Boulder 70.3 - All Streaks Must Come to an End

Triathletes all know that ending up in the med tent means you pushed yourself a little bit, way too hard. Every race for the past year, I have gotten dehydrated, and ending up laying in some sort of mini hospital while doctors try to figure out what is going on with my body. I've puked, passed out, and everything between during races. Turns out, triathlon isn't about killing yourself as fast as you possibly can when the gun goes off...

Riding with Erik Nau and Rachael #instagramfamous Norfleet

One of my goals for 2016 is to be competitive in races where there are a lot of fast people. Boulder 70.3 seemed like a good place to start after blowing up at Collegiate Nationals. Leading up to the race, longer bikes/runs were becoming a part of my regular routine, and I felt confident that I would be able to push through the first half of the run. During a half, the last 10k is pretty much up to how well you hydrated and ate.

We did very little "race specific" training, and a lot of hills. #Fitness was the main focus. It was tiring, and the first 30 minutes of most sessions were spent waking up and feeling sorry for my legs. Eventually, they would come around and get moving. Having a lot of training partners in addition to Steve has been a great change from last Summer. 99% of my training in Bend was done alone. It's much more enjoyable to train with other people.

Rist...

New bike is awesome :)

After a hard hill run w/ Steve

Estes Park is always fun

After a swim/sauna at the rec in the morning, we headed to Boulder for a quick ride with Conrad and Scott (U of A TriCats), before checking in my new bike and headed back to Erik Nau's house. Erik is a friend of ours who let us stay with him the night before the race. He was very hospitable and was so laid back you wouldn't have known he was racing if it weren't for his disc wheel and tri-spoke set up on his bike.

not peeing.

Race day:

We got a ride over to the race site pretty early to avoid the traffic. My transition area was right next to a Dimond, so I figured it'd be pretty easy to find my bike coming out of the water. After dropping bags off with my parents and hitting up the porta-potties, it was go-time.




Swim: I ran into Paul Stevenson, a former ASU teammate who now races for Team EMJ just before the swim start and we wished each other luck. I started out on the far left, hoping to avoid some of the chaos. After sprinting the first hundred or so, I couldn't see any other pink caps. Either I had gotten dropped really really hard (which has totally happened before) or I was in the lead, which has never happened before. Several times during the swim, I felt tired and wanted to stop but then I would realize that I would still had to swim back to the shore, and that I was already halfway done. I honestly felt like my heart was going to explode more than 5 times. Out of the water I asked if I was ahead of Paul (an extremely strong cyclist) but wasn't really able to get any sort of split or lead time. Since this isn't a pro race, and my heart felt like it was going to pop out of my wetsuit, I majorly chilled in transition.

Just thankful that part of the race is done

Bike: On the bike my legs felt good (for about 10 minutes), so I started to push. The Cervelo P2 was #dirtyfast. I can't thank Patrick at Rocky Mountain Multisport enough for getting it ready to go in less than 2 weeks! After a few minutes, I was able to calm myself down and keep the effort under control. I didn't have any specific target heart rate, power number, or anything to target. My goal was to just race by feel, stay conservative early, then if I felt good on the second half I would pick it up. Hydration has been a major issue in the past. The forecast was in the upper 80s at the time I would be running, so I made sure to stay topped off. For the most part, I kept myself under control for the whole ride. I was still racing, but knew that my body was probably working harder than it felt. Focusing on nutrition and hydration was key, so I let my body go however hard it felt like going.

"I only do it for the bike sick pics" - Julia Jankuski

Giving Mark Bowstead a tow - Just kidding

My legs felt worse at mile 10 than they did at mile 50, so I pushed the final few miles into transition. The bike course was awesome. I went through 4 water bottles (one of them for cooling purposes) and a few packs of Clif Bloks. Rolling up the hill into transition, I finished up a water bottle and took in a few extra bloks. Somehow my shoe went flying off backwards before the dismount line, but a quick thinking volunteer grabbed it and threw it to me... Clutch. T2 was spent pounding the rest of my water and taking my sweet time, because I knew I had a hot run ahead of me...

