Injury, Hawaii, & The State Championship Team Time Trial

Preface: You might want to read this in two or more sittings. This post is slightly longer than a chapter of Lord of the Rings.

The last month or so has possibly been one of the lamest months of my life. I'm blaming procrastination (so myself, really), but everything caught up with me at once and my life got real crazy, real fast. It was probably the perfect time to have an injury (if there is ever a perfect time), because I couldn't have worked out even if I had wanted to. I still don't know what really went wrong with my left leg, but the week after Wildflower, I couldn't run. It was probably your common strained hip flexor-IT band-hamstring combo. Luckily, I had plenty to do in life to keep me busy and take my mind off the fact that I couldn't run or bike. For me, swimming gets old pretty fast when you have nothing to balance it with; but having that as my only option, I've been in the pool a lot in the last month. A week ago, a customer made the comment to me at work: "You must be a swimmer huh?... "oh no" I thought, I look like a swimmer now.. huge V back and massive shoulders. Great. But alas, I'm back running and spinning around again, mostly pain free. 

1 hour from landing in Hawaii.. already doing damage. 

Hawaii (32.2)

Not a bad place to be.. especially if you can't race. I had known for weeks out of the Hawaii 70.3 that I wasn't going to be able to do the run. a) I hadn't been doing any running all month b) I didn't want to risk screwing myself up even worse (as I've been told a lot in the last month: I'm too young to try and push thru an injury" c) Why do something half-heartedly, knowing you can't give your best? 

I knew I could do the swim and bike portions at least. I had gone out a few times the week before and hadn't been feeling too much in my leg while riding. It was nice to be in Hawaii and not have to be so wound up about racing all week. Cold chillin, Kona coffee and a lot of swimming over the reef is what went down the majority of the time. (Oh, and learning how to build a Shiv from the ground up)

The Race

I had absolutely 0 expectations (other than a somewhat legitimate swim, cause Lord knows that's all I've been doing lately) for this race. The past two times I've raced here, I've had a disgusting swim. The first year I swam a 34, I believe; last year I swam a 30. That's gross for what I know I can do. Of course, the swim here is much different than your average 2k sheltered swim. It's a mass start (over 1800 this year), you don't have a wetsuit and who know what the currents, sharks/sea monsters, waves and chop are doing out there. 

Lindsey on the aquabike

I started waaayyy outside to keep clear of the mass of chaos, just waiting to be unleashed. My favorite was how the race started. Everyone was drifting past the start buoys and Greg Welsh (the Aussie commentator) yells to all the athletes: "Everyone needs to get back behind the buoys.. MOVE BACK!!! I know you all can hear me, I'm not going to start this race until everyone moves ba..." right then: BOOM!!! & off goes the start cannon. Ok, I guess we’re going. I had a lovely start to this race, I was so far outside I had a clear shot to the first buoy and plenty of space to flounder and splash about without anyone molesting me. I got to the 1st buoy fast and to my amazement the front pack was maybe 10-20 seconds a head of me. Fairly pleased with myself, I settled in and set a nice pace for the next 15-20ish minutes. I wasn't passing anyone, but more importantly, I wasn't being passed.. until the last 500 meters. That's when I popped and a huge pack passed me. When I came out, I saw the clock was a mid 28 minutes. I can live with that.

The Bike

I always love getting on the bike @ Honu because I get a huge confidence boost. Since it's a mass start, you promptly pass a ton of people because there are so many good swimmers in front of you that'll struggle on the bike. I found a comfy pace quick and went to work. I went from 32 overall (or something like that) after the swim to 19th in the 10 mile out and back section before heading up the coast.

We finally started to hit some hills around mile 15 and that's where I turned it on. I felt fantastic and kept feeling stronger. I'd get a huge boost every time I'd see someone in front of me and feel the urgency to bolt past them. I think I was in the top 10 somewhere as we ascended up to Hawi and approached the 31 mile turnaround. In the final mile or so I only counted 6 or 7 people coming the opposite way. Sometime around then I felt my lower back and hip start to get really tight and aggravate my IT band (it had been bothering me for a while on the bike). I made the decision to drop out and avoid anything serious when we entered Hawi.

I thought that was the right decision until 3 hours had passed and I was still sitting in a rainy penalty box up in Hawi. However, I was constantly entertained by overly serious age groupers riding into the penalty box and yelling at this poor lady Cee'cee, who had nothing at all to do with their "ridiculous and explicative" penalties. I must have heard "There goes Kona!!!!", over 10 times. bahahah... come on. 

I’m proud of all my friends that raced especially Kosuke Amano. I’m not going to lie, if I were in the position that Kosuke was in that day (cramps all through the bike and run), I’d probably have thrown in the towel. Instead, Kosuke humbly battled on and walked the majority of the run course to finish. For someone that fast, it says a lot.

