So it turns out I haven't updated this thing in a while. I think I've got a reasonably decent excuse. This little dude...
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| Hello world! |
was born on July 8th. His name is Michael Bradford Payne. He's been pretty cool thus far. His main interests are eating, sleeping and pooping, with the occasional bout of screaming whenever circumstances compel him to deviate from his preferred routine of eating, sleeping and pooping.
Since things at home are relatively under control I signed myself up for the Twin Cities Triathlon late last week. I wasn't quite sure what to expect going into this one. My training volume has been down a bit, but what I have been doing has felt relatively strong, and I hadn't raced in 4 weeks, so if nothing else I was going in well rested. My only real goal was to put in a good effort, knock the cobwebs loose and get my mind right to put in some solid training over the next few weeks for AG Nationals and Best of the US.
The Pre-Race Jams
I'm really digging the latest Deftones record Diamond Eyes. Well, most of it anyway. Like the last few Deftones albums, ~70% of it is brilliant and the rest puts me to sleep. But hey, that's what the fast forward button is for.
The Pre-Race Jams
I'm really digging the latest Deftones record Diamond Eyes. Well, most of it anyway. Like the last few Deftones albums, ~70% of it is brilliant and the rest puts me to sleep. But hey, that's what the fast forward button is for.
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| 70% of the time, it works all the time. |
The Race
This race has a 1.2mi point-to-point downstream swim in the Mississippi river. Thanks to all the rain we've been getting lately, the current was ripping along at about 5 knots, and thanks to the heat wave the water was bathtub warm, so no wetsuits.
Since the "beach" we started at was all of about 5 feet wide, we were sent off one-by-one in a time trial format. I lined up 3rd behind Devon Palmer and stomped my way in. Then the epic shitshow that was my swim started.
I managed to make it all of about 10m before I felt my timing chip coming loose on my ankle, so I turned over on my back, found the chip (luckily they float) and attempted to re-fasten it. It turns out fastening a velcro strap around your ankle while trying to stay afloat in water that allows for zero visibility is really hard. It doesn't get easier with practice either, as I found out when my chip came off two more times. My general attitude as this was happening is best summarized below with some totally pro MS-Paint work:
After the chip came off the 3rd time I finally got smart enough to just stuff the thing down the top of my suit. By that time the damage had been done. I was sitting in like 20-somethingth place, and given that I had a head start on all but two of those guys I was really losing ground.
With the chip situation squared away and my head back in the game I managed to swim through most of the pack that passed me during the chip drama. Since there was literally zero visibility there was a ton of contact. Sorry to anyone I may have swam over the top of. I generally try to not do that.
The swim exit looked like a TCMC group workout as I came out right behind Patrick Parish and Brendon O'Flanagan and right in front of Steve Sander. In "real" time however I was behind all of those guys due to the order of the time trial start. I wowed (read: confused the hell out of) the assembled spectators with a sweet ninja move where I pulled the chip out of my suit and bent down to swipe it over the mat without breaking stride and sprinted into transition.
T1 was slower than it should've been since I had to strap my chip back on, but it was only a couple extra seconds and I made it out right on the heels of Patrick and Brendon.
Right about the time I finished strapping into my shoes I arrived at the base of the infamous Ohio Street climb. I've done this climb quite a few times over the last couple years, but never on my tri bike, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It ended up not being too big a deal and I got up pretty comfortably in the saddle with a couple gears to spare. I passed about a half dozen people on the way up and closed a bit of the gap to Patrick.
Once it flattened out on top I caught up to David Holden and Nick Madrinich, both of whom are extremely fast swimmers. That was a huge confidence boost. If I'm catching the super-swimmers at mile 2 than I clearly didn't lose as much time in the water as I feared. Gotta love that river current.
