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!

New Orleans 70.3

Holy crap, tri season really sneaked up on me this year. Since my DNF disaster at Vegas last September my head really hasn't been in the game. Training-wise I managed to string together a few 25,000+ yard weeks of swimming back in November/December, but then my shoulder blew up, taking me out of the pool altogether for a couple weeks and sharply limiting my volume thereafter. And then I got the flu in mid-January, which took me completely out of action for about a week and a half and felt like it took a solid month to really recover from. Our ass-tastic neverending Minnesota winter didn't exactly help things either. 

Luckily everything started to come around by about mid-March and I started to feel more like my old self again. Next thing you know it's last Friday and I'm pulling the old Ordu down off of the hooks in the garage ceiling for literally the first time since September, only to immediately disassemble it and stuff it in a bag for a Saturday morning pre-dawn flight to New Orleans and my first race of 2013.

So suffice it to say I was feeling rather under-prepared and my expectations weren't exactly sky high for this one. Basically as long as I made it to the finish line in one piece and stayed out of the med tent/hospital I'd be satisfied. If I got a Vegas slot I'd be happy. If I won my AG and/or went under 4:10 I'd be ecstatic.

The Pre-Race Jams

Hatebreed may be the quintessential pre-race jam. Knuckle dragging mosh riff after knuckle dragging mosh riff? Lyrics that are basically a more profane version of the motivational posters in your dentist's waiting room? A style that is self-described by frontman Jamey Jasta as "all pit, no shit"? Yes please!

Race Day

I somehow leveled myself into staying at the ridiculously overpriced host hotel for this one. While that's a bad beat for my wallet, it worked out pretty well for the pre-race logistics. I got to sleep relatively late and stumble downstairs to catch a shuttle bus out to the race start.

Since I had to drop my bike in transition the night before there wasn't much to do other than put some air in the tires, layer on the sunscreen, pull on the wetsuit and stroll on over to the swim start.

Swim

The swim started with the male pros and female pros going off as waves, with the rest of us going one at a time in time trial format starting with the relay teams. M35-39 was the second group in the time trial lineup, right after the relays, so I didn't have to wait around too long. It was first come/first served for the order within the age groups, so naturally as soon as they let our group into the corral just about everyone started trying to get to the front. I decided to deliberately hang back, figuring that all of the faster guys would be starting up front, so by starting in back I'd be sure that in "chip time" I'd be ahead of anyone I came across out on the course. By the time we settled into an actual line I was about 120 out of the 160 guys in the group.

Eventually I made it to the end of the dock, crossed the timing mat officially starting my race and jumped in. 

The water wasn't bad. I expected it to feel much colder. Since there were no warmups allowed I made a conscious effort to ease into a reasonable pace as opposed to my usual tactic of monkey spazzing the first couple hundred yards then blowing up. Soon enough I settled in and was steadily passing my fellow yellow-capped M35-39'ers and within a couple minutes started picking up the stragglers from the purple-capped relay group.

There isn't much else to say about the swim. I never came across anyone that made any sense to draft off of, so I just tried to keep my turnover high and work my way from one turn buoy to the next. When I got to the stairs leading out of the water I took a quick peak at my watch and saw that it was still reading 00:00. D'oh! Apparently I didn't hit the button on my way in. Seeing a 27:00 split at the end of the race was a pleasant surprise. That's a nice PR for me in a 70.3 swim and was honestly better than I expected given that I don't feel like I've been swimming all that well in practice lately, although I guess it's not that far out of line with the non-wetsuit 28:30 I did in Vegas last fall.

T1 was uneventful. I managed to find my rack on the first try and get all my swim gear off and bike gear on without tripping over myself.

Bike

This was the part of the race that had me a bit concerned going in. As previously mentioned, my tri bike hung neglected from the garage ceiling between unpacking it after Vegas and packing it for this race. I did one ride of ~2 miles the day before the race after reassembling it just to make sure everything was working correctly, then racked up and hoped for the best. 

That's not to say I haven't been riding, it's just that almost all of my mileage has been commuting on my cyclocross bike with big knobby tires wearing a loaded messenger bag and full winter gear (i.e. really slow), sometimes pulling Mikey behind in a trailer for extra slowness. I've always maintained that a Watt is a Watt, and that it doesn't really matter if you're grinding your way up a hill towing a trailer behind your steel-framed beater at 9mph or all dorked out on on your fancy carbon race bike doing 25+. Just get out there and give it hell on a daily basis and you'll be fine. I guess I was going to put that theory to the test on this one.

So coming out of T1 I executed my first flying mount of 2013 without falling over, got into my shoes and commenced giving it hell. I'm still one of those non-power meter using Luddites, so I settled into my "I left the house kind of late on my way to work and need to hustle if I'm going to make this stupid 8 o'clock meeting in time" pace and was pleasantly surprised to look down and see that it was netting me a ~23mph pace into a pretty stiff headwind. It will take a bit to recalibrate my brain after a long winter of seeing 15mph on the commute for that same effort. This was the first point that I stated thinking I might have a pretty good race in me after all.

I passed a couple guys from my AG within the first 5 miles, then a couple relay riders in the next 5 and it was all open road in front of me until I saw the pros coming back the other way around mile 20. 

