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!

Lifetime Fitness Tri and a Bunch of Other Stuff

So it's been a couple months since my last update.  But hey, you get what you pay for... and I'm writing this for free. I've raced a buttload in the last few weeks. Here's the TL;DR writeups for a few races prior to a long-winded retelling of my day at LTF.

Trinona

My knee was pretty banged up after crashing at Apple and I missed some training because of it. Not surprisingly I felt kind of sluggish at Trinona and finished over a minute slower than last year. But I still managed 3rd, which is the best case scenario with DKT and Hedgecock on the starting line. Good enough.

Lake Waconia

This was one of those rare days where I was firing on all cylinders. I swam about as well as I'm capable of, biked to the front and hung on during the run to cross the line in first by a substantial margin, setting a huge personal best on that course on a day when pretty much nobody else did. Alas, the referees had other ideas. Oh well, they can take away my win, but they can never take away my giant freakin' banner.

North Mankato Triathlon

I wasn't originally planning on doing this race at the beginning of the season but ended up registering last minute. Having grown up in North Mankato, this race is basically a trip down memory lane. The race itself was pretty straightforward. I got out of the water in 5th or 6th, took the lead about 3 miles into the bike, got off the bike way out front and cruised it in on the run. The bike course is definitely the highlight of this race. It's an out-and-back that follows a really cool winding road along the Minnesota river before a pretty legit little climb out of the river valley. And best of all, the course is closed to traffic. I dare anyone to find me another race anywhere with closed roads where you can register day-of for less than a hundred bucks. I doubt you can, because that combination probably does not exist anywhere else.

Lifetime Fitness Triathlon

LTF has always been "the one that got away" for me. I've done this race twice previously and come up just short of my goal both times. The first time was 2009. Back then I had never broken 2 hours in an Olympic distance race, so naturally my goal was to finish in a time that started with a 1. My finish time in 2009: 2:00:01.6. FAIL. We got to wear wetsuits that year too so I couldn't even use that excuse.

In 2010 I showed up looking for a podium spot in the elite amateur wave. I kicked off the day with an inexcusably awful 23:35 swim and only managed to claw my way back up to 4th by the time I crossed the line. I also didn't break 2 hours again. Double FAIL.

This year was going to be different. I was coming off of strong races at Waconia and North Mankato and had been killing it in training in the weeks leading up to the race. This was the year I was going to finally stand on the LTF podium.

The Pre-Race Jams

The Safety Fire is the best band you've never heard of. You should all buy their debut album Grind the Ocean. The guitar playing on this record is SICK.  And that's in all caps for a reason. One of the hardest things to pull off in music is to write stuff that's technically interesting but doesn't come off as pretentious wankery. These guys absolutely nail it.

So go buy their record. I don't want my kid to grow up in a world where Justin Bieber is a millionaire while these guys tour in a crappy old conversion van and work shitty day jobs. Do it for the children.

The Race

I don't know what my deal is, but I've been having really lackluster starts this year. LTF was no different as I was blown off the back of the lead pack inside of about 5 seconds. Some douchelord also took a really flagrant grab at my ankle and almost took my timing chip off. Luckily I had the foresight to safety pin it before the race so it stayed on, but I could feel the loose strap flapping around back there which was really annoying.  Oh well... head down and keep going.

The whole way out to the first turn I was bumping into Sean Cooley. He had the inside line at the turn and got a body length on me around the buoy. I tried to slot in behind him for the draft but I couldn't hang and he gradually pulled away. I went solo the rest of the way and just tried to keep a good turnover rate going. I ended up getting out of the water about 20 seconds behind Dan Hedgecock and about 20 seconds in front of Patrick Parish. My official swim split was 22:12, which is about a C- swim for me. That works out to 1:21/100yd if my gorilla math is to be trusted.  I warm up faster than that in the pool, so I have no excuse for crapping out these kind of times at races. Bleh...