Once I got out onto Hwy. 13 there was only Patrick and a lead motorcycle in front of me. This struck me as odd because I expected Devon to be out front (it turns out he was, just so far that I couldn't see him). After a steep, but thankfully short, climb back out of the river valley on Lexington I caught up to Patrick and went for the pass. I've raced Patrick a ton over the last few seasons and I knew that if I was going to make that pass stick I would have to ride extremely hard, so I shifted about 2 gears taller than I would normally ride and just mashed the pedals for the next several miles.
A few corners later I took a quick look behind me and didn't see Patrick (or anyone else), and the lead moto was the only thing in front of me. At this point I thought I was leading the race since I've never heard of a lead moto for 2nd. I kept pushing hard hoping to build up a good lead over Patrick since I knew he would put significant time into me on the run. After a scary descent back into the river valley through narrow residential streets I arrived back at transition. Once I got to my rack in T2 I noticed Devon's bike was already there, so I guess I was in 2nd after all.
Running out of T2, the first thing I noticed was that my legs felt really, really heavy. Way worse than they have at the start of the run in any other race I've done this season. I suppose that makes sense given the overly enthusiastic bike pace. It also probably didn't help that the first mile of the run is all uphill. Pre-race all anyone wanted to talk about were the hills on the bike course. Those were nothing compared to the hills on the run course. On the bike you always have the option of coasting a downhill. There's no such thing on the run, where descending is every bit as punishing as ascending.
Once I made it up and over the bridge and back down to Shepard Rd. I finally caught sight of Devon, who looked to have a 2+ minute lead. I was gradually closing in on him and had the gap down to 90 seconds or so when Patrick came flying past me at about mile 2.5. I kept plugging away at my own pace and was sitting in 3rd about 1 minute back from Devon at the turnaround. I also had Illinois-based pro Ryan Guiliano about 90 seconds behind me, and he looked like he was closing fast.
By the time we got back up to the downtown side of the bridge, Devon still had maybe 20 seconds on me. There's only about 3/4 of a mile left at this point, so I knew it would be tough, but I was still determined to try and catch him. I lengthened my stride on the downhill and pushed as hard as I could, closing the gap to ~10 seconds (my shins are still hating me for this as I write it ~36 hours later). Unfortunately for me, Devon knew I was coming and found a little extra in the last few hundred meters, so the 10 second gap held to the line. Since he started ahead of me the official gap in the results was 8 seconds.
I was awarded my 2nd ever oversized novelty check for my efforts! This was a nice surprise as I was unaware that there were cash prizes when I signed up. Completely unexpected money may be the best kind of money.
OHP puts on a hell of a race. The venue was amazing. The bike and run courses are difficult, but not ridiculously so. And swimming in the river is no big deal. In fact, just judging by the fact that I don't feel sick as hell today, I'll take the river over any of the metro area lakes. So if you find yourself on the fence for this on when planning your schedule for next summer, do it!
Twin Cities Triathlon Results
This race has a 1.2mi point-to-point downstream swim in the Mississippi river. Thanks to all the rain we've been getting lately, the current was ripping along at about 5 knots, and thanks to the heat wave the water was bathtub warm, so no wetsuits.
Since the "beach" we started at was all of about 5 feet wide, we were sent off one-by-one in a time trial format. I lined up 3rd behind Devon Palmer and stomped my way in. Then the epic shitshow that was my swim started.
I managed to make it all of about 10m before I felt my timing chip coming loose on my ankle, so I turned over on my back, found the chip (luckily they float) and attempted to re-fasten it. It turns out fastening a velcro strap around your ankle while trying to stay afloat in water that allows for zero visibility is really hard. It doesn't get easier with practice either, as I found out when my chip came off two more times. My general attitude as this was happening is best summarized below with some totally pro MS-Paint work:
 |
After the chip came off the 3rd time I finally got smart enough to just stuff the thing down the top of my suit. By that time the damage had been done. I was sitting in like 20-somethingth place, and given that I had a head start on all but two of those guys I was really losing ground.