The course is an out and back and we were pushing a solid ~10-15mph headwind on the way out. It is however, pool-table flat with very few turns so I was able to stay aero the whole time and keep the average speed respectable. After making the turn and picking up the tailwind I started passing a few of the female pros.

My nutrition "plan", to really stretch the definition of the word plan, was to eat one gel at each of the 3 aid stations and grab bottles of water once I ran through the 2 bottles of sports drink I started out with. For whatever reason that left me really bloated and gassy by about mile 30. I even puked up a little bit of gel at one point, but my legs still felt fine so I was able to keep up the pace. Luckily everything started to normalize by about mile 45 and I was able to keep riding strong all the way back to transition for a 2:13 split, which is way better than I could have reasonably expected going in, so no complaints there.

T2 went off without a hitch, although I was surprised to see one bike already racked up not too far from me. It couldn't have been a relay because they were all the way on the other side of transition, so it had to have been another M35-39'er. That was surprising because I thought I was keeping a pretty good lookout at the turnarounds and thought it was nothing but relays and pros out front. Oh well, either I catch him or I don't. One foot in front of the other either way.

Run

Immediately upon leaving transition I was passed like I wasn't even moving by a couple relay guys, who were considerate enough to clearly identify themselves as relay runners by wearing splits and singlets. I did my best to ignore them and set off at my own pace.

And now the TMI/gross part. I'd been feeling kind of like I had to pee since about mile 45 on the bike, and I'm not above pissing all over myself on the bike, but it never got bad enough to have to take action. Once I started bouncing around on the run, however, I really didn't have much of a choice anymore. I had already left the transition port-o-pots behind and I didn't feel like stopping anyway so I figured what the hell, may as well let it fly on the run. I figured pissing on the street is pretty much standard operating procedure for New Orleans anyway, right? So if you've ever wondered if it's possible to take a piss while running a sub-6 mile... yes, yes it is.

My now piss-soaked self reached the first mile marker in a nice brisk 5:43, which is unsustainably fast for me, so I made a concerted effort to pull it back a  bit.  I covered the next mile in 6:03 and settled in at 6:19 for mile 3, which actually felt reasonably comfortable.

Somewhere between mile markers 3 and 4 I caught up to the owner of the mystery bike in T2 and we exchanged pleasantries as I went around for the pass. I built maybe a 20 second gap by mile 5, but some combination of him speeding up and me slowing down had us running together by mile 7. We ran together for a couple miles and actually chatted a bit. Turns out his name is Shane Niemeyer and he has a pretty interesting life story. At around mile 9 Shane became bored with my company and dropped the hammer on me and started to pull away. Lucky for me he had divulged that he was 4th into the water in our group, meaning he had at least 3-4 minutes head start on me. That gave me the luxury of keeping my own pace and not having to try to respond. By now my stomach was once again protesting the crap I'd been stuffing into it. It likely would not have gone well had I tried to counter his move.

I managed to keep plugging along at ~6:20/mi and eventually the gap between us settled at ~30 seconds. Somewhere very close to the end, like mile 12.5 or so, Shane actually stopped and was bent over grabbing his ankle as I ran past. Talking to him after the race, apparently it occasionally pops out of joint and he has to manually jam it back in. Gnarly. He eventually got it sorted out and re-passed me in the finish chute, but by then I was feeling pretty secure for the AG win knowing that I started so far back.

Post-Race

Since I forgot to start my watch before the swim I still didn't know what my final time was. Eventually I made my way over to the results tent and got my printout saying I did a 4:05:52. Given the lack of preparation I would have been very happy with anything under 4:15, so to come in almost 10 minutes ahead of that and win my AG by a healthy margin is nothing short of amazing for me. I guess that's why we race instead of just comparing training logs and calling it a day.

Winning my AG conferred upon me the privilege of signing up for the 70.3 World Championship in Vegas this September. Of course, being that WTC is very much a for-profit concern they need their money up front. So after walking back to the hotel to retrieve my checkbook I approached the Vegas signup table to claim my slot. As we were completing my registration the girl behind the table said, "I'm going to need one more thing from you." "Ok," I said, "What do you need." She said, "I'm gonna need about tree fiddy." It was right then that I noticed the WTC representative was actually 8 stories tall and from the Paleolithic era.  That damned Loch Ness Monster had tricked me again! "Dammit monstah! I ain't givin' you no tree fiddy!" I yelled as she swam off into the distance.






Some of you reading this are probably productive members of society and as such do not waste enough time on the internet to understand the whole Loch Ness Monster bit at the end. It's from South Park.  Lrn 2 internet.  The fee to register for Vegas happens to be $350 and I couldn't resist. 

Cooking with Matt

Alright... my first ever off-season update. When I started this blog I had every intention of posting regular updates on a wide variety of topics, yet here I sit 2+ years later and every single post is a race report. So how can I go on calling this The Most Interesting Man in Columbia Heights?  Well...

I pretty much am that one-dimensional and boring. Now I could do the standard training update you routinely see on your typical triathlon-focused blog, but that would be even more boring and repetitive than an endless stream of very-much-identical race reports. It's December. I'm swimming a lot. We'll leave it at that.

Today I'm not going to say one more damn word about triathlon. I'm going to take one small step toward earning my blog title and drop some real 21st century Renaissance man shit on you. We're going to be talking about cooking. Yes, you heard me right. Cooking. I'm going to take you through all the steps necessary to make a boss level pizza from scratch right in your own kitchen.

