The past is simply that....the past (Part 1)

This will be my feeble attempt to put my past few months of racing, training and life back into order.

May 17th, Summer Open Triathlon

I can barely remember the race at this point.  A few standouts though.....Swim ~ It was friggen cold! A few moments before the race I thought to myself.  I don't need this way too cold.  But I recalled last Oktoberfest tri when EK mentioned to me to learn to deal with the elements.  Don't think of it as cold, think of it as something you will come across during your IM that you will need to overcome.  And so I put my face under the water and blew bubbles.

It took my breathe away.  The race began, I said Nok 3xs and off I went.  Besides freezing the swim was decent.  Transition decent.  Get on the bike....and I'm peddling.  Last race a few weeks earlier I popped my front derailleur.  So it would only serve to mention, yes of course this time my rear derailleur was separated and I had just 2 gears to peddle the 15 or so miles.  Up hill on the out and down hill on the return.  Not fun.  I didn't set my watch correctly similar to the recent duathlon so once again I had not a proper power meter or race pace etc.  So I was racing blind and doing the best I could.  transition occurs, running shoes on and two frozen stump feet are out and running and trying to defrost.  The pins and needles of such were felt around mile 1.5.  I cross the finish line and immediately went back to cheer one of my training mates Susan on as I know she was just about 10 minutes behind me.  Failed attempts at post race bloody marys with the team.  I went home.  Pretty non descript and uneventful for me.  Just getting the cobwebs out.

June 1st, Boulder Sprint Triathlon

Here we are....where it all began just a year ago.  My first tri.  And as they say....you always remember your first.  Last year my motto going into this race was "Lord, please don't let me be last"

Spiderman, spiderman does whatever a spider can...spins a web any size catches thieves just like flies....
look out here comes spiderman. 

Equipped with my new long sleeve spidey wet suit, I was excited to take to the water and see how this thing works. Phhhhhhhpt, Phhhhhhhpt....I'm shooting webs.  That's the face above you make when you make that sound of phhhhhhpt when you shoot your web.  If you weren't aware.  Next weekend is Kansas 70.3 and I wanted to make sure that I am not wearing a full wetsuit for the first time in a 1/2 Ironman competition.  SO....Boulder Sprint you are my testing grounds.  

My Boy ~ Rugger and Girl ~ Bella Nera

As a relative newbie with each race I do, I truly try to learn something from it.  I am constantly learning in training and racing.  My prerace talk with EK in the week leading up to the sprint was about execution.  Being smooth and to race as error free as possible.  So if I had trouble with my Front derailleur in the Duathon and my rear derailleur in the Summer Open one would believe that it was time to take Bella in to have a look over.  Pretty smart huh??  So I brought my girl in for a once over and I was confidant that she would be running smooth.  

I couldn't use my Garmin in the Duathlon.  I messed things up with it in the Summer open. I had troubles in IM Cozumel.  Let's just say for being a pretty intelligent man, I struggle sometimes with electronic gadgets.  I have missed downloading data to my coach more times than I care to remember for every reason imaginable with this dang watch.  I hear it can even make Frozen Margaritas if you can program it correctly.  In any case, I practiced.  I practiced working my watch.  Turning it on and turning it off.  I practiced going from swim to transition to bike and so on.  I did not want to miss another opportunity to have complete data for this race.  The watch and more importantly the operator was ready to be error free.

My home away from home for a couple of hours.

I arrived at the transition area earlier that I had to any race in my whole year history of racing. I set up shop and was ready to go.  This caught the attention of a few training partners.  I put on my Spidey Suit shot my web..... Phhhhpt Phhhhpt a few times and went down to the water to warm up.  Warming up is still an area that I need to work on and figure out how to do better..  Do I swim for 15 minutes? Do I run 2 miles?  Do I ride 5 miles?  All the above???

The swim felt relatively good.  My full sleeve wet suit test went well for swimming.  Not for removing the wetsuit.  I put my Garmin watch on the outside of the wetsuit so that it would still get GPS tracking instead of under my sleeve.  I never had to think about this with the sleeveless.  Well, needless to say it was a bit of a struggle to get the wet suit off as seen in the picture above.  Lesson learned.  I swam the course about 5 minutes faster than last year and completed my transition from swim to bike about 2 minutes faster than last year.

The bike course was about 5 miles longer than last year due to the construction on the Diagonal Highway.  The bike felt pretty good and although I was about 5 minutes off of last years time, we also rode about 5 miles more.  All in all a time improvement and feeling pretty good with the bike.  Transition from bike to run saw in efficiency of about 40 seconds from 2013.  

The run was decent.  I started it fast, as I typically have a hard time starting the run at all and get the bike legs switched to running legs.  After the 1st mile split I pulled back a touch and settled in almost too slow in the aftermath and for the final mile, I picked it up a step and ran the fastest split of the 3.5 miles.  All in all 3 minutes faster than last year on the run. Compared to 2013....2014 saw a 5 minute faster race with an additional 5 miles of biking.  5 miles of biking would be about 17 minutes.  So apples to apples best I could tell I completed this years race in about 22 minutes faster than I did last year.

A beautiful morning swimming, biking and running saw my finish with the traditional flying to the finish.

A few hours later the traditional post race bloody mary's.