The California State Championship Team Time Trial

I’ve never like team sports. NEVER.. until this past weekend. George Gutierrez talked B+L team riders Bill Jones, Josh Soto, and myself into competing in the State TTT. It sounded awesome to me and I kept thinking to myself “How hard could it be? It’s only drafting.” Man, did I learn how hard drafting could be, especially in tail winds on flat courses. We all drove up to Lake Los Angeles together, crammed into my family’s Nissan Titan, with no a/c. That was a true test in itself. The guys had been practicing together a few times on Fiesta before the event, and I had done a little run thru with Josh and Bill earlier in the week, so we had some idea of how we would signal to each other and rotate in and out of formation. The day before, we did a 45 min practice on a section of the course, to figure out how we would take corners together and position ourselves in the crosswinds.

Race Day

We rolled up to the start with everything ready and in order (with the exception of Bill’s wallet) and busted out the trainers to get in a good warm up an hour out from the start. Once we were good and warm (some of us more so than others) we headed over to the start line. The course was a flat clockwise square where we come back and do the first stretch twice; 24 miles total. The first section was a 6 or 7 mile section with a tail wind. I thought this would be a good little place for us to, as we all agreed, ease into the effort. However, I think race nerves got the better of us all and we started off doing, essentially, a 7 mile interval at 105%.

Josh set the pace for us, which was not easy, and in a tail wind on a flat course, there’s not much benefit to a draft; So I could barely hold his wheel. He was powering beyond belief. When we rounded the first corner into a side wind, Josh fell off the back. He yelled at me something along the lines of “I’m done, I ramped up my legs too hard”. I yelled back at him “Hell no you’re not- Get on my wheel now!!!” We lost a bit of time getting everyone back into formation, but once we were all on, we picked back up the pace and started hammering taking between 30 seconds to 1 minute turns pulling at the front then falling to the back of the train. The next 10ish miles went smoothly as we passed a pretty good amount of teams that started in front of us and kept a solid pace going. George was throwing down pretty hard when we were riding into the wind. It gave us all a good chance to catch our breath and regroup. On the second to last stretch, we were pushing into a crosswind and had half of the “flying V” rolling in full force. I’m fairly sure we had to have been maintaining a high-30/low-40mph average. This is where we did the most damage on the course.

When we hit the final stretch (again) things started to get a little crazy. Josh popped about a mile or two into it and had to drop off (you only need to finish with three riders) and my gas tank was running on fumes. However, Bill Jones came in to save the day. For some reason, this is where Bill thrived.. the final stretch. George and I were really struggling to hold his wheel, and eventually I had nothing left- as well as a really tight IT band. I must’ve yelled “Bill I’m off, hold on… OK, I’m back on, lets go! (20 seconds later) Bill I’m off, hold on” over 10 times. It was just too hard for me to keep his wheel with a solid tail wind providing almost no draft. But Bill was the hero of the day, doing his best to pull/pace George and I for almost the entire length last stretch. We finished with a time of 48:18, which is pretty dang fast. That’s slightly over a 30 MPH average. We ended up in 2^nd in our category to a Pro team and had one of the better times of the day.

They went all out on the awards expenses.. as evidence of our huge medals.

I’ve never been more proud of a team effort in my life. We were all so tired from just having laid it all out there, we rolled into a gas station/market and bought cokes, candy, chocolates, Ice cream… Bill and George got fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and macaroni and OJ. Weird combos but hey, we earned that crap. The fun didn’t end there either. After the drive home George and I had the pleasure of working for the rest of the day at the shop ;-)

Conclusion

My apologies for the book-like post, but I’ve had a fair amount of events I’ve felt obligated to write about. Hopefully I can get back on the program soon and get my legs up to speed so I can have some legitimate races. As for my summer, I snuck into the San Diego International Triathlon (this weekend) on June 26^th at the Spanish Landing/Seaport Village downtown. Don’t know how my run will look but the race itself should be fun since the bike course is where I train 3 days a week. (Now, whether I have a bike to ride or not, remains to be unseen). I’m debating whether or not I want to do the Carlsbad Triathlon in the beginning of June. Then it’s onto Vineman 70.3, which should be interesting because of the amount of time I haven’t been training.. Then I come home and might give the Solana Beach Triathlon a shot while I’m in racing mode. August is still a mystery. I really want to do Alcatraz again, but I have to get some travel company for that. 

Wildflower

You might expect this post to be a rant or a trip down whiner’s road, but it’s not going to be. Truth be told, I had a decent race, and last Sunday was one of those rare days where your game plan actually happens*. All week before the race I told myself I’m going to win this thing on the bike.. and damn it, I did*.

*Just to be clear I would like to say that the 2:00 penalty I received on the bike course was not drafting related. It was a position penalty for being towards the center of the road for longer than 15 seconds. (19 seconds). 

Pre-Race

I drove up with my two good friends Marc Schommer and Kosuke Amano (who both had awesome races as well; Especially Kosuke, finishing top 5 overall on Sunday) and my girlfriend Lindsey. We camped in the outer reaches of the campgrounds next to Cal Poly and some immature/childish 30 year olds that constantly found it necessary to yell everything to each other and act as if they were all at an endless party.