Before we begin, we have to clear a couple things up. First and most important, proper pizza has thin crust. If you prefer that deep dish abomination they erroneously refer to as pizza in Chicago, you are a weird pervert and we probably can't be friends. I think there are support groups for that sort of thing. Second, this is not a process for the impatient. It is absolutely essential to cold ferment your dough overnight at a minimum. You can Google recipes claiming that you can mix up the dough and throw it straight in the oven, but they are lying to you. Sure, the results are edible, but so is the pizza crust in a can you can get at the grocery store, which happens to be roughly the quality you'll get if you cut corners on your homemade dough.  If you're OK with that level of quality just save yourself a lot of work and get the pre-made crap. Or better yet pick up the phone and have something delivered. 

Now that we've got that out of the way, you're going to need a couple key pieces of equipment. First, you will need a proper pizza stone. This is essential to get enough heat into the crust to cook it properly while at the same time not decomposing your cheese into its constituent atoms. You can't skimp on quality here either. We're going to be firing the oven up as hot as it will go, which for most consumer grade ovens means somewhere between 500ºF and 550ºF and some stoneware can't handle this much heat (I found this out the hard way). I ended up getting this one from Amazon based on the favorable reviews and it's been performing admirably. Next you will need a pizza peel. That's one of those giant spatulas that you'll see guys using in legit pizzerias to get the pies in and out of the oven. If you're a ninja you can probably make it happen without the peel, but having one makes the whole process 1000% easier.

I am not a ninja.

First up... the dough. My dough recipe is a fairly standard New York style, with the proportions arrived at via extensive trial and error (I ended up going relatively heavy on the sugar and olive oil because sugar and olive oil are awesome):

• 2 cups unbleached flour (I just use all-purpose, one of these days I'll get around to experimenting with some of that fancy-pants Italian 00 stuff)
• 1 teaspoon active-dry yeast
• 1.5 teaspoons salt
• 3 teaspoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Start by thoroughly mixing the yeast with 3/4 cup of hot water and let it sit for about 5 minutes. While you're waiting for that, mix up the flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Then dump the olive oil and yeast/water mix in and stir it all up. Before long you'll have a sticky ball of goo that looks something like this:

Once it gets too thick for the spoon we have to get down to the messy business of kneading our dough ball. If you have the means this would be an excellent job for a stand mixer, but I keep it ghetto and just get in there with both hands. After a couple minutes of kneading the dough should smooth out and stop sticking to everything in sight. If it doesn't, work in more flour until it does (and it shouldn't take much, a tiny bit of flour goes a long way here). At the end of the process you should have a nice smooth ball of dough:

This much dough would make one enormous pie, so I cut it in half and put both of the dough balls into a container which goes straight into the fridge.  The dough should roughly double in volume after 24 hours. The 24-hour dough makes a pretty solid pizza, but it seems like my best pies have come from 2-3 day old dough.

Fresh balls

Bigger balls

Now that the dough is out of the way we can tackle the sauce. I started by following this recipe exactly, and the results were... meh, OK I guess. But it was lacking a certain something so I ended up modifying the original recipe fairly significantly (again through good old trial and error):

• 28 ounce can of tomatoes (either whole-peeled or diced, I doubt it matters much in the final product)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon dried basil leaves
• 1 yellow onion
• 2 teaspoons sugar

From there just follow the procedure in the recipe linked above. Two things they don't mention though: First, drain the tomatoes before you puree them. Sure you can cook off the extra water, but why waste the time?  Second, you take the onion halves out and throw them away at the end (although this should be fairly obvious). I also disagree with their idea of only chopping the tomatoes down to ~1/16" chunks. I've found that a smoother sauce is easier to spread evenly over the pizza, but it tastes the same either way.

Sauce in process

Now that we've got our dough and sauce, we can get started on the fun part -- making the actual pizza. Step one: crank your oven up as high as it will go and let the stone pre-heat for at least 30 minutes. My oven tops out at 550ºF, but I've made a few pies at 500ºF as well with good results. While you're waiting for the oven to heat up, flatten out your dough ball into something more pizza shaped. I'd like to say I do this by tossing  the dough up in the air while humming the theme from The Godfather, but I'm nowhere near that skilled so I just lay a piece of parchment paper down on the pizza peel (this is fairly critical to be able to get the pizza off of the peel and into the oven) then plop the dough down on the paper and flatten it out with a roller. How thin you want to roll it out is completely up to your personal preference, just remember that it will roughly double in thickness as it cooks. I usually get a 12-13" diameter pie out of one of ball of dough.

Dough ready for toppings

Now just top it however you want. Personally I prefer a fine white wine alfredo sauce with free range goat cheese and organic baby arugula... oh wait a minute, I'm not a fucking hippie. I hit that thing with a generous layer of the red sauce we made earlier and finish it off with a big ol' pile of mozzarella and pepperoni. On a more serious note, do not use pre-shredded cheese of any sort. They cake that stuff with cellulose to keep it from clumping together in the bag, which really messes up the way it melts in the oven. You'll get a much better end product if you buy a block and do work with a cheese grater.

