#$%!$$#%^@! I spent like 3 hours writing this post a couple nights ago, published it, watched it actually get a few page views, and then it just... disappeared. Poof. Gone. Somehow it got rolled back to a not even close to complete draft version from several days prior.
FU Google... providing me this service for free and still somehow giving me less than my money's worth. The nerve of some people. So here goes take 2. Please don't eat this one internet gremlins.
In much happier news, Tiffany and I are proud to announce that we have another kid on the way! Due in December. We haven't decided on a name yet. Mikey suggested "Fishy" and "Dinosaur". We've taken those under consideration.
Speaking of Mikey, he is now the strider bike champion of Huset Park. I suspect he'll be legit pedaling on 2 wheels by the end of the summer.
I've raced 3 times since my last update. All 3 races went very well. Writing about them has been a much greater struggle, but hey, I'd much rather be killing it at the races and sucking ass at blogging than the other way around.
The Pre-Race Jams
The rest of the Gear West guys killed it as well, sweeping the podium.
Unlike Buffalo, however, the weather didn't let up, forcing about a 90 minute delay to the start. I say "about" a 90 minute delay because I managed to forget my only functioning watch at work the day before, so I really have no idea what the actual delay was. I was a little nervous doing a long course race sans-watch. I also haven't bothered rigging up a computer on my new bike yet, so I'd be doing this one in true Luddite style. I've had decent success with data-free short course racing, but pacing a half (especially on the run) has never been my forte so I was a little worried about blowing up on the back half of the run.
The Pre-Race Jams
Destroy Everything by Hatebreed has a nice positive message. I am saying that without a trace of irony by the way. It really does. I don't care what you're doing when you're listening to this. It could be something totally mundane like folding your laundry. But dammit, you're gonna fold that laundry faster and better than you've ever folded it before or die trying.
This semi-literate gentleman from the always informative and entertaining Youtube comments section understands...
Gear West Duathlon
I've
found myself out of town for this one the last several seasons, so I
was excited to get back out there this year. For those of you not
familiar with the course, its most distinctive feature is a really
badass off road run course. It totally reminds me of places we used
to run in high school cross country back in the stone age. The course was oddly dry this year too. Every other time I've done the race there have been a couple nice mud pits to navigate. Either way, it's a way different experience than your typical on-road duathlon/triathlon.
The
race played out pretty much according to the script. Dan Hedgecock
and Brian Sames dropped me about 4 steps off of the start line. I
held 3rd for about half a mile when Brooks Grossinger came around for
the pass. I held 4th for the remainder of the 1st run, coming into T1
a few steps behind Brooks and close to a full minute back from Dan
and Brian.
I
ended up passing Brooks at the mount line when he had to turn around
to retrieve a lost shoe. I caught Brian a couple miles in and could
see Dan just up the road. Unlike the previous week at Oakdale,
however, Dan was not in the mood to get caught. I clawed back about
30 seconds over the course of the ride, but still came into T2 about
30 seconds in arrears.
Luckily
in my unsuccessful effort to chase down Dan I had put a pretty good
gap on everyone behind me. That made the 2nd run a bit of a formality
for both Dan and I, allowing him to cruise it in for the win with me
claiming 2nd about 40 seconds later.
The rest of the Gear West guys killed it as well, sweeping the podium.
The Gear West guys who didn't race knocked it out of the park as well, most notably co-race directors Sean Pease and Trent Schroeder. Of course, this should surprise nobody since both of these guys are full time employees of the best bike shop in the business and it's not like Kevin is going to hire a bunch of scrubs. Anyway, if you miss this one next year and don't have a very good excuse, you're stupid and we can't be friends.
Buffalo Triathlon
This
is another one that I've had to skip the last couple of seasons
because I couldn't cram it into the schedule. Waking up that morning
to a severe thunderstorm I was wishing I had skipped it again.
Luckily the storm blew through about a half hour prior to the start,
and it stayed cool and overcast throughout, which makes for pretty
good racing weather in my opinion.
I lined up next to Marcus Stromberg and Jon Balabuck hoping to hitch a ride on some fast feet. Since they are both faster swimmers, Marcus runs about the same splits as me, and Jon typically runs a minute or two faster than me, my strategy is fairly
obvious -- try to limit the damage on the swim, then go nuts on the
bike and hope I can build up a large enough gap to render the run
inconsequential. Luckily that happens to be my preferred strategy
anyway and more or less the only way I've ever had any success.