The night before the race it was freezing. I knew it was going to be a good race because I woke up tired, groggy, grumpy, and seriously contemplating whether I wanted to race or not. Every time I wake up not wanting to race and feeling like crap, I somehow always have a good race. It’s the days when I wake up feeling good that I suck.

The Swim.

All I wanted to do was make one of the front packs and not loose too much time to the leaders. I knew Bill Jones could potentially have a huge day in the water and hold a sizable lead on the bike. My swim fitness isn’t killer right now (I’ve hardly swam in the last 3 months), but its good enough to be with the top 5-10 fast dudes.

When the horn went off I had a good jump and got out of the chute pretty fast, but for some reason just didn’t have the 2^nd wind sprint power to keep with the guys in the front. Rounding the 1^st buoy I got dropped. I got into a groove I saw the pack was literally 20 seconds a head of me. I swam solo behind them the whole 1^st half of the course at the exact same pace. It was kind of depressing that I wasn’t up there with them. When I made the turnaround things started going awry. I didn’t know where I was swimming. It was some of the worst sighting in the history of open water swimming. This police boat had to come over and guide me away from the shore. I was zig zagging everywhere. Probably threw a good 100-200 yards onto my swim. Came out in a high 19 minute swim; I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even in the top 10. I’m really disappointed in my sighting, and anyone who’s ever swum open water with me knows how bad my aim is. You can bet I’ll be doing sighting drills twice a week every week till I’ve figured it out.

Bike.

I stayed calm. I knew I could do some work on this bike course. I passed two dudes going up Lynch Hill. I have to say, no matter how in-shape you are, that stupid hill gets you every time. You’re already tired coming out of the swim and all the blood is in your arms, so trying to go straight up a hill immediately is really awesome. After I left the campgrounds I started to get my cycling legs going. I had a lot of fun on that course, feeling great, and was really embracing the hills; just kept my head down and pushed hard. I eventually caught everyone before the turnaround but Bill Jones and Thomas Roos; I saw that they had about 20-30 seconds on me as they passed by me before the turnaround. I caught up to them on a hill probably around mile 14 or something like that. Neither of them looked too good. Bill kicked it in, followed my pace and dropped Roos. I led the rest of the way, which was a pretty sweet experience. There were cameramen and photographers on motorcycles all up in my business. I felt like a pro leading an Ironman.. it was rad.

*note: at no point during the bike section was I aware that I had been in violation of a positioning rule, nor did I have any foul intentions of doing anything outside of the rules.

Run.

This is where I have a lot of regrets.

I got into T2 just a bit before Bill and jammed thru that transition. I was met by two dudes on mountain bikes to lead me on the run course. I had a surplus of energy just surging through me. The crowd got me really fired up as I left the spectator area and I tried the best I could to slow down and pace myself but just couldn’t stop my legs from bolting. There was some dude with a big backpack standing in the middle of the staircase that the athletes ascend to get on the run course, with his back to me. People started yelling at him to get off the course but it was too late, I was already in the middle of pushing him over to get out of my way. I don’t feel one bit of pity for the guy or any injury I may have cause either. Use your head bro. After around 10 minutes in I felt pretty crappy from taking off at a ridiculous pace. I kept moving and tried to keep a strong pace.

A little before the 5k marker, I got my running legs back and felt good again. I was a good ways up one of the longer hills and looked back to see Thomas Roos rounding the turn at the bottom of the hill. I thought, “no way this dude’s gonna catch me today” (no disrespect to Thomas, but I was way too determined to let anyone pass me). I booked it up the hill and didn’t even have to look back to know I was putting time into him. Somewhere around this point a couple of camera men had been riding with me on the back of motorcycles. We were chatting a bit and I kept hearing things like “Well Keith, it looks like you’ve got this.” “You’re going to be the champion. Just finish it!” I’m not blaming anyone but myself for this, but I let up and wasn’t running hard anymore. The last 1-2 miles I was merely “running” not racing. Especially coming down Lynch hill, I was dogging it and enjoying the moment. When I reached the announcer booth at the top of Lynch hill, my watch had a low 29 minute time showing, it’s supposed to be around a mile or so to the finish.  For whatever reason I forgot I was racing anyone other than the collegiate guys.

Thoughts.

 It was an awesome experience running down that finishing chute, having it all to myself and lifting up the banner. However, even though I sat waiting for the next guy to come in a minute and 40whatever seconds later, I immediately felt like I didn’t earn anything. I didn’t finish with that feeling of having given it my all. I felt like I could’ve done that stupid run course two more times. That’s not how you’re supposed to feel after finishing a race of any distance. As I stood in the finisher chute, I saw every guy finishing with a look of honest pain and suffering on his face, I just felt stupid. Probably why I got over the penalty so quickly.

Lessons learned.. don’t half ass anything, even if you’re winning*; You never know when a stupid 2:00 penalty is going to blindside you. I can’t let the what-if scenarios consume me, because there are a million and 1- but I need to work harder, bottom line. 