Ready for the oven

Once your stone is nice and hot slide the pie onto the stone, parchment paper and all. You'll have to experiment to find your optimum cook time based on the thickness of your crust, your choice of toppings and the actual temp of your oven (consumer-grade ovens have notoriously shitty temp control, on the order of ±50ºF from what you set it at). For my pepperoni pizza in my oven set at 550ºF, 5 minutes and 30 seconds seems to do the trick.

Bam... pizza's done! Nothing to do now but let it cool down for a couple minutes, then slice it up and dig in.  Buon Appetito! (Google tells me that's Italian for Bon Appetit)

Mikey approved!

PR or ER (aka 70.3 World Championship Epic Fail Report)

This got really long.  Here's the Cliff's Notes version for people who either don't have the time to read the next several thousand words or who just don't like me that much (both completely understandable):

• Go to Vegas for 70.3 Worlds
• Gamble a bit and play a ton of pinball in the days before the race
• Race day: Swim well, bike OK, attempt to suicide myself on the run
• DNF to med tent, ambulance ride to ER, overnight hospital stay
• Doctors run some tests, tell me I may have a serious heart condition
• Doctors run more tests, do a complete 180º and tell me I'm fine

The Long Version

Well... that did not go according to plan. I didn't sleep at all on Sunday night. That in and of itself is not the problem as the plan did not schedule any sleep that evening. The plan was to be on the Vegas Strip all night making it rain celebrating an AG win at 70.3 Worlds. Instead, I spent Sunday night (and most of Monday) at the St. Rose Dominican Hospital flat on my back, unable to sleep because I was covered in needles and electrodes. How did this unfortunate series of events come to pass? Read on...

Pre-Race

I arrived in Vegas on Thursday afternoon feeling on top of the world. I had just come off an AG win at Nationals a few weeks ago and had been absolutely crushing it in training since then. I felt like another AG win was mine for the taking. Hell, even 1st OA amateur didn't seem totally out of the question, although realistically I'd need a bit of good luck for that. Either way, I showed up in the best shape I've ever been in, fully tapered and ready to go.

After loading up the rental car, I headed on over to my hotel in Henderson and checked in. My room looked like one of those fake studio apartments they set up inside of IKEA.

After assembling the bike and hitting the grocery store to stock up my mini-fridge I headed on over to Green Valley ranch to donk around on the poker tables for a bit before heading back to my hotel to call it an early night.

Friday morning I headed over to the race site and jogged one loop of the run course prior to picking up my race packet. Since that was all over and done with by 10AM and bike dropoff wasn't until Saturday, I had the rest of the day to kill. If there's one thing you can say about Vegas, it's that it is just about impossible to be bored there. Name an activity, and it's available in this town (for a price, of course). As luck would have it the price of my chosen activity was only a handful of quarters, because I ended up going to the Pinball Hall of Fame.

This picture shows ~10% of their machines.

This place is beyond amazing. They do not charge admission, you just walk in, plunk your quarters into the game of your choice and do work. They had not one, but two of my 2nd favorite machine ever, Attack From Mars...

Destroy the saucer!

And my #1 all time favorite pinball machine, Star Trek, The Next Generation...

Resistance is futile!

My skills are a little rusty compared to my college student union glory days, but I still managed to hit the replay score often enough to make 5 bucks last for 3 hours. I ended up leaving only because my feet were starting to get sore from standing up so long. A repeat visit is definitely on my list next time I'm in Vegas.

Saturday was bike and run gear check in. I decided to go for a short ride prior to check in and managed to flat my front tire about a mile out of transition. Luckily some friendly Germans were driving past at the time and offered me a ride back to my car. I never got their names, but I made sure to thank them profusely for saving me from having to waste my only spare tube and CO2 cartridge before the race even started.

Once back at transition I walked around looking for a place to buy a new tube. Strangely, WTC only had official bike tech support back in Henderson. Nothing at all at the lake. I really didn't want to have to make another round trip back into town just to fix a flat. However, I vaguely remembered a large trailer full of bikes a few hundred yards up the road so I set off in that direction. Turns out that trailer was manned by a friendly gentleman named Nick, owner and proprietor of SAGmonkey, who hooked me up with a new tube and valve extender. Seriously nice guy. If you find yourself out on the West Coast and want to ride look these guys up!

After bike checkin it was back into town to drop off my run gear. As I was walking through the expo on my way back to the car, the day's trend of strangers treating me way nicer than I deserve continued. I stopped by the Foster Grant booth to look at their sunglasses and the guy there hooked me up with a free pair in exchange for filling out a survey. Nice! After that it was back to the room to try and rest up as much as possible.

Race Day

Finally, race day. I felt like I had been in Vegas for weeks at this point. Since my body clock was still on Central time waking up at 4AM was no sweat and I got out to Lake Las Vegas nice and early. The race started with the pros at 6:30 with my wave scheduled to go off at 7:20. After watching the pro start I got into line with the rest of my wave and shuffled along as we waited our turn. Everything moved along relatively quickly and we entered the water right on schedule.

For some reason they split M35-39 into three waves, of which I was in the 2nd, so there was plenty of room on the starting line. Being the World Championship I expected the start the be pretty rough, but it was actually very mellow since there were so few of us in the wave and we all had plenty of space. A few hundred meters in I settled into a draft and stayed there around both of the turns. Maybe 2/3 of the way into the swim we started running into significant traffic from the previous waves and I lost my draft, so I kept on plugging away on my own. I got out of the water at 28:46, which is a huge personal best for me in a non-wetsuit 1/2-iron swim. If there's one positive I can take away from this race it's the swim.

