Caleb and I raced in the ICE Breaker Triathlon on Sunday. As a first time through the entire experience I felt pretty good and I will absolutely do it again. That said, it was tougher than I anticipated.
A quick recap.
It might have been smart to have practiced open water swimming at least once before the competition :-) I found swimming a relatively long distance in freezing, murky lake Folsom, accompanied by a set of less-than-polite competitors kicking me in the head to be rather, well, disorienting. In fact I would say "vertigo" best describes the sensation. Needless to say my swim lines were terrible, I was constantly looking up to see where I was, I burned a ton of extra energy and ended up zigzagging my way to a time I wasn't happy with (I know this without even seeing the split because I started with guys in blue caps and ended with guys in green ones - that's not normally a good sign ;-).
Even though things did feel a little better on the bike, it doesn't change the fact that I'm a serious cycling newbie. My experience on a bike being limited to about 6 months of occasional spin classes, stationary bike once or twice a week and maybe half-a-dozen pre-race practice rides on Jan Klube's awesome loaner tri bike (which when I was standing still made me look like I knew what I was doing, but when in motion made me look like some jackass with a really nice bike). There were a couple cool aspects of the bike ride. The first was the course - a tight undulating track that wound through the woods and along the lake. It was very pretty and with everyone whizzing along it was really fun. The second was being in the presence of some seriously talented cyclists. I had no idea as to the degree of difference between a hack cyclist and a good one. And the first realization was that it isn't just about being in better shape (which those folks are), but it's about knowing how to ride the bike and use the terrain.
Each cyclist had to make two laps around the course, so basically all the really good cyclists had to pass guys like me on their second lap. I actually found that part to be totally cool. These folks (guys and gals) were always in the right gear, knew exactly how to maintain momentum up and down the rolling hills and just emitted a sense of strength, confidence and efficiency. I, on the other hand, was braking on the turns and starting each climb from scratch - essentially clueless on how to really ride the course and use the bike.
But having seen these folks, I get it now. Performing on a bike requires a set of skills and a kind of intuition you acquire through practice. As I was riding I was trying to think of the right analogy for the good cyclists. At first I thought of horses, and maybe that analogy would have worked had the ride been more long, straight and flat - but in this case they were more like wolves. Not the scrawny ones you see on nature shows, but the muscley ones you see in the movies. I just got the sense that the good cyclists looked upon guys like me as easy prey and they chased us down and ate us up. I was totally impressed. I want to be more like them :-)
My, on the other hand, greatest moment on the bike split was *just* managing to not tip over at the top of one of the hills having stalled-out completely on my climb from being in absolutely the wrong gear. At the last mili-second I found one extra inch of strength to turn the crank that one more time to keep upright. I was quite proud of myself to have not ended up looking like a complete idiot, especially in front of the wolves. As I was about to tip I could hear "aren't you the guy...???" in the back of my mind - thankfully, mercifully, I recovered.
But again, as with the swim, not knowing what I was doing on the bike not only lead to a slower time, but worse, lead to a horribly inefficient use of energy.
I thought the run would be my strongest split and it basically was. Having struggled through the first two splits I was pretty much out of gas when I got off the bike - and transitioning from 45 minutes of hard cycling to running was like trying to turn two boomerangs into spears. Your legs just don't like that switch one bit. But after about two miles I started to feel like I was getting somewhere close to my normal running stride. The only problem there was at mile three the trail had a 500 foot, straight-up, incline. That was a real treat. So basically the last mile of the race felt pretty normal (that's about 8 or so minutes of comfortable exercise out of an hour and forty-nine minutes of activity).
Then it was over. That part was nice.
Overall it was a fun experience with the really big realization being that it's as much about knowing what you're doing, and thereby not wasting energy, as it is about the kind of physical shape you're in. There were a zillion things I could have done to save energy and time (most of which have very little to do with more physical training). The big two are gaining some degree of comfort in open water swimming and getting a basic sense of how to ride a bike (and the terrain) for speed. My biggest gains in the next race will come from not making the same rookie mistakes on those two splits.
Jan - thanks again for the bike.
Brian - you can have your %^#@$^@ wetsuit back, it sucks!!! (just kidding - thanks bro ;-)
Race results can be seen here (I'll post the splits when they're posted on TBF's site).
Ezra,
First off, congratulations on your first triathlon! It's amazing to see how incredibly fit you have become in such a short period of time. My primary memories of Ezra are having burgers at Smokehouse on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley. (If you still go there it certainly doesn't show!) It's like Ezra 2.0.
As for the race -- starting with one swim wave and finishing with another -- please let me know when you figure out how not to do that. All but the fastest swimmers are generally caught by faster swimmers from later waves (at least one wave during an olympic event and two to three waves for longer triathlons). You'll certainly improve at sighting and drafting with more open water swim practice but you can always count on the fishmen from later waves to come through. That's fine. Draft and use them while you can, then let them go. These are the guys you get to say "great swim" to when you pass them on the bike and hopefully never see again until you're eating orange slices at the finish. :)
Coming from a cycling background, I think I can put myself in the "wolf" category and speak for most of the "pack". ICE Breaker is a very technical bike course. The only things a wolf is concerned about on a course like that is finding the right line through a corner, avoiding other cyclists and road hazards, and hopefully not losing too much speed. ICE Breaker is very much a road bike course -- you need to be able to shift often, feather the breaks, stand up and power, and take aggressive lines around the turns -- all things nearly impossible to do on a triathlon or TT bike with cow horn bars and bar-end shifters. Anyone on a TT bike was at a serious disadvantage. Anyhow, for general bike handling skills, Phil Casanta, a local bike and triathlon coach, puts on decent skills clinics. I grew up as a bike racer and can actually say that I learned a few things about cornering and descending from Phil. More at: http://www.hypercatracing.com/clinic_dates.htm
As for hunting down other cyclists, in most triathlons I hardly ever notice other cyclists out there unless they are passing me, at which point I'm interested to know what age group they're in and if I think they can maintain the pace. Regardless, I closely monitor my pace (based on watts/power output) so there is very little I'm going to do to adjust based on what a faster cyclist is doing. Hopefully, they're just misjudging their output and will blowup later during the bike or on the run.
For the run, sounds like you did great. My friend Andreas and I ran the course to take pictures of Jaime, Andreas' wife, and other people from the Golden Gate Triathlon club. The ICE Breaker run course seemed more like Xterra than a typical triathlon run! I can only imagine how much that hill must have hurt after powering through the bike. Great job on keeping your pace high.
Congrats again on a great first tri. Looking forward to seeing what other events you decide to do. J&A puts on some pretty popular Olympic events, the best being San Jose International Triathlon and the Folsom International Triathlon. Jaime and I will be at both racing each respectively. Hope to see you there!
Brian
Posted by: Brian McNitt | April 24, 2007 at 12:56 PM