I've wanted to race the Waseca 1/3-Iron since it's inception, but have never been able to work it into my schedule. June and July are usually so race-heavy that I need a bit of a mid-season break just for self-preservation. That break typically falls right around the last week of July/first week of August. This year, however, my mid-season hiatus was pushed back to early July due to the birth of my son, so instead of being all worn out and dead feeling, I've been chomping at the bit waiting to get out and race. So late last week I decided I'd finally make the trek down to Waseca and try my hand at the somewhat bizarre 1/3-Iron distance
The Pre-Race Jams
A 7:30AM race start, ~90 minute drive, and the desire to get there a bit earlier than usual because I hadn't pre-registered adds up to a pretty damn early wake up call. For some reason I had even more trouble waking up on Sunday than usual. I was stumbling around my house like I was drunk and it seemed like loading the car took twice as long as usual.
I knew I would need some weapons-grade noise to jar myself awake, so I cranked up Speaker of the Dead by Emmure. This is excessively downtuned, brutally heavy deathcore with all the subtlety and finesse of a sledgehammer to the side of the head. Just what the doctor ordered.
The Race
Looking at the participant list in the days leading up to the race, I was confident I'd be toeing the line as the prohibitive favorite to win. However, since this race allows morning-of registration, you really don't know who will be showing up. This point was driven home on race morning when I saw Kevin O'Connor standing on the starting line. Sometimes you show up for a workout and a race breaks out. Game on.
The race started out with a 1 mile wetsuit-legal swim in Clear Lake. Degree of difficulty: Clear Lake is not clear (the visibility is actually down in the 6-7" range) and the water felt way too warm to be wetsuit legal. I'm not sure if an official water temp measurement was taken, and if it was I never heard it, but it felt every bit as warm as the Mississippi did last week at Twin Cities, and the water temp there was 82º.
The swim start was surprisingly rough given the relatively small size of the field. I lined up next to Kevin hoping to stay on his feet the whole way, but I lost him in the scrum during the first 100m. I took a couple good kicks to the jaw, swam over a couple guys, and had a few guys swim over me within the first couple minutes. Good times.
When things finally sorted out, there was one guy off the front maybe 10 seconds or so, with me and two others (based on the results, I'm guessing John Shelp and one of the relay swimmers) chasing. I decided to do the smart thing and settled into the draft behind the other two guys. I stayed there for another 400m or so, but I kept swimming up the other guys' backs, and the guy out front kept pulling away, so I bid my little pack farewell and struck out on my own for the rest of the swim. I suspected it was Kevin out front who I was chasing, but I couldn't be sure. I don't think I gained much ground on him once I started swimming solo, but at least I didn't lose any more, so I think I made the right choice.
Heading up the beach into T2 was rough. I was cooking in my wetsuit, my legs were wobbly and I felt a little dizzy. I've never been so glad to finish a swim before in my life. I saw that it was indeed Kevin who I was chasing as he was running out of transition with his bike when I arrived at my rack, so I tried to hustle through transition as fast as possible to keep him in sight.
The first couple miles of the bike were rough. I was still in a daze from overheating on the swim and my legs felt terrible. I took it pretty easy for the first few minutes and tried to rehydrate. After downing about 20oz of fluids I started to come around and could start riding for real. I quickly picked off a relay biker that had passed me within the first couple miles and caught up to Kevin around mile 4 or so.
I wasn't quite sure going in what the correct pacing strategy should be for this distance. Is it more like a long Olympic or a short half-iron? I chose to split the difference and pretend I was racing an Olympic during the bike and a half during the run. This worked out pretty well as I built up a decent lead heading into T2 and the hot and humid conditions ensured that the run would be a death march regardless of how I paced the bike.
I also had the bright idea of lowering my front end by removing a spacer from underneath the stem as I was giving my bike the traditional pre-race tuneup on Saturday evening. I hadn't changed a single thing about my bike setup since May 2010, I had no real reason to change anything since I had my best ride of the season at Twin Cities last weekend, and the collective wisdom of the triathlon universe says changing your bike position 12 hours before a race is a terrible idea. Still, you never really know whether or not something will work until you try, so down the bars went. The verdict... who knows? I honestly couldn't even tell the difference. For some guys, moving something on the bike a few millimeters one way or the other makes all the difference in the world. I am apparently not one of those guys.
T2 was a little slow since I decided to put socks on for the run, but I made it through without incident and got out onto the run course. I hit the first mile marker in 5:40 still feeling pretty decent, but the heat and humidity caught up with me in short order as my splits kept creeping upward every subsequent mile. By the time I got onto the second loop I was hanging on for dear life at around 6:20 pace. Thankfully I was able to hold that for the remainder of the race. I had no idea how far back Kevin was, so I was actually running a little scared.
With around 2 miles left to go race director Mark Bongers rode up next to me on a mountain bike and told me I was about 5 minutes up. After hearing that news I was ready to shut it down and jog the rest of the way, but then I took a look at my watch, crunched a few numbers and realized that if I could just hold pace I'd get in under the course record, so I pushed hard the rest of the way and hit the finish line at 2:37:29, lowering the course record by 56 seconds.
Thanks to Final Stretch for putting on a great race, all of the volunteers for helping us out, and to the people of Waseca for allowing a bunch of Lycra-clad goons to take over your park for a day!
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