Liberty Half Iron

So I was back in action last weekend at the Liberty Half Iron.  Since Liberty is a Saturday race and BOUS was a Sunday, that left me with only 6 days to recover.  Normally that wouldn't be an issue as I'm typically feeling fully recovered from a hard Olympic distance effort within 2-3 days, but for some reason when I woke up the day after BOUS both of my calves cramped up and never really loosened up at all.  Hopefully this has something to do with the fact that it was so cold at BOUS and it's not just the new normal as I get older.  If that's the case my days of racing on back to back weekends may be over.

I've done Liberty twice before, in 2008 and 2009.  The last few years I've opted to race Trinona instead, but with out of town travel the previous two weekends I really didn't want to make it 3, and I've grudgingly come to accept the reality that I'm a better 70.3 than Olympic distance racer anyway.  So... eff it, let's fire it up for a half iron 6 days after BOUS and hope for the best.

The Pre-Race Jams

Warning... nostalgia trip incoming!

I remember going to my first "real" concert back when I was a 15 year old high school sophomore in Mankato.  Up to that point, the only live music I got to see was the shitty teenage bands I and my friends played in.  But on this day my friend Jeremy had a newly-minted driver's license and permission to use his parents' van, so a half dozen of us piled into said van and made the trek up Hwy. 169 to the promised land of Minneapolis and the legendary First Avenue.

We were going to see Helmet and Quicksand, who were (and still are) two of my all-time favorite bands, along with an opening act called Orange 9mm that I had never heard of.  When Orange 9mm took the stage I was blown away.  I had never heard anything that sounded even remotely like that.  During their set they tossed a bunch of promo cassette tapes off the stage and I snagged one.  This was the first song on it...

Normally I'm of the "disregard nostalgia, acquire new jams" mindset, but this shit right here stands the test of time and will remain in heavy rotation for me until I'm either dead or deaf.

The Race

Liberty always feels more like a travel race than a local race just because so many Canadians show up.  It's like they shine some sort of Canadian bat symbol (I guess it would be a maple leaf) up in the sky and every triathlete in Thunder Bay and Winnipeg immediately drops their hockey stick and their plate of poutine and heads south.

The thing about Canadians is that they are masters of public relations.  They have the whole world thinking they're all polite and mild mannered, what with their "eh's" and "aboot's" and socialized health care and all.  But I know better.  Canadians are vicious, ruthless bastards.  Their national sport is hockey...

And their whole country is overrun by bears...

BEARS!

You cannot possibly survive all that and winters that are even colder and drearier than ours and not be a soulless killing machine. So isn't just your ordinary, run of the mill local race.  This is a matter of national security.  I won't let you down America!

Swim

I think they said the water was 62F.  That sounded a lot worse than it actually felt.  It was actually quite pleasant once you got over the initial shock of getting in.  After about a 10 minute warmup swim I was comfortable and ready to go.

I lined up right next to my Canadian arch-nemesis Jon Balabuck hoping to be able to stay on his feet at least for a little while.  Jon has historically been a much faster swimmer than me so I really wanted to try hard to minimize the damage in the water and at least keep it close.

I had what felt like a pretty crappy start because after the initial chaos cleared out I saw about a half dozen guys in front of me.  In hindsight though I think I did OK and they all just went out unrealistically hard because by about halfway out to the turnaround I found myself in a most unfamiliar spot in the swim: LEADING THE DAMN RACE!

Jon was swimming directly to my left and there were a few guys not too far behind us.  I thought about dropping back to try and get on Jon's feet, but his fellow Canadian and eventual 3rd place finisher Patrick Peacock was already pretty firmly camped out there and I didn't want to drop all the way back behind him because it would have been way too easy to lose track of Jon from 2 spots behind, so I settled in and we swam the rest of the race directly next to each other.  I tried to throw in a couple surges here and there but never got more than a half body length for my efforts.