T1 was a total gong show. I ran down the wrong row and couldn't find my bike, wasting at least 30 seconds. Eventually I stumbled to the correct rack and got my swimskin off and my helmet on. After a long run up to the mount line I finally got rolling.

The bike course starts out tough with a significant climb and doesn't get any easier. I seriously doubt there's a  mile of flat road the entire 56 miles. Traffic was pretty thin thanks to the small waves and 5 minute spacing so moving up through the field never required too much evasive maneuvering. I took 2 bottles at every aid station and did my best to stay hydrated, but that was starting to become a losing battle as the temp climbed up toward 100.

Just after the turnaround at about mile 30 Sami Inkinen came around me for the pass. Sami went sub-9 at Kona last year and is consistently at the top of the AG results and was a logical pick to be on the podium at this race, so I didn't want to let him get away. I managed to re-pass him a couple minutes later and stayed in front for a bit, but eventually he must have decided to kick it up a notch because he went flying by and before I knew what was happening he had about a 10 second gap. I pushed hard trying to close the gap, but he kept slipping farther forward and I eventually had to back off the pace and resign myself to letting him ride away. It's not every day I get broken off like that on the bike, dude is a certified beast.

The good news is that while I was unsuccessfully trying to chase down Sami I passed Tim Hola, who is another guy with extremely impressive credentials. He also started five minutes ahead of me in the previous wave, so that was encouraging. The rest of the bike was fairly boring and I made it to T2 with a 2:25 split. I had seriously underestimated the difficulty of this course as I had targeted a 2:20 split based on the map and elevation profile.

T2 had valet parking. Right at the mount line there was a gang of volunteers grabbing bikes as we jumped off. Nice. I grabbed my gear bag, busted ass through the change tent as fast as possible and got out onto the run.

As I crossed the timing mat marking the official start of the run I looked down at my watch and saw that I was right at the 3 hour mark. As I sit here writing this a week and a half later I can identify this precise moment as when my race went off the rails. Pre-race I had targeted 4:20 as my goal time. So I looked down at my watch and said, "alright, 1:20 it is, let's do this." With a flat course on a cool day that's not totally out of the realm of possibility. Unfortunately for me, this was not a flat course or a cool day, and with the clarity of hindsight it seems like such an obvious rookie mistake to try and run that fast on that course in those conditions, but at the time I was most certainly not thinking logically. I didn't go out to Vegas to not gamble. I was all in.

I started out feeling pretty decent heading down the hill to the first turnaround. I was keeping a lookout for Sami heading back up the hill the other way but I never saw him. At the time I figured he was so far ahead of me that it was hopeless, but anything can happen in a race like this so I stayed on the gas.

After the first turnaround at ~1mi there is a solid 2 mile uphill to the next turnaround. I was still feeling good so I kept pushing it hard all the way up. On way back through transition I heard a nice loud, "Hey Minnesota!" in a thick German accent. It was a guy I had met on the walk between the parking lot and bike checkin the day before. I gave my new German friend a high five as I blasted through. Just before I made the turn at the top I saw Sami heading the other way and the gap was right around a minute. Holy crap... I'm still in this thing. I pushed hard all the way back down the hill and managed to catch him right at the turnaround at the bottom of the hill at mile 5 or so.

On the way back up the hill I started to feel pretty crusty, but this is completely standard at this point in the race so I just did my best to keep the pace up and put some distance between me and Sami. I made the turnaround at the top of the hill (about mile 7) still feeling what I can best describe as "acceptably shitty" and made the turn to go back down. As I passed back through the transition area to start the 3rd lap my pace really started to suffer and I was rapidly passed by about a dozen people after not being passed by anyone for the entirety of the first two laps. Even this wasn't too alarming as I was starting lap 3 and many of the people passing me had to be on lap 2. I saw my one-man German fan club one last time and couldn't even muster up the strength to slap his hand as I went by.

At this point I was concerned about my pace falling off, but I was still thinking about the podium, not survival. That all changed within the span of a minute. About a half mile down the hill from transition (I think, this part is a little fuzzy) it was like someone threw a switch and my body just crapped out. The last thing I remember was veering off to the left and ending up on the curb, thinking to myself, "Wow, that's not right," then jumping back down on the road only to end up back over to the left on the curb a couple steps later. Then next thing I remember is sitting on the grass on the right side of the road (I have no idea how I got  all the way over to that side) being handed a bottle of water, insta-puking said water upon trying to drink and thinking, "Where the fuck am I?"

<The next couple paragraphs may or may not have happened as written, the memory is fuzzy at best>

After a couple minutes sitting there things started to slowly come back to me. Where am I... oh yeah, Vegas... what am I doing here... ummm, some sort of race... oh yeah, 70.3 Worlds... fuck, I think I was winning my age group and now I'm not even going to finish. All the while I was trying to drink but nothing at all was staying down.