(The good news is I think my skimpy 9 units next semester will allow me race collegiately one last time, next year;-)

Next up: Honu 70.3 (and maybe the OC Triathlon if Jordan Bethke promises to not make me look too stupid on the bike).

Alabama and Collegiate Nationals

Gotta knock this one out before the homework really gets piled on and this becomes irrelevant.

I have to say..... I had a blast staying with the UCLA Tri team and am truly thankful for time I got to spend with them. It just makes me wish we had a legitimate tri team at Loma. It makes these trips much more bearable when you have friends going through it with you. Not only was hanging out with the UCLA tri team sweet, but all of the schools from the West Coast Collegiate Triathlon Conference. I love all those guys. It honestly didn't feel like separate teams from the WCCTC competing with the rest of the Collegiate teams, but the WCCTC vs. the rest of the schools (or maybe just Boulder). It was pretty awesome. I don't think any other conferences have that sort of camaraderie. 

Alabama was ... Alabama. Hot, humid, and rednecks. Our first night, a couple of the UCLA guys and I went for a little exploratory run around the hotel area. I somehow forgot my running shorts so I decided my retro 80's speedo would have to suffice. After circling the Lowe's parking an upwards of 6 times and running to the highway and back I told the guys I was going to call it a night & head to the hotel. They decided to head in as well. Right as we exited the Lowe's parking lot, I noticed something hit me in the back, followed by a sticky substance creepin on my arm. Everyone was bewildered at what had just happened, but apparently some rednecks in a big ol truck, threw their leftover hooters at us while driving off. I'm guessing it was aimed at me because of my flamboyant speedo and retro headband. Luckily for myself, the others took the brunt of this drive-by fooding because they were on the outside while running.. It was awesome after we realized what had happened. "welcome to alabama". Josh Reyes and Nick Handel were smothered in thousand island dressing. It was hilarious. We decided to go to a nearby waffle house shortly after and were recognized as "those guys running around" by the WH employees. Apparently we threw a huge wrench in the Alabama system. I was just waiting for some big guy to come up to me and say something like "We don't take too kindly to yer kind around here, boy..." I immediately regretted the decision to bring only highly fluorescent V necks on this trip. 

Speaks for itself

The Race:

Brady, 30 seconds till the gun.. Me in the right corner ;-)

Alright.. I knew it was a bad decision to race 6 days after racing Oceanside 70.3. I knew deep down inside that: A. There's no way I could be competitive with these guys at this level, being as sore and tired as I was. B. There's no way I could be competitive with these guys at this level anyways. The guys in the Top 5 have been doing this for a long time and put in way more work than I do at shorter distance stuff. That being said, I'm neither happy with my result or upset by it. 

Having raced AG Nats only 8 months ago, I had some idea how this course would be going. So when I saw that dock, I wasn't going to fall victim to getting a crappy swim spot 5 seconds before the start again.  When we jumped in and everyone swam out to do another little warmup, I quickly grabbed a protruding chain on the dock to get a solid start spot. As the officials told everyone they had to be touching the dock and the gun would be going off in 30 seconds, I had the biggest smile on my face. I had my feet planted on the dock while holding the chain as almost everyone else was floating in water touching the dock. I'm pretty sure the CBS camera man had his camera right on me. The gun went off and I swear, no one.. no one touched me for the first 200 meters. It was the best start to a race I'd ever had. For the lack of swim training that I've been doing, I'd say I had a pretty dang good swim. I exited the water just in front of a few strong WCCTC swimmers including Henry Szeto and Tim Black. The fairly long run up to transition was really fun. 

I'm in the red goggles clutching the chain on the right still.. 

Bike:

I don't want to throw down a massive rant about the bike section of this race just because I don't want to be "that guy", but I'm not happy about it. Essentially, with the course being two loops and the lanes were only 1 car lane wide, there was some nice drafting going on. Whatever.. this happens, I have to learn to deal with it. I was hammering out a pretty good pace by myself for 45 minutes before a pack of 15+ dudes came up to join me in the last 4-5 miles. Lame sauce. I know half of these guys were sitting up drinking coffee and eating doughnuts for the majority of this ride. It's not fair, but that's life. The bike course had no legitimacy whatsoever. There was a good sized pack a minute in front of me the whole time as well. I did see a lot of penalties being issued by the officials, which is good, but why did it even come to that? Come on USAT, get your shit together. It doesn't take a scientist to figure out what's going to happen with 700 fast 20something year olds all crammed together on a fast bike course. 