With the chip situation squared away and my head back in the game I managed to swim through most of the pack that passed me during the chip drama. Since there was literally zero visibility there was a ton of contact. Sorry to anyone I may have swam over the top of. I generally try to not do that.
The swim exit looked like a TCMC group workout as I came out right behind Patrick Parish and Brendon O'Flanagan and right in front of Steve Sander. In "real" time however I was behind all of those guys due to the order of the time trial start. I wowed (read: confused the hell out of) the assembled spectators with a sweet ninja move where I pulled the chip out of my suit and bent down to swipe it over the mat without breaking stride and sprinted into transition.
T1 was slower than it should've been since I had to strap my chip back on, but it was only a couple extra seconds and I made it out right on the heels of Patrick and Brendon.
Right about the time I finished strapping into my shoes I arrived at the base of the infamous Ohio Street climb. I've done this climb quite a few times over the last couple years, but never on my tri bike, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It ended up not being too big a deal and I got up pretty comfortably in the saddle with a couple gears to spare. I passed about a half dozen people on the way up and closed a bit of the gap to Patrick.
Once it flattened out on top I caught up to David Holden and Nick Madrinich, both of whom are extremely fast swimmers. That was a huge confidence boost. If I'm catching the super-swimmers at mile 2 than I clearly didn't lose as much time in the water as I feared. Gotta love that river current.
Once I got out onto Hwy. 13 there was only Patrick and a lead motorcycle in front of me. This struck me as odd because I expected Devon to be out front (it turns out he was, just so far that I couldn't see him). After a steep, but thankfully short, climb back out of the river valley on Lexington I caught up to Patrick and went for the pass. I've raced Patrick a ton over the last few seasons and I knew that if I was going to make that pass stick I would have to ride extremely hard, so I shifted about 2 gears taller than I would normally ride and just mashed the pedals for the next several miles.
A few corners later I took a quick look behind me and didn't see Patrick (or anyone else), and the lead moto was the only thing in front of me. At this point I thought I was leading the race since I've never heard of a lead moto for 2nd. I kept pushing hard hoping to build up a good lead over Patrick since I knew he would put significant time into me on the run. After a scary descent back into the river valley through narrow residential streets I arrived back at transition. Once I got to my rack in T2 I noticed Devon's bike was already there, so I guess I was in 2nd after all.
Running out of T2, the first thing I noticed was that my legs felt really, really heavy. Way worse than they have at the start of the run in any other race I've done this season. I suppose that makes sense given the overly enthusiastic bike pace. It also probably didn't help that the first mile of the run is all uphill. Pre-race all anyone wanted to talk about were the hills on the bike course. Those were nothing compared to the hills on the run course. On the bike you always have the option of coasting a downhill. There's no such thing on the run, where descending is every bit as punishing as ascending.
Once I made it up and over the bridge and back down to Shepard Rd. I finally caught sight of Devon, who looked to have a 2+ minute lead. I was gradually closing in on him and had the gap down to 90 seconds or so when Patrick came flying past me at about mile 2.5. I kept plugging away at my own pace and was sitting in 3rd about 1 minute back from Devon at the turnaround. I also had Illinois-based pro Ryan Guiliano about 90 seconds behind me, and he looked like he was closing fast.
By the time we got back up to the downtown side of the bridge, Devon still had maybe 20 seconds on me. There's only about 3/4 of a mile left at this point, so I knew it would be tough, but I was still determined to try and catch him. I lengthened my stride on the downhill and pushed as hard as I could, closing the gap to ~10 seconds (my shins are still hating me for this as I write it ~36 hours later). Unfortunately for me, Devon knew I was coming and found a little extra in the last few hundred meters, so the 10 second gap held to the line. Since he started ahead of me the official gap in the results was 8 seconds.
I was awarded my 2nd ever oversized novelty check for my efforts! This was a nice surprise as I was unaware that there were cash prizes when I signed up. Completely unexpected money may be the best kind of money.
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| I have no idea who or what I was looking at when this was taken. |
Twin Cities Triathlon Results