I started the run with a few female pros and just tried to stay in control of my breathing and have good form . I kept looking down and seeing a pace that was a little too fast to be sustainable and slowed down a bit. I told myself to settle in by the first aid station. During long runs, I tested out running with a bottle in hand and holding a gel flask. As someone who sucks at drinking out of cups on the run course and hates slowing down at aid stations, this turned out to be a great idea. Being able to drink whenever I wanted was great. The gel flask worked great and tasted terrible. Every aid station consisted of a pace check to make sure I wasn't going too fast (for the first lap), 2 cups of ice down my top, and a few cubes in my mouth. I would take the cubes, suck on them for a bit, then move them to both of my hands. Around mile 3, Steve came strolling up by me. He was looking solid, and I knew he could see Mark Bowstead up the road in 7th place. We ran up a hill together before he went on his way. About 10 seconds later, another pro came rolling by, absolutely crushing the run. He ended up catching Steve, and putting him in 9th, just out of the money :(. Steve had a great race, though, and most importantly, didn't implode like he has in previous years. Seeing some legendary pros out on the run course supporting the people racing was super cool. Callum Millward, Tim Don, and Ben Hoffman were super encouraging out there.

Beginning lap 2!

Seeing Patrick (with the chicken-head hat), my parents, Coach Mace, and the rest of the Noco/CSU people as we rolled through on the second lap was awesome. After going by, I felt recharged and ready to go. During the first lap I told myself that if I felt good, I could go hard starting at mile 9. Mile 7 I started to feel pretty good, so I picked it up a bit. By the time mile 9 came around I was beginning to struggle and was scared of blowing up, so I chilled out a bit and told myself to wait till mile 11 to run really fast. By mile 11, I felt crappy again. There were a lot of ups and downs during the second half of the run, but I was ready for them and confident in my pacing that I would be able to crush the last two miles. I chilled through the aid station at mile 11, thanked some volunteers, and managed to negative split the run with a strong last couple miles. Running down the finishing stretch was special. It was all downhill, and I smiled and made sure to stop my garmin BY MYSELF for the first time this year. I had finally not blown up during a race (even though there were lots of times I thought I would) and didn't need to go to the medical tent.

Sorry finisherpix, but I'm not paying $59.99 for these.

I got some pizza and just sat there smiling, clinging to my finishers medal and redbull. We didn't check results until we got back to Erik's place, and we realized that I had won the overall amateur race. It's funny, because this is the first time I didn't even think about time or placement goals going into and during a race. I just swam the swim course, biked the bike course, ran the run course, and trusted my body to do it fast. Sugar, maltodextrin, and ice played a major role in me being able to do this. It's a great result, and I'm pumped about it, but I am still humbled that I was beat by the top male pro by over 20 minutes... Everyone in the top 10 (Jake Montgomery had a 5 min. penalty) biked under 2 hours, and crushed me on the run by a few minutes. Nonetheless, I'm still happy and feel like we're on the right track!

Awesome sunburn line post race

We've jumped into Lake to Lake prep pretty quick with a training camp this week.I'm excited to race for the NoCo Tri club on my birthday in Loveland! After that, I'll be doing the swim leg (lol) in a relay team at Boulder Peak where we're competing for $25,000 in prize money - you read that right - against some of the best pros out there.

Thanks to everyone who made this race possible!

Erik Nau - thanks for letting us crash at your place, and great job out there!
Steve - Thanks for letting me train with you all the time, eat your food, and annoy you! Congrats on a great race!
Mom and Dad - It's always special to race in front of you guys, thanks for coming down! I know you're having fun on your bike trip right now :)
Patrick - Thanks for setting that bike up, and your on course support is amazing! You've got the best tri shop out there too. Now go drink a beer.
FAST Masters and...
Everyone I've trained with over the past month here in Fort Collins
Volunteers -Having ice on the course is clutch

If anyone wants to buy this bike it's $1800!