Run:

I may have not PR'ed in any sport on Saturday, but shoot.. I PR'ed both of those transitions. I have a notorious T1 time. I flew through both of those transitions like I had Tiger's Blood in my veins. The run was pretty funny to watch, not funny to partake in. The first 2 miles are mostly uphill and it was really funny to see guys take off at too hard of a pace, only to get gnarly side stitches a mile or so into it and pull off to the side. (I was pretty close to being on of those guys). I'm glad Henry and I left transition at the same time. It really helped to pace with him in the beginning when we each were going through ups and downs. Right around the second mile I noticed my run legs start to open up and I felt good so I took a chance and pushed out of this group of guys I had been running with. I hit the only downhill hard and put some time on everyone. When I hit the flats I really pushed hard and opened up a nice gap on the group. I was feeling really good and probably could've been running faster but held back a bit. I hit mile 4 in a low 22:10-something, so relatively fast. But then, out of no where, I hit the wall. My legs suddenly had no energy left and I couldn't go any harder. My pace slowed dramatically and I heard footsteps advancing in my direction rapidly. Within 30+ seconds Henry and Noah Beyeler caught me and ran past me with ease. I tried to hang on to Henry's feet but I had nothing inside me. Oceanside finally caught up to me, and to be honest I was surprised I made it that far, that fast. I'm really bummed because there was a pack of 10 guys, less than a minute in front of me, all running fairly slow. Noah held the same pace I had been holding earlier and caught all but one of them. So I jogged in to finish 21st overall at a 37:40something 10k, which isn't terribly bad.. but I know I'm capable of running much, much faster. 

Still proud of my effort at least, knowing I battled, took some chances and ran a clean race. Just bummed seeing the results and knowing the guys in the Top 10 weren't too much faster and the next 10 guys in front of me were only a minute faster. Pretty stoked for Henry and Brady O'ryan though.. they both had great races and Brady took 3rd overall. Also stoked for my buddy Bill Jones at UCSD (also a B+L athlete), who was second out of the water and held thru that run to finish in the top 15. 

Oceanside 70.3 Recap (2011)

I had to wait a day to write this. Writing a race report the day of the race is always bad news.. It's like that email you write when you're angry and you send it, then look back the next day and go "woops, that was a little harsh". Anyways, I had plenty of time to think about my race while sitting in traffic today on my drive up to USC to drop off my bike for Collegiate Nationals (next Saturday in Alabama).

Don't worry.. more pics to come G.buts with the photo cred.

Race Morning:
I'm not going to lie, I was pretty excited for this race. I woke up feeling fresh and easy; took a nice little shower at 4:10 to get my body awake. Pumped up my tires and I oiled my chain (I didn't actually oil my chain, that's just how the song goes) and rode from the pier to the transition area in the Harbor. I had everything pretty much ready to go so it was quick setting up and taking off for a little warm up jog. Now, I had already taken care of the bathroom business well before the crowds started forming, but as soon as I saw the pros take off I suddenly had to go again. I ran back to the bathrooms to find a Disneyland feature ride queue formed. Well, I had a good 30 minutes till my wave went off so this was fine.. until 23 minutes had gone by and I was still waiting in that line. With 5 minutes to go I bolted out of that portpotty and sprinted towards my group. I ran into Lindsey who was curious as to what I had been doing, and fought my way up the age group waves to my wave which was "on deck". As the group before us took off, they let us swim from the loading dock to the deep water start in the middle of the harbor. I always love this because you can tell from that 25-50 meter swim, who the better swimmers will be cause it's pretty much a warmup sprint for position for the start. Of course I get out there and who else is right next to me but Brian Duffy. Now we don't speak of his name in my house so I will refer to him as He-Who-Must-Not-Be Named. He-Who-Must-Not-Be Named is quite a good swimmer (& cyclist and runner for that matter), so I knew going into this race I'd pretty much be racing him unless someone else in my age group had a killer day (which you can never rule out!)

The Race:
Well, in typical Keith Butsko style, I bolted from the swim start when the gun went off and had a nice gap between me and everyone else. In fact, it was too nice of a gap; so I poked my head up and noticed I was swimming off course (yes, within the first 50 meters) into the boats along the side of the harbor. Quickly corrected myself and found the lead pack. There were 4 others swimming at the front with me and one dude (who I later found out was He-Who-Must-Not-Be Named) that broke off the front after the 3rd buoy and started blazing a trail of his own. This group of 3 and I swam for a while together until we started encountering the slower age groupers clogging up the course. I don't blame them, they can only swim as fast as possible.. However I'm pretty unhappy about how the WTC (or IRONMAN) seeds the waves. I never understood why they put the older age groups and the challenged athletes at the front. I probably ran over 7-10 people during my swim and got kicked in the face a good number of times because there were people just floating around in the water. It was pretty choppy and wavy towards the turning point on the swim course. A lot of people were struggling but I used my surfing knowledge to use the waves to my benefit and get a little push from them. The group I swam with had long been separated, so I really didn't have anyone to gauge my effort with. When I exited the swim I looked at my watch and it said 27:xx. I was not very happy to see that and angrily grabbed my bike and headed out.

