Goals: This was my first tri of the year, and with minimal open-water swimming and no transition practice, I was primarily hoping for a solid-execution race: don’t make any big errors, race within myself. Semi-secretly, I was hoping for a top-10 finish and perhaps a masters win.
Pre-race: The past week was a hard training week for me; I just eased up a little on Friday. I figured this would impact the race, but long ago I decided that Issaquah would be a “C” race for me. Mid-week, I was tempted to revisit this, but I recalled the frequent advice on this alias to stick to plan—so I proceed with a hard brick on Wednesday and a long bike and a long run on Thursday. If nothing else, this race would give me some insight on the impact of recent hard training on a race.
Swim: I went with the first wave, and the start was surprisingly sudden. People were in the water, and the horn went off. I was on the inside, not due to any real planning, and soon I learned that this was a mistake as I got to battle it out with several other folks taking the same line. All the years of water polo were coming in handy, but I was wishing I had started to the outside to avoid this mess.
Things opened up after the first buoy, and I was surprised at the pace of the race. I felt pretty decent: despite having only 10 minutes of open-water training in 2007 before this race, swimming in a good wetsuit is always fun because it feels so fast. Nonetheless, there were a bunch of other swimmers in front of me. I am used to being near the front in swims, so I was thinking maybe I had made a big mistake in doing so little swimming training so far this year. “Oh well, just go.” (Note photo above: Coming out of the water, note my wife Lynn with the camera heading over to T1)
About half way between the buoys, something went wrong with a stroke, and I felt a minor dislocation of my right shoulder. This brought back bad memories of shoulder problems I had occasionally in high school swimming, and briefly I thought I might have to quit the race. After a couple of tentative strokes, I decided to press on, despite the minor pain.
Finishing up the swim, I was a little relieved to come out of the water and it seemed that there weren’t TOO many people in front of me. My wife yelled to me that I was 9th out of the water… “ok that is workable.”
Time: 7:30.
T1: Uneventful, which is what you want in a sprint tri transition. I must have moved up a few places in the standings in T1.
Time: 0:58
Bike: I had a couple of minor issues starting the bike. I nearly lost my left shoe while putting it on while moving, but I saved it and got it on correctly. Then, I realized that I hadn’t reset or turned on my PowerTap… OK dealt with that too and started pedaling for real.
Going out of Issaquah was smooth, and I tried to lock in a power of 325w. I could see a couple of guys about a hundred yards in front of me battling it out. At ~165, HR was too high for some reason (tired from the swim?), so I decided to ease up slightly. I was steadily reeling in one of the guys in front of me, and it seemed like the other was pulling away. I passed one guy, and shortly thereafter I passed someone else.
Up the hill at about four miles, somebody smoked past me. I could see that it was a smaller guy, someone who probably has a big advantage on the hills, and he was going so much faster that I figured it would be hopeless to track him. However, cresting the hill he was maybe fifteen bike lengths in front of me, and on the downhill my weight turned from liability to advantage. I caught up a little, and tracked behind him by 25 yards or so for a while. I also steadily approached someone in a UW tri suit—tall, very slender guy. I passed the UW guy shortly before the turnaround, although from the looks of him I figured correctly that I would be getting another look at the UW logo on the back of his jersey during the run.
One cool thing about an out-and-back bike course is that you can precisely see your position in the race. The race winner had a giant lead, but not long before the turnaround I saw the guy in second place, and the guy who had passed me on the hill was in third. So, I was in forth at that point.
On the other hand, after the turnaround you get to see what is happening in the race behind. There were hardly any riders until a few hundred yards after the turnaround when there was a veritable peloton of ten or so guys within about twenty five yards of one another. “Lame,” I thought to myself as I concentrated on my rabbit forty or so yards in front of me. I figured I could easily pace off of him until the hill, where he would likely drop me. The problem was that I was down to 300-310w, and I didn’t really feel like re-passing him and getting re-re-passed on the hill, so I just hung way back at that wattage. With the benefit of hindsight, I think that was a mistake: I could have gone harder in this section, closer to my ~335w FTP, as my HR was now down to the low 150s.
There was no passing for me in the second half of the race, which was a nice change from 2006 where I got passed a lot in the second half of this race.
Time: 37:42, avg 23.9 MPH, 311w AP, 314w NP, 157 BPM avg HR
T2: I did make one minor error at the end of the bike: I forgot to take my feet out of my shoes until about 100 yards from T2, so I bailed on that and decided to run in bike shoes on the grass in T2. This added a few seconds while I removed my shoes at 0MPH instead of at ~22MPH on the bike. T2 otherwise went fine.
Time: 1:00
Run: I could see the third-place guy about 50-100 yards in front of me. I’m relatively weakest in the run, so I knew I would not hold 4th place, but I decided to try to continue pacing off this guy, who seemed to be going about my pace. It was cool hearing the announcer say “now we’re starting to see the runners come through, let’s cheer ‘em on!”
Sure enough, the UW guy passed me about half a mile into the run… now I was in 5th place. Then another guy passed, putting me in 6th. Still, I felt like I was running well; I had grabbed my PowerTap in T2 so I could monitor HR on the run, and it was just right at about 163, so I knew not to push any harder.
About 1.5 miles into the race, I heard some more footsteps, and when the guy was about two yards behind me he said something that I didn’t catch. “What was that?”
“Cool shoes!” he said, referring to my new Newtons.
“Thanks, they’re good, ‘cept I can’t keep up with you!” He laughed and waved as he flew off into the distance. Now I was in 7th place, and I really did want a top-10 finish at this point. I snuck a look back on an open stretch, and I didn’t see anyone. At another spot, I could see someone about 100 yards behind me, and he had that slender runner’s build that I hate seeing when racing. I determined to keep pressing.
Coming back into the park, I snuck another look, and he was about at the same distance behind me. Soon thereafter, I passed a spectator who gave me some good cheers, and almost immediately after I passed he started yelling “go Brady, c’mon!” Now I knew someone was on my heels and I shifted up to the last gear I had, seeing my HR go up past 170. With maybe 50 yards left in the race, he flew past me, but I had nothing left to give at that point. I was pleased, at least, that it was not the guy who had been tracking me for a while—I had managed to hold him off. (See second photo, above)
Time: 18:16. 162 BPM avg HR. I think that the course was less than 3 miles, as I don’t think I was running a 6:05 pace. I’m guessing I did a 6:15 to 6:30 pace.
Overall: 1:05:26, 8th place, 2nd in masters males, 1st in M40-44.
Post-race: As I was finishing, the announcer stated that a 47-year-old had finished the race. It turns out this was the guy who passed me back on the bike hill. It was very fun hang out with Jill Fry and crew after the race: they’re a great, inclusive bunch.
I am pleased with the race execution, although my bike AP was lower than I know I can do. Perhaps too much recent training and too little 2007 swim training cost me some on the bike. Today, my shoulder is quite sore, so swim training may unfortunately need to continue to take a back seat.
dave
