USA Triathlon olympic distance national age group championships - race report 2013

RACE REPORT

The swim

At about 9:30am my M30-34 age group wave proceeded down the ramp and I was able to warm up for 5min after stretching for 20min close to the transition zone. The water was chilly and it took me a couple of minutes to acclimate to the water again. With approximately 200 triathletes in my wave the swim would be “interesting” and fast for sure. Reason being that technically the fastest Olympic distance age group triathletes from across the United States were competing after qualifying by placing in the top 10% in their age group at various races across the United States during the 2012-2013 year leading up to USAT Nationals.

The start gun went off at 9:45am with 200 swimmers frantically blasting away to the first turn buoy. The first 500m out of the 1500m swim was just mayhem. With so many fast swimmers around it was difficult to get the best line and we end up swimming into and over each other constantly fighting to draft a faster swimmer or trying to get the best line to the next turn buoy. I settled into a steady pace after 500m and manage to draft a couple of swimmers for brief periods of time. Some of the swimmers I tried to draft were swimming skew so took my own line and swam by myself for long sections. I quickly checked my stop watch close to the end and saw I had been swimming for approximately 18min. I knew that my target swim split of 21:30 was doable. I exited the water in 22^nd place and was right on target with a swim split of 21:29. I entered transition and had a slightly slower T1 time than anticipated due to struggling to get the bottom section of my wetsuit off.

The swim start area (Photo taken after race day)

The bike

Out of T1 I went and onto the bike leg. With my slow bike split of 1:08 in Bermuda just less than a month ago I knew I could bike faster on the fairly flat Milwaukee bike course due to getting the proper retul bike fit done and specifically working on my bike fitness over the last 3.5 weeks. I end up averaging 37.5km/h for the 40km bike and posted a bike split of 1:03 which was the bike split I was aiming for on the day.

Reviewing my heart rate data afterwards and speaking to my coach I realized my average HR was approximately 10 bpm lower than what it should have been. I was biking at half iron distance HR and not Olympic distance HR. The positive side of this was that I felt fresh coming off the bike and heading into the run. It is also encouraging to me that a bike split of 1:01 on similar bike course is certainly achievable for me in the new future.

 The run

I was hoping to capture my run data but thankfully (being sarcastic) to one of the worst GPS devices I have ever used the garmin 405 disappointed with only picking up the satellites 5km into the 10km run. At least I could capture my HR data and can use this data to set training zones going forward. I felt really strong heading into the run and was running close to 4min/km for the first 5km. Typically, I start fading 5km into the run during an Olympic distance triathlon but having discussed this issue with my coach he gave me more targeted run sets to try and fix this problem.

I got to 3miles into the run and felt that I still had energy in the tank with no immediate need to stop and walk. I kept on pushing and could start feeling the pain setting in with my HR creeping up to 95% of my max HR. I just kept on pushing through the exhaustion levels and thought of my son Jordan to keep my going. I looked at my watch and was hoping to do a new PB which would mean a time of less than 2:12. With about 2 miles to go I realized I could go sub 2:10. I kept pushing and thought to myself of all the training sessions I had done to this point and that 2 miles is nothing in the big picture. I saw the US Bank building in the distance (downtown Milwaukee) and knew the finish line was right in front of there.  Eventually I had 1 mile to go and pushed to dig deep with what I had left to reach the finish line in a new PB of 2:09:50.  I was elated especially after having a breaking through run performance of 41min flat. Afterwards I had learned that my wife (in the Cayman Islands) and my Mom (in South Africa) were able to see me finish live thankfully to the online streaming from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

My son Jordan watching the live stream from the Cayman Islands

In the end I finished 46^th out of 183 triathletes in my age group representing all 50 States in the United States with top 25 Americans eligible for qualifying for the World Age Group Nationals. If I was an American National I would have been 21 spots away from qualifying for the World Age Group Championships to be held in Edmonton, Canada in 2014. This means that as an American citizen the qualifying time for the M30-34 World Age Group championship would be a 2:04 or faster. Interesting to note that the guy who won the M30-34 age group did a freakishly fast time of 1:54 which is very close to times professionals do on the ITU circuit. Another standout achievement I noted for the day was that Bob Scott who is 83 years young won his age group in a time of 3:07. The winning time in the M70-74 age group was 2:34. Amazing indeed!