T1 was slow since I had to fix the loose strap on my chip, but I managed to stay ahead of Patrick and get rolling on the bike without tripping over anything. Once I got strapped in and up to speed I could see Dan and about a half dozen other guys a good way up the road ahead of me. I rode pretty much as hard as I could for the first couple miles trying to catch up. I finally caught the group going through the roundabout in Minnehaha Park. Just as I was starting to work my way through the crowd I saw Sean peel off to the right and go the wrong way out of the roundabout. Bummer dude, I've been there.

Once I got through the pack I put the hammer down again to pass Dan, only to be re-passed about a minute later on River Rd. Dan and I would ride the rest of the race like that. As soon as one of us started slacking the other would blast on by. Between the constant back and forth between me and Dan and the twists and turns of the course that was without a doubt the most fun I've had on the bike during a race.

We caught a handful of guys on the St. Paul side of the river and finally got to the front of the race when we passed Jake Rhyner on the bridge back over into Minneapolis. The race almost came completely unglued for me at about mile 18 or so as we headed toward Lake Harriet on the parkway. Dan and I had been getting a fair amount of attention from a referee moto for a few miles, which is understandable as we'd been riding within a handful of bike lengths of each other the whole race. But we both know the drill and were riding clean (completing our passes in a timely manner, dropping back when passed, staying to the right, etc.), so I wasn't too worried about the ref being there. What I didn't account for were my greasy ass hands being unable to hold on to a water bottle. I squeezed the bottle to take a drink and the thing squirted out of my hand, right over my shoulder and damn near hit the motorcycle that was about 10 feet behind me. I didn't even see where it ended up so I chose to keep going rather than stop, turn around and look for it. I thought there was zero chance that went unseen and was 100% sure I had just torpedoed my podium chances by earning myself an extra 2 minutes.

Over the next couple miles I let Dan open up a ~200m gap on me as I replayed the bottle incident in my head and scolded myself for being such a klutz. Eventually I got my head back into the game and started hammering again. I figured we were far enough off the front at this point that even with a bonus 2:00 I could still hold onto a podium spot if I ran well. I caught back up to Dan on the back side of Lake Harriet and we did the pass/re-pass thing a few more times before finally arriving back at transition.

In T2 I did something completely out of character -- put up the #1 time. I've never done that at a "big" race. I look forward to someday regaling my grandkids with tales of that fateful day in 2012 when I bitchslapped the entire field in T2.

Dan must have made himself breakfast or something in T2, because I managed to stay in front of him for about the first half mile or so before he came around and started to fade off into the distance. At the first out and back on Cedar I saw that I had a little over a minute on Patrick and another 30 seconds or so on Jake. This was more or less the exact same gap I had on Patrick at that point of the run at Best of the US, where I managed to hold him off by 12 seconds, so this one was likely going to go right down to the wire as well.

At the 2nd out and back Dan was a solid minute up the road, while Patrick had closed to just under a minute. I never saw Jake on the 2nd lap, which was encouraging since I was still assuming I needed to cross the line 2 minutes in front of him to secure 3rd. Coming down the homestretch I knew Patrick was closing fast since I could hear people cheering for him behind me. Luckily for me the finish line came at 10 kilometers instead of 11 and I was able to hold him off, hitting the finish line in 1:57:46, which is an enormous PR for me on this course. My previous best was a wetsuit-aided 2-flat back in 2009.

Patrick crossed the line about 20 seconds back and I began the waiting game of looking at the clock to see if I had to worry about being knocked off the podium if I ended up taking a penalty for the bottle drop. I breathed a giant sigh of relief as Jake was the next guy across the line in 2:00:35, which meant I would end up no worse than 3rd.

At the end of the day all of my fretting about a possible penalty was for naught as my 1:57:46 and 2nd place stood on the final results. Apparently the ref was busy birdwatching or something. Maybe it was karmic payback for Waconia. Whatever... I'll take it. All in all a pretty solid day for me.

Apple Duathlon

I'm behind schedule again.  Weird, I know.  I've actually raced twice since my last update: Apple Duathlon and Trinona Triathlon.  This one will cover Apple.  I'll write up Trinona at some unspecified later date.  It may be out of order since the annual Lake Waconia throwdown is tomorrow and I'll probably write about that one while it's still fresh.