Collegiate Nationals: Textbook Implosion

Last week the ASU Tri team headed to Clemson, South Carolina for Collegiate Nationals. This is our teams main event for the year, and by far the most fun/competitive race out there. Special thanks to our Sponsor Tri Scottsdale for their generous donation. It's not cheap or easy to take a decent sized group of people across the country for 5 days, and we really appreciate you helping lift some of the financial stress off of our team!

Lake house = amazing

We left PHX on Wednesday afternoon and arrived in South Carolina Just after midnight. After a quick run to walmart to grab the essentials....

We finally arrived to our prestigious rental house. It was about a 10 minute drive from the airport. We had 11 people staying in our house, and there was more than enough room. It was significantly less stressful than staying in a hotel. We could all sit around in the living room, on the porch, at the dock, ect. and just hang out. Another major benefit of renting was that we got to cook dinner and save some money.

Just one of a billion bedrooms... 4 bunk beds and two bathrooms

Yeah, we were stoked to be there

It wouldn't be a normal race if I didn't have a bike crash leading into it. Two weeks prior to the race, I was making a very shallow turn into a parking lot on campus to meet our team for a brick workout, and my wheels slid out from underneath me. My derailleur hanger was bent, and ego was bruised...

As if one bike incident wasn't enough, I figured I should probably borrow some race wheels. After some brake compatibility issues, I decided to order the new tririg omega x brake. After a Facebook message and some google searching I concluded that it would indeed fit my bike and leave me with enough room for the massive 808 rear I was borrowing. The brake was shipped to Clemson so that it could be put on the bike by the Raceday Transport mechanics when we arrived in Clemson.

After a lot of fiddling and trouble, we concluded that the 808 was simply too wide to fit within the tririg brake, and that the center of the tire would still rub against the middle of the brake. Luckily, my teammate Andrew has an 11 speed p2, so we switched wheels and brakepads so that he would have the rear 808 and I would have his shimano training wheel. I wasn't exactly stoked to find out that the brake still didn't close on the right spot of the rim. We decided to file down the pad to ensure that there would be no rub on the tire, which took about two hours.

Pretty #aero

As you might be able to tell, I've got #bikeprobs

Before we knew it, it was friday, and the draft legal race was going on. There were some really impressive performances, but I thought that Josh Fowler from U of A had a great race. He was really agressive on the bike and really made sure he put himself in a position to run well (and did just that).

On Friday I also picked up my packet and found out that I would be starting in wave 2. USAT had allocated slots based on team standings, and since ASU wasn't ranked in the top three teams in the conference we had been given no slot in wave 1. This wasn't ideal, since I would have no idea where people actually were, and wouldn't be able to work with some of the strong bikers (or so I thought).

These guys came through big time

After we finished fridays open water swim and run, we went back to the house for dinner and to check out our competition in the Jaybird Journey to Nationals video contest. UVA had an awesome video this year, as did SDSU. Sadly, we didn't take home the cake for the #3peat, but there were some great videos this year!

Saturday morning came around, and everything felt like it was in place. I was pretty nervous and tense, but Steve's coach Mace came over and got me pumped up and ready to go. Seeing Erica from U of A win the women's race was so awesome. She is incredibly strong on the bike, and has no problem keeping up with the dudes.

Erica smashed it

I lined up at the start next to Willie from CSU, just like at Havasu, and prepared mentally to be smashed 1/3 the way through the swim. We took it out hard, and by the turn buoy there was a solid string of people. A group of two was pacing about the same as me, so I hopped over to a hip and grabbed a draft for the rest of the swim. With about 200 to go I started to push to try and get around some people who might be fading and get a clear line out of the water up to t1. I got out of the water with David from U of A, who I have exited the water with at literally every single race this season now.

After Mace got me pumped up for the race

Just before heading out onto the bike I looked over and saw Jack Toland from CU in hot pursuit. After getting on my bike and putting on my shoes I immediately put the hammer down. I wanted to make riding with me seem like a suicide mission. After around 7 or 8 minutes Jack caught up to me and made a pass. We road through wave two, and by 15 minutes in, we had already established around a 1 minute gap on the rest of our wave. The pace didn't feel too crazy, and I took the lead again while going up one of the climbs. This years bike course was significantly different than last year. There were two pretty significant climbs on it that forced me out of the aerobars and way up the cassette.

