Tritonman - a Learning Experience and a Half

It's February, so naturally we're beginning to race down here in the South...

First things first: to support our teams journey to nationals click here

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My training since January had been interesting. I was sidelined from running for a few weeks because of an injury that I got while playing in the alumni hockey game, so I focused a lot on swimming, biking, and doing strength workouts. I also bought a new bike, which has newly replaced di2 components since the first set were trash - if you want to ask more questions about details regarding the bike I'd be happy to talk about it... just not here because this post isn't about my bike.

training camp was awesome again

Sammy Scott, an ex ASU swimmer has taken over our swim coaching, and he has been cranking up the volume on us. It's been much nicer having someone who you can relate to as your coach, and he is going to be a massive part of our teams journey to becoming better triathletes.

After being injured, I did my best to ease back into running. Even after a week completely away from it, I still didn't feel like I was running 100% pain free for another 3-4 weeks. That was probably good, though, because it gave me some time to work on my biking and getting stronger. There is no point in being a ridiculously fast runner in February anyways (what I told myself to help me sleep at night).

Team bonding

TRITONMAN: Draft legal

Tritonman consists of a two day races series on a ridiculously fast course. the first day is a draft legal race that attracts some extremely high level pros (Joe Maloy, Eric Lagerstrom, Ben Kanute) and the second day is a non draft legal race. It's very similar to collegiate nationals, except both races are sprint distance.

Race morning started with some rice cakes and pb/banana. I had no problems emptying out my system, if you catch my drift. I got a ride down to transition with some teammates and checked in. The nerves weren't too bad, and as I walked into transition there were a bunch of stud athletes. The field was stacked by amateur standards... Like 5 dudes who race WTS events on a regular basis and ~20 total pros. I borrowed Julia's (another teammates) road bike for the race in order to save room in cars and not be that guy who brings two bikes. Plus it's a really nice bike.

I want to thank the UCSD Tri club for giving us a legitimate 30 minutes to warm up in the water. I lined myself in the second row directly behind a group of pros. I figured maybe I could catch a little bit of a draft for the first 100 or so and just try to get in a group after that. Overall that plan actually worked well! I was out of the water right in the middle of the pack, exactly where I expected to be. This was my first ITU Style race where you actually had to get all your stuff in a bucket, and I am proud to say that I didn't screw any of that up! I got a split from Sammy as I headed out onto the bike.

Bike:

I decided I would put my shoes on right away and then try to bridge up to the group that was only a few seconds ahead of me. It wasn't my best idea, as a 5 second gap quickly turned into 20 when I put the shoes on. Look at pictures, I was able to determine that most people didn't put on their shoes until ~2 miles into the ride. I spent 6-7 minutes going balls out, and eventually was able to bridge up with another guy to the group that had some really fast runners. I took my turn at the front, feeling not as great as I thought I would on the bike, and then pulled off. The next person behind me must have put in some ridiculous surge, because I found myself off the back just trying to hang on for dear life.

Trying to bridge up

The next 3 minutes were spent in no-mans-land. Instead of resting once I bridged up I immediately went for it and paid the price of not being able to cover any sort of move. I was caught by a pretty fast group on the second lap, and worked with them for the rest of the bike. The support form our team out on the bike course was amazing and they kept me going hard the whole time by positioning themselves all over the course and they were awesome.

Throwing in a few surges

For the most part everyone took their turns and we ended up not losing any time after lap 1 to the group directly ahead of us. Heading into transition a UCSB guy attacked and I covered it, but I brought the entire rest of the pack with me when I bridged up. Then while everyone was taking their shoes off I moved up, which was another dumb move because when I took mine off I got passed by one or two guys.

The run went way better than I expected it to. The first lap was pretty rough, and it felt like my shoes were only half on my feet. After that, I thought I only had one lap to go, so I started to open up. By the time I got to the finishing straight I was ready to sprint and be done with it. But then someone yelled "OK NICE JOB ONE MORE LAP KEEP IT UP". Crap... I opened up more and was able to pick a few more people off in the final lap. Our team had somehow managed to all get over to the run course to yell at me which was awesome. It's so much easier to crush yourself with 20 teammates yelling at you.

After the race I ate a lot, then went for another ride, this time on my 53x15 TT bike... More on that later.

Non draft:

After a big night of chipotle, pasta, and a bunch of yogurt pretzels I was ready to race again. My legs felt better than they did on Saturday, although that isn't really saying much...

Swim:

They had our swim separated into waves based on when you signed up, so I started in the 2nd collegiate wave. I lined up at the front this time, and knew that I could have a legit chance of being out of the water in a good position. I focused on just going as hard as I could for a while before settling in. I found myself in a chase group before it got strung out along the way in. I got out and was within one minute of the leader from our wave.

Bike:

Onto the bike I put my shoes on right away, but this was so that I could just step on the power and race my own race. I saw Andrew from CSU right there with me and we were going about the same speed. Eventually I took the lead and he was pretty much right behind me.

Click Here to hit up Erin if you want your helmet to look this cool!

Background on why i'm riding 53x15: Last weekend I had a flying mount "incident" during practice that resulted in a smashed rear derailleur. I ended up having to buy an entirely new di2 groupset because they don't make 7970 compatible with any of the new di2 components. After the first lap I had settled in and was feeling pretty good. I knew I would finish the bike with a solid amount of energy left for the run if all kept going as planned. I made a pass and looked back only to see another athlete sitting on my wheel. Being the level-headed, calm person I am, I started freaking out. I swore at him, screamed at him, told him to get the f**k off my f**king wheel, but it didn't work. he just laughed. I threw in major watt bombs, and started trying to shake him but nothing was working.

What I'd like to do to cheaters

Looking back I would have been better off waiting until we went by a photographer and then attacking. He would have had to let up his draft for a bit so they didn't get it on camera, and then I could have distanced myself. I am not happy about his cheating, but I am also not happy about the way I handled it; I could have very easily ended up with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. In the end, I tried to make him run over a pile of sticks, and got myself a flat tire in my rear wheel. I couldn't change it because I had no way of downshifting to take my wheel out.

What I will do in the future

I saw our entire team out there and just tried to be as positive as I could. I was bummed, but they still had a race to finish and I figured that mine was over so I might as well just yell as loud as I could for them.

Random thoughts on drafting:

In hockey, no matter how many times you blocker someone in the back it will still never be as effective as a cup check. Instead of showing roos how pissed I was, I should have just taken it as a compliment and kept racing my own race and disposed of him at a more appropriate time (like doing a cup check when they're not expecting it).

Next up we're heading to Henderson, NV for spring training camp, and then making our way up to Havasu again on March 19th for MCTC Championships!

Thx for saving us lifeguards!

 Thanks to Jimmy Song , Jorts Sports, and Keenan Photography for the pictures!

gotta get more aero

Pumpkinman and Season in Review

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Swim: But did you die though?

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.

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.

Bike: Managed to not blow up, didn't get any cool pictures

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.

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).

Run: Almost made it without dying

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.

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 12^th 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!

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

We brought out quite a few people this year :)

Lake Mary in Flagstaff 

Met an olympian and world champ in the same day!

A few of us went to the pool

Average run in flagstaff

Thanks for reading!

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!