The Pre-Race Jams

Stabbing the Drama by Soilwork.  This is like the Chipotle steak burrito of metal records.  Sure, you could go to some little hole in the wall mom and pop Mexican joint on Central Ave. and possibly get a far superior burrito, but you might also get norovirus and spend the next 24 hours hunched over the toilet.  It's a high risk/high reward situation.  Instead  you could play it safe and go to Chipotle, spend your 7 bucks, and get the same burrito you've had a billion times before.  No surprises, just 1200 delicious calories in a neat little foil package.  Stabbing the Drama is like that.  There's nothing on here that really blows my mind, but it's still a staple of my diet and I find myself listening to it several times a week.

Apple Duathlon

I registered for this one 3 days prior to the race from a hotel room in Key West, FL, about 72 hours post-Florida 70.3  I don't know what I was thinking.  It was the middle of the afternoon.  I wasn't even drunk yet.  All I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Since I was on vacation between the two races I can't say I didn't take my recovery easily.  I went for 2 slow jogs totaling about 8 miles and that's it.  Zero bike rides, zero swims.  So I showed up at Apple feeling reasonably decent.  That lasted until about 400m into the first run, when my calves started feeling really tight.  Luckily it was just the "really fucking sore" brand of tight and not the "stop right now you dumbass, you're injured" brand of tight.  I kept plugging away and made it through the first 5K in 16:22, which was good for 6th.

Once out on the bike I quickly made my way up into 4th within the first couple miles.  At about mile 6 or so I caught up to Chad Millner and drilled it up a hill to try to put a good gap on him.  It worked as I didn't see him for the rest of the ride.  Not too long after passing Chad I finally caught sight of Patrick in the lead with Jesson Baumgartner not too far behind.  

Jesson is a med student from Iowa who ran CC in college.  He also competed at Duathlon Nationals in Tucson back in April and crossed the line in 3rd, about a minute ahead of me.  He ran afoul of the referees somewhere along the line though and collected some penalty minutes which backdoored me onto the podium.  We chatted a little before the start at Apple and it turns out the referees never told him what he was penalized for and they didn't post a penalty sheet anywhere after the race.  I highly doubt it was drafting since according to the results nobody who was riding near the same speed as him would've been anywhere near him during the ride, so I'm guessing it was something silly like going on the wrong side of a cone at a turn (which was ridiculously easy to do at Nationals the way they had the course set up).  So it's overwhelmingly likely he got completely jobbed out of a podium spot at Nationals.  He was in pretty good spirits about it whereas I would've been super duper Hulk-smash pissed in that situation.  So he passes the nice-guy test anyway.

I gradually reeled Jesson in over the remainder of the ride and came into transition about 5 seconds back.  I had one of my better transitions ever and got out about 10 seconds in front of him.  However, I managed to crash spectacularly on the timing mat at the run out.  It had started raining with about 5 miles left in the bike and was coming down pretty steadily by the time we made it back to transition.  Turns out those rubber mats are slippery little bastards in the rain and I came down pretty hard on my right knee.  When I got back up and set out on the run something was definitely not right with that knee.  I honestly thought about just pulling out of the race right there, but I looked back at transition and saw that nobody else had come in yet, so even slightly gimped I was still looking good for the podium so I decided to stick it out.

I was still running pretty gingerly up the hill leading out of T2 when Jesson flew by me on his was to the fastest run split of the day.  Luckily for me the knee loosened up a bit after about a mile and I was able to pick up the pace a bit on the backstretch.  I looked back on every single corner and even a couple times on the long backstretch straightaway, but I never saw anyone gaining on me so I had the luxury of not having to push too hard.  I eventually crossed the line in 3rd limping and damn near hypothermic in the pouring rain.

So, moral of the story... racing a duathlon six days after a half Ironman is most definitely a stupid idea, but I didn't die and the injuries weren't permanent, so all's well that ends well.