Both
Jon and Marcus did me a huge favor by going off course during the
swim, allowing me to get out onto the bike a handful of seconds in
front. Once out on the road I quickly scooped up Thad Ingersoll and
one other fast swimmer I didn't recognize, and by mile 4 had the
always welcome sight of the lead vehicle in front of me.
Out
on the run I could immediately feel the result of the
overenthusiastic bike pace, but luckily everything was proceeding
according to the plan and I had several minutes in the bank vs. Jon, Marcus and the rest of the field.
Somewhere
around mile 2.5 I saw a good sized painted turtle attempting to cross
the road. This a somewhat sketchy section of the course where you
have runners going both directions on the shoulder, a steady stream
of bikes screaming downhill at 30+ MPH in one lane, with auto traffic
going up the hill in the other lane. In other words, that turtle (and
possibly some unweary cyclist as well) was going to have a bad time
if someone didn't carry it across. So I ended up taking a 20 second
or so timeout to grab the turtle, stop traffic and hustle it across.
Note to competitors: if you want to handicap me in a race you can
always release some turtles on the side of the road. I'll be stopping
100% of the time. Of course, if any turtles are harmed due to your
actions I will knife fight you, so keep that in mind.
Running always magically hurts a lot less when you're sitting on a comfortable lead, so the rest of the race was pretty chill. I ended up crossing the line at 1:55:51, which is a good 2-3 minutes faster than I expected. Sweet.
Liberty Triathlon
In a development that surprised absolutely nobody, our lovely Minnesota climate served up another heaping helping of ass-awful weather for this one.
Unlike Buffalo, however, the weather didn't let up, forcing about a 90 minute delay to the start. I say "about" a 90 minute delay because I managed to forget my only functioning watch at work the day before, so I really have no idea what the actual delay was. I was a little nervous doing a long course race sans-watch. I also haven't bothered rigging up a computer on my new bike yet, so I'd be doing this one in true Luddite style. I've had decent success with data-free short course racing, but pacing a half (especially on the run) has never been my forte so I was a little worried about blowing up on the back half of the run.
I lined up right next to Dan Arlandson, planning on trying to hold onto his draft as long as possible. When the initial starting scrum cleared I was sitting 3rd in a 3-man lead pack, right on Dan's feet. Holy shit, the plan is working for once!
A couple buoys past the turnaround I drifted off to the side a bit, lost the draft and couldn't get back on, but the damage was minimal since there wasn't too far left to swim. I ended up getting out in 3rd, about 15 seconds back.
The other guys must have decided to give their bikes a last second tuneup in transition because I somehow erased the entire 15 second deficit and made it to the mount line first. My time at the front was short lived, however, because as I was trying to get my right foot into its shoe, I yanked the strap completely out of the loop, rendering it useless. I rolled along for a bit attempting to fix it with one hand, but it soon became apparent that I had two choices: stop, get off the bike and fix it, or ride the entire 56 miles with my foot on top of the shoe.
Riding 2+ hours with a loose foot sounds absolutely dreadful, so I elected to stop. I fumbled around for a bit, finally got the strap functional again and hopped back on only to realize that somewhere in all of that the insole had come loose and was now almost completely hanging out of the shoe. As with the strap, I failed at the one-handed rolling repair and once again was forced to pull over. All told I lost about a minute fucking around with my shoes before I hopped onto the bike for the third and final time. That doesn't sound like a ton of time in a 4+ hour race, but Dan and 2 other guys passed me while this was going down. It's never a good feeling to be losing spots like that when you're not even out of sight of the transition area yet.
On the plus side, I got to practice my flying mount 2 extra times. And some boners got to make fun of me on Facebook. I really like Curt's theory...
Upon exiting the park I could just barely see the 3 guys ahead of me up the road. I hammered it about as hard as I could trying to get back in front. Just like Buffalo, I didn't really want to get into a foot race with any of these guys. I'd much rather arrive at T2 with some time in the bank, even at the risk of "overbiking" a bit.
I ended up catching everyone as we rolled through the town of Delano, about 4 miles in. The first turn is at ~8 miles, where I was able to sneak a look back and was rewarded with the sight of nobody on my wheel, so at that point I dialed the effort back to something that felt sustainable for the duration. The way the wind was blowing that day gave us a very strong tailwind for the first 16-ish miles. The flip side of this is that we were going to be fighting that same wind for the last 16-ish miles. If you don't leave a little bit in reserve for the final push home in that situation you're gonna have a bad time, both in the time on the clock sense as well as the pain and suffering sense.