Eventually I was loaded into a golf cart to head back to the med tent. I have no idea how long that ride actually took, but it felt like hours. My condition steadily worsened the whole ride and by the end of it I couldn't feel my legs, was having trouble breathing and was thoroughly convinced I was going to die. I very distinctly remember the only coherent thing going through my mind at the time was the repeating thought, "Don't close your eyes... don't close your eyes." I also remember absolutely screaming at the driver trying to get him to go faster. Race director Frank Lowery called me on Wednesday to see how I was doing. It turns out he was the guy driving the cart. Frank, if by some one in a million shot you stumble upon this blog, thank you again. I can't possibly apologize enough for whatever I may have yelled at you while you were driving.

Upon reaching the med tent I was hoisted out of the cart, plopped down onto a cot and had an IV jammed into my arm. After a couple minutes a girl came by with a name tag that identified her as a nursing student, which, ridiculous as it sounds was a huge relief to me. I figured if they're unleashing the students on me I must not be actually dying.

An IV bag and a few glasses of Coke later I again had full use of my arms and legs, but my head still felt pretty fuzzy. Several people asked me for my race number and I couldn't remember it to save my life. It also took me a few moments to remember my age when asked. This set off a whole new round of terror in my head as I was now convinced I was permanently brain damaged and doomed to spend the rest of my life as an incoherent moron who can't even remember his age.

Over the next hour or so I laid there in the med tent trying convince myself I wasn't brain damaged by attempting to remember random facts like family and friends' phone numbers and birthdays. I also ran through the multiplication tables and some basic arithmetic in my head. Luckily it all came back relatively quickly and my fear of knocking a few points off my already suspect IQ was gradually replaced with anger at not finishing the damn race.

Eventually a doctor came by and told me I wasn't coming around fast enough and he was recommending I go to the ER. I put up a pretty feeble argument against it, but I was obviously not quite all there yet and ended up relenting. So when the EMT's showed up I hopped onto the stretcher to take the roll of shame through the packed finish line area out to a waiting ambulance. 

It was only a 5 minute or so ride to the hospital and I was wheeled into the ER to await evaluation. Over the next couple of hours they poked and prodded at me in a variety of ways. First they took some blood for the lab, then they wheeled in a portable x-ray machine for a chest x-ray, then someone showed up with an ultrasound rig to look at my heart.  By now it's somewhere around 6PM and I'm actually feeling somewhat normal, so I'm confused at why they kept ordering additional tests to say the least.

While I was laying there the EMT's who brought me in stopped by a couple times to see how I was doing. I'm not sure how it even came up, but on one of their visits I somehow mentioned that my hotel was only a couple miles from the race site. The EMT then completely blew my mind by volunteering to get my bike and drop it off at the hotel. Apparently when they're not responding to a call they're allowed to do pretty much whatever they want provided they stay within their assigned area. Since both the hotel and race site were within their area using the ambulance to haul my bike was completely above board. I never got the guy's name, but whoever you are, thank you immensely. It would have been a colossal pain in the ass to try to track down my bike the next day.

Finally after several hours in the ER a doctor shows up and starts saying something about Troponin levels and T-waves. Apparently between my labs, EKG readings and ultrasound images they hadn't ruled out some sort of heart condition. Anything from congenital hypertropic cardiomyopathy to a straight up heart attack. Seriously!?! A fucking heart attack?!?!? The one place that I had never felt any pain through this whole ordeal was my chest. Wouldn't I have known if I had a heart attack? Regardless, the doctor told me I was being admitted for observation over the night and should expect further testing by a cardiologist the next morning.

After a couple more hours sitting there in the ER I was wheeled up into a room. This was a significant upgrade because I had a TV. I was getting pretty bored staring at the wall down in the ER. Now there was nothing to do but settle in for a long night and call home to Tiffany and let everyone know I was still alive.

After a night of little to no sleep Monday morning finally arrived and someone showed up to roll me down to the lab for a cardiac stress test. For those lucky enough to have never had this experience, it involves being shot full of some sort of radioactive tracer and imaged under a gamma camera, getting your heart rate elevated to ~85% of max either the old fashioned way (running on a treadmill) or via drugs, then getting another dose of radioactive juice and going back under the camera. I'm still waiting on my super powers to develop.

So after the first image they wheel me over to the testing area and hand me a consent form for the drug-induced stress test. OH HELL NO. I inform the nurse that sitting on a bed perfectly still while my heart spazzes out is not an option and it's the treadmill or nothing. She kept trying to tell me that the cardiologist (who I had still not met) had ordered the drug-induced test and did not want me to run. I dug my heels in and eventually she called the cardiologist who approved the treadmill test with zero hesitation. WTF?!? Who the hell is actually in charge here and why can I ask one person what the hell is going on and get one answer, then a few minutes later ask someone else and get the completely opposite answer?

With the blessing of the mystery cardiologist I got wired up to yet another EKG and hit the treadmill. Holy crap it felt good to move my legs a little after being flat on my back for the better part of 24 hours. As the treadmill started at desert tortoise pace I was told the speed and incline would be kicked up a notch every three minutes until my heart rate reached 158, then I had to maintain that for a minute. I finally got there 18 minutes in, which I was told by the staff was a record. Sweet, I may have DNF'ed the world championship, but I rewrote the record for a cardiac test usually given to elderly heart patients.

After another round of images I was sent back to my room. After another several hours watching crappy daytime TV I finally came face to face with the mystery cardiologist. Dude walks into the room, shakes my hand, and tells me, "You have what we call an 'athlete's heart'. You're perfectly healthy and we're discharging you this afternoon." 