Apple Duathlon Results

Florida 70.3

Viva Las Vegas


I actually qualified for the 70.3 World Championship in Las Vegas last year by winning my age group in New Orleans, but I ended up skipping 70.3 worlds to race Best of the US. That worked out alright, so no real regrets, but I was still somewhat bummed at missing out on Vegas.

So this year as soon as I found out the BOUS race was moving to spring of 2013, I immediately started looking for a 70.3 race to qualify at. I pretty quickly settled on the Florida 70.3 for the simple reason that it was the only race that fit into my schedule. Tiffany also decided that she and Michael would make the trip as well and we'd spend a few days after the race bumming around Florida family vacation style.

The Pre-Race Jams


It turns out sharing a hotel room with a 10 month old baby is not a solid strategy for a good nights sleep, so when my alarm went off at 4AM on race morning I felt like absolute crap. I knew I had to bring out the big guns to turn this situation around, so I cranked up Imperium by Machine Head and stuck that shit on repeat for the half-hour ride from the hotel to the race site.

This song is like an owner's manual for life. It makes me feel like I can wake up, eat a bowl of broken glass and nails for breakfast, run on over to NASA and punt a rocket into orbit. Going hard for 4+ hours in the Florida heat and humidity is nothing...


On to the race...


Swim 

Unfortunately I was in the 15th of 18 waves, which meant I had a solid hour and a half to kill between transition closing and my actual start. I spent most of that time pacing up and down the shoreline watching the 1500 or so people who got to start ahead of me go through the swim. At a boat launch ramp about 20 yards from where we entered the water I saw this lovely sign: 

One silver lining for getting stuck in a late wave... by the time I get in the alligators should already be full. The water was in the mid-80's and super gross. My non-scientific guess is that it was about 50% water, 30% mud and 20% alligator poop. Finally my wave was up, they lined us up in knee deep "water", fired an air horn and we were off. I took a front and center spot on the line and jumped out to a pretty decent start. After the initial washing machine cleared a couple hundred meters out it looked like there was one guy from my wave well off the front already, then a small pack of a half-dozen or so being led by me. I just kept going rather than falling back into the pack to draft since we were already getting mixed up with stragglers from earlier waves so I figured holding a draft would be next to impossible in all that traffic anyway. 

The rest of the swim was spent weaving around traffic and absorbing occasional frog kicks to the kidneys from random breaststrokers. I never saw another cap from my wave after the first turn buoy. My watch showed 29:30 at the swim exit. I was pretty disappointed with that time, but looking at the results I was 3rd in my AG and either 1st or 2nd in my wave (there were 2 waves of M35-39, I was in the 2nd) depending on what happened to the guy who jumped out to the lead at the start so it couldn't have been as lousy as the time would seem to indicate. I'll have to wait until I do a swim where I'm not changing course and/or running into somebody every other stroke to get an honest assessment of my 2012 open water swimming ability. At least I wasn't eaten by a gator.

T1

T1 was my 2nd worst transition ever (my #1 worst transition ever is the 2009 Liberty half, where I had to sit down and bandage a bunch of blisters on my feet before setting off on the bike). I kicked it off by running right past my rack and getting lost, then temporarily forgetting my race number while I scanned up and down the rows looking for my bike. Once I finally found my bike I threw my helmet on, grabbed the bike off the rack and ran a few steps before realizing I forgot to put my race belt on. For some reason WTC requires that a number be worn on the bike, so not wanting to risk a silly penalty I laid the bike down on the ground and did an about face to return to my rack to retrieve my race belt. I'm sure all of this only cost me 30 seconds or so, but it felt like an eternity. It's always demoralizing to piss away time like that so early into what I know is going to be a tough race.

Bike 

I started out the bike in full hammer mode since I figured I was off pace from a slower than expected swim and an epic fail transition. There was a pretty good tailwind the first half and I was holding in the 28mph range while yelling my throat raw at people to move to the right. The roads were pretty narrow with no shoulders for the most part so there was very little room to navigate around slower riders. And of course pretty much nobody was riding to the right like they're supposed to. There aren't enough motorcycles in Sturgis to properly enforce the position rules in the AG waves at a WTC race. 

