I finished my first ever triathlon this past weekend and it was a blast! We met at 7am on Friday morning to road trip down to Lake Havasu City, AZ and we made it just in time for the collegiate division pre-race meeting. The atmosphere of the collegiate division was a lot different than the overall competition because during the meeting nobody paid attention to the presentation because everybody was too busy sizing up the competition from the other schools. Our BYU team stood out among all the Arizona and New Mexico schools because they were already completely tanned and we were butt white (didn't help that we had all shaved our legs which made them look even whiter!). We stayed with some families that had offered to put us up for the night and we arrived at the venue at 5:30 in the morning to get our transition areas set up, get body marked, and prepare for the race. The swim start was a wading start where all of the collegiate males (~100 of us) were standing waist deep in the water lined up for the horn. Water temperatures were announced to be around 61 degrees but it wasn't bad at all. The race started and there was some crowding and a little battling for position in the water out to the first buoy turn, but I can't imagine what things will be like in Ironman with more than 20x the number of competitors all starting at the same time. My swim went about as I had expected. I was predicting a time between 28-30 min and was surprised to check my watch coming out of the water and see that I was at 27 min. My transition into the bike went pretty smooth as I was able to get out of my wetsuit pretty quickly, slam a gel, and spray sunscreen on my arms and face before heading out on the bike. Next time I need to make the extra effort to reach around and spray the back of my shoulders cause that was the only spot I got burned, but I got burned pretty good back there.
On the bike I only had my aero bottle filled with gatorade and after doing the first neighborhood sections with some hills, I realized that in the heat I had already polished most of my gatorade and was only 5 miles into my ride. I decided not to drink anymore until the last 5 miles of my ride when I was going to slam my other gel. That was probably a good call as I got a bit of side ache for next little leg of the ride but nothing bad. At the halfway turnaround they were handing out waters so I grabbed and dumped it in the aero drink leaving me with a really watered down gatorade, but in the heat, that's definitely better than nothing. We entered another neighborhood on the way back that had a few pretty steep hills in it. Coming back down out of it I maxed my speed at 46.4 mph to give you an idea of the grades we were riding. After hitting my gel at the 20 mile mark, I started riding pretty hard to try and get back in by my goal time of 1:15 on the bike. At this point in the ride though, the wind had picked up pretty good and so it was tough battling the strong head wind. I was able to pass more riders over the last 5 miles than I had in the previous 5 so that felt encouraging even though my bike time came in around 1:18 which was a few minutes off the pace that I had wanted.
My bike to run transition was really easy as all I had to do was drop off my bike, grab my race belt, and switch into my zoot running shoes. The first stretch of the race is on sand along the water's edge which just saps the energy out of you. After clearing the sand you run up a flight of stairs and across the London Bridge. I could definitely notice the rising temperatures while out on the run and at each aid station I had to grab a gatorade in one hand to drink and a water in the other just to dump on myself and my jersery to help cool me off. Took me almost two miles of running before my legs loosened up and didn't feel like I was going to have shin splints. After that I finally felt that I could hold a solid pace so I was able to ride that for most of the rest of the race until the last 5 mins when I hit the sand again and the way back to the finish. That was by far the toughest stretch of the race so coming around the last corner that put me back onto grass was almost more of a relief than crossing the finish line 100 yards away. My run time finished around 49 min which was a little higher than I had hoped, but I completed the race overall in 2:38:21 which was right in the range of 2:35:00-2:40:00 which I had predicted all week. As a team we finished 3rd overall in the men's collegiate losing only to University of Colorado and University of Arizona. We were pretty happy to be able to come in and place in only our first year as part of the mountian collegiate triathlon conference.
Swim-27 min; Bike-118min; Run-49min; Overall: 2 hours 38 min
Down to a week until the first race of the season! I'm pretty pumped for this first race to see how the training has been coming. I guess if nothing else, I'll look good at the race. Our team warm-ups came in this week and they are way sweet. Our race jerseys and shorts are arriving early this week so we'll be representing the school in style and we'll hopefully have some representation on the podium. You gotta check out these sweet warm-ups though!