note: looking at everyone's swim times, I now feel much better :-p

The Bike:
Fueled by anger, I pushed hard in the 1st 24.4 miles & went thru in 59:00. That's a bit faster than I'd have typically gone in an olympic distance race (not to mention how windy and hilly the course was). Partly pleased with myself/ partly scarred of wondering if I was going to have enough energy to make it thru the remainder of this course, I settled down a bit and found a good pace. As soon as we hit the back side of Camp Pendleton I hit the wall (or maybe it was just the false-flats into a headwind). I felt drained of energy and couldn't push myself thru the winds. That wind sucked. The more I tucked into an aero position, the more my lower back would cramp. Finally, I saw the bright green suit of Jim Walsh ride past me right when I felt the worst. He was going a bit faster than I but not too much. So I copied his speed and tied an imaginary 75 foot rope to him and hung on (& no I wasn't drafting). That got me thru the back side of that course. I only felt worse the longer I rode. My lower back cramps turned into nausea and that increased the more I exerted myself. When we turned west and headed back into Oceanside, it didn't get any easier. I looked at my watch and saw my bike split was 2:03 and only had 11 miles to go. How many times have I TT'ed 20k on Fiesta Island in heavy wind and clocked 30 minutes? Too many to list. So I gathered myself up and fought into the wind (again) and pushed on. I thought I had a grueling pace but it must've not been (as my bike split ended up being 2:35).

Thanks to Karen Hardy for the Pic!

The Run:
Angry again, I ran into T2 feeling pretty sick. I saw my dad while putting my shoes on and he yelled to me that I was only 3 minutes back. I knew he had to have been exaggerating because there's no way He-Who-Must-Not-Be Named had given up that much time to me on the bike. The 1st couple of miles weren't actually too bad. I still felt sick but I didn't have the back cramps paining me anymore. I saw a man dressed as a seagull running around and felt better. But.... towards the end of the 1st lap I started feeling worse. My legs actually felt fine and I had the "running feel", but my stomach just felt horrible. The harder I tried to push myself the worse I felt.

The Walk:
I hit the turnaround and honestly couldn't run another step without throwing up. I didn't care about my time at this point.. I was only concerned with my well being. I walked back up the hill towards my family who gave me encouragement but I only wobbled by. I continued my saunter on down the hill past my friends and felt so defeated. As I passed the TCSD aid station I tried drinking a bit of coke and eating a banana (you ask why I was eating when I felt nauseous? My stomach felt bloated with water and empty at the same time.. weird, I know). I continued walking till I passed Jim Vance trying to help me out. I started jogging sometime around the pier and tried to pull myself together. I jogged till Wisconsin Street and as soon as I hit that hill I bonked big time. I walked up the hill and sat on the curb next to a dumpster, took my shoes off, cracked my toes, and laid back into some dirt. A little girl came and gave me two cookies from a nearby aid station. I ate them and put my shoes back on. Started walking again. I thought to myself "I have to finish.. no matter what or I'll never forgive myself".

The 2nd Run:
I started jogging, which turned into a run sometime after I saw Matt Reed walking around drinking a coke (I guess he dropped out, it only gave me inspiration to keep going). I still felt horrible but I continued on knowing that I could be finished with this race.


Conclusion
Finally finishing felt fantastic (like that alliteration?). I ended up with a 1:35 run split (amazingly). I'm perplexed because I had to have walked 1-2 miles at a snails pace and who knows how long I was sitting with my shoes off eating cookies for. So I'm actually quite encouraged to have run that fast while feeling as bad as I did. --Just taking what I can from this race. As my friend Kosuke Amano told me after the race: "It's those hard challenging days that make you a better athlete (person). It defines who you are. The days when you feel amazing are boring." On a side note: I did love/appreciate Jim Vance's encouragement and pep talking during the run. Every time I went past him, he had something insightful to say to me. (not to say my family and friends didn't). And every time I ran past my girlfriend Lindsey, she gave me this look as to say "you better get your ass moving dude.. I put up with a lot of your crap for this" ..but in the most loving way.

I still feel disappointed in my performance (even though I finished 2nd in my age group.. don't know how that happened), I am proud of myself for finishing. I really want to thank all of my family and friends, especially those who came out to support me at the race. Seriously, spectating at these events can be brutal. I really appreciate it.

Yesterday only made me 10x more motivated for the Collegiate National Championship this weekend. Roll Sealions.. (or whatever the heck PLNU's theme is. Probably "PLNU: We're Straight Up Average" Actually I think it's "Forward"; somewhat fitting)

Here It Goes Again

Wow… I haven’t updated my race blog since early November. I am sorry to keep all of my eager readers in the dark for so long ;-) Although, if anyone is upset by my lack of blog posts, there’s been plenty of action along the twitter front in it’s stead.

Quick recap of my “off-season”; it wasn’t an off-season at all. I think I took a few days of after Clearwater and started building up again. That race left such a bad taste in my mouth I’ve been determined to become a better runner. I know it’s in me; I just had to go find it (I’ll probably be finding “it” for a long time). The first step to accomplishing this was to put my trust in someone that not only knows how to run fast, but putting it into an equation alongside two other sports. So I got serious about running and asked Mike Clinch to help me out and coach me. Mike is one of the most consistent and competitive athletes in any endurance sport and has been involved in triathlon for a long time, so I really value his knowledge and advice (not to mention that the dude makes you feel stupid on the track).