There was also quite a bit of auto traffic as the roads were open. I lost maybe a minute or two having to wait behind cars as they waited for a safe spot to pass the line of bikes in front of them. Somewhere around mile 30 the terrain started to undulate a bit and we lost our tailwind so the bike started to get much more difficult. Luckily I had already moved up through most of the field at that point so my lungs and throat got a break from the yelling at least. I ended up jumping off the bike with a 2:12:08 split, which was pretty much in the center of the 2:10 - 2:15 I was expecting. I had no idea where I was relative to the rest of my AG or the amateur race as a whole, but I figured I couldn't be in too bad of shape since I wasn't passed the entire ride. I also felt like I did a decent job pacing myself and setting myself up for a good run.  

T2 

T2 was brisk, except for the few seconds I always give away putting on socks. New goal for this season: HTFU and complete a half-iron race without socks... skin of my feet be damned. 

Run 

The run course was extremely challenging. It was 3 loops through the residential streets around the lake with two sizeable hills in the first mile and a half. I was hoping to run right on 6:00/mi pace and nailed it the first loop and was actually feeling pretty decent. The wheels started coming off about midway through the second loop. At around mile 6 I noticed that I had stopped sweating and was starting to shiver a bit, which generally means I'm getting to the point of being dangerously dehydrated. Not wanting to risk a trip to the med tent I decided to do something I haven't done in a race since 2007... walk. From mile 7 onward I briefly walked at every aid station while I guzzled down whatever liquid I could get my hands on. The walk breaks were only about 10-20 seconds each and I was keeping ~6:30 pace between aid stations, so I wasn't losing a ton of time, but it was still pretty demoralizing. I thought for sure I was throwing away the AG win and possibly even a Vegas qualifier.

Because of the chaotic nature of a late wave start and the 3 loop run course I never really had a good idea where I was relative to the rest of the field. I didn't see a single soul from my AG during the 1st lap, which I now know was because I was already at the front, but at the time I thought there had to be at least a couple guys from the previous wave out there in front of me. I passed a handful of 35-39 guys during the 2nd lap, but they were clearly running much slower and I was pretty sure they were a lap behind.  At around mile 8 a 30-34 guy went past me running very strong. He started either 5 or 10 minutes behind me depending on which wave he was in, so crunching some numbers in my head I quickly came to the conclusion that if he was also on lap 2 he was on sub-4 pace and it was basically hopeless for me and if he was still on lap 1 then he was on 4:20-ish pace and as long as I kept putting one foot in front of the other I had nothing to worry about. Either way it made no sense risking a complete blowup trying to go with him so I let him go.

About halfway through the third lap I spotted a couple 35-39 guys up ahead of me who looked strong enough to conceivably be on the 3rd lap as well. I put on as much of a surge as I could to pass them. I wanted to get well ahead by the next aid station because I was still planning on walking through it in order to get more fluids in. It worked as their footsteps faded into the distance and I never saw them again. Looking at the results I'm pretty sure they were on lap 2 anyway.


At about mile 12 I saw the 30-34 guy who passed me back on lap 2 and he became my new target as I tried to lift my pace again. I was still aware that because of the wave start I was either 10 minutes up or down on him, but at that point I no longer cared. It was a point of pride. This guy passed me like I wasn't even moving earlier and now it looks like he's struggling and I need to return the favor. I caught up to about 20 yards back of him when he reached the turnoff for the finish chute... and kept going for another lap. I guess I was 10 minutes up on him after all. I gave myself a mental fist bump, turned into the finish chute and high fived a few kids as I jogged it in for a 4:11:51.