Before long Jon, Patrick and I made it to the swim exit together with Brendan O'Flanagan not too far behind.  The official timing mat was about 20 seconds of running away from the swim exit, so seizing my first ever opportunity to record a #1 swim split I sprinted up those stairs and was the first guy to enter T1.

According to the results 3 guys in the later waves beat me, giving me the 4th overall swim split, but digging a little deeper I can pretty confidently say that 2 of those are either timing glitches or guys who accidentally swam the Olympic distance course.  The 3rd probably legitimately outswam me, but whatever, simply not losing several minutes to Jon is enough for me to get excited about.  This was bar none the most fun I've had in a triathlon swim.  Actually having to think about tactics and pack dynamics makes the swim much more interesting than my typical practice of getting my struggle on by myself back in no man's land.

Bike

Jon beat me out of transition by a couple of steps, but as soon as I got strapped into my shoes I started hammering and made the pass as we were leaving the park.  I know on my best day I can count on him outrunning me by 5-6 minutes, and given how banged up my legs still were from BOUS I didn't expect to have my best day on the run so my best chance for the W was to go for broke on the bike and hope to build up a big enough gap to jog/shuffle/hobble it home in the latter miles of the run.  Fortunately I had actually been feeling pretty strong on the bike all week.  Everything seemed to be falling into place in the early miles of the ride and I steadily built up a pretty significant advantage.

I maintained a pretty high effort level for about the first 15 miles or so until I realized it was probably in my best interests to back if off a touch, but still kept up a good strong effort for the remainder of the course.

There isn't much else to say because I was pretty far off the front, so the only other racers I saw were either in the Oly or were on their first lap while I was on my second.  I'm happy to report that I saw zero squished turtles on the ride.  I've done quite a few training rides on those roads and typically you would see a handful of flattened turtles over a ride that length.  Hopefully that was just good luck and not a result of massive die off over the long winter.

I made it back to transition with a 2:09 split, although I heard the course was roughly a mile short so it would have been about 2:11-2:12 at full length.

Run

There's no way to sugar coat this one, it just flat out sucked.   A 1:27 split on that course in perfect weather is borderline embarrassing for me.  I haven't run that slow in a half in about 5 years.  Both of my calves cramped up at mile 1 and it never got any better.  I managed to average about 6:20/mi out to the turnaround, but as soon as I saw that I was ~10 minutes up I shut it down completely, slowed to about 7:30-8:00/mi and started walking through aid stations.  I'm not sure if that was the correct decision because it didn't really hurt any less than gritting out the 6:20's, but once you flip the switch and slow down like that speeding up again is basically impossible.

I managed to minimize the damage enough to keep the rapidly advancing Canadian horde behind me and eventually turned onto the gravel path that marked the last half mile to the finish, where I picked up the pace just a bit in order to not look like a total putz for the spectators at the finish line, then damn near collapsed as soon as I crossed the line in 4:07:37.

Jon was the next guy across the line in 4:11, meaning he put almost 8 minutes on me in the last half of the run alone, and Patrick crossed in 3rd less than a minute after.

I would have let the Canadian version of the CIA waterboard me with maple syrup for a can of Coke at the finish line, but there was none to be found in the otherwise excellent post-race food spread.  Jon was in the same boat.  Luckily, I had a couple bottles stashed away in my car and in an act of international diplomacy that will be studied by scholars for generations, negotiated the eventual withdrawl of all Canadian forces from the race site in exchange for one 16oz bottle of Coca-Cola.  You can go ahead and pencil me in for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize right now.

2nd Best of the US

A couple weeks ago I road tripped it down to scenic (as an engineer, oil refineries and steel mills do count as scenic) Hammond, IN to attempt to defend my title at the Best of the US amateur triathlon championship.  I managed to put together a fairly decent race, but still only came away with 2nd place.

