals, and also can dodge the under 25 rental fee, which saved me a
total of $27 a day. In the end, I spent $111 + about 30 on gas in order to get
too and from Huntington beach. If had picked up a rental from the airport, the
daily fee would have been about $50 higher, making me feel like a sly genius.
LA traffic is terrible, and I was scared out of my mind that
I would get crashed in to. I didn’t, and safely arrived at the beach around
10:30. The waves were about 2-5 feet tall, and I went for a quick dip in the
ocean, trying to figure out how to get through the waves. I quickly realized
that the start of the swim, usually the most important part in a triathlon in
terms of positioning, was going to be very difficult. I don’t have Cam Dye’s
take out speed, I also didn’t grow up surfing or beach lifeguarding, have never
done a beach start before, or raced in the actual ocean (just missing bay, in
water start, no waves). Come race morning, I was going to be in over my head
both literally and figuratively. The field was really fast, and full of strong
swimmers, and the ocean swim does not suit my skill set.
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| First world problems |
Honestly, there was so much stress due to travel, phantom
injuries, and other stuff that I won’t talk about here leading in to the race,
that getting to the start line was a solid W for me. After being dropped off
and setting up my transitions, completing helmet check, etc, I headed down to
the beach with my coach Elliot and Erica (3rd in the women’s field)
for a warm up jog before heading up to warm up in the ocean. The waves didn’t
look terrible. Until they did. At like 6:20 as we lined up in the start corral,
I could barely see the white buoys they set up (genius), and the waves were
looking pretty damn big compared to the ones I had been practicing in the past
few days. They were anywhere between 3-10 feet, depending on the location, with
the current blowing towards the right. Being the dumbass that I am, I lined up
on the right side in the front row. I knew that everyone was going to run
directly left right at the start, so I figured I’d just hop on Cam’s feet and
draft the entire race, drop him on the bike, then run a 29 minute 10k. That
last sentence was sarcasm.
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|
The gun went off and we ran in. Basically everyone face
planted after hitting this small 3 foot gap in the sand. I stayed with the
group for about 15 seconds before getting thrown backwards by a large wave.
After collecting myself, I could see them about 50 meters ahead. Then another
big wave came and sent me backwards again. I looked up, trying to breath, and realized
that I had definitely messed up, and was definitely going to have a big gap
coming out of the swim. I’m ok with getting dropped by cam dye in the water,
but getting dropped this way was very defeating. My surfing skills definitely
needed some work, and I was like 200 meters back to the front group 400 meters
into the race. And all of those guys can already swim faster than I can, so
whatever hope I had in coming out of the water in a group was shattered...
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| This picture made it in to the LA Times! pretty sick |
I expected about a 2-3 minute deficit to Cam Dye, but due to
my ocean/surf inexperience, I was now looking at about 5. Sick! Later on I
learned that lifeguards had to make about 60 saves… I don’t think the swim time
is a reflection of my swim, but it happened, and I wasn’t ready to get
destroyed by some waves and just didn’t get under them in time. Shit happens.
That’s racing sometimes... Thankfully, I will probably never have to deal with that bad of
a deficit again, considering that Cam Dye, Eric Lagerstrom, and Ryan Fischer
are three of the bests swimmers in triathlon. And they all can surf better than
me.
The run out of transition was long, and Elliot gave me a
split and just told me to ride as hard as I could. He was very encouraging, and
I really needed that after getting destroyed in the water. Once the shoes were
on, it was time to mash. I saw Cory (Wattslayer69) and he screamed at me to
mash. I put my head down and event to work, slowly picking off people. It hurt.
My power meter kept dropping out so
my numbers weren't beautiful, but I could also tell that my legs weren’t
fantastic. The name of the game on this course was staying aero and keeping the
pedal to the metal. It is super flat, the roads are smooth, and there are 4
turns. The stagger rule was in effect, so I basically did the entire race on
the left side of the road to avoid getting a penalty. I
tried to keep my speed as high as possible, but faded pretty hard about 30
minutes in. I switched bottles to the one that had a gel in it, and then came
back to life about 10 minutes later. I ended up with a pretty good bike split,
which makes me happy considering it wasn’t my finest hour (still better than the swim tho…). If I had great day on the bike, I might have gone
about 30-60 seconds faster, which would have put me in the exact same place on
the standings.
On to the run, I actually felt really good right away. I
decided to run without a watch and just go by feel since this was my first time
running fast for more than 1 minute in over 3 weeks…. So basically it was a
test to see what I could do with minimal volume/intensity. Although my run time
isn’t super fast, I would say it was solid considering the circumstances! I
stayed conservative, and ran by feel. There as also a quarter mile section with
sand that I definitely jogged. With 20/20 hindsight, I could have pushed the
run significantly harder. I stayed within my comfort zone until like mile 5,
and then realized I still had a good amount in the tank, but was just scared of
blowing up! After a few years of bonking HARD during the run and switching to a
more conservative strategy, I think it’s time to start pushing it a bit more
and taking it to that next level around miles 0-6.2. It’s very hard to place in
the money when you run and swim 4 minutes slower than the next guy, so maybe I
need to start pushing it a bit more and taking more risks as opposed to playing
it safe. It’s funny, because I completely feel comfortable crushing myself on
the bike and throwing up in my mouth a little bit, but the run is scary.
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| Looking way to conscious crossing that line. let's change that |
There’s a lot that I left off of this blog, but I had a positive experience in my first pro race and learned a lot about the
margin of error while racing with these guys. Its cutthroat, and I really
needed that. I’m somewhat happy with my effort, not really happy about my
result, but at the end of the day it feels good to race again, and I’m
motivated to train hard for the next race - Best on Hess time trial this weekend and then KC Tri the following!!