Immediately after my chip was removed I went straight to a nearby picnic table and bent over it dry heaving. Three different EMT's approached me and asked if I needed to go to the med tent but I managed to convince them all that this was standard behavior for me after a half-iron race and avoided the IV needle. It was however a little disconcerting that nothing at all was coming up given that I had managed to take in two full cups of water and/or sports drink at the previous five aid stations. After the dry heaves stopped I went straight to the post-race food tent and guzzled four cans of Coke and two of Sprite and started to feel somewhat normal again.

I wandered around the finish line for area for a while looking to see if results were posted anywhere, but they were nowhere to be found so I resigned myself to sitting on the ground in the food tent until transition finally reopened and I could get to my phone to check the results online. I ran into Jeff Fleig from LaCrosse, who I had previously met last summer at TriStar Minnesota and we sat there comparing notes from our races for a bit. It's always nice to run into a familiar face when you're 1,000 miles from home.

Once they finally reopened transition and I was able to get the results I was blown away that my 4:11:51 was good enough for 11th overall and first amateur. I was pretty confident that I had my Vegas spot sewn up, but I figured that with all the walking I did that someone out there had to have managed better. Some days it really is all about the bike I guess.

After heading out for some nutritious recovery chow at a nearby McDonalds, I reported to the Vegas signup table credit card in hand and claimed my spot, fully intent on actually attending this year. Mission accomplished.

World Turtle Day


Did you know that May 23rd was World Turtle Day? No?!?!? Get with the program.

Most people finding themselves with a few spare days in central Florida with a small child would choose to go to Disney and proceed to drain their wallet for the privilege of spending hours and hours standing in line. Well, most people are chumps. We chose to go the full-on nerd route, first taking little Mikey over to the Kennedy Space Center and then down to the Keys where we were visited the Turtle Hospital, a facility that rescues and rehabs sick or injured sea turtles for eventual release. Yep, that picture below is me wearing a turtle shirt, holding my kid who is also wearing a turtle shirt, standing in front of a building filled with sea turtles (bonus nerdery... the picture was taken by my wife who was also wearing a turtle shirt). Keepin' it awesome in 2012.

Duathlon Nationals

Still Alive

Wow... it's been a solid six months since I've updated my craptacular blog. I'm sure my one or two loyal readers (hi mom!) are very disappointed. Truth is I've been on my grind. If I want to get any training done these days it has to happen in the early morning, so setting the alarm for 5AM has become completely standard.  Between work, training, and trying to keep my kid alive and my wife sane there isn't room for much else. My master plan of regularly posting original content in order to build up a loyal following who I can then proceed to spam with Adsense and affiliate links so I can eventually generate enough revenue to go to the liquor store and buy a 40oz is way behind schedule. I'll try to do better.

Since it worked out so well last time, Patrick Parish and I decided we'd take our show on the road yet again. This time for Duathlon Nationals in Tuscon.

In Duct Tape We Trust

Ever since I forked over my credit card at the luggage counter on the way out to my first fly-in race back in 2010, I've had the dream of cobbling together my own bike boxes and outwitting those greedy bastards.  About a half dozen trips and several hundred dollars in bike fees later I finally got off of my ass to do something about it.  

This trip was the maiden voyage of my DIY ghetto bike boxes.  They're made out of corrugated plastic held together by canvas straps and several hundred feet of duct tape.  The good news is that the bike got there and back without damage, the boxes held up just fine to the rigors of air travel, they actually fit through the x-ray machines so there's less chance the TSA will open them, and they're much easier to carry and get into/out of a car than a traditional bike box.  The bad news is that I only avoided the fee on one leg of the trip.  I can make the frame box substantially smaller by removing the crank, so I'll make that adjustment for the next trip and see how it goes.

The Pre-Race Ridiculousness

For some reason USAT insists on having a mandatory day-before packet pickup and bike check-in for this race.  Since Tucson is about a 2 hour drive from Phoenix you either have to take a really early flight out that morning or head out two days before the race and deal with an extra night away from home.  Since the extra night away from home is not a viable option I went with the really early flight.  I hopped out of bed at 4:30 on Friday morning, said a prayer for my sketchy looking homemade bike boxes as I tossed them in the trunk of the car and headed off to the airport for a 6:15 scheduled departure.

