Thursday, October 4, 2012

Super(duper)Frog


Taken off Slowtwich.com
Preface: First of all, there will be no talk about speedos in this blog post. I don’t care that Lance raced in (a lackluster) one; it’s old hat to me.


Aight, lets do this!

I’ve stated this before, but I’ll say it again, I race the best when I don’t think about it & just go hard. The more I think about a race in the week leading up to it, race morning, or during the actual race… the more I suck. For example, all I did for a month leading in to the Las Vegas 70.3 was religiously deliberate every little detail in my head; then I over-analyzed everything while I was racing. What happened.. ? I sucked. (I know I just used a fallacy, but it works). Almost every “good” race I’ve had, I've merely showed up, ready to get brutal.

So, two weeks out from SuperFrog, I honestly didn’t even think about tapering much, I just did what I wanted (workout wise, food wise, beer wise…). Race day, didn’t sweat out the details of how I was going to race, beforehand; I just wanted to roll. I’m not a very orderly person. Over-structure only creates angst. I don’t function on any level when everything is deeply detailed and planned out ahead of time. I thrive off of spontaneity. Not saying I don’t have any levels of organization..

Recapitulation

Race morning, I woke up at 4am to find my beloved roommate, Ramon, freshly & haphazardly draped across the floor with a streak of snacks, clothes, and other debris, trailing from the front door, to the bathroom, to his final place of residing. This was my first inspiration- to race as hard as he had just partied.

Got to transition and chatted with some friends for a bit. The moment of the morning may have been Karl Bordine’s face as he was warming up on the trainer in transition and Lance strolled up next to us with his entourage and circus of photographers & media’ers. I think Karl had headphones in and his back turned, but as the atmosphere went from peaceful to chaotic within a matter of seconds, he sat up & gave me a look, as if to say: “I don’t even need to check behind me to know what’s going on right now”. It was fairly comical, as Karl is not a small guy, and was nonchalantly warming up right in the middle of this pandemonium.

Photo by Dan Megna
Swim: There was a bit of swellage on the beach Sunday morning, so I was pretty stoked to navigate the surf. It may be one of the few advantages I possess in triathlon, coming from a surfing background. Apparently, it didn’t matter because I had the slowest start ever, my goggles fell off after the 1st dolphin dive. After getting them back on and adjusted, I was already #OTB of the front group after 20 seconds. I, pretty much, did the entire swim solo (& essentially the rest of the race, for that matter). I had the sighting pretty dialed in, I just didn’t have anyone to swim with, so I wasn’t pressing as hard of a pace as I should’ve been. On the exit of the 1st lap, I was told it was just under a minute to the front group. On my 2nd exit, I was 3 minutes back from the front guys… hmmm. 28:15

Bike:
Fairly straight forward here- 56 miles of flat road….. by myself. It was a monotonous 2 hours & 11 minutes, playing number games with my new powermeter (thank you Mark Palmer & B+L Bikes). I loved the cheers from all my friends and family (& even people I don’t know) that came out to watch! Thank you for the entertainment. I jumped off the bike in 4th place overall, around 10 minutes from the leader.

Steph Galuppo w/ the pic cred
Run:
(Sorry to go 'tridork' on everyone and talk about mile splits here. I don’t do it often.)

Despite only drinking 1 ½ water bottles during the bike, I think I left too much in the tank, because my legs felt way too fresh when I started running. Amped on having a good run, my first mile down the beach was 5:52 followed by a 6:14. The 3rd mile was rough because the sand got mega deep. After 3 miles on soft sand, running on the flat asphalt and hard packed paths felt like cheating. I was hitting a nails pace on the 1st loop (3 miles ranging between 6:05-6:15 miles). On the second lap, things started to slow down a bit and the lack of nutrition finally caught up to me. I ran a lethargic 6:20-6:40 pace for the next 3. I then exited this loop back onto the beach, still running solo and in no-man’s-land. There were no volunteers to direct me at the time, but it looked like I was supposed to make a left into some soft sand and run south. So I did, and after around a minute or so, I didn’t see anyone ahead and stopped. I second guessed my course choice and ran back to the gate, a volunteer told me that we were actually supposed to run down this path. That was stupid.

Thanks to Angel King for the finish line snap!
The 1st mile or so back on the beach was pretty tough and my rhythm was like a bad dubstep song. It took way too long, but I remembered how to run on sand again and my pace went from an old lady’s grocery store stroll to an unenthused little leaguer’s trot from the bench to his position in the field. I finally reached the expo area & my garmin told me I had run 13.1 miles, so I figured the end was near, but I didn’t know where exactly. I got a ton of high fives from spectators and friends on the beach, but I swear I asked everyone “where’s the finish?!”. No one had an answer for me. I found out the finish was around 2 minutes back from where I had been running when a cop finally flagged me down. I ran right past the turn into the finish line. There were no volunteers to flag me down into the turn (it sounds stupid not knowing where the finish is, but when I’m racing, I’m not thinking sensibly anyways). Oh well, I lost an overall place and a solid chunk of time, but I wasn’t overly upset about it. When my watch hit 13 miles, my run time was somewhere in the 1:27 minutes range, but it ended up being 1:31 after my off-course adventure. A little bummed I didn’t officially get credited for having a better run split than what it should’ve been, but that’s life.

4:13 & 5th Place overall

Hangin' w/ Mitch after the race while he hangs out w/ that sandwich.
I totally enjoyed SuperFrog and would recommend it to anyone who wanted to race a ½ iron distance tri. Congrats to all my friends who raced and killed it! The swim and run weren’t easy, but who gets fulfillment from doing something paltry? You’re in the wrong sport if you’re looking to cakewalk something.

Thanks again to all my friends and family for the big cheers last weekend and all the awesome messages afterwards! Thanks to Mark Palmer & B+L Bikes for all the support they give me; and finally to my buddy Mitch Hall for not only helping me “build the layers on my metaphorical cake” (Yes, I know, 2 “cake” metephors in the last 50 words. #noshame #CakeEater) this season, but also putting on a great race last Sunday.

I may jump in an Olympic distance race in two weeks before the Austin 70.3 at the end of October. The itch to go faster just increases after every race.

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