Good news from the swim department! I've been working on some of the stuff from last Saturday's swim clinic and I'm starting to see some of the improvements I had hoped for. Did a few unofficial 650s during the week for reference and I was another minute faster than my last official time. Hopefully I can stay focused and keep my stroke in the race.
The weather has been pretty good so I went out Thursday morning for a bike ride then Friday found me skipping class for a 9 hour hike in the hills searching for some shed horns off a big bull that dropped them since I saw him last Friday. I zigzagged all over the hillsides looking for his horns but couldn't come up with them. I did, however, find a few other old ones including this 6 point.
Saturday I woke up to some pretty sore legs and think I was still a little dehydrated from the previous day so I opted to wait until 1pm to ride. We did around 30 miles but hit some pretty steep hills hoping to be ready for the couple we'll face in Havasu. It was pretty tough tackling some of those climbs without the usual pop that was missing cause of my hike. After the bike ride, we transitioned into our 10k run which was some of the only running I did this week (besides the day that I rolled out of bed 10 minutes before swim class and had to just tie on my shoes and run to the pool at school...good news, I wasn't even late).We have a good group of 20+ heading down to Lake Havasu on Friday morning so it should be a blast and you'll have to check back next week for my race report.
Week 10: S: 4 mi; B: 45 mi + spinning; R: 8 mi
I may be a little late in updating the blog here from last week, but I suppose it's better late than never. It felt really good to finally start running again this week after giving my blister time to heal. It probably ended up being for the better cause my knee was feeling good throughout the week while running as well. I had a couple good runs just over 6 miles which is how far I'll be going in Havasu, and I also got a longer one of about 10 miles in on Saturday. I went hiking on Friday and while going up some steep stuff my foot slipped and I fell straight on to my knee cap. Pretty sure the elk across the canyon hurting me yell and grunt, and if there were any cougars nearby, I'm pretty sure I scared them off too. It hurt and resulted in a bruise bigger than a silver dollar on my kneecap. It didn't hurt real bad walking around on it the next day so I continued on with my plans for my 10 mile run. I woke up Sunday though and could barely go up and down the stairs to my room cause it was so stiff and sore. It's already Tuesday and dang thing is still purple. Haven't put it back to the test running yet but it's pretty sad that my last two injuries preventing me from running didn't even occur from running. A stupid blister while walking home from school and a monster bruise from the non-contact sport of hiking. Oh well.
Saturday we opted out of our morning ride/run to have professional triathlete Heath Thurston who hosted a 2 hour swim clinic with us. He's usually one of the first swimmers out of the water in his races, and his signature move is finishing that last 20 or so yards with the butterfly so his wife can identify him coming out of the water. He helped us out a lot, and of course the margin for improvement is maybe a little greater for me than for some of the top guys on the team, but I really took a lot out of the clinic. He started us out first with sinking to the bottom of the pool and blowing our breath completely out and staying as long as possible so that we'd get it in our minds that we can stay under without any breath. Then he had us do a deadman's float, from there we started kicking with it, and then we started breathing as we did it longer distances. Eventually we started streamlining, then pulling and arm recovering. The premise of Heath's methods is to teach you to feel the water and your body positioning in it. From there, you don't have to fight the water, but can let the water do work for you. It was pretty amazing cause I actually felt for the first time like I was gliding in the water. I'm actually a little slower swimming with these little corrections, but I feel so much more efficient in the water and that will pay off in the long run. I'm gonna keep working with that form and hopefully I'll become faster and more fluid in the water.
Well with the swim clinic and a canceled spin class during the week, I didn't get any time in biking but I did get my highest mileage run week and an awesome swim clinic which has me excited to keep improving there. 2 weeks til Lake Havasu and I can't wait!
Week 9: S: 4 mi; B: 0 mi; R: 22 mi