As I was walking across the skyway from the parking ramp to the terminal I noticed an unusually large number of people outside the terminal on the sidewalk.  As I attempted to enter the terminal I found out why... TSA was not letting anyone in.  About every five minutes or so they pushed everyone back farther until we were eventually all back out in the middle of the parking ramp.  After about an hour or so the bomb squad truck rolls up and some guy gets out in the full-on bomb suit just like something out of a movie and heads into the terminal.

Eventually the bomb suit guy comes back outside, gets in the truck and rolls off, but for some reason it's a solid 30 minutes before we get the all clear to go back inside.  It turns out some numbnuts checked a bag with some sort of homemade water filter that looked like a pipe bomb when they x-rayed it.  By now it's about an hour and a half past our scheduled departure time.

When they finally give the all clear I hustle back inside as fast as I can and end up 2nd in line at the Southwest counter.  I say another silent prayer for my plastic and duct tape handiwork and get in the now hour-long line for security screening.  The whole time I'm in line I'm checking the status of my flight on my phone and the departure time keeps getting pushed farther and farther back.  When I clear security I head over to my gate and see the board is displaying no info for my flight at all.  It turns out they sent the thing out about a half hour after TSA declared the bomb scare over.  I can only guess that the plane had approximately zero passengers on board since the vast majority of us had no chance to clear security in that time.  They must've really needed that plane in Phoenix or something.

Luckily I was able to get rerouted onto a flight to St. Louis with a connection to Phoenix that got me in around noon.  Patrick was not so lucky.  He was supposed to be on the same flight, but it took him several hours to get through the luggage check and security lines and he wouldn't be landing in Phoenix until 8PM.

Once I hit the ground I hopped in the rental car and headed toward Tucson with a quick stop at the In-N-Out Burger drive-thru for some pre-race fuel.  Upon arrival in Tucson I threw my bike together like a NASCAR pit stop and made it to packet pickup and bike check-in with about a microsecond to spare. For some reason the packet pickup only went until 4PM. Seriously guys, if you're going to insist on this day-before crap at least extend it into the early evening.  It would make life much easier for people coming from out of town.

I could've had it much worse however. By the time Patrick finally makes it to the hotel I've already been asleep for a couple hours.  

The Pre-Race Jams

In honor of my recent entry into the M35-39 age group, here's an appropriately titled blast from the past:

The Race

Between the time zone change, the travel freakout the day before and general pre-race nervousness both Patrick and I are wide awake by 5AM.  Patrick had negotiated a race morning packet pick up due to the airport drama, so he left for the race site pretty early.  Our wave wasn't going until 8:15, so I sat there and watched TV for a couple hours before I headed out.

Once I arrived I quickly aired up my tires, set up my transition and emptied an entire spray can of sunscreen onto my pasty white midwestern skin.  We actually got pretty lucky with the weather.  It was in the high-70's/low-80's with light winds while we were racing.  It could've easily been much, much hotter and windier.

After a more than likely inadequate warm-up jog I got in the start corral the moment they called my wave.  The start line was extremely narrow and I wanted to stake out a spot on the front row so I wouldn't have to worry about getting boxed in by anyone else.

Right from the gun some maniac takes off at full on kamikaze suicide pace, a couple other guys try to follow, and 1/4mi in I'm sitting in 5th or 6th.  Strangely enough, Patrick is not one of the guys in front of me.  That should've been a giant red flag that I'm probably not pacing this run very intelligently.  At about 1/2mi Patrick finally pulls around.  I hit the first mile marker at 4:55 and I'm somewhere around 7th position nowhere near the leaders.  Assuming that marker was in the right place I think that's my new mile PR.  Even if it wasn't in the right place that opening mile was still damn fast.

Mile 2 is significantly downhill and I clock a 5:13, getting passed by 3 more guys in the process, which is pretty standard for me since I hate running downhill and seem to really suck at it compared to most of the guys I try to race with.  Of course, what goes down must come up, and we soon make the turn to climb back toward transition.  I manage to pass a bunch of guys on the uphill and come into transition 5th in my wave.