After races like this I have to sort of step back and remind myself that I'm basically playing with house money at this point.  What I mean is that when I toed the line at my first race six years ago I was overjoyed to simply finish (I took 82nd that day in case you're curious).  Even qualifying for a race like this seemed like an impossible pipe dream.  Competing for the win seemed downright ludicrous.  Fast forward to 2013 and I can throw down a 1:53 at an Olympic distance race, finish second against a nationally competitive field and actually be somewhat disappointed.  2007 me would kick present-day me so hard in the nuts for that.  Oh well, enough of the emo shit, here's a race report...

Sean Cooley and Marcus Stromberg were also making the trip, so we assembled at my place pre-dawn on Saturday and loaded up Marcus's truck for the drive.  Those guys were great travel partners.   I was expecting some resistance when I suggested we hit up the Old Chicago across the parking lot from our hotel for my traditional pre-race dinner of pizza and beer, but they were all about it.  My people!

Trudy organized a special BOUS-only course briefing from the RD at our hotel, at which we also picked up or swag bags.  We got some pretty cool stuff this year, including some boss level goggles...

and this tasty bottle of wine...

which was given a good home in my belly when we had some dinner guests over last weekend.  It's always a nice touch to get stuff from a race that's actually useful. 

On race morning we were joined by Alex Hooke at the hotel and we managed to clown car all 4 of us plus our bikes into one vehicle for the 20 minute drive over to the race site.  While we were loading up it was absolutely perfect race weather - about 60 degrees and overcast with light winds.  By the time we got to the race it was already starting to cool down and the clouds were starting to look a bit threatening.

The BOUS race was held in conjunction with Leon's "World's Fastest" triathlon.  Whatever Leon's background is, he is a master of marketing and promotion.  I've never seen so much advertising plastered around a transition area/finish line before.  The race t-shirt looks like something you would see in NASCAR with all of the sponsor logos.  There was a pre-race flyover by military aircraft.  There were two guys buzzing around the start area on jetpacks (seriously).  If that weren't enough, they had a TV crew there.  I've been told that the race will air July 4th on Comcast SportsNet, although I'll have to get someone to record it for me since I don't have cable.  Or just bootleg it off the internet somehow.

As the defending BOUS champ I got a fair bit of attention from the cameras as I was setting up my transition area, so expect a few seconds of B roll footage of me taking my running shoes out of my backpack or something similarly mundane if you happen to catch the broadcast.  I also got interviewed by Robbie Ventura, which was awesome.  Hopefully I don't come off as a total spaz if they actually use it in the show.  In case you couldn't tell, having my every move documented by a film crew puts me a wee bit out of my comfort zone.

By the time the actual race started the weather had made the transition from perfect to downright awful.  The temps had dropped into the low 50's, a light rain started and the wind kicked up to a steady 20 miles an hour with gusts to who knows what.  I took that as my cue to suit up and get the hell in the water, because it was much warmer than the air at that point.  As a result I probably got a good 600-800 meters of warmup swimming in, which is a solid 500-700 more than I traditionally do.  Despite the industrial surroundings the water was pleasant and seemed reasonably clean.

Finally I made my way over to the start.  Both the male and female Best of the US competitors were lumped in with the male and female elite amateur wave in the Leon's race, so there were on the order of 150-200 of us starting at once.  Luckily it was an in-water start and the line was a couple hundred yards wide, so there was plenty of room for everyone and not too much contact.

There were some fast swimmers at this thing, so I found myself blown off the back of the lead pack before we even got to the first marker buoy.  Every time I sighted it looked like there were about 50 people in front of me, which was disheartening to say the least.  At the time I thought I was in the middle of one of my traditional epic fail 22+ minute swims that would take me out of contention right from the start.  Eventually, about 1/3 of the way in a female came past me kicking like a maniac and I settled in behind to draft.  While drafting a girl in a race is a serious blow to my manhood, it was a pretty decent boost to my swim speed.  I can't adequately describe how hard this girl was kicking.  It made it very easy to stay behind her even though the visibility in the water wasn't the greatest.