Don't get me wrong, this is much better news than being told my heart is going to explode, but at the time I was just sitting there slackjawed wondering why in the world it took a 24 hour hospital stay and many thousands of dollars worth of testing to come to this conclusion. I asked if I needed to limit my physical activity at all and he said no, I was free to do pretty much whatever I wanted. And just like that homeboy left the room and I had nothing to do but pack up my crap and figure out how I was going to get to my car, which was a solid 20 miles away out at the lake. I'm sure I looked something like this the rest of that day...

Several hours and one expensive cab ride later I had retrieved my car and made my way back to the hotel. It was still only 8PM and I briefly considered trying to rally and hit the strip, but as soon as I saw the bed the whole ordeal caught up with me and my energy-o-meter went straight down to zero.

So what's next? No idea. I feel pretty good right now all things considered and would like to race again this season to try to redeem myself from such an epic fail in Vegas, but I'm honestly a little scared to race given how everything went down. I figure I'll chill out for another week or two and then reevaluate whether or not it makes sense to try and rally for a late-October race somewhere, otherwise I'll just throw in the towel on the 2012 campaign knowing I've failed in a way in which only a select few have managed to fail, which I guess is sort of a win.

Age Group Nationals

Cryptozoology

Did you know Lake Champlain has a legit lake monster? Yep, sure does. His name is Champ. And  he has his own Wikipedia page, several fan sites and is the mascot of my new 2nd favorite minor league baseball team. My favorite minor league baseball team would naturally be the Beloit Snappers. I judge minor league baseball teams purely on the awesomeness of their mascot.

Anyway, I recently headed out to Vermont to search for lake monsters race USAT Age Group Nationals. Since my aunt, uncle and grandmother live in New Hampshire just a couple hours south of Burlington, Tiff and Michael came along as well. Speaking of Mikey, he's a full on walker now...

He's still in the Frankenstein/straight arms and legs stage, but I have faith that he'll adopt my trademark T-rex running style soon enough.

The Pre-Race Jams

How hard do they party in Sweden? This hard...

The Race

Swim

My swimming A-game is a little like the elusive Champ. Somewhere I'm sure there's a grainy photo of me exiting the water in an Olympic distance race in under 20 minutes. Some less than credible people (they get in a pool at 6:30 every morning, so they must be at least a little nuts) could tell you about sets I've done in practice that indicate I should be a sub-20-in-a-wetsuit kind of guy. But somehow on race day I tend to find a way to make that not happen.

I got excited looking at the map of the swim course before the race this year because it looked like they got rid of the first turn. In 2011 there was a 90 degree turn right about at 200m. That turn buoy was the mother of all aquatic mosh pits. I probably would have had better luck standing up and walking over the top of people like a lumberjack on a log jam than I did trying to swim through there. On the map it looked like USAT listened to the complaints and gave us a straight shot out to ~600m, which would give the pack plenty of time to thin out and make the 1st turn much less of a fistfight. I was a bit disappointed when I showed up on race day to see that they set the course exactly the same as last year, shitty 1st turn and all.

What that all means is that the best way to swim this course is to go 100% balls out to the 1st turn and hope to get through ahead of the bulk of the pack. Sure, it sucks to start a 2 hour race completely smashed, but it beats the alternative, which is getting slowed to a standstill and punched in the face repeatedly.

Given all of the above I decided to line up toward the inside for the in-water start and did my fair share of elbowing and kicking to hold my position on the front row while we were treading water waiting for the horn. Once the horn went off I put my head down, windmilled my arms and kicked like a maniac trying not to get swallowed up by the bulk of the pack. It worked fairly well as I stayed toward the front got around the dreaded buoy with no real issues and surprisingly little contact.

After rounding the turn the swim got nasty. The wind was blowing hard out of the Northwest producing 3-4 foot chop and we were swimming straight North, which is a problem for me since I breathe left which meant every breath was a roll of the dice as to whether I'd get a mouthful of air or a mouthful of lake. This was easily the toughest conditions I've ever had to race in. To make matters worse I tend to veer right even in calm water, so given an even harder push to the right from the wind and waves I promptly found myself way off course. Looking back the smart thing to do would have been to cut straight back over to the left and try to get on some feet and let some other chump fight his way through the chop for me, but I rarely do the smart thing in the water and kept trying to re-sight on the buoy line to minimize the extra distance, which resulted in me swimming that entire leg of the course completely by myself.

Eventually I found my way to the 2nd turn and managed to navigate between there and the 3rd turn without undue difficulty, although by this time I was right in the thick of the earlier waves so there was a bit of zig-zagging to get around people. Once I rounded the 3rd turn I again found myself completely alone, with everyone else 10-20m off to my left, only this time I was right on the buoy line. It seems the wind was pushing everyone else over to the left and my tendency to pull right was keeping me swimming straight. Alright! My time to shine!

I got around the last two turns fairly easily but took them very wide to avoid traffic. Again I ended up way over to the right on the final leg leading into the boat ramp, which kind of sucked because there were weeds over there that felt like barbed wire on my face, but at least this time I didn't add much extra distance. I finally ran up the ramp amidst a sea of folks from previous waves without a single cap from my wave in the immediate vicinity. I chose to do the race sans watch so I had no idea what the damage was, but at the time I figured it had to be substantial. I was actually pleasantly surprised to see 22:32 for my swim split in the results after the race.  That's 30 seconds faster than my 2011 split in way, way, way worse conditions (and likely a non-trivial amount of bonus distance). Still not the elusive A-game because I easily left a minute or two out there by wandering off course and swimming alone, but I'll give myself a B-minus for the effort.