I got through transition quickly and headed out onto the bike course still in 5th.  The bike course is a 2-loop out and back with constant rolling hills.  The 50+ wave went out 15 minutes ahead of us, so there was a constant stream of traffic to pass.  Because of all the traffic I never had that great of an idea of where the rest of the guys from my wave were, so I just did my best to keep hammering away.  I made my way around the one and only guy from my wave I ever came into contact with at about mile 9, putting me in 4th.

Shortly after making the turnaround to start the 2nd lap I had one of the scarier moments of my racing life.  Heading into a turn I'm rapidly approaching one of the guys from the earlier wave and screaming "ON YOUR LEFT!" at the top of my lungs.  He seems to have heard me and looks to be setting up for a wide turn so I start to take the inside line, still shouting at him for good measure.  Well, it turns out he must have interpreted "on your left" as "move to the left", because as soon as I get up next to him, he drifts over to me and we rub shoulders.  Since I have more momentum I continue to pull ahead, and eventually his front wheel touches my back wheel and down he goes.  Luckily there were two police officers working that intersection as well as a couple dozen spectators, so figuring that my stopping would serve no purpose I rode on.

The whole rest of the loop I'm replaying that incident in my head and praying that the guy isn't seriously messed up. I breathe a giant sigh of relief when I ride back through that corner ~15 minutes later and there are no body or bike parts on the ground and no ambulance on the scene. I would've felt like the world's biggest scumbag for riding off had that guy been seriously hurt. I jogged out to that intersection after the race and talked to one of the cops. He said the guy had some road rash, but was otherwise OK, refused any medical attention and left the scene under his own power.  Everything happened so quickly I don't know what else I really could have done, but I still feel pretty shitty for being one half of an encounter that probably ruined someone's day.

I get through transition without any hiccups and head out onto the run course in 4th place, about 20 seconds back of the guy in 3rd.  I manage the first mile in 5:15 this time around and look to be closing the gap a bit to 3rd, but I start to lose ground again as we head down the hill. I develop a wicked side stitch on the way down the hill, which is odd. It's been several years since that has happened.  Did I mention I hate running downhill?  Luckily the side stitch clears up toward the bottom and I try to maintain some type of reasonable form for the last push back up the hill.  By now I'm in pretty rough shape and just ready to be done.  

I enter the finish chute a few steps behind one of the 60+ guys from the first wave.  Deciding that a finish line sprint with a guy who started 15 minutes ahead of me is ridiculous (and truthfully, a little afraid that I wouldn't even win said sprint), I set up shop about 10 yards behind him and cruise the last couple hundred meters, crossing the line in 4th.

When I cross the line I give Patrick (who finished 2nd overall, only a handful of seconds behind a guy who finished 2nd in the pro wave at last years Duathlon Nationals) a high five and and proceed to dry heave over a fence while Patrick is being interviewed.

Since the awards ceremony is at 6PM back at the host hotel we don't stick around long and collect our belongings as soon as the transition area is reopened.  We head back to the hotel and to get cleaned up before a post-race refuel at In-N-Out.

This whole time we're still under the impression that we're 2nd and 4th overall. After returning to the hotel I get on the computer and check to see if the official results are posted.  It turns out that I've been upgraded to 3rd overall since the guy who crossed the line in 3rd managed to somehow accumulate 6 minutes worth of penalties.  And since the overall winner is Canadian, he's not eligible for the US championship (apparently he was racing in a one-man "open" division).  That makes Patrick the US champ and me the runner up!

Minnesota was well represented at the awards ceremony, as not only were Patrick and I on the overall podium and winners of our respective age groups, but Bob Powers and Ben Ewers won their age groups as well.  

So the first race of 2012 is over and done with.  Patrick and I both brought home national championship jerseys and a hell of a lot of stories to tell (although most of them have more to do with the fake bomb scare than the race). I'll take that to kick off the season anytime.