The rest of the ride was pretty standard. There were a couple of construction zones with mildly questionable pavement quality, and of course the weather was far from ideal with the rain and wind, but it didn't seem all that bad. I can't leave my house in any direction without dealing with shittier pavement and I regularly commute in worse weather. That said, it was nice when the rain let up halfway through the bike and I no longer had to use my finger as a makeshift windshield wiper on my helmet visor.
T2 was a leisurely affair. I originally planned to run sockless, but when I got to the rack and saw how soaked my shoes already were I made the gametime decision to pull the emergency socks out of my bag, which I had wrapped up in my jacket in an effort to keep the contents dry.
Once my shoes and socks were situated I made my way out onto the run course. The course loops around the transition area a bit, so you get to look maybe 3-4 minutes back before disappearing into the woods. Since nobody else had come in off the bike by then I knew I was sitting on a fairly substantial lead.
The run course is straight out and back, with the first ~2 miles being net downhill and very fast, then neverending rollers all the way out to the turnaround and back with the last 2 miles back up the hill. I tried not to go too nuts down the hill and held what felt like a strong, steady pace out to the turnaround. I reflexively checked for a split on my nonexistant watch at every mile marker, but of course saw nothing but my bare wrist.
About a half mile before the turnaround I spotted a guy running about a minute up the road. As we crossed paths after he made the turn I noted that he was wearing a long sleeved shirt with no visible race numbers, so I was pretty sure he was just out for a workout and not racing. However, on the way back guys who were still on their way out were giving me splits up to the mystery runner. Now I'm wondering if they all know something that I don't and this guy really is in the race. At the time I assumed I was on 4:10-ish pace, so it didn't seem inconceivable that some non-local ringer that I didn't recognize really was out front.
At any rate having him out there kept me motivated to keep pushing. I eventually caught him at around mile 12 and we chatted for a bit. Turns out it was Nick Friesen, a guy from Canada who took a DNF due to 3(!) flat tires and was just using the run as a workout. I've had 2 flats in ~80 lifetime starts. I can't even imagine 3 in one race. Being a Canadian, his reaction to all the flats was something along the lines of "Eh... that's life," whereas I imagine I would have flown into a good old American nuclear rage and ended up in jail. USA!
With a little more than a mile left Cathy Yndestad rode up next to me on a mountain bike. I asked her if she had the race time and she said 3:55:(something, I can't remember). My first thought was, "Holy shit! Sub 4!" But then I redid the math and realized it would require something along the lines of a 4-flat mile, and LOL at that. I ended up running my usual 6:something mile and stopped the clock at 4:02:46, where my Gear West teammate and all around good guy Ross Weinzierl, being a classy gentleman, had a cold can of PBR waiting for me.
I'm extremely satisfied with a 4:02 in those conditions, especially taking into account the time I spent on the side of the road at the beginning of the bike. Even better, this year everything felt fully in control. Of course I was working very hard throughout, but I never had to push into puke-on-your-shoes, med tent territory. Whereas last year I went 5 minutes slower in better conditions and was deep into the puke zone with 2 completely cramped up calves for most of the run (to be fair the bike route was different this year, but I know these roads pretty well and I'd have a hard time believing that it accounts for more than a minute or two either direction). Hopefully I can keep the ball rolling for the rest of the season.
Liberty Triathlon Results
A couple buoys past the turnaround I drifted off to the side a bit, lost the draft and couldn't get back on, but the damage was minimal since there wasn't too far left to swim. I ended up getting out in 3rd, about 15 seconds back.
The other guys must have decided to give their bikes a last second tuneup in transition because I somehow erased the entire 15 second deficit and made it to the mount line first. My time at the front was short lived, however, because as I was trying to get my right foot into its shoe, I yanked the strap completely out of the loop, rendering it useless. I rolled along for a bit attempting to fix it with one hand, but it soon became apparent that I had two choices: stop, get off the bike and fix it, or ride the entire 56 miles with my foot on top of the shoe.
Riding 2+ hours with a loose foot sounds absolutely dreadful, so I elected to stop. I fumbled around for a bit, finally got the strap functional again and hopped back on only to realize that somewhere in all of that the insole had come loose and was now almost completely hanging out of the shoe. As with the strap, I failed at the one-handed rolling repair and once again was forced to pull over. All told I lost about a minute fucking around with my shoes before I hopped onto the bike for the third and final time. That doesn't sound like a ton of time in a 4+ hour race, but Dan and 2 other guys passed me while this was going down. It's never a good feeling to be losing spots like that when you're not even out of sight of the transition area yet.