T1

I was racked toward the far end of the space allotted for the M35-39er's, so I was able to get a pretty good assessment of where I stood relative to my age group as I ran toward my bike. There were very few missing bikes and Mark Harms was pulling his bike off the rack right as I ran by, putting him only 30 seconds or so up on me. Mark is historically a much faster swimmer than me, so if we're in T1 at the same time I'm doing alright. I got stood up at the mount line for a few seconds by some people from the earlier waves, but that's pretty much to be expected with a wave start so no big deal.

Bike

About 200m into the bike course there was a fairly rough railroad crossing. I felt something brush my leg as I crossed the tracks, but didn't think anything of it as I looked down and confirmed that my bottle was still in place. I found out what had hit my leg a few seconds later after I finished strapping into my shoes and got down into the aerobars. It was one of my aerobar pads. Oh well, nothing to do but keep going, so I did the rest of the ride with my left arm sitting on the velcro about 1/2" lower than my right arm, which was still on the remaining pad.

I scooped up a few guys from my wave within the first handful of uphill miles and caught sight of Mark somewhere around mile 8-ish. I rode absolutely as hard as I could while passing him in hopes of building a gap. I fought the urge to look back all the way out the the turnaround where I saw that I had a pretty good sized gap, maybe 30-45 seconds or so. There's not much to say about the remainder of the ride. It's net downhill from the turnaround back to transition, so I rode hard-but-not-too-hard and started thinking about setting up a good run.

T2

I was happy to see that there were zero bikes on my rack when I arrived. My position was confirmed by the race announcer who said that I was the first M35-39 off the bike. The actual transition was pretty crusty. I had some trouble getting into my running shoes which cost me a few seconds, but I managed to get all the way through transition before Mark or anyone else from M35-39 got off the bike, so that was nice.

Run

This run almost killed me last year. It starts out with a very steep ~1/4mi long uphill straight out of transition. I heard people after the race saying that it's a 17% grade, but that seems a little generous. It's goes up 150 vertical feet in roughly 1/4mi, which my back of the envelope math tells me is on the order of 11%, which seems a bit more realistic. Either way, it is not a pleasant stretch of road to run up.

The correct way to tackle this course is to go relatively easy up the hill, recover a bit on top and then let 'er rip the rest of the way. Last year I did the exact opposite. I attacked the shit out of that hill and continued to run like a complete maniac for the first couple miles only to completely and predictably fall apart in the last mile of the race and put up my most disappointing run split of the 2011 season.

This year I had my head on straight and kept myself in check on the hill. It was more of a walk/shuffle near the top than a proper run. Once I got over the top I was able to open up my stride a bit and start clicking off 5:30-ish miles. I started in wave 5 and waves 1-4 were the 50+ age groups, but there are some fast old dudes out there so I had plenty of targets up the road to keep me motivated. I would also be lying if I said I didn't sneak a few looks back to make sure Mark wasn't sneaking up on me.

Taking it easy up the hill paid off and I was able to keep it together over the last few miles and finish strong. I ended up reeling in all but 2 of the early starters, both of whom went off 25 minutes ahead of me in wave 1. The final time was 1:57:52, with a 34:39 run split which was especially satisfying after not even cracking 36 minutes last year. At the end of the day that ended up being good for 10th overall.

Since I was only the 3rd guy to cross the line and the first under 2 hours the announcer made me feel like a big deal. They even put up a finishing tape, which was a new experience for nationals. In both of my previous nationals I started in one of the back waves and came across the finish line as just another anonymous face in the cast of thousands. This year I finished all alone with nobody within a minute on either side with 100% of the attention focused on me. I clowned around a bit in the final 100m delivering a few high fives to the spectators, which was fun, but getting to the line 3 seconds sooner would have bumped me up to ninth in the overall standings. Ah well... lesson learned for next year. Go hard all the way to the line and pretend you're in a finish line sprint, because you probably are.

The Aftermath

Mere moments after crossing the line I was whisked away to the doping control tent by a USADA official. That makes me 3 for 3 on being selected for drug testing at AG Nationals. This year I had the foresight to have them take me through the bag drop on the way so I could get into some dry clothes. That made the process about a million times more tolerable than it was in 2010 or 2011. I made it out in just a shade over 2 hours this year, which is a massive post-race drug test PR.

The awards ceremony was later that night at the host hotel and I had the pleasure of climbing up to the top step as the new National Champ of the M35-39 age group. The Minnesota contingent was loud as always and we made sure to class the place up with a couple styrofoam coolers full of PBR. Not a bad day for me at all.

I'll end this one with a huge shout-out to everyone who helps to make a trip like this possible. TCMC for general awesomeness. Grand Performance bike shop for keeping me geared up properly. My Aunt Val and Uncle Bob for outstanding hospitality and being extra cool about having a one year old wrecking machine unleashed on their house. And last but not least my beautiful wife Tiffany and awesome son Michael who inexplicably see nothing wrong with me flying across the country to compete for a prize purse of zero dollars. You guys are amazing!