 

Anyways, I had a tough break in early December on a run when my IT band decided to act a fool. I basically took all of December off running. That sucked because I was just starting to get comfortable. It might have been a blessing in disguise, as I got well acquainted with my new ride this year. B+L Bike & Sport has so graciously decided to let me ride a Shiv by Specialized (which very well might be the best bike on earth.. seriously). My ITB was ridiculously slow to heal but sometime in early February, I eased back into running. After a few weeks I was back, fresher and way more amped about running than I’ve ever been. Mike was careful about scheduling too much, too soon, but had me running consistently and adding something new to my repertoire: speed work. I’ve never really done any speed work before, so I immediately noticed a big surge in my speed. Now, I should say I haven’t been diving head first into speed work like an 800m runner --since I’m still geared towards the 70.3 distance-- but I’ve been doing a fair amount of it. One thing about doing this much running, along with keeping my biking and swimming the same, is the ability to be hungry at every moment in the day. I’m really glad I have a meal plan this semester at the Caf on campus. I’m pretty much going into that place and emptying out the salad bar, pasta station and sandwich meats area (and pray they don’t have bananas, or I’m taking enough for a small family of monkeys) every time.

The Season So Far:

It’s only been a few months of really small races, but I’ve had a few good races so far. The 1^st Collegiate race of the season, the CSUSM Sprint Triathlon at Fiesta I got 1^st overall; which was nice to start the year off with a win. The TCSD March Duathlon was a good sign of progress in the run department. I ran with the runners during the 1^st 2 mile loop, had the fastest bike split of the day, and hung on to finish 2^nd behind Mike. I drove out to race the Palm Desert International Triathlon and had a decent swim, a decent bike and had to drop out on the run because of stomach cramps. And last weekend I did the first TCSD Triathlon of the year; raced well and finished 2nd overall behind my friend Kosuke Amano (who’s run is out of control fast right now).

What to look forward to:

This will be my third season in endurance sports. Excited. I’ve got some awesome races planned this year and I know I’ll be racing with a lot of my good friends. There should be some quality twitter/facebook updates on my trips across the country to these races.

The big races that I have scheduled:

·      California 70.3 - April 2^nd

·      Collegiate National Championship – April 9^th

·      Wildflower – May 1^st

·      Hawaii 70.3 June 4^th

·      Vineman 70.3 – July 17^th

·      Solana Beach Triathlon – July 24^th

·       Lake Stevens 70.3, or Age Group Nationals, or Alcatraz – Late August

·      Ironman 70.3 World Championship Las Vegas – September 11

Out of Gas (IM 70.3 World Championship Race Report)

Now that I'm back home and have had plenty of time to reflect on my race last Saturday in Clearwater, I've concluded what went well and what went really wrong. First off, before I start dogging myself, I'd like to thank my family and friends for supporting me and God for providing the ability to compete in such a huge race and to even do this crazy sport.

Ok.. Race day, I woke up before my alarm went off (rare) feeling excited and ready to get this day started. I had such a good feeling leading up to Saturday, almost like nothing could go wrong. I ate a somewhat small breakfast (still being full from the pizza I downed the night before) and headed out to the transition. Luckily some dude with a golf cart gave me a ride down to the start (roughly little over a half mile away), which was nice because I didn't need to be on my feet anymore than necessary. After the usual pre race bike check, I chilled out for 2+ hours on the beach listening to my ipod. My start wave, 29 and under, started last at 8:00am, an hour and 25 minutes after the pros. So by the time we got underway, the wind had started to pick up, which meant, with it being an ocean swim, it had started to get pretty choppy and rocky a half mile out to sea. The chop, along with the buoys drifting apart slightly, along with weaving in and out of slower age groupers made for a tough swim. Miraculously, I navigated the course pretty well (if I do say so myself) and exited in 26:57, which I thought was pretty good considering the lead pack of pros did it around 24 minutes in much more ideal conditions. I believe I was in 10th place at the time of my exit.

I jumped on my bike and took off at an olympic distance pace, knowing that I needed to go hard and find some faster guys to pace and work with so I didn't get caught in a fat pack of 50 people sucking each others wheels. Somewhere around mile 4 I hit a pile of concrete and heard something "clink" under me. I looked down and sliding on the ground directly under my right foot was my aero water bottle filled with perpetuem.. my only nutrition for the day. Hmm, I could stop and loose time to pick it up or go on and pick up powerbar drinks at the aid stations. I decided to just keep going (probably because I felt good at the time) which would be a big mistake. I never found anyone to pace with the entire ride. I began to hate this bike course the longer I rode. I would just see massive pack upon massive pack flying in the opposite direction. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hypocritically claiming that I had a "clean" race by any means. I was in the slip stream of the slower riders I passed in front of me, but I never sat in a pack and got the benefit of a "draft"the entire time. Not to mention it was windy. It felt like a constant head wind for the first 25 miles and in various places on the back half of the course. I remember specifically, at mile 50 my legs started to really hurt. I hadn't had anything but water for the first 25 miles, then only powerbar drinks, passing by aid stations after that. So being a little under 3 hours into this race, I was already bonking.