I rode Ms. Happy Feet all the way to the swim exit and passed about 5 people on the short run into transition.  When I saw an 18:55 split in the results my first thought was that it had to be at least 100 meters short but Marcus had it at 0.93mi on his Garmin (consider that imperial/metric conversion your homework), so who knows, maybe I'm finally starting to crack the code on open water swimming.

After an uneventful transition I got out on the road and passed another 10 or so guys in quick succession before the field started to thin out and it was only Adam Zucco, Colin Riley, Marcus and a couple other guys I didn't recognize out in front of me.

The bike course was pretty wild... 2 loops with 4 u-turns per lap and a couple sections of not-so-nice pavement.  I think this type of course plays to my advantage a bit since I do most of my riding in the city, so I'm used to sharp corners, evasive maneuvers and bombed out pavement.  It seems like a lot of triathletes, even relatively fast ones, don't like taking any chances in the corners and are unwilling and/or unable to spike their power to get back up to speed quickly afterward.  If you are willing/able to do those things you can pick up 5-10 seconds at every turn, which is a considerable advantage on this kind of course.

About midway through the first lap I passed Marcus and it was only Colin and Adam in front.  I didn't manage to catch Colin until about mile 18 or so, which just so happened to be in the "speed trap", which was a one mile section of the course that was separately timed.  Since I was going basically max effort all the way through there to try to make the pass stick I ended up posting the fastest time of the day, which earned me this sweet trophy:

Passing Colin and moving up into 2nd overall also earned me the privilege of having a TV moto hovering about 6 feet to my left for the rest of the ride.  Hopefully I didn't hit the camera with any snot rockets.

I stayed slightly in front of Colin all the way back to transition and made a pretty careful dismount since I knew my feet were going to be numb from the cold.  T2 was tough since my hands and feet were cold enough to make getting into my running shoes something I actually had to think about, but my time is right in line with the field so everyone else must have struggled a bit as well.

Colin came out of T2 right on my heels and we quickly closed the gap up to Adam.  Right about then Colin decided he had enough of my company and tore off up ahead, putting a solid 20 seconds on me by the time we hit the first mile marker.  I outran Colin pretty handily to win the 2011 BOUS Championship, so I had no idea what to make of this move.  I just kept plugging along at my usual 5:30-ish pace figuring he was either going to blow up and come back, or he simply got that much faster since 2011.  Either way I was more or less at max effort already so I didn't have much choice in the matter.

The run course is a straight out-and-back and is likely the flattest thing possible so there isn't a whole lot to say.  By the time we hit the turnaround Colin had grown the gap out to ~45 seconds, so absent a complete meltdown he was going to be out of reach.  The good news is that I was pretty secure in 2nd with a minute plus back to the rest of the field.  One of the two TV motos stayed with Colin and the other stayed with me for the entire run.  I figured they would have bounced around a bit since places 3-7 were tight enough that there was some actual action.  What they're going to do with 35 minutes of footage of me running by myself is beyond me, but that's not my problem I guess.

As near as I could tell from my vantage point the gap between me and Colin held steady after the turn and he crossed the line in 1:52:05 for the win while I held onto second at 1:52:54.  Jason West, a 20 year old kid I hadn't heard of before, made up some serious ground on the run, coming in about 30 seconds behind me to win the Leon's race, marking what will in all likelihood be the last time he's beaten by my old ass.  That dude can fly.  Mark Harms was the next finisher across the line, rounding out the Best of the US podium.

Marcus had an extremely solid day taking 5th in the Best of the US race, which gave us a pretty stout margin of victory in the men's team competition.  And Andi Meyers took 7th in the women's race, which gave us 3rd in the coed team competition.  Add in top 10 finishes by Alex Hooke and honorary Minnesotan Sean Cooley and Minnesota was represented quite well indeed.

So, while it would have been nice to repeat as champ, I gave it my best and it just wasn't in the cards this year.  Hats off to Colin for unleashing a serious dose of beastmode on the rest of us and taking the win in style, Marcus and Sean for being most excellent travel partners, and to Trudy Marshall and the rest of the BOUS organization for putting together a great race!