Finally I would like to thank my wife Jana for letting me continue to train during the last couple of months with my son Jordan only being 6 months old now. I would also like to thank my parents for their encouragement and support which has played such a big part in getting me to this point of realizing milestones of my triathlon dream. Last, but not least I would like to thank my coach Guilherme Campos who I met through the inaugural www.mercurymantri.com  event held during January in the Cayman Islands. Guilherme has gone the extra distance for me as a coach. For further details on his coaching services please see gui-coaching.com

Natwest Island Games Bermuda 2013 - Olympic distance triathlon race report

 I am sitting in a coffee shop in Brooklyn, New York sipping on a cappuccino while typing up this race report after departing Bermuda on Wednesday morning. The Island Games closing ceremony was this Friday. Part of me wanted to stay to attend the ceremony but the other part wanted to get back to my 5 month old son Jordan and my wife Jana. I have been blessed with the most incredible gift ever this year being the birth of my son Jordan on my birthday the 7th of February.

To date Bermuda is the most beautiful Island I have visited in my lifetime. Little Cayman also ranks high up there.

Attending the Island Games has been a wonderful experience and it has been a competition I have been aiming to attend for the last 5 years. When the opportunity presented itself to race the Island Games triathlon on an island like Bermuda I just knew I had to try and make the trip.

I arrived in Bermuda Friday morning the 12th of July and attended the compulsory race briefing Friday evening. Saturday morning all athletes had to attend the compulsory course familiarization session which was a good thing as I was very uncertain of the bike course at first. I rode one complete loop of the bike course which was a 12.33km loop close to the Airport. The swim took place on a section of the island called Clearwater beach. After the bike I ran 1 loop of the 2.5km run course which was a path through an area with plenty of trees.

My bike all setup and ready to go for race day

One big mistake I made on Saturday was that I forgot to take any nutrition with to eat after the course familiarization. I end up going hungry for an hour which is not good the day before a race.

Sunday morning (race day) arrived quicker than I thought. Triathletes staying at the Fairmont Southhampton had to wake up at 4am to load our bikes into the truck at 5am. The 2 Cayman triathletes departed the hotel with approx 6 triathletes from Guernsey and 3 triathletes from Jersey. The mood in the bus was pretty tense as most triathletes were either in race mode or busy catching a nap.

We arrived at the race site at approx 6:15am and the 1h15 min to the race start of 7:30am just flew by. At approx 7:20am all triathletes had to line up and were introduced individually to the crowds. What I did not realize beforehand was that we would be lined up on the shore according to our race numbers. As I was number 43 I was the furthest away from having the best line to the first buoy. As the gun went off I remember running full steam ahead and got boxed in by slower swimmers to the first buoy. I immediately lost the first group of swimmers which was not ideal as I was aiming to place in the top 10 on the swim. The swim course consisted of 2 loops x 750m. I got past the first buoy and tried to draft 2 swimmers ahead of me. There was slight chop on the water which made the swim slightly more challenging. I eventually found my rhythm but could feel I was not swimming as strong as I usually do. I remember my stroke feeling sloppy and tried to straighten it out.

I exited the water in just over 22.5min which was about 1.5min slower than I wanted to swim. T1 went pretty smooth and I headed out on the bike course. It did not take me very long to realize that the field would comprise of very strong bikers. I end up posting one of the slowest bike splits of the day and one of my slowest bike splits to date of 1h08min. Not to make excuses but it did not surprise me too much afterwards as I found it very challenging to train during the months of February - April adjusting with the birth of my son Jordan early February and covering for my team manager at work during the busiest time of year. The weekly sessions I skipped in these busy weeks were my biking sessions. This had the result that I just biked once a week for many weeks leading up to the race. The bike course was also rather hilly which makes it difficult to prepare for training on the flat roads in Cayman.

Moving onto the run coming out of T2 it took a minute or so for my lower back to ease up and get into my usual running stride. From the 3 disciplines on the day I remarkably felt the strongest on the run. I end up running 45min flat which was good enough for the 22nd fastest run split out of 45 triathetes racing. It was very hot and humid during the run which suited me as I have been training in the heat in Cayman over the last couple of weeks. The average run split for the 3 medal winners was approx 39min. As mentioned the run course comprised 4 x 2.5km laps. There was a rather steep hill on each lap which made the run course challenging together with the humidity.

Out on the run course at the turn around point

I finished the race placing 31st out of 45 triathletes starting the race. 39 triathletes eventually finished the race with approx 6 triathletes dropping out due to mechanical problems on the bike or heat related issues. Overall I was disappointed with my race performance. I have however learnt a couple of valuable lessons from the race which would enable me to tackle things slightly differently if I ever get another opportunity to race an olympic distance event at this level. I found the level of competition to be very high with some of the competitors having raced before at events such ITU World Age group championships, Commonwealth Games and Ironman World Championships.

Getting a picture post race

Lastly, a big thank you to my coach Guilherme Campos for getting me ready for the race. Guilherme did an excellent job of providing me with a weekly training programs leading up to Island Games as well as following up with weekly skype calls. Also a huge thank you to my wife Jana for supporting me during the last 4 months to train while raising our son Jordan as well as my parents.

Enjoying a well known drink in Bermuda called "dark & stormy" after finishing my races