Chasing Jack

As we made our way to the top, the leaders were just beginning their descent. It looked like a Sunday group ride on TT bikes, and everyone was yelling at each other to stop drafting. In some ways it was expected, but still upset me because earlier I had talked to Jimmy Richatello (head IM ref) and he said that the 3 bike lengths rule is pretty much a joke. he explained that you can still save 30 watts by sitting 3 bike lengths back. For those of you who aren't familiar with that, 30 watts is about equal to 1.5-2.5 mins, or ~1mph. In the team captains meeting the day before we had been told there would be 7 motos out on the course. I saw zero.

Congestion - check out a video of the drafting here

Throughout the second lap I faded a bit. Jack put about additional 7 seconds on me at each turnaround, and by the time we got off the bike he was ~20-30 seconds up. Half of my fade was probably due to the effort during our first lap. We had hammered pretty hard. The other half was me trying to not completely cook myself before taking one step of the run.

Strava file here...
*elevation gain ~2000, garmin messed it up

Out onto the run I took a minute or two to settle in. I knew that the leaders would likely be starting their second lap while I was going onto my first lap, so it would be a good chance to try and hang on to some feet and make up time with a pacer. Right as I came down the hill onto the main road, Dan Feeney from CU (who runs very fast) hit the turnaround to my right. At Havasu he went by me like I was standing still. On this Saturday, I decided to leave my brain at home and go for it. I ran shoulder to shoulder with Dan for the entire first lap, passing a bunch of people who were riding the struggle bus. Looking back, though, that's how I would like my second lap of the run to feel, because shortly thereafter.....

Holding Dan's feet

Smiling, because now there is photo evidence

I was feeling good and feeding off the crowd all the way until mile four, and then I started going up the hill and my legs started to completely unhinge themselves. Was it nutrition? No, I wasn't cramping or anything. And I took a gel and BASE Salt. It must have been pacing. The speed of the first lap combined with the heat meant that I was either going to pay the price of slowing way down or die trying to maintain that pace. Long story short, I chose the second option (trying to keep going the same pace) and pushed my body farther than it's ever been before to the point where I actually fainted at mile 5. Thankfully, there was an aid station near this spot, and a volunteer quickly got over there and got me to the med tent safely.

Looking back at it, I am brutal not a very smart racer when it comes to run pacing. I tend to start well beyond my limit and then fade hard as opposed to start at something that feels comfortable and will eventually become hard and let my perceived effort build. As one of my old goalie coaches JJ would say "You're in a hurry to be horses**t". I want to feel the pain of the 10k right away, and it always ends up coming back to haunt me at around mile 4 like clockwork. I also need to increase my run volume if I want to be able to maintain that speed throughout the course. The last true "long" run I did was in March, and before then it was in August. We've really been focused on speed, and while I've proved that I can run a 5k at a decent pace, at the end of the day it's still a 10k run. I haven't done the volume to warrant running Tim Don-like #dirtyfast speeds for the entire run.

#TheDon

Even though not finishing is a hard pill to swallow, I am still happy with how my race went up until implosion happened during the run. Special thanks to: Sammy, our swim coach, and Danny our bike/run coach. Without you guys I wouldn't have any idea what to do, ever. The ASU Tri team for being great training partners and teammates. It has been awesome bonding with everyone this year, and I'm looking forward to next year already! My parents and brother for listening to me complain about my #bikeprobs and being my personal consultant on what I should do for pretty much every situation and keeping me in check. Erin, our president for all of her hard work this year. Our team has grown exponentially because of you, and you nailed it this weekend with our nationals planning. Dmitry, thanks for coming with us, looking forward to doing Lemmon with you this weekend!

Candid shot by the lake

BOULDER 70.3

Going into Boulder 70.3, having enough volume in all three sports, fueling properly, and following a smart, negative split effort pacing strategy are going to be the critical elements in focus.

Team dinner