On the plus side, I got to practice my flying mount 2 extra times. And some boners got to make fun of me on Facebook. I really like Curt's theory...
Upon exiting the park I could just barely see the 3 guys ahead of me up the road. I hammered it about as hard as I could trying to get back in front. Just like Buffalo, I didn't really want to get into a foot race with any of these guys. I'd much rather arrive at T2 with some time in the bank, even at the risk of "overbiking" a bit.
I ended up catching everyone as we rolled through the town of Delano, about 4 miles in. The first turn is at ~8 miles, where I was able to sneak a look back and was rewarded with the sight of nobody on my wheel, so at that point I dialed the effort back to something that felt sustainable for the duration. The way the wind was blowing that day gave us a very strong tailwind for the first 16-ish miles. The flip side of this is that we were going to be fighting that same wind for the last 16-ish miles. If you don't leave a little bit in reserve for the final push home in that situation you're gonna have a bad time, both in the time on the clock sense as well as the pain and suffering sense.
The rest of the ride was pretty standard. There were a couple of construction zones with mildly questionable pavement quality, and of course the weather was far from ideal with the rain and wind, but it didn't seem all that bad. I can't leave my house in any direction without dealing with shittier pavement and I regularly commute in worse weather. That said, it was nice when the rain let up halfway through the bike and I no longer had to use my finger as a makeshift windshield wiper on my helmet visor.
T2 was a leisurely affair. I originally planned to run sockless, but when I got to the rack and saw how soaked my shoes already were I made the gametime decision to pull the emergency socks out of my bag, which I had wrapped up in my jacket in an effort to keep the contents dry.
Once my shoes and socks were situated I made my way out onto the run course. The course loops around the transition area a bit, so you get to look maybe 3-4 minutes back before disappearing into the woods. Since nobody else had come in off the bike by then I knew I was sitting on a fairly substantial lead.
The run course is straight out and back, with the first ~2 miles being net downhill and very fast, then neverending rollers all the way out to the turnaround and back with the last 2 miles back up the hill. I tried not to go too nuts down the hill and held what felt like a strong, steady pace out to the turnaround. I reflexively checked for a split on my nonexistant watch at every mile marker, but of course saw nothing but my bare wrist.
About a half mile before the turnaround I spotted a guy running about a minute up the road. As we crossed paths after he made the turn I noted that he was wearing a long sleeved shirt with no visible race numbers, so I was pretty sure he was just out for a workout and not racing. However, on the way back guys who were still on their way out were giving me splits up to the mystery runner. Now I'm wondering if they all know something that I don't and this guy really is in the race. At the time I assumed I was on 4:10-ish pace, so it didn't seem inconceivable that some non-local ringer that I didn't recognize really was out front.
At any rate having him out there kept me motivated to keep pushing. I eventually caught him at around mile 12 and we chatted for a bit. Turns out it was Nick Friesen, a guy from Canada who took a DNF due to 3(!) flat tires and was just using the run as a workout. I've had 2 flats in ~80 lifetime starts. I can't even imagine 3 in one race. Being a Canadian, his reaction to all the flats was something along the lines of "Eh... that's life," whereas I imagine I would have flown into a good old American nuclear rage and ended up in jail. USA!
With a little more than a mile left Cathy Yndestad rode up next to me on a mountain bike. I asked her if she had the race time and she said 3:55:(something, I can't remember). My first thought was, "Holy shit! Sub 4!" But then I redid the math and realized it would require something along the lines of a 4-flat mile, and LOL at that. I ended up running my usual 6:something mile and stopped the clock at 4:02:46, where my Gear West teammate and all around good guy Ross Weinzierl, being a classy gentleman, had a cold can of PBR waiting for me.
I'm extremely satisfied with a 4:02 in those conditions, especially taking into account the time I spent on the side of the road at the beginning of the bike. Even better, this year everything felt fully in control. Of course I was working very hard throughout, but I never had to push into puke-on-your-shoes, med tent territory. Whereas last year I went 5 minutes slower in better conditions and was deep into the puke zone with 2 completely cramped up calves for most of the run (to be fair the bike route was different this year, but I know these roads pretty well and I'd have a hard time believing that it accounts for more than a minute or two either direction). Hopefully I can keep the ball rolling for the rest of the season.
Liberty Triathlon Results