The Run (or jog)

I got off my bike feeling encouraged though. I've been doing so much running lately, that I was sure I could overcome my nutrition deficit to finish this race in my goal time. I felt great for the first 3-4 miles, averaging low 6 minute miles. I purposefully held back a bit, knowing that this was not an olympic distance race (like my body had been use to in the past month), I'd have to pace myself correctly in order to conserve energy. I hit the 6 mile marker in 39 minute exactly. I started to slow after I went up and over the bridge again, the legs were starting to feel heavy. It must have been funny for my family to watch this next portion of the race unfold. They were standing about a quarter of a mile away from the turnaround of the second lap. So they saw me go by feeling pretty good, running around a mid 6 minute mile. Then as soon as I hit the turn around, I lost my momentum and rhythm and went into survival mode. As I ran past my family, literally just 3-4 minutes later, I was a completely different person. I looked like I was about to fall over. All I could think about was how hungry I was. My stomach was eating itself and my muscles were on fire. I ran past someone cooking cheeseburgers and I would've paid $100 to have just a bite of one. I staggered thru an aid station and grabbed a handful of pretzels. The second they entered my mouth, it dried up like a desert. Coke, and more coke was all I drank for the remainder of the race. It was the only thing that I wanted... sugar, carbonation and calories, and immediately. I ran miles 7-10 at a snail's pace. People were trying to encourage me but nothing was working. I was out of energy. It sucked because my heart rate probably wasn't even above 120. My muscles were just so exhausted. I didn't even feel like I was working aerobically, I was watching the ground moving slowly under me, thinking to myself "dang I'm really going slow.. my mom could probably outrun me right now". After I crossed up and over the bridge for a 3rd time, I dove into the coke at an aid station. Three cups. About a minute later, it was like my legs turned on. I could move them again. I started to cautiously pick up the pace and stretch out my strides. After crossing the last timing mat, I knew I only had three+ miles to go. Looked at my watch and said "I don't care how tired I am.. I have to break 1:30 today". Just like that, I started running low 6's again. Ran past 4 guys in my age group going up the bridge one last time and didn't look back going down it. I flew past one more guy in my age group in the last mile and knew I was home free. Just happy to be done with this race, I crossed the finish line with an underachieving 1:28 half marathon and 4:12 overall on the day. Ended the day in 14th place in my division and 110th overall. Compared to 19th in my division last year and 202 overall.

I improved my time by 4 minutes on a tougher course, in tougher conditions, with no nutrition other thank coke and water. I know I could've run well under a 1:25 which makes me upset, but you learn from your mistakes. Am I happy with 14th place?... not at all. However, the positives of this race outweigh the negatives by a good amount. I've got to remember too that this isn't a local sprint tri, it's a world championship, so the level of competitiveness is much higher. It has been a good year, and the races that have been my "A" races, I've done well in. (California 70.3 3rd, Hawaii 70.3 2nd, Vineman 70.3 1st, Alcatraz 1st).

So yet again, I just have more motivation to work harder this next year and keep improving. I'm going have my good friend, the speedy Mike Clinch, help coach and work with me this offseason to achieve some major improvements in my running, which is feeling stronger every day.

I'd like to thank family, friends, and B+L bike and sport for all of your support.. my girlfriend Lindsey Addie for putting up with all of my training and ridiculousness, and Jesus for saving such an unworthy person. I couldn't be where I am with out you!!!!

Clearwater - IM 70.3 World Championship (Pre Race)

Well, it's been an interesting last month or so. Came out of my last 4 races feeling horrible. I've been sick ever since my race in Alabama and finally went to the doctor and got rid of it last week. I've managed to get in some decent training in the presence of me feeling like crap but it hasn't been too solid. Nonetheless, I'm feeling really strong going into this race. Mentally, I'm probably the strongest I've ever been right now. I want this race more than any other I've competed in. I experienced everything about this course last year and I know what to expect, it's just a matter of doing in on Saturday. Last weekend, I had a little moment of relief when I blew out of my "slow" running rut, that I've been in the last 4 months. I won the November SDTC triathlon with a nicely paced 21:56 4 mile run. Not only did I finally start running fast, but it was a pace that I felt I could sustain for much longer. It doesn't matter this week though, all that matters is what I do on race day.

This is going to be a really competitive field like last year, where the winners of my division were running 1:15 and 1:16 half marathon splits. I definitely don't have that kind of capability right now but I know I can put up a strong run. I've never broken a 1:30 half (in a 70.3) before, so anything under that will be a success. I'm also feeling quite strong swimming as well. I've hit 26:00 on the dot three times this year in a 2k swim, but never gone under that. I feel like I can break it right now if we're given somewhat clean conditions. Who really knows what is going to happen in the bike. This bike course is flat and narrow and packs forming are unavoidable. So I could end up going 2:30 or 2:00.. you never know. My goal is to race to the capability to which I know I can. I don't expect to be throwing down 5:45 miles but I know I can run a lot faster than 1:30. My body may be lagging a bit from being sick right now but mentally I'm way fired up. I just pray that God gives my body the strength to